Engage and inspire

I don't normally enjoy working over a weekend, but I'm looking forward to this one. Saltash.Net School, one of the premier technology early adopter schools in the United Kingdom is holding its annual staff conference down on the north coast of Cornwall this Friday and Saturday, and its Deputy Head Dan Roberts, has managed to get hold of some exceptional speakers for the event. Both 'slum-dog Professor' Sugata Mitra and Afghanistan war hero and double amputee Ben McBean will give keynote speeches on Friday evening, after which there will be a question and answer session, with invited panellists Stuart Ball (Microsoft Education), the blogger and journalist Merlin John, and yours truly.

The following morning, it will be my turn to speak, and I will be providing a keynote entitled: 'Teachers and Technology: The Big Picture' in which I will talk about how teachers can harness the power of new and emerging technology to inspire and engage learners. I will post my slides up on my Slideshare site after the presentation. There will be workshops later in the day led by Dan Roberts and Stuart Ball on how to use Web 2.0 tools in teaching and learning, and the entire event will be searchable under the Twitter stream #saltash11. Much of the conference will also be live streamed at this site. Here is the list of people attending the conference. I'm looking foward to it.

Image source

Engage and inspire by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

In the abstract

Writing a good abstract - a brief summary, precis or synopsis that appears at the front of an article - is important. It may be the only thing the reader sees, besides the title of your paper. This is because many event organisers only publish abstracts in conference proceedings. The same applies with journal articles - most publishers, particularly those who put up paywalls, will often allow you a free look at just the journal abstracts. The abstract is therefore quite an important device to promote your article. Get it right, and make it eyecatching, and you will often 'hook' people into reading the full article. Get it wrong, and you may lose your audience.

Several people have asked me to share my ideas and advice on writing abstracts for conference papers and journal articles. If you disagree with these suggestions and/or have alternative ones, you are very welcome to post your ideas and views below in the comments box. I'm sticking my neck out here, as there are sure to be objections about some of the following, but this is my blog and these are my ideas, and they are here to promote some discussion - so here goes:

I always write my abstract last, after I have written at least a full draft of the paper. The reason I do this is because often, my paper doesn't take its full shape until it's close to being finished, and I find it easier to write the abstract then. Alternative advice is to write your abstract first, because it can give you structure, but if you really want some scaffolding for structure, you could use sub-headings which can be removed later if you wish to do so.

There are of course many variations on the abstract, but essentially, any good abstract is fairly concise, and contains five key points (which could be written in as little as 4 or 5 sentences):

1: The background and context of the study.
2: The aims and purposes of the study; may also include research question(s) or hypothesis.
3: The method used to answer the research question(s); may also include brief details of the type and number of participants; sample size.
4: Summary of key research results/findings.
5: How the results contribute to knowledge of the field; main conclusions and/or recommendations.

So there you have it - a formula for a brief abstract that is applicable for use in the reporting of most research reports or academic studies. One final note - keep it brief, because most conference organisers, journal editors and book publishers will reject long and rambling abstracts.

Image source by Pascal Klein

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

You've been hailed

Increasingly, as technology becomes more personalised, it will also become more personalisable. By this I mean that not only will users be able to tailor the technology (apps, backgrounds, appearance, functionality) to their own needs, but it will also be used increasingly to appeal to their senses, and even to adjust their perceptions and behaviour. Watching a re-run of the 2002 sci-fi movie Minority Report, reminded me of this. The central character, a Pre-Crime Officer by the name of John Anderton is walking down the street, and animated advertising images are calling him out by name as he passes by: "John Anderton - you need this product today!" We assume that the embedded technology within the advertising hoardings is detecting some personal feature that identifies him - possibly the irises in his eyes - and can then call him by his name. Such advertising, if it were technically feasible (and some would argue it already is) would be very powerful, because as all advertisers know, it is the personal message that is the most influential.

The Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser had plenty to say about how ideological messages influence the perceptions of individuals. Objects, music, art (and I would add media and technology) can all be used to 'hail' the individual and make them feel as though they are personally being addressed. This process of interpellation could be exemplified in Lord Kitchener's World War One poster 'Your Country Needs You', and all of the subsequent imitations by other governments to encourage young men to enlist in the military to protect and defend their country. His stern expression and the stark message said it all. The eyes of the interpellator followed you wherever you went, and there was apparently no escape from the fact that Lord Kitchener was calling you personally to join him in the struggle against evil.

It is highly likely that such interpellative technologies as those seen in Minority Report will be realised sooner rather than later. But it is the context aware systems and their ability to educate learners that I am most excited about. Such systems will be at the core of the Smart eXtended Web, and equipped with the appropriate handheld or wearable technology, learners will be able to interact with their environments in ways never before achievable. All of this will also be very personal, and will facilitate new and exciting forms of education.

Inspired by a Twitter conversation with Manish Malik @manmalik, Simon Brookes @Pompeysie and Pat Parslow @patparslow.

You've been hailed by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Positive deviance

One of the statements I have made in recent speeches has gained quite a reaction. It contains the phrase 'positive deviance.' I've had a few questions about it so let me try to explain a little more:

In any community there are a few people who are not satisfied with the way things are done, and go against the grain. They often try out new and possibly unacceptable ideas that in the end, prove correct, or promote some positive change. So from the undesirable comes the desirable. People who are positive deviants are usually unpopular, or are considered to be lunatics, subversives or anarchists. Consider the little boy in the crowd who was the only one bold enough to should out 'The King has no clothes on!'. Nobody else dared to say it. But he saw it like it is and spoke out. This was an example of positive deviance. It brought about a change in people's perceptions. 'Some things will never change' sang Bruce Hornsby, and then he added 'Ah but don't you believe it.' Changes can be achieved even in the most conservative organisations if they are approached properly. But positive deviance can go farther than individual action.

Positive deviance can also come from collective action - or in the words of James Surowiecki - 'the wisdom of the crowd'. The current radical changes in the Middle East are being caused by collective positive deviance, in this case in the form of mass civil disobedience. Tyrants are being overthrown by the collective positive deviance of those who simply will not put up with being oppressed any more. Sadly, there has been bloodshed, and even loss of life, yet people still seem willing to make the sacrifice so they can secure a better future for themselves and their children. Positive deviance is therefore based on direct action as well as thought. “It is easier to act your way into a new way of thinking than think your way into a new way of acting”. Or in other words, it is easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.

Teachers can be deviant in a positive way. All it takes is for one teacher to notice that something is not being done particularly well and can be done better. All they need to do is speak out, blow the whistle. It may not be acceptable to change the way 'something has always been done', but sometimes it still has to be done, regardless of the cost, if a positive change is to be made. Positive deviants get into trouble sometimes, because they disrupt the status quo - they challenge and subvert 'the way things have always been done', and they can be uncomfortable to have around. But ultimately, if we want far reaching change in our school systems, then we need positive deviancy. So do you see things that need changing? Are you disatisfied with the way things are done? And are you prepared to take the risk to make some changes, to try out new things? Are you a positive deviant?

Image source by Nigel Mykura

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

Counting the cost

When we talk about the future of learning, we talk about the future of society. Most will agree that good education contributes significantly toward the wellbeing and prosperity of society. Without a trained, educated work force, nation states are not in a position to compete within the global economy. You only have to look at any emerging nation of the world where there is poor or partial compulsory education provision to see exactly how its economy is faring. Moreover, the higher the number of people unemployed, the more drain there will be on the economic and social resources of the state. This is the main reason why successive governments load their deck so heavily in favour of improved educational provision. It is politically expedient and it is also socially and economically desirable to seek to improve the state funded education provision. And it is why most changes imposed by governments don't actually work. This is because the governments of the world often remain blinded by economic considerations, and fail to see the true value of good education. Our leaders know the price of education, but have no idea about its true value.

Education is not just about preparing children for a world of work, and it is more than an organised attempt to secure the economic future of the nation. Education is far more valuable than that. How can we ignore the simple joy of learning? How can we measure the cultural value of learning about art, music, science, faith - the world around us? What price can we place on leading young people to maturity of thought, where they become discerning and critically aware individuals, able to decide for themselves what is right or wrong in the world? How do we place a price tag on enabling children to channel their fertile imaginations into precious, creative, transformative outcomes?

The answer is, we can't ... and we shouldn't. When the world falls apart around us, what we will be left with - is what we have learnt. And while the good people of Christchurch, New Zealand, are struggling to come to terms with their tragic losses, resulting from yesterday's devastating earthquake, what will they be doing? They will be surviving, escaping, organising, caring, sharing, coping, communicating, collaborating, rebuilding, reflecting and reappraising, and drawing on many other valuable skills they have learnt. Skills that go way beyond the mere acquisition of facts and knowledge. They will be drawing upon their emotional and intellectual resources which do not result solely from immersion in a 'curriculum', but rather through their exposure to the values and mores of their community.

As the news of the Christchurch earthquake broke yesterday, many people drew on their social media communication skills to connect with each other, providing vital information and sharing news, in a virtual community that spanned the globe. They achieved this without the help of the broadcast media, who were once again hours behind in reporting from the scene. We received reports from citizen journalists, people caught up in the drama of the moment, using their mobile phones to send out their pleas for help, and their remarkable but disturbing pictures and videos of the scenes they were witnessing before them. Such actions cannot be taught. There is no curriculum that can be developed to give us an appreciation of what we should do in a disaster or a crisis, no way to teach how we can communicate human tragedy as it unfolds. We learn by doing and we learn by being exposed to these experiences. And as we learn, others learn with us and from us. As a community, we somehow survive and ultimately, thrive. Lifelong learning is what education is made of. It was never about knowing what, always about knowing how. Let us never confuse schooling with education. If we do, what will be our future?

Dedicated to the memory of those lost in the Christchurch earthquake of 22 February, 2011.

Donate to the Red Cross NZ Earthquake victims fund

Image source by Martin Luff


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

Lunatic fringe?

Ivan Illich once argued that schools were like funnels, a transmission system - an industrialised, impersonal process that created more problems than solutions. His alternative to funnels was to establish 'learning webs' where students could share their expertise within their communities and learn from each other as the need arose, and as their interests drove them. For Illich, informal learning was more appropriately situated than formal learning, and therefore more relevant for lifelong learning. The work of Paulo Freire holds a particular significance to this discourse - he argued that dialogue was more powerful than curriculum, because it is the essence of informal learning, driven by interests rather than the expediences of the state. Einstein was an echo of these sentiments. He once said: 'Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learnt at school'.

During a presentation in Manchester two years ago, I happened to mention that Illich's 1970s notion of deschooling society could now be achieved through new web based tools, but that we were in danger of turning the Web back into a funnel if we persisted with wholesale implementation of institutional VLEs that constrained rather than liberated learning. He is one of my favourite anarchists, I said.

In an online discussion group later, someone suggested that my mention of Illich was enough to brand me as a member of the 'lunatic fringe'. I smiled, because I wasn't offended by this, but genuinely encouraged. A similar thing happened to me during the plenary session of the ICL conference in Austria. I asked a question of one of the keynote speakers, and cited Illich's deschooling position. He lost his cool and declared "No-one quotes Illich anymore!" It's not always a bad thing to be labelled a lunatic. It often means that people just don't fully understand what has been said. It's the same when someone is labelled an anarchist. It is often used as a perjorative description, without a clear understanding of what it actually means.

The Sex Pistols sang 'I am an anarchist', but I'm not convinced they were really aware of the true connotations of their lyrics. One of the conference delegates at my Manchester presentation asked me to explain my statement that Illich was 'one of my favourite anarchists'. He asked me to say what 'other anarchists' I admired. I responded with a list of people including: Jesus Christ, Mozart, Picasso, Van Gogh, Stockhausen, Einstein, The Beatles and Dylan Thomas. A surprising list perhaps? Few of these, if asked, would have classified themselves as anarchists in the sense that they wished to 'destroy the world'. They didn't of course. Most of them were criticised for being mad, deluded, drug-crazed or drunken, but each of them in their own way broke out from the mould, enabling us to see the world in a new way. They created new concepts that made us rethink our representations of reality. To me, that is what true anarchism is. Not being satisfied with the present, anarchy is about challenging, subverting, removing and ultimately replacing the tired, creaking old structures - a kind of 'destructive creativity' perhaps. It may not all be about smashing the system. It may be about repurposing it - just take a closer look at Illich's ideas:

Here is what Illich (pictured left) actually said: “A…major illusion on which the school system rests is that most learning is the result of teaching. Teaching, it is true, may contribute to certain kinds of learning under certain circumstances. But most people acquire most of their knowledge outside school, and in school only insofar as school, in a few rich countries, has become their place of confinement during an increasing part of their lives".

Illich was not saying 'destroy school'. He was saying that the ills of the current state funded school system (read 1971, or 2011 - it makes no difference) far outweigh the good. School is creating far more societal problems than it is solving, he believed. His notion of 'learning webs' reflects his concern that we become more community focused and able to respond to changes, whilst his critique of 'funnels' shows his concern for the bland, homogenous and often irrelevant curricula of his own time and the impersonal, behaviouristic manner in which it was delivered.

On his blog, Bill Ellis provides us with useful insight into the motivation behind Illich's thesis: "Deschooling Society was more about society than about schools. Society needed deschooling because it was a mime of the school system that it engendered and that engendered it. In our current society individuals are expected to work in dull and stultifying jobs for future rewards. This they are trained to do in schools. They go to school so that they can get a job to work for future rewards".

We are seeing some green shoots. Creative curricula and personalised learning environments are the start of the deschooling process Illich called for. The formation of loose networks of practice and virtual communities, professional learning networks (PLNs) and 'user groups' on the Social Web is another. Retiring school systems that inhibit creative expression and individualism, and introducing new forms of assessment that support learning rather than measure it are also the start of the deschooling process. Using appropriate digital media that connect people into expert webs and enable them to negotiate meaning that is relevant to their own specific contexts is infinitely better than direct instruction. I can't see us demolishing the school or university building. What we should see happening though, is building the essence of all that is good from the school and university into each personal learning space, wherever that may be, and whatever form it might take. You can read more about the Deschooling Society ideas of Ivan Illich.

Images: Moon source. Illich source.

Lunatic fringe? by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Very touching

Under consideration during one of my tutorials were the affordances of touch screen tools such as Apple's iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch. Regular readers of this blog may remember a post I wrote last month on natural gesture interfaces entitled It's only natural. In it I reported that there are a number of ways to interface with a computer now, including touch screen, non-touch (e.g. the XBox 360 Kinect), touch surface (e.g. MIT's Sixth Sense wearable), voice activation, and a number of other operation modes, many of which are spin-offs of adaptive technologies developed to support users with physical disabilities. Even facial feature recognition has been mentioned as a future interface mode.

But it was the Apple iPad tablet and other touch screen tools such as Dell's Latitude laptop that were in our focus today. (A review of the new Latitude 2110 will feature on this blog in the near future) I speculated that it was not only the tactile characteristics of the touch screen that were important, but that haptics could also be a key factor. Non-touch interfaces will no doubt become popular in time, as has already been shown by the rapid rise in popularity of the XBox Kinect. But the Nintendo Wii remains a popular gaming technology, possibly because of the haptic feedback system built into the handset. If you hit a golf ball too strongly for example, not only do you hear the fateful sound of an overhit golf ball, and experience the view of the ball overshooting the green, you also feel the vibration in the handset, which convinces your nervous system that you have made a mistake. Although the iPad screen doesn't vibrate, it never the less provides pressure resistance feedback to the user. It is a sort of middle ground between the flexible 'give' of the conventional keyboard or mouse, and the 'nothingness' of the XBox 360 Kinect. Haptics, I think, will have a big role to play in the future acceptance of natural gesture interfaces and may influence which systems ultimately become the 'Killer App' replacement for the keyboard and mouse. People may not be as ready for the completely non-touch interfaces.

A second point we discussed was that natural gestures such as pinching, flicking and swiping are intuitive, and offer students a tactile, transparent window to manipulation of content and quicker learning. Transparent technologies are those that require learners to invest a minimum of thought and effort into navigating and operating a system, thereby allowing them more cognitive processing capablity to learn. Conversely, an opaque technology (some institutional VLEs fall into this category) is a technology that forces students to concentrate more on using the tools than they do on actual learning. The former is clearly more desirable than the latter, and iPad and iPhone type interfaces provide this transparency. Students 'see through' the technology to more easily find, organise and assimilate the content.

The third important aspect of touch screen interfaces is their capability to support learning, communication and interaction with surroundings while on the move. New and emerging applications such as Augmented Reality, GPS and 3D visualisation also have a lot of appeal, particularly for those who find themselves having to navigate through unfamiliar neighbourhoods. We will probably see a lot of new developments around computer interfaces in the coming few years, but I think Apple have nailed it with the iPad touchscreen for a while at least.

Image source


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

Manifesto

If you have a few moments to spare over the next few weeks, you could check out the Manifesto for Media Education site, where educators and media specialists from around the world are being invited to post their thoughts and ideas on best practice, learning philosophy and the future of education, all around the context of media. Here are Pete Fraser and John Wardle, the minds behind the Manifesto project:

"This project is an attempt to develop a shared understanding, some shared reasons, for media education. We hope it will stimulate discussion within course teams and with students. We imagine it will lead to conversations about how we teach and what specific things we teach, but those are secondary questions. We believe we may uncover many reasons but it seems better to have articulated many as opposed to none and as Postman says ‘A definition is the starting point of a dispute, not the settlement’.

"On this website you will find a variety of writers’ summations of their reasoning for media education. These will be context specific and at times may feel at odds with one another. However we hope that by the end of the process we will have a better, more sustaining understanding of the purpose of what we do and that we will be able to draw on this understanding to keep us on track in the classroom and in defending and advocating our subject in the future."

With contributors such as Stephen Heppell, Henry Jenkins, David Buckingham and Natalie Fenton, it's a thought provoking set of readings which should get you reaching for your laptop to respond.

Image source

In the clouds again

Tonight I'm travelling up to Loughborough University to speak at tomorrow's Google Apps for Education User Group meeting. Together with the University of Portsmouth's Manish Malik I will be presenting a paper on our latest thinking around Cloud Learning Environments. Other speakers include Tony Hirst and Niall Sclater (both at the Open University), Nick Skelton (University of Bristol) and presided over by Martin Hamilton (Loughborough University). You can follow the entire day's proceedings by checking the Twitter hashtag #guug11. Here's our abstract:

Manish Malik (Faculty Learning and Teaching Coordinator at the University of Portsmouth) and Steve Wheeler (Associate Professor of Learning Technology at the University of Plymouth) discuss the recent developments and the patterns emerging within the CMS/LMS/VLE product sector. From BB & Moodle 1.0 to BBoogle & Moodle 2.0/Google to Sakai 3.0/Canvas to a GApps based learning environment. Also they highlight and demo an application that shows the potential that Google Apps and other loosely coupled Web 2.0 services have in creating an open Virtual Learning Environment that is cloud based or a "Cloud Learning Environment."

Image source by Marcos Papapopolus


In the clouds again by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

The future of learning

The Future of Learning

View more presentations from Steve Wheeler.

What is the future of education? With the upsurge in ownership of smart mobile devices such as iPhones, Androids and Blackberries, the rapid social penetration of touchscreen computers such as iPads, and an increase in the purchase of Kindles and other e-reader devices, the future of learning is definitely smart mobile. 80 per cent or so of the learning that most of us engage in is of an informal nature. Informal learning is becoming an increasingly enriched experience with personal tools, and there is improved connectivity too, ensuring that anyone who has a mobile smart device is more likely to be able to connect to the Internet quickly and seamlessly. Social networking sites and online media sharing sites are also enjoying exponential increases in membership, leading to the supposition that this generation is a profoundly connected generation. Students will use Facebook when they want to, and their institutional managed learning environment when they have to.

It is clear that education will not share the same future as the state funded school, because education and school are not synonymous. It doesn't end at school either. Those who pursue formal learning to the level of further and higher education will experience a growing gulf between the capabilities of the technology they arrive with in their hands, and technology that is provided in the classroom. They are different tools, for different purposes. The Blackberry or iPhone will be used to connect to informal learning and friends, for fun, entertainment and social purposes. The institutional system will be used for connecting to formal learning, and activities that are more formalised and by their nature, less entertaining and engaging. The personal technologies will be sleek, attractive, must-have, rapid action and intuitive devices, while the institutional systems will be rule-bound, clunky, opaque and bland. It follows that many students will prefer to access learning resources, their tutors and peers through their own personal technologies. We will thus witness a gradual decline in on-campus learning, with an increasing number of blended programmes made available to meet the demand of an increasingly mobile student population. Because students will increasingly rely on smart mobile tools for learning, FE and HE institutions may agree special arrangements with telecommunications companies to offset the call cost for students, as a trade off to the money the save by reducing their on-campus operations.

The blended learning courses of the future will be those that combine formal and informal learning features. Formal learning will be undertaken mainly for the purpose of gaining accreditation, informal learning will be engaged with for the remainder of the waking hours. Unless we can harness the power, excitement and richness of the informal personalised learning experience and translate it into formalised settings, we will continue to see a widening rift between school and education. The slideshow above - a part of the keynote speech I gave at LearnTEC in Karlsruhe, Germany, earlier this month - illustrates these and other thoughts about what we might see in the future of learning.


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

Pigs are flying

In several previous posts on this blog I have extolled the virtues of open content, and have called for traditional journals to go open access. Recently we heard the excellent news that the flagship journal of the Association for Learning Technologies (ALT-J) which recently changed its name to Research in Learning Technology, will go fully open access in January 2012. It took a change of publisher to achieve it. In future, I predict that the 3 issue a year publication will reach a significantly larger and more diverse audience than it has ever previously achieved. That's what happens when content is made free and open for all. For me and an increasing number of other academics in all disciplines, open access is the way forward, and I am becoming disenchanted with the idea of writing for closed and pay-wall ridden publications.

I therefore sat up and took notice this week when the American publishing house Nova Science sent me an e-mail asking me if I wanted my recently published chapters to be open and freely available to readers. What an opportunity! I thought. It's a no brainer! So I checked the fine print. Here's the deal: Any Nova published author can participate in the open access scheme - it's easy. All we have to do is complete an order form and send it off to Nova with our credit card information. For only $400 I can enjoy option 1. "This feature allows your chapter to be visible free of charge to anyone in the world with internet access. In addition, the Publisher will send e-announcements to up to 100 recipients upon request and provision of the email list." For a paltrey $700 my readers and I can enjoy option 2: "The Express version of Open Access provides Open Access immediately after page proofs resulting in full Open Access 8-12 weeks before publication." Not satisfied with such an unbelievably generous offer, Nova are really pushing the boat out, creatively offering additional options for only a small extra payment, including colour print versions ($300 for the first 10 pages and just a little more for additional pages), video enhancement (a snip at $400 for 10 minutes) and even 'personalised offprints' at $14.50 per item.

It thrills me to think that Nova Science (and hopefully other publishers too) have finally decided to put their authors and readers first, while worrying less about their shareholders, as they fully adopt the ethos of open content and open access for all the content they publish. After all, the content is only there as a result of the hard work of academics and authors, so it's only fair. It warms my heart to think that they are now putting aside their profiteering instincts to ensure that knowledge is democratised and freely available for all. I'm going to sign up to this most excellent arrangement ... just as soon as the pigs that are flying around outside my window stop for a swill break.

Image source by Stephanie Pouyllau

Pigs are flying by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Interview with a Wolfram

Conrad Wolfram is a man dripping with ideas and innovation. He is also a decent, unassuming and thoroughly pleasant guy. He has a high powered vision of the world 'where computation meets knowledge.' Since May 2009, when it was released for general use, Wolfram Alpha has caused some waves. For the Wolfram brothers Stephen and Conrad, Alpha is less a search engine, more an answer engine, because it processes queries against structured data rather than simply presenting a list of pages or hyperlinks found through word-matching.

I had the pleasure to hear Conrad Wolfram give a keynote speech on semantic search at LearnTEC recently, and I was even more delighted when I got to sit with him on the train all the way back to the airport, and the opportunity to converse with him about semantic web, computation research, intelligent search and the nature of knowledge. A graduate of Cambridge University and now Strategic Director of Wolfram Research, Conrad has some marked ideas about technology and learning. He is also good friends with a number of luminaries in the world of computing including Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. He drops their names into the conversation as if they are sitting across the room from us. Software engineer Theodore Gray is mentioned in the conversation, and we discuss how Wolfram research is developing. Conrad also tells me how he felt just before walking on stage to present his TED talk. We talk about how Wolfram's earlier intelligent knowledge engine Mathematica was founded. We talk about the future of knowledge, we touch on David McCandless' and Hans Rosling's amazing data visualisation tools, and we discuss the need for better understanding of how to use search terms. Time went by quickly and we parted company at Frankfurt Airport, promising to stay in touch. As I made my way over to the check in counters, my mind went back to his speech earlier in the day...

During his LearnTEC keynote, Conrad Wolfram (pictured left with conference chair Peter Henning and I) had given a live demonstration of both the Wolfram Alpha answer engine itself and also a new experimental site which 'I'm not supposed to show you just yet.' It is impressive stuff, with powerful computation that goes beyond simple interpretation of the words entered, generates 3 dimensional visualisation of data and promises the capability to automatically create widgets when the user asks the right questions. How old was Queen Victoria in 1890? It will give you the answer and then create a widget to deal with other, similar queries. Where is Victoria Falls? It provides a location map, and offers a number of geolocation options. The four pillars of WA, said Conrad Wolfram, were linguistic analysis, curated data, dynamic computation and computed presentation. If used correctly and intelligently, WA is indeed an extremely powerful research and computational tool.

Conrad Wolfram also had a lot to say about learning during his presentation. He argued that the value chain of knowledge is changing. By this he suggested that knowledge brokering is no longer the domain of the experts, but echoing sentiments of the wisdom of crowds and the power of tribes, he argued that repositories of knowledge can become even more powerful if they are searched intelligently and using visualisation computation. And as each new node and connection is created by individuals, a new democratisation of knowledge emerges - that is Wolfram's vision. 'If you drive yourself,' he said, 'you learn more about the route than you would if you are a passenger.' This suggests that most search engines make the enquirer a mere passenger in the journey to knowledge, whilst WA puts the enquirer firmly in the driving seat.

And what about education and Wolfram Alpha? He has a message for teachers: 'Stop teaching calculating', he advises, 'and start teaching maths.' The tools are already available for students to do calculation, what they now need, he states, is the ability to test things and verify results. The knowledge balance in schools, said Wolfram, is all wrong at present. There is too much knowledge giving and not enough opportunity for students to test things, experiment and discover for themselves.

Images by Gudrun Porath

Interview with a Wolfram by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

I have it within me...

When Doug Belshaw invited me to write a blog post on the purpose of education for the Purpos/ed project I could see the importance of revisiting this vital question. Your own rationale for becoming an educator should reveal quite a lot about your own personal philosophy on education. For me, it's about making a positive impact on people's lives and inspiring them to learn.

Let's start with the word 'education'. One of the Latin root words is 'educere' which means to draw out (from within). If we practice education properly, we will see that it's not about getting students to perform to standardised tests that bear no resemblance to reality. Standardised tests allow governments to check on the performance of the school, not on individual learning. This is not education, it's schooling.

If we practice education properly we will also realise that it's more about learning than teaching. I often think about what I actually learnt in my school years. I was taught to read and write and to perform elementary mathematical functions so I wasn't ripped off when I visited a shop. But this was nothing compared to what I learnt through my own endeavours, in my own time - the science I learnt through my keen interest in the NASA Apollo Moon missions was far superior to anything I picked up in my physics and biology lessons. I wrote my own 'books', made posters of the moon and models of rocketships, knew all the planets, the star systems. Even now I can tell you the exact escape velocity from the Earth's gravity and can describe the physics of an eliptical orbit in fine detail.

My profound appreciation of music is more down to the long hours I devoted learning to play guitar in my bedroom until my fingers bled. In fact I learnt more about music by self-teaching myself guitar and watching films of my rock heroes than I ever learnt playing repetitive scales on a recorder in school.

I think you can see where this is all going. In school, my teachers (with one or two notable exceptions) actually failed to draw out from within me the desire to learn - to develop the aptitude I already possessed to become a reasonably good musician or the ability to convey my thoughts and ideas in a number of ways including writing and public speaking. I'm at the top of my game now, and I owe most of it to ..... me. Sure, others have inspired me to learn, but this has generally happened in the long years since I left school. All of my professional and academic qualifications were achieved studying part-time, after I reached 30. I studied for 3 degrees and a teaching certificate on the basis that I wanted to do so. I was interested, so it was well worth the sacrifice. And I keep learning now, as often and as much as I can, to stay as close to the leading edge of my profession as I can. Because I want to. I have it within me to do so.

School for me wasn't so much a waste of time, as something I had to endure to become who I ultimately have become. I left with very few qualifications. Some teachers inspired me but many were wide of the mark because they didn't have the time or the interest in me to see my potential. One told my parents: 'Stephen is a very sociable lad, but he will never become an academic.' I didn't have it within me, he assured them. 'Maybe he can find something useful to do with his hands' he advised sagely. Well, I did have it within me, but I had to draw it out of myself in the end.

Schools are not all bad news. There are plenty of good teachers who take time to get to know their students and try to find ways to draw them out. Dispense with the rigid, compartmentalised curricula, and the standardised testing, and let the kids express themselves more creatively through their own means (including the open use of personal technologies in the classroom) and school would be a place where people could be drawn out to achieve their highest potential. Take away government meddling and allow schools to govern themselves, and we might see some positive changes taking place, with children engaged more in learning, and actually eager to get into school every day.

So back to the original question - what is the purpose of education? It is to inspire students to learn to the best of their ability, to draw them out to be the best they can be, and so enable them to aspire to great things. Just make sure you don't confuse education with school.

Image source


I have it within me... by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Semantic technologies and learning

The January special issue of Interactive Learning Environments is out right now. Our guest editors have done a great job drawing together 5 excellent papers under the banner of 'Semantic Technologies for Multimedia Enhanced Learning Environments' and for Learning with 'e's readers, here is the editorial in full, with excellent summaries of all the papers by our special issue editors Marco Bertini, Vladan Devedzic, Dragan Gasevic and Carlo Torniai:

Widely available learning material is recognized as a key asset that enables aggregation, provisioning, retrieval, reusability, adaptation, and personalization of educational content. Besides being able to author, publish, discover, and use high-quality learning objects, it is equally important to use multimedia-rich learning objects. Many domains require very advanced content, where different concepts and processes require the use of multimedia (e.g. image, sound, and video) to provide students with a better understanding of concepts under study. This inevitably sets new requirements in multimedia-enhanced learning environments for the advanced representation and creation of learning metadata. The goal is not only to have a richer representation of learning content but it is also important to consider multimedia learning objects in various learning situations where interaction and collaboration are required features. For example, interaction needs to be improved across all the six dimensions of the well-known interactivity triangle with the three main participating nodes of interaction - instructors, students, and content (Anderson & Garrison, 1998). Yet, students are also content creators. This is nicely facilitated by Social Web technologies (e.g. blogs and wikis), which better enable learning environments to support principles of social constructivism. While today user-created multimedia content is a commodity in learning environments, we need to have pedagogical strategies to show how to make the best use of the available technologies. Creative solutions are needed and new perspectives are more than welcome. Just as we can expect learners to easily create and publish multimedia content, we should also facilitate interaction between learners, their peers and educators through multimodal channels of communication and help new users benefit from the experience of previous users of multimedia learning content. Spector (2009) of Google Inc. refers to this phenomenon as “fluidity among the modalities,” where many new modalities will come in addition to the more frequently used ones - text, video, voice, and image.

Scope of the special issue

This special issue analyzes how semantic technologies can be leveraged to address some of the above-mentioned challenges of multimedia-rich learning environments. To perform this analysis, it is first important to define the concept of semantic technologies. Traditionally, the Semantic Web is associated with semantic technologies (Gaevi, Jovanovi, & Devedi, 2007). Ontologies, as the backbone of the Semantic Web defining formally and explicitly represented shared domain conceptualization, are the main way for representing and sharing metadata. Current research in learning technologies has shown that in learning environments Semantic Web technologies can integrate data about learning objects, learning activities and learners captured from various e-Learning systems and tools. Due to the intensive use of Web 2.0 techniques (e.g. collaborative tagging, social networking, mash-ups, and wikis), lightweight representation of semantics and metadata is used in the form of folksonomies, user comments, and ratings. Despite the initial perception that Web 2.0 opposes the Semantic Web, these two efforts are being jointly used to create a common space of semantic technologies (Hendler, 2009). Therefore, semantically enhanced metadata for learning multimedia cannot be considered without the social and interaction context, in which learning constantly happens (Jovanovi, Gaevi, Torniai, Bateman, & Hatala, 2009). Metadata is used to facilitate the discovery and sharing of learning multimedia objects and metadata created through the interaction of learners and educators among themselves and with the learning content.

This special issue solicited papers focused on the use of semantic technologies in multimedia-enhanced learning environments. In this call, we were especially interested in publishing research reports and lessons learned in the following research tasks:

• Ontologies and semantic annotations for multimedia learning objects.


• Collaborative tagging and folksonomies for multimedia learning objects.


• Semantic social networking in multimedia-based learning environments.


• Semantic technologies for enabling pedagogical theories in multimedia-enhanced learning environments.


• Semantic-enhanced learning designs in multimedia-enhanced learning.


• Semantic technologies for personalization and adaptation of multimedia-enhanced learning.


• Semantic-rich service-oriented architectures for multimedia learning environments.


• Semantic multimedia content for (collaborative) mobile learning.

Selected papers

After an enthusiastic response to the open call for papers, followed by a rigorous peer-review process, we are pleased to present five papers addressing some of the indentified research topics. While it would be unrealistic to expect a complete coverage of all research topics due to their vast scope, the paper selection reflects thoroughly the state-of-the-art in this area and some promising research results. More importantly, we can also see many needs for future research, which will hopefully be addressed in the years to come.

In the paper entitled “Automatic generation of tests from domain and multimedia ontologies,” Andreas Papasalouros, Konstantinos Kotis and Konstantinos Kanaris look at the problem of automated generation of quizzes for assessment from domain knowledge. The authors recognized that currently there are many approaches allowing for generating and analyzing tests, but they all rely on text-based content. However, in many different areas, it is important to include multimedia content into the questions asked in quizzes. In their approach, the authors make use of ontologies to represent knowledge of a domain at hand. The domain ontologies are then used together with multimedia annotation ontologies to annotate multimedia learning objects. On top of such annotated multimedia, the authors propose several different strategies for generation of multiple choice questions, where the assessment of students' answers is making use of ontology-based reasoning (i.e. subsumption). Besides applications on text-based content, the authors also demonstrate how their approach can be used for images and argue that the approach can easily be applied to other types of multimedia content. With the use of a prototypical implementation of the proposed approach, the results obtained in the evaluation demonstrate some very promising practical prospects.

Semantic annotation of multimedia learning objects is the topic addressed in the paper entitled “Semantic annotation of video fragments as learning objects: a case study with YouTube videos and the Gene Ontology” by Elena Garca-Barriocanal, Miguel-Angel Sicilia, Salvador Sanchez-Alonso and Miltiadis Lytras. The authors focus their effort on user-generated content (in particular videos posted on YouTube) that can be used as learning material. The need for effective ways to annotate this content is addressed by an annotation tool based on domain ontologies. The generated metadata are then used as a filter for selecting relevant parts of annotated clips as learning objects.

Another paper also focuses on collaborative annotation of multimedia learning content - “A collaborative multimedia annotation tool for enhancing knowledge sharing in CSCL,” by Stephen J.H. Yang, Jia Zhang, Addison Y.S. Su and Jeffrey J.P. Tsai. The authors investigate various annotation techniques (e.g. comments or tags) as instruments helping students develop their critical thinking skills through collaborative learning. In particular, they proposed an architecture based on the use of semantic technologies (for conceptual modelling of collaborative annotations) and web services (for distributed collection and flexible integration of shared annotations). By developing a novel learning environment for collaborative e-Learning and knowledge sharing, using a personalized annotation management system (PAMS 2.0), the authors extensively evaluated the implications of their architecture and approach in a course involving 94 junior university students. The analysis of the collected data indicates that the proposed approach to knowledge sharing helps learners better comprehend their readings and stimulate them ask engaging questions to be discussed with their peers.

The role that semantic technologies can play in reusing and sharing learning resources is well depicted by A. Yessad, C. Faron Zucker, R. Dieng-Kuntz and M.T. Laskri. In their paper entitled “Ontology-based semantic relatedness for detecting the relevance of learning resources,” they describe a novel approach to the computation of the semantic relevance of learning resources to a learning context of a learner. The idea is to compute the relevance between conceptual annotations for the learning resource (built using its role in the learning process and its learning topics) and the concept of interest to the learner. The proposed method offers promising results compared to both semantic measure of similarity and experts ratings.

While it is important to discover some parts of multimedia content, it is also equally important to validate the quality and relevance of the learning content to be used by a learner. In the paper “Constraint modeling for curriculum planning and validation,” Matteo Baldoni, Cristina Baroglio, Ingo Brunkhorst, Nicola Henze, Elisa Marengo and Viviana Patti recognize in authoring of personalized curricula, a gap between learners' traits (e.g. background knowledge or various cognitive traits) and curricula that educational institutions may offer. To address this research challenge, the authors propose a constraint-based technique based on the use of ontologies, model checking principles, and temporal logic to validate whether personal curricula being proposed for each individual learner satisfy the learner's personal traits. The prototypical implementation of the Personal Reader system for education allowed the authors to evaluate their proposed method and to report on some important lessons learned.

Image source by Taylor & Francis

Dear elearning101...

Every so often, someone who 'wishes to remain anonymous' slithers out from under a stone to post a few destructive or malicious comments on someone else's blog, vandalises a wiki page (like 'Furballer' did recently) or hacks into a site. Sometimes the comments are quite clever. More often though, they are simply meant to hurt, damage or undermine. The perpetrator hides behind their anonymity because they wouldn't have the courage to say the same thing to a person's face. It's so easy to be anonymous on the web. Then you can say exactly what you want to say, and suffer no personal consequences, because there's no come back. Right? Er... wrong. Let me introduce you all to 'elearning101' (whoever he or she may be), and point you in the direction of their recent post on my Slideshare site. This is what elearning101 wrote:

"Another rehash of the same old stuff. Is this really what passes off as a keynote nowadays? Any chance of of evidence rather than a load of hyperbole. This is just a list of ideas loosely thrown together without any examples, evaluation or evidence Can anyone explain what a CC Steve Wheeler licence is? Does the author have his own version of Creative Commons?"

This was posted in response to a slideset several people asked me to share after they heard my keynote presentation in Germany for the LearnTEC Conference. I don't want to make a big fuss out of this, or act like a wounded victim, because I'm not. I'm big enough and old enough not to worry too much about a few negative comments. The positive comments I receive about my work far outnumber the negative, abusive or disparaging ones. No, instead I want to point out that posting anonymous rude comments on someone else's site is unacceptable. For me, it's a form of cyber bullying. I won't stand for it, and neither should you. I'm writing this blogpost because I want to bring such behaviour out into the open. In so doing I hope the community of practice I value, the readers of this blog, and those who are as passionate as me about learning and technology can read, be aware, assess and otherwise discuss the implications of it.

Here's what I wrote in response to elearning101 on my Slideshare site:

"Wow, thanks for your comments elearning101 - if that is your real name. :-D Unfortunately, your comments don’t really bear any resemblance to reality and I’m almost certain you wouldn’t be bold enough to say this to my face. Agreed, some of the slides have been used before in previous presentations, but the content and message were specific to the audience at LearnTEC so I repurposed some of them appropriately.

Ask anyone who attended for their comments and feedback and I think you will find they would be all very positive, and we had a lot of constructive dialogue afterwards. That has to be worth something? I would like to discuss this with you without you hiding behind your shroud of anonymity sometime perhaps... I’m open to criticism, when people are honest with their identities, and then perhaps your comments might actually carry some weight."

Ironically, since I posted the slideshow, it has received over 1500 hits in 24 hours. Not bad for a slideshow filled with hyperbole and a lack of examples, evaluation and evidence eh? I would also like to ask this: How does elearning101 know that my talk was all hyperbole and lacking evidence? Answer - they don't, unless they were in the audience. Then they would have heard the evidence I cited from my own recent studies into my students' use of social media. I will also say this (although I doubt very much if elearning101 will dare to reveal their true identity, especially now I have made their activity public). I repeat my challenge to elearning101 to discuss with me why s/he thinks my slides are valueless. They actually make a valid point about the Creative Commons licence - I failed to post the final slide which tells viewers exactly which licence I selected - a share alike, non-commercial licence. Shame, because these kinds of argument would hold more water if these anonymous commenters provide their real name. I would also like to hear if elearning101 or anyone like them has ever been up to their tricks on anyone else's sites. What is the extent of this kind of anonymous commenting? I'm well aware that elearning101 has been active on other sites, including Wikipedia, so watch out - your website could be next.

Please don't misunderstand me, I'm open to any amount of criticism, as long as it is constructive and is given without spite. Tell me what is wrong but then tell me what you think I could do to improve it. I learn a lot from the feedback of my own personal learning network. When it's anonymous and destructive though, I think the writer forfeits their right to be taken seriously. But I also wonder what you think as you read this? I welcome comments from anyone (including elearning101 of course) on this incident, but please identify yourself if you are able to. Have you experienced the same or similar? What are your views on such incidents? And what are the implications for us all as an online community?

Image source by Jeff the Trojan


Dear elearning101... by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

The futures market

It was very refreshing to see the set up of LearnTEC in Karlsruhe, Germany this week. Billed as one of the largest learning technology trade fairs in Europe, it dwarfs the likes of mega conferences such as Online Educa Berlin, with well over 7000 visitors over the three days of the exhibition and conference. I was honoured to be invited to give a public keynote within the trade fair arena (see yesterday's post for more on this), and afterwards was inundated by requests for interviews and discussion. Several of the vendors also button-holed me to discuss my previous blogpost Upstairs downstairs, where I gave a critical report on the previous week's Learning Technologies Conference London exhibition. The ensuing discussion heated up the blogosphere for a while, with vendors defending their various positions, and practitioners giving their own views. To their credit, the vendors at this exhibition seemed to be a little more in contact with their training and teaching colleagues. I deliberately went around to the stands to question vendors on their approaches and examine their wares. I was pleasantly surprised by their candour and their openness.

The exhibition stands were very innovative (check out the human avatar above, who was not just entertaining to watch, but also informative when you talked to him) but also very much in touch with the zeitgeist - the current trends of learner centred training, user generated content, technology enrichment and interactive forms of education. I was impressed also by the way many of them wished to engage in discussion at the end of my keynote. Several vendors left their stands to crowd around the edge of the Bildungsforum where the public talks were held, so they could hear what I had to say, and perhaps make their own contribution to the public forum. Some were very concerned about the image of the conference exhibitor (they had already read my Upstairs downstairs blog post and knew who I was) and wished to quiz me on what I considered to be the needs of the learner right here, right now. I had several frank and fruitful discussions with them about learning needs, technology trends and emerging pedagogies. It was also interesting to see that many of the major vendors were notable by their absence from the event. The only major players I saw were SmartBoard and QuestionMark Perception - perhaps this is a clue about the success of the trade exhibition. It seems to me that the smaller companies have an eagerness to connect with the users to establish a foothold in the industry, and maybe this makes them a little more open to discussion and consultation.

LearnTEC certainly seems to have the balance right between academic discourse and vendor demonstrations. The way they were mixed within the same space, in a public and freely open environment seemed to work well. The discussion was rich and productive as a result. On a final note, the image on the left was taken of a stand in the middle of the exhibition - it was a reminder to everyone who walked past about where we have come from, and where we should never, ever, return to, because learning is about looking to the future, not the past. Take note, conference organisers - all of this is the future of the learning technology conference.

The futures market by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.