Learning in a Digital Age: The myth and the reality

I recently gave a keynote at the eLearning 2.0 conference held at Brunel University, in West London. The presentation was a reworked version of one I gave earlier in the year in Tallinn, Estonia. In Learning in a Digital Age: The Myth and the Reality, I present a number of widespread beliefs about elearning, and challenge the provenance, reasoning and application of these theories. Learning styles, digital natives and immigrants theory, and the arguments that you cannot personalise learning in large organisations; or that SMS txting is dumbing down language; are all scrutinised and challenged. Brunel University did an excellent job of recording my voice and the slides, and synchonising them, probably using Camtasia or a similar tool. Here it is in full, for those who want to follow the arguments and discussion that ensued.



Learning in a Digital Age: The myth and the reality by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.

Never mind the quality, feel the width

Is Wikipedia dying a slow death? Will the one-stop shop for students soon draw its final breath?

These are the questions posed by the BBC's Rory Cellan-Jones in his blog post 'Wikipedia on the wane?' His post was fomented by a recent report from a Spanish academic who claims that editors are leaving the online wiki based encyclopedia faster than new ones are joining. The study estimates that Wikipedia has lost 49,000 editors in just a few months. That's rather careless of them - just where did all those editors go? What are they doing now? And where were they the last time we saw them? They certainly aren't editing Wikipedia's pages anymore says the report. And it seems that the crisis has been caused by heavy handed tactics and beaurocracy which is offputting to those who wish to create new pages or make changes to existing entries. Love or hate Wikipedia, you have to admit it is a real phenomenon, with just about every subject under the sun covered, and high rankings for all pages in search engines. If you want depth of information, go to Encyclopaedia Brittanica. If you want breadth and width of topic coverage, it's Wikipedia you need. They are both fairly accurate, but when an error was detected in the past, Wikipedians moved in quickly to rectify it. But will that continue, or will the website fall into neglect and disrepair?

The report, which also features in the Wall Street Journal, shows that enthusiasm (which let's face it, was the reason for Wikipedia's early success) seems to be falling away. Cellan-Jones suggests that without the 'worker bees' nurturing the pages of Wikipedia, and dedicated armies of enthusiastic and knowledgeable editors maintaining the fine balance between opinion and fact, the online encyclopedia may fall into disrepute. It would be ironic indeed if this was the case, now that Wikipedia seems to be gaining respect with its recently introduced new quality measures.

But there is light at the end of the tunnel - visitors to Wikipedia are on the increase, and it looks as though the rumours of its demise are premature. The solution has to be that more users need to become contributors - which was after all, the original ethos of the wiki, wasn't it?

Image source (edited)

Internet memes - chains you can believe in

So what's all the hype about internet memes? For those who are not in the loop, the term 'internet memes' is 'used to describe a catchphrase or concept that spreads quickly from person to person via the Internet, much like an inside joke' (Wikipedia). It's a little like a chain letter or a series of links between friends, but it usually happens without any effort. For bloggers, we have already experienced the Passion Quilt Meme, the 7 Random Things Meme, and way back in time, we witnessed some of the video/visual memes that have since become infamous, including the Star Wars Kid video (with all its many variants) and several Numa Numa song versions on YouTube. They are simply ideas that spread, usually virally, due to their quirkiness, timing in relation to an event, or more often than not, a phrase that sticks and becomes a 'catch phrase'.

There are also the damn awful self publicity memes and the blatent advertising and marketing memes, which to all intents and purposes are merely shameless spam dressed up in a thin layer of acceptability. And yet these are fascinating ideas that teachers might be wise to pay some attention to. There are some questions that certainly spring to my mind when I think about internet memes. They are: how do these memes catch on in the first place? What is it that causes some to survive and thrive whilst others wither and die? How can we harness the power of the social web to exploit this information transmission for the benefit of students? Or for the benefit of our communities of practice?

Reflecting on the recent election victory and inauguration of President Barack Obama, several ideas come to mind. Several iconic images, slogans and phrases that emerged to capture the essence of these unprecendented and historic events. 'Yes we can!', 'Change we can believe in', and the stylised 'yin and yang' type icon - (including all the ongoing rhetoric about who got there first, Pepsi or Obama) are just a few. Either way, these are memes, because they carry information and they are culturally transmitted. The same thing happened for a very different reason when the Twin Towers and the Pentagon were attacked on 9/11. Psychologists call this a 'flashbulb memory' effect - when an indelible image or impression is forged in the mind due to the emotional effects - the shock and awe of a significant event. Perhaps this is happening with internet memes, but with a longer exposure time, and through a smaller aperture. These images and ideas are powerful because they stick in the mind and are easily remembered. If you are reading this and are a teacher, you should recognise the potential for using memes in teaching and learning, regardless of the sector within which you work.

Internet memes, like many artefacts on the social web, are capable of transmitting information that students can transform into knowledge. How teachers do this is down to the ingenuity of each teacher and their skills in manipulating internet tools, images, sounds, text and so on. Unfortunately, many teachers are still paddling around on the shoreline of the social web, and need to wade in a little deeper to be able to exploit its power for the benefit of their students. We all need to contribute to make the Web a better place for learning. As a part of my personal contribution I'm in the process of creating a series of 60 second videos which show how my own students are using web 2.0 tools to learn. They will appear as links on this blog in the coming months. Keep the faith - and don't break the chain! Can we all contribute something interesting and useful? Yes we can!