Blogging with Freire

Well .... not exactly. Paulo Freire - that great Brazilian educational thinker - died in 1997, just as the World Wide Web was emerging in the Western world. So Freire didn't actually live to see the power and potential of social media, or the impact blogging would have on education. But what would he have said about blogs if he had been witness to the participatory web in all its present glory? Here is my interpretation of some of his ideas, drawn from his most celebrated book 'Pedagogy of the Oppressed', and presented in six key points as they might apply to the art of educational blogging.

1) Respond to reader comments with humility. Freire wrote: "...dialogue cannot exist without humility. Dialogue, as the encounter of those addressed to the common task of learning... is broken if the parties (or one of them) lack humility. How can I dialogue if I always project ignorance onto others and never perceive my own?" (p. 71). This is not just a message for educational bloggers. It is a message for teachers everywhere. How can we stand there in a self proclaimed position of enlightenment, and view our students (or audience) as being in a state of ignorance? This is hubris of the first order. And yet that is what happens in many classrooms across the world every day, because that is often how teachers are trained. It is also acknowledged that many teachers teach in the same way they themselves were taught. In a blogging context, it is easy to be offended when an adverse comment is received on your blog. You may be tempted to respond aggressively, to 'put the other person right'. Often though, good learning occurs when we consider the views of others. Even if we don't agree with the views of other people, it is good to consider them, to evaluate their meaning and contemplate alternative perspectives. Dialogue is what blogging is really about.

2) Don't be afraid to speak out. Freire counsels: "Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral." It's clear that there is a lot of inequality in the world, and some of this exists within the world of education. Schools are not perfect, and there is no education system in the world that has it completely correct. There is no better place for speaking out against injustice, or exposing inequalities than a popular blog site. It's better than owning a newspaper. People will read what you have to say if you have something interesting to speak about. So use your blog to speak out on behalf of those who can't speak out for themselves.

3) Use blogs to circumvent regulated learning. Students who blog quickly realise that they can explore knowledge for themselves. They can become independent learners. Freire was critical of the banking approach to education, where teachers regulate learning: "The teacher's task is to organise a process which already occurs spontaneously, to 'fill' the students by making deposits of information which he or she considers constitutes true knowledge" (p. 57). When a learner starts to blog, they start to think for themselves. They have to consider an audience of more than one (teacher and essay writing) and they are required to be masters of their own journey. In another sense, blogging can subvert traditional education in another way. The dialogue that can ensue from blogging is often more valuable than the act of writing on the blog. Quadblogging and the 100 Word Challenge are just two of the school based blogging projects that are making a real difference for learners by providing them with a guaranteed audience every time they blog.

4) Read other people's blogs and make comments. The act of seeking out alternative perspectives and views in itself will sharpen the reader's thinking and cause them to question received knowledge. Freire says: "... it is indispensable to analyse the contents of newspaper editorials following any given event. 'Why do different newspapers have such different interpretations of the same fact?' This practice helps develop a sense of criticism, so that people will react to newspapers or new broadcasts not as passive objects of the 'communiques' directed at them, but rather as consciousnesses seeking to be free" (p. 103). Alongside newspapers and news broadcasts we can add blog commentaries. Blogs are places where people can express their opinions and offer their interpretations, and these are the new street corners where individuals have their conversations. Engaging with knowledge in this way will liberate the mind and help develop critical thought.

5) Use blogging to support thinking. Often, abstract thoughts remain abstract unless they are externalised in some concrete form. Traditionally, writing has been used as a means to crystallise thinking, because as Daniel Chandler says "In the act of writing, we are written." Freire writes that "In all the stages of decoding, people exteriorise their view of the world" (p 87) which implies that in order to understand our personal reality, we need to first bring our thoughts out into the open. Blogs are public facing tools that enable their owners to externalise their thinking in a way that is open for scrutiny. In the act of public writing, we expose our ideas and begin to understand our own thoughts more clearly.

6) Use blogging as reflection. Reflection is an important part of learning, and is a skill that must be developed if it is to lead to successful outcomes. Reflection is also the key to personal liberation. Friere argues that: "Attempting to liberate the oppressed without their reflective participation in the act of liberation is to treat them as objects which must be saved from a burning building" (p 47). Reflection means active participation in learning, and blogging is a very powerful tool to support this process.

Reference
Freire, P. (1970) Pedagogy of the Oppressed. London: Penguin.

Photo by Steve Wheeler


Blogging with Freire by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.

Cultural hegemony and disruption

The Italian political theorist Antonio Gramsci is best known for his theory of cultural hegemony. In a Gramscian sense, hegemony describes the power exercised by the ruling class over the population in order to maintain control of the means of production. Cultural hegemony is imposed as political doctrine largely through the state education system, but also via other means including print media and broadcasting. Sometimes referred to as 'brainwashing' hegemony is actually more complex and is an insidious way to indoctrinate the masses into a 'false consciousness' where each person believes they have ultimate control of their own destiny. In doing this, the elite impose a view that 'that's just the way it is', but as musician Bruce Hornsby once exhorted, 'Don't you believe it.'

Whilst Gramsci used hegemony to refer specifically to the inculcation of political doctrine into society, I believe the theory can be applied in a much wider sense, and that we are witnessing a challenge to the dominant societal discourses through disruptive technology. I emphasise here the power of participatory media to promote democracy and to a strengthening of the influence of the voice of the people. The current exponential adoption of social media has huge implications for the system of education, itself a key component of cultural hegemony.

How does social media disrupt cultural hegemony? Across the connected world we are witnessing a tangible subversion of long standing dominance. Social media for example has achieved a remarkable success in eroding the power of previously elite media channels. One example is the encyclopaedia, long cherished as one of society's most important knowledge repositories. For years the multiple volumes of Encyclopaedia Britannica have graced the shelves of libraries worldwide. They are expensive, regularly in need of updating and replacing, and take up a great deal of physical space.

Enter Wikipedia - the online social encyclopedia to which everyone has a stake in. In an extraordinarily short period of time, Wikipedia has taken up pole position as the world's knowledge repository. It is now the first port of call for many, supplanting Britannica and other previously popular reference books. And when all factors are analysed, this should be no surprise. Wikipedia is popular because it can be accessed from anywhere using a web enabled mobile phone.

More importantly it is also popular because it is democratic, and breaks the hegemony imposed by commercial publishers. Anyone can start off a new page, or quickly add content to more than 14 million existing pages (and that is just the English language pages). In response, Britannica has recently announced that it will no longer publish in paper format, but will now be exclusively digital. It's probably already too late. Wikipedia has challenged the hegemony and is now the new killer application. Other killer apps are also challenging the hegemony imposed by previously dominant channels.

Other commercial companies are also falling foul of disruptive technology. Previously dominant multi-national corporations such as the photography giant Kodak have discovered that failing to respond quickly enough to societal changes can be very costly. The market position of Kodak was once thought to be unassailable. Not anymore. Kodak failed to adapt quickly enough to the rise in popularity of digital photography, filed for bankruptcy and now finds itself in a very unstable financial position from which it may fail to recover. Mail companies are also discovering that e-mail and the cloud (and the capability to send large documents and images instantaneously for very little cost) have undermined what had previously been a very secure monopoly in the physical delivery of letters and parcels. What was the Royal Mail's response to the drop in physical delivery? They raised their prices. Nicolas Negroponte's prediction of a transition from atoms to bits has been realised, is disruptive in the extreme, and it is only just beginning.

Blogging and open access journals are becoming the first choice of publishing for many academics and scholars. Many are turning away from the closed journals regardless of the status they currently enjoy, because open access journals and blogs gain a larger audience for their writing, and publishing is quicker. How long will it be before these media disrupt the hegemony the large publishing houses such as Elsevier, Springer and Wiley currently impose upon the academic world?

Blogging is not yet considered a real threat to the closed publishing world, but this may change as it gains more momentum and as respected academics begin to exploit its power of reach. Blogging is not generally subject to editorial control, so individuals are at liberty to write what they choose. The peer review process occurs when readers comment and enter into dialogue with the author. Then learning happens as ideas are challenged, arguments ensue and synthesis is achieved. Blogging is a new form of educational democracy. 

Newspapers too are struggling to survive as they cope with competition from the online journals and magazines that are gradually usurping their readership. It doesn't stop there. YouTube and other video sharing sites have gained a significant purchase in the broadcasting world, and are in the process of displacing some of the previously prominent media channels. All mainstream TV channels have now adopted Facebook and Twitter to capture views and news from citizen journalists from news hot spots around the world, just to keep ahead of the opposition. The dominant movie and music industries are also threatened by the likes of YouTube and Vimeo, and there have been several recent high profile law suits over breaches of copyright. Copyright law itself is also under scrutiny as a result of the influence social media have gained. The copyleft movement (which includes Creative Commons licencing) is challenging the dominant discourse of copyright and the contentious notion of ownership.

Civil liberty is under threat in any society where there is excessive surveillance. But even here, ordinary people are being empowered through the use of personal technology. The internet meme featuring the cop who in an unprovoked act, casually pepper-sprayed peaceful Occupy protesters is an example of surveillance being used against the dominant class. The police in this sense are a state apparatus. They are traditionally the owners of surveillance technology. Yet on this occasion, the cop - one Lieutenant John Pike (pictured) - was captured forever in an act of brutality by cameras owned by ordinary people, and subsequently suffered the consequence of becoming an infamous and universally parodied figure on the internet. Numerous versions of his act, some very humorous, can be found under the Lt Pike meme. Some would argue that this was the best form of retribution. Once again, democratic use of social media and personal devices exposed what was really happening during the Occupy movement.

Governments can also be disrupted. One of the most remarkable series of events to date this century has been the political activism that has occurred as a result of widespread social media use. Videos and blogs emerging from Tunisia alerted the world to what was happening, whilst the use of social networking mobilised the entire country to rise up against its oppressive government. Ultimately, the government fell and the people regained their lost democracy. Similar events caught on across the Arab world, in Egypt and Libya and elsewhere as ordinary people began to challenge their dictatorial governments. At the time of writing, this struggle against the dominant class continues.

Social media, the participatory web, and mobile communications have already radically changed the face of the connected world. Cultural hegemony has been disrupted as a result of the democratic use of technology, but we must be careful not to assume that the hegemony imposed by the dominant classes will disappear. It will not. New killer applications merely disrupt older previously dominant applications. The elite class then move in and gain control of the new tools, ultimately exploiting them, and imposing their power through these new channels of influence. In this sense Marx was correct. This is an ongoing cycle - a class struggle between the ruling elite and the rest of society to gain control of the tools that will ultimately influence our entire culture. Cultural hegemony and the killer application are locked together forever in a dance of death. To survive we will need to avoid complacency.

Hyperhabitat image source
Britannica image by Fotopedia
Lt Pike image by Louise Macabitus


Cultural hegemony and disruption by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.

Lies, damned lies and the Internet

Increasingly, students need to acquire the important skill of critical thinking. Content is growing exponentially on the web, and students are exposed to increasing amounts of erroneous material, misleading, biased or opinionated accounts and false research. During the last week I have been thinking about how teachers can address this issue. One of the new digital literacies students need to acquire is the ability to distinguish the good from the bad content. How do we instill these critical skills in our learners? In his Pelecon 2012 keynote, Alec Couros showed some examples of how history has been airbrushed. He cited Henry Jenkins: "In hunting culture, children play with bows and arrows. In an information society, they play with information". Couros gave several examples, but the most impressive was the following example of information manipulation. This picture of Jack Ruby shooting Lee Harvey Oswald is iconic for a certain generation, but for those who are younger and know little about the political history of the United States of America can easily be fooled.

This second version of the Oswald assassination photo has been skillfully manipulated to represent an entirely different meaning to that of the original image. The political message that accompanies the altered image is clearly satirical, but never the less resonates with the views of a large proportion of American citizens and others around the globe - that Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone in assassinating President John F. Kennedy, but was a part of a larger conspiracy. Whether or not this JFK assassination theory is true or even partially true, it remains one of the most trenchant conspiracy theories of modern history, and was even portrayed in an Oliver Stone movie. A whole host of websites have grown up around it, to sustain the argument further. The Internet is peppered with other similar conspiracy websites, some for example claiming that US astronauts never set foot on the moon, that the Apollo moon missions were a hoax and the entire mission was instead filmed on a movie set. Despite a number of expert rebuttals, this conspiracy theory persists. The alleged murder of Diana, Princess of Wales in Paris in 1997; Elvis Presley faked his own death, and is still alive; Area 51, a crashed UFO in Roswell, and an Alien/US Government conspiracy; The existence of the Illuminati; a Freemason led conspiracy to instigate a new World Order; and a whole host of other so called 'lunatic fringe' conspiracy theories are propagated through internet websites. Many are attracted to read such content because these alternative explanations appeal to the more fanciful corners of our imaginations. But some websites, such as those offering alternative medical advice, can be extremely dangerous.

What is today's student to make of all this? Deliberately misleading websites are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to bad content on the web. Let's take this a little further. How do students discern the difference between a website that hosts good, empirical, well established content, and one that doesn't? And how do they detect when a website is not based on established fact, but is merely a collection of opinions and conjectures? This is a more subtle distinction than determining if a conspiracy theory actually has any real credibility. Students are often left floating adrift in a sea of content, with the onerous task of deciding what is good content and what is not. The ultimate test is to decide what to include and what to leave out of their assessments to actually gain a good grade.

I regularly ask my own students to challenge what is being said in the classroom. I advise them to question everything they hear, read or see, to help develop their critical thinking abilities, to practice defending or attacking a theory, to exercise their evaluative skills. I read recently of one professor who deliberately lied once each lesson, and challenged his students to detect the lie. As the lies became more subtle, the students began to struggle to detect the falsehood, until eventually they were at the point where they were deeply scrutinising everything that was presented in the lesson, and going beyond the content to make sure they had discovered the lie. They had to discuss extensively to put themselves in a position where they knew what was correct and what was incorrect. The web is a very fertile place to learn, but we all need to develop our critical awareness of what content is good and what is to be avoided.

Image source


Lies, damned lies and the Internet by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.

Yesterday in Parliament

Yesterday I spent a fascinating few hours in Parliament (which currently on its website for some reason has a picture of Russell Brand). I got to see quite a lot of the Palace of Westminster, including some place most people never get to see, all courtesy of Denise Hudson-Lawson, who just happens to be a big wheel at Westminster. Of which more later. I had been invited to give the inaugural presentation at Parliament's Innovation Forum, and after lunch I spoke to a group of around 80 civil servants on the subject of 'Harnessing the power of social media'. I will blog later about the content of my talk and will share my slideshow in due course. It was interesting to talk over lunch with ICT Strategy Change Manager Joanna Jones and her colleague James about digital technology and to learn more about how the Houses of Commons and House of Lords are using social media in their political and governmental work. One of the best things I have seen so far this week is a group blog set up by a few of the peers called Lords of the Blog. Check it out and you will find it witty, bold and informative, and not something most people would expect from a group of people who have the reputation for being 'stuffy' and a bit 'past it'.  Twitter too is being used by a number of Members in both Houses, most notably Tom Watson MP (75,00 followers) and Lord John Prescott (128,000 followers), Foreign Secretary William Hague MP (80,000 followers) and perhaps infamously Diane Abbott MP (37,000 followers) who made an unfortunate comment on Twitter that provoked disciplinary action from her leader. Another MP to fall foul of Twitter errors was recently re-elected member George Galloway MP (71,000 followers) who confused his own new constituency Bradford with another completely different northern town Blackburn.

Just about every member of Parliament and many of the Peers have a personal/professional website, probably maintained by their staff, but never the less, affording them with a digital presence on the web. Although many realise the power of social media to broadcast and amplify their messages and views, it is evident that along with Abbott and Galloway, some are occasionally a little naive and unguarded in their off the cuff tweets. It gets them into trouble, because there is always someone watching the Tweet stream. It is a very real issue, and one I addressed in my Innovation Forum presentation. Another burning digital issue is the validity of the online petitions the government has instigated - another project that is managed by the team that invited me to speak at the innovation forum. The rules state that anyone can start an e-petition on any subject, and if and when that e-petition receives support from 100,000 or more unique signatures, it is passed to the Backbench Business Committee for further consideration, with the possibility to be debated in the Commons. Just how many get to the stage of being publicly debated by our lawmakers is still to be discovered, but every e-petition that receives 100,000 signature receives an official response. Democracy in action? We will need to wait to see just how effective e-petitions are in giving ordinary people a voice.

My day at Parliament was concluded by a personal tour around the Palace of Westminster, including a visit to Westminster Hall, a place steeped in history and over 900 years old. This grand hall is the very place where King Charles I was tried and convicted for treason and sentenced to death, and also the place where deceased British monarchs are laid in state. It is also famous for recently hosting a speech by U.S. President Barack Obama. I also got to see the Members' lobby and St Stephen's Hall, and a brief visit to the famous terrace restaurant where views over the river Thames, and the London Eye can be had under the shadow of St Stephens Tower, which houses Big Ben. It was a memorable day, and well worth the hours of train travel there and back.

Images by Steve Wheeler


Yesterday in Parliament by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.

The Pelecon (brief)

It's all over for another year, but I really believe that this year's Plymouth Enhanced Learning Conference fully lived up to its theme - create, connect, collaborate. Many blogs, videos, photos, tweets (at the time of writing almost 20,000 in less than 3 full days - here's the complete archive) and other content has been created throughout over the course of the conference. In brief, here are a few of the artefacts created: The Instagram collection of photos itself is richly representative of the event from start to finish. The Pelecon Flickr collection curated by Jason Truscott is even more detailed, as is the Pelecon Photo Stream. My colleague Oliver Quinlan did an amazing - nay Herculean - job, liveblogging every one of our invited speakers, and then posting them very quickly onto the web complete with many of the important links to video and other content each speaker presented. The failure confessional attracted a few delegates to spill the beans of their failures, and what could be learnt from them. All too often we celebrate success at conferences, but forget that we can also learn a lot from what went wrong. You can see some of the 'confessions' on the Pelecon YouTube channel.

More than 200 delegates throughout the three days enjoyed presentations that were fast moving, varied and challenging, and plenty of time and space for networking. As usual, Pelecon has proved to be a great place for making new friends and consolidating old friendships, sharing ideas, discovering new tools and technologies, and generally increasing the digital footprint of the technology enhanced learning community. Matt Lingard and his colleagues are crowd sourcing reviews from delegates for a special ALT Newsletter report. Others too, will be busy writing their blogs as they reflect on three extraordinary days. Search for the #pelc12 hashtag and you will find them.

I made the joke in my introduction that although most people think Pelecon is an international e-learning conference, for me it is actually an excuse to have a three day party with all my friends. And yet, in a strange way, it is actually true. It felt more like a party, a celebration - than it did a conference, because everyone was having such a great time, in excellent company, in a fabulous location, exploring, learning and discovering together. For me, from my perspective as organiser, Pelecon has been the best conference in the series. We are already planning next year's event, where we will aim to do even better. The eight Plymouth Enhanced Learning Conference - Pelecon 13 will take place between 10-12 April 2013. We hope you will be able to come and join us.

Image by Jason Truscott


The Pelecon (brief) by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.

Opening Pandora's box

Once upon a time, teachers used to close the door behind them, and then begin their lessons. To all intents and purposes, what went on inside the classroom stayed inside the classroom. Then along came technology. New technologies have the potential to undermine the 'sanctity of the classroom' as they open up what is said and done for the world to see. It is not unusual in my classrooms to see students using technology to record and share my content and their interactions with anyone who is interested.

It started off in sedate style a few years ago, when several students began to ask if they could audio record my lectures and seminars to play back later. Next came the introduction of the lecture capture tools, video and audio as well as the ability to synchronise these in sequence with slides. Soon students were tweeting the highlights and soundbites of lectures, and now they are liveblogging entire sessions from start to finish. Those of us who frequently present at conferences also expose ourselves to live video streaming for hidden audiences worldwide. Many lecturers object to this 'technology enhanced exhibitionism', and in some cases ban capture tools from their lecture halls. Others are ambivalent. A few, myself included actively encourage the recording, sharing and broadcasting of our lectures.

What are the benefits and dangers associated with the use of these tools? On the positive side, students are able to revisit lectures in their own time, and in their own place. They can also view lectures even though they may have missed attending due to illness or for other reasons. For social media savvy lecturers, lecture capture is a means for disseminating good ideas and best practice farther afield. Sharing slides or lecture casting opens up the classroom and affords an entirely new audience out there beyond the boundaries of the classroom, one that can be exponentially larger than the original tutor group. Many social media tools also enable discussion beyond the original event. All of these can be seen as positive spin offs of lecture capture.

Yet some might ask whether this is opening up a Pandora's box of trouble? Are we going a tool too far? On the less positive side some lecturers are uneasy about exposing their ideas and content to an outside audience. Some simply feel uncomfortable about having every word they say, every mannerism, every hesitation recorded for posterity. Others may feel the intellectual property of their content is being compromised. Still others may believe that they will be exposed to criticism they do not deserve. One objection to live blogging is that students may misinterpret what has been said, or misrepresent ideas, thereby compromising the integrity and academic standing of the lecturer. Did he really say that? Was that really his intention? Many of these objections are understandable, and for less confident lecturers in particular, may be enough to cause them to ban the use of lecture capture technology of any kind in their class room.

My view is that the benefits of these tools far outweigh the risks. I'm very comfortable with being recorded, live streamed, tweeted and even live blogged if it will improve students' chances and enrich their learning. But what do you think?

Image bu Fotopedia


Opening Pandora's box by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.

Creative learning spaces

For me, one of the highlights of the Estonian Elearning Conference in Tallinn was listening to Stephen Harris, principal of the Sydney Centre for Innovations in Learning. SCIL is an Australian secondary school that practices teaching and learning within open spaces, where student autonomy and personalisation of learning are top priorities. Under Stephen's leadership, the school enables BYOMD - bring your own multiple devices, which means that students can learn in a number of different spaces and places around the school, using their own familiar tools. Stephen spoke about the metaphors for creative space that are used to contextualise learning:

The Camp Fire: This is a social learning space where students face each other, and in doing so gain an expectation that each should contribute something to the discussion and activities.

The Cave: This is a personal learning space where students can be on their own. Personal learning spaces enable them to reflect on their learning, and create their own learning pathways.

The Sandpit: Sandpits are places where young people can try out new ideas and experiment without fear of failure. They can take risks and ask the 'what if' questions, in a psychologically safe environment.

The Watering Hole: Informal spaces where students can gather spontaneously, either inside or outside the school. Children can meet at the foot of a stairwell or under a tree to discuss anything, whether it is school related or not.

The Mountain Top: Here young people can share their work and ideas. They can publish or broadcast them in a public performance space, or use blogs, podcasts, videos and other technology tools to share their content with their peers and the world. 

Stephen reported that enabling these kinds of activities inside the school, children gained a sense of autonomy they would otherwise not have, and as a result, they also gained ownership over their learning and a new sense of responsibility. The incidences of behaviour problems deminished to manageable proportions. 

Image by Steve Wheeler

Creative learning spaces by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.

Have the wheels come off?

A recent article written by Audrey Watters carries the emotive headline The Failure of One Laptop Per Child (OLPC), and there has been some heated response. In the article, which is actually balanced and measured, Watters comments on recent media reports that the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) Project inspired by Nicolas Negroponte does not increase test scores. She goes on to discuss the implications of this supposed failure with a nod toward the anti-Edtech brigade, whom we assume are saying 'told you so', and also in the context of other technology projects which have had reasonable success. On such project mentioned is Sugata Mitra's Hole in the Wall project (HITW), where computers are placed in villages and deprived areas for children to use with no evident teacher support. A comparison between the two projects is quite helpful.

When compared to Negroponte's OLPC project there are clearly some differences. Although both Negroponte and Mitra believe fervently in a 'minimally invasive education' where children are allowed to explore for themselves, OLPC is conducted largely on a 1-1 computer to child ratio. Ostensibly, this sounds sensible, and with personalised learning high on the political agenda, OLPC has been welcomed with open arms by many governments worldwide, particularly those with widespread poverty. In a real sense, OLPC has been a very real attempt at bridging the socio-economic divide. OLPC does exactly what it says on the tin - it provides one highly resilient laptop computer for each learner.

In the HITW project on the other hand, computers are almost always used by small groups of children, who together work through their exploration, negotiate their meaning and solve problems collaboratively. Perhaps this is the first important difference we need to contend with. Are children better learners when they learn on their own, or when they learn with their peers? Swiss psychologist and child development theorist Jean Piaget would have agreed with the OLPC project. The child is a solo scientist, in Piaget's terms, and this makes discovery learning a most valid approach. Learning on your own, according to Piaget was just as valid as going to school to learn communally. Russian constructivist psychologist Lev Vygotsky would have disagreed with this position, and would probably have pointed to HITW as the most effective way to learn, because in his terms, children acquire their skills through conversation, the use of language and collaborative learning - or in his terms, through the asymmetric relationships that exist within the zone of proximal development.

Notwithstanding this kind of theoretical posturing, a second point to consider is that the HITW project situates computers in communal spaces where they cannot be moved. Does this in some way also situate what is learnt, so that those gathered around it gain something extra that they would not gain from the OLPC's fairly mobile device that can be used in multiple contexts? OLPC and HITW are different, but one is not necessarily any more effective or powerful than the other.

Thirdly, and possibly most importantly, we need to consider the tests used. Are we simply to accept that the tests used by a variety of authorities to measure OLPC children's learning gain are accurate, or appropriate? Are they actually measuring what we should be measuring? As highlighted by several of the comments on the Audrey Watters blog, many are rightly sceptical. Can we (and should we) actually measure the sheer joy of discovering something new? Are we not ignoring the excitement generated by new experiences? Can we quantify how powerful this is as it generates motivation and the impetus to go on and learn more, both inside and outside of the classroom? Can we really accurately capture the many sensory experiences children enjoy when they are learning, and reduce these to a single grade or mark of overall achievement? Finally - is the measure used to gauge the contribution OLPC has made toward learning really necessary? Surely these are immeasurable, and the only reason anyone would attempt to do so, is because there is a hidden political agenda that emerges as  a measure of peformativity (i.e. school league tables). It seems a shame that much funding for innovative education projects relies on centralised government money.  One Laptop Per Child is a Herculean effort at liberating and democratising learning. It should be praised not buried.

Image by Steve Wheeler


Have the wheels come off? by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.

10Q: Leigh Graves Wolf

Leigh Graves Wolf, who is one of the Pelecon invited spotlight speakers next week, is Program Director for the Master’s in Educational Technology program at MSU. Leigh started her career in 1997 as a network administrator and technology coordinator at the International Academy in Bloomfield Hills. While at the International Academy she ran the desktop publishing club and assisted the faculty with integrating a relatively new technology “the Internet” into their classes. In 1999 she moved to Detroit Country Day Junior School where she taught elementary keyboarding and also assisted the staff with integrating various technologies into their curriculum. In 2000 she moved to the Upper School to coordinate the one-to-one laptop initiative and assist faculty with laptop integration. She also taught a laptop skills course, multimedia design and the International Baccalaureate course Information Technology in a Global Society.

While working at Detroit Country Day, Leigh completed her master’s degree (mostly online) at MSU in Digital Media, Art, and Technology. Most recently, Leigh has worked as an instructional technologist for Oakland Community College and an academic technology specialist for the Eli Broad College of Business at MSU. In these positions, she assisted faculty with designing and teaching online courses. Throughout her career, Leigh has presented at several national conferences and often runs professional development sessions for faculty and staff on new and emerging technologies. Here, ahead of her speech at Pelecon, she answers ten questions about her life and career:

How did you start out on your career in education? 
Funny story.....I actually started out as a disc jockey. My undergraduate degree is in radio and television production. The media industry is pretty difficult to tap into if you're not willing to move around a lot and the thought of jumping around the states was a bit intimidating to 21-year-old me. While still pondering my career in radio, I took a position with a local high school as a network administrator. While my primary responsibility was pulling cables, setting up desktops and administering servers, the school/students/faculty (and I) recognized my desktop publishing, communication and design skills could come in handy for teaching staff and students. So my role morphed to including not only "techy" reponsibilities but into what we now know as an ICT facilitator or coordinator. This was wayyyy back in 1997, the web, as we nows know it was just a baby. And that is how it all began.

What do you think is the most important aspect of education? 
Community - of all sorts face to face, virtual, or hybrid. As the saying goes, "it takes a village" - not only to raise a child, but to continue personal and professional growth through the lifespan.

What three things would you change in education if you had the chance? 
Time constraints on skill set achievement, teacher perception and pay (change it to higher of course) and removing the ties of learning away from physical and traditional spaces.

Who has been the biggest inspiration in your life? 
Jim Henson. When I was young, it was my dream to work for Jim Henson. I was enchanted by the Muppets, Sesame Street, Fraggle Rock – the whole lot. I wasn't just into passively watching the screen, something made me want to learn and understand what was happening behind the scenes. I wanted to make that magic happen. I have had a lot of role models and influencers in my life and while I never had the opportunity to met him, Jim Henson had a tremendous impact on my life (as he has had on countless others.) I credit him with igniting my desire to pursue radio and television production. While my career has morphed into the awesome position I have now, Jim Henson's spirit still stays with me. I hang a picture of him with Kermit in office as a constant reminder of how we never truly know how deep and wide our influences run.

What will be in your spotlight presentation at Pelecon next week?
It will be pretty exciting. I'm going to engage the audience in the first massively multi-player quickfire challenge. The specifics are secret - that's the point!

Where would you like to be in 5 years time?
Hopefully back in Plymouth presenting at the 12th annual PELeCON! I really love what I do and hope to continue to grow and change along with the field.

What do you consider to be the biggest barrier to good learning? 
Fear of failure. I think it's what bothers me most.

Can you tell us a little about how you use social media and technology in your work? 
I sure can - if you have 30 minutes you can watch this video which explains how I (in my program coordinator role) use social media:




What is the achievement you are most proud of? 
I am very proud of our Master of Arts in Educational Technology program at Michigan State University and more importantly of our students and alumni. We have created a global network of educators who support each other and their peers - our network inspires me each and every day.

What links would you like to share? 
If you want to know more about me, you can visit my site - Leigh Graves Wolf - I have all of my "social streams" feeding there, so you can see what I'm reading (and often eating as food photography is a side interest of mine.) A little known secret is that when I'm frustrated, I go to CakeWrecks - the site makes me giggle.

10Q: Leigh Graves Wolf by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.

Community really is the curriculum

I'm in Tallinn, one of the most beautiful of the old Hanseatic cities dotted along the Baltic coast. It is the capital of Estonia, a small country with a population of around 1.3 million, 400,000 of whom live in Tallinn. In Estonia, runs the publicity, free wifi access is a human right, and it certainly seems to be true. No matter where I have been today throughout the city, I have been able to get free access to the internet on my iPod Touch. It's such a refreshing change from the pinch penny airports and city centres I usually frequent. Estonia is also famous as the home of Skype, which although now a Microsoft acquisition, was funded by Tallinn boy Niklas Zennström. Skype still operates out of Tartu, Estonia's second largest city in the south of the country. What a fitting place then, to hold an e-Learning Conference.

And that's why I'm here. I'm in Tallinn to give the opening keynote for the Estonian e-Learning Conference which takes place over 3 days in the city. I spent a great afternoon meeting with Sebastian Fiedler who just happened to be paying a fleeting visit to Tallinn, and emailed me for a meet up. This all happened because of Facebook and Twitter - tools the e-learning community uses with exceptional effect across the globe to keep in touch and share ideas. We had a great time over a few drinks discussing many of the burning issues surrounding digital media and learning, and we both left having learnt something new from each other. Later this evening I enjoyed the company of Stephen Downes and Allison Littlejohn, who have also been invited to keynote the Tallinn Conference. Again we all learnt a lot from each other in conversation around the dinner table.

On the walk back to the hotel I got into a conversation with Stephen and inevitably the talk turned to open access publishing, a subject that is close to both our hearts. I don't publish much in conventional journals anymore, and neither admitted Stephen, does he. He actually made a profound comment about this. The e-Learning community is very small, and those of us in it tend to cross paths frequently he pointed out. Perhaps that's why, he said that many of us don't need to publish that much anymore. Most of our ideas come out in conversation, whether face to face or online. And that I guess, pretty much sums it up. Community really is the curriculum these days.

I'm looking forward to the next two days here in Estonia. There are some interesting papers in the programme. Some of these will be live streamed, so if you want to watch those presentations over the next two days, go to the Estonian eLearning Conference website for further details.

Image by Steve Wheeler


Community really is the curriculum by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.

Get it in glass

What is the best way to merge web with world? Let me put it another way - how can I integrate my online experiences using social media platforms, with what I do out in the real world? For a while, Augmented Reality (AR) has been promised as the next big thing in enhanced technological living.

Many of us have seen the MIT Sixth Sense wearable projection AR demonstration by Pranav Mistry and Patti Maes, and marvelled. Some of us may even have theorised on the potential impact such systems might have on learning.

What about the aesthetics? Wouldn't it be great to 'wear' your computer, and have it project your content over the top of real world objects? And what about the pragmatics? Wouldn't it be wonderful to have access to as much information you want about any object or person you encounter, at anytime, and in anyplace? Those fantasizing about the prospect of owning an AR wearable may soon experience it for real, in an affordable, mass produced version. Google's Project Glass aims to develop a wearable glasses version of an AR system that links your vision and voice directly to all your social media and web based activities, in real time, and against your real world. Below is a video that demonstrates some of the proposed capabilities for users.



Project Glass will do this by projecting visual information over the top of your normal vision, in a see-through heads up display using a glass visor. This is something the military have been able to do for some time, as a means of enhancing information for helicopter and jet aircraft pilots. The military can afford these expensive AR tools. Up until now, the general public have been unable to gain access due to cost.

That all looks like it is about to change if Google can release a version of its Project Glass AR system that is a) affordable b) aesthetically pleasing so that enough people will invest in a set and c) reliable enough to work in the most challenging conditions (e.g. adverse weather conditions and proofed against idiots). There will be plenty of objections from those who want to keep their online lives distinctly separate from their real lives. Health and safety gnomes will also no doubt warn of the dangers of walking in front of a bus while focusing on your heads up display. There will probably be caveats about eye strain and damage from the non-ionising radiation the AR glasses might be suspected of emitting. Regardless of the objections and warnings such a system might provoke, once Google releases its AR glasses to the public, it may signal the slow but inevitable demise of handheld devices such as the mobile phone, and perhaps even the iPad and other handheld computing.

Image source


Get it in glass by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.

Interactions of the fourth kind

Interaction. For many teachers, it has become the keystone of contemporary education. Many studies into the importance of interaction in education have been conducted. We all have different definitions of what interaction involves, but most of us agree - it's an important component of learning. According to theorist Michael G. Moore, there are three types of interaction. In an editorial piece in the American Journal of Distance Education in 1989 Moore outlined his three levels. The first, learner-teacher, is the most likely kind of interaction to be found in traditional classroom settings, but with the age of social media and other forms of digitally mediated communication, interaction can now be just as rich an experience when conducted at a distance.

The second type of interaction, according to Moore, is the learner-learner kind. Generally, this kind of interaction can be seen in the informal conversations that take place outside the classroom, in the common room, at the pub, waiting for the bus home. And yet, in formal learning settings,  learner-learner interaction can be used as a valuable pedagogical technique to encourage free thinking, deeper engagement with the topic, debate and discursive activities, collaborative learning and much more.

Moore's third kind of interaction is learner-content. This is probably the least formal of the interactions in terms of its place in the classroom. Although some learner-content interaction can be observed, with the momentum now toward more discussion, project work and collaborative learning within the classroom, student-content interaction is more likely to occur outside the classroom, at home, at work, on journeys. 

In 1994, Hillman, Willis and Gunawardena suggested a fourth kind of interaction - student-interface. In the digital age, this is the first point of contact between students and all other kinds of interaction. Students now interact more or less continually with their peers, their tutors. The article called for "design strategies that facilitate students' acquisition of the skills needed to participate effectively in the electronic classroom". Hillman et al hit the nail on the head 18 years ago, as new computer systems emerged. Even more than ever, in the age of new handheld devices, wearable computing and natural gesture technology, we need even more effort put into understanding how learners interact with their tools and technologies.

How for example, might students learn differently using touch surfaces such as the iPad, when compared to non-touch devices such as the X-Box 360 Kinect? There is discussion about the advantages of game playing using haptic perception (sense of resistance and tactile feedback) devices such as the Nintendo Wii handset over powerful gestural but non-touch controlled interfaces. What about the several human senses that are brought into play when such tools are used? What can we learn about ourselves and our environments when proprioception (the relative position of our limbs and body in relation to each other) and equilibrioception (the sense of body movement, balance and acceleration) are called into use? For a long time we have focused on the main senses (audio and visual, and to a lesser extent kinaesthetic) at the expense of the many other human senses, but with new technologies increasingly available for learning, it is now time to study the effects of the fourth kind of interaction in greater detail.

Image by Alvaro Canivell

References

Hillman, D.C.A., Willis, D.J. and Gunawardena, C. N. (1994) Learner interface interaction in distance education: An extension of contemporary models and strategies for practitioners. The American Journal of Distance Education, 8 (2), 30-42.

Moore, M. G. (1989) Editorial: Three types of interaction. The American Journal of Distance Education, 3 (2), 1-6.


Interactions of the fourth kind by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.