Digital classrooms

This is Part 5 in my series of posts on the future of learning and technology. A few years ago Peter John and I wrote a book entitled 'The Digital Classroom'. It was published by Routledge in 2008 and is now also available as a Kindle reader version. It wasn't the first published under that title, and it probably won't be the last. The idea of a 'classroom' (regardless of how anachronistic that may sound) is appealing when it is 'digitised'. It's the old, comfortably familiar territory embellished with the new. Everyone in the world of education it seems, has an interest in how technology is going to influence what we do in the classroom. The book was received well, and we received some positive comments and feedback. Although the book is probably a little dated now, with technology advancing at rapid pace, it still set a benchmark for some of the things we could expect to see in the coming years. We talked for instance about how technology would streamline assessment, and how the curriculum might be impacted by new technologies. There were sections on digital literacies and mobile learning, both of which we considered to be important for the success of education and learning in the future. Blogs and wikis and other social media made an appearance, even though at the time they were still fairly nascent in compulsory education. We even mentioned the Semantic Web (or Web 3.0) as a potential horizon technology for learning. We spent a lot of time talking about digital cameras and interactive whiteboards, both of which have had dubious success in the school classroom.

Ultimately though, we could not have predicted the new tools and technologies that will become very much a part of normal school life in the recent and coming years. We did not foresee the touch tablets and their rapid success in schools, nor did we predict the rapid rise of smart phones and apps, or the potential of augmented reality. The non-touch motion sensing gestural interfaces now emerging (for example the Xbox 360 Kinect) and the voice activation applications were still just a gleam in the eye for many of us. Perhaps we should not have titled the book The Digital Classroom, but simply Digital Classrooms, because now we know that there are many possibilities, and that classrooms that have digital capabilities are many and varied. If I was to take a risk and suggest possibilities for the next 5 years of development, I might be right on some of my predictions, and hopelessly wrong on others, but here we go...

The signs are there that in the coming years, more gestural interface technology will be available for learners, and that advances in manufacture and design will enable the installation of screens on walls, desktop, in fact on any flat surface. The screens will be resilient and high resolution, but as thin as a sheet of card. The mouse, and keyboards such as the one in the image above, may disappear completely in favour of voice and gesture activated tools. For students with mobility issues in particular, this may turn out to be an important leveler. Smart touch devices will continue to develop too, so that every student will have the means to access all their learning resources right there in their hand, wherever they are, and whenever they need them.

Much more learning will be done outside of the classroom. Digital classrooms will become the place where learning is performed, celebrated and assessed - on large wall screens for all to enjoy. For many teachers, learner analytics will become an indispensable tool for tracking student progress and intervening when necessary. Many governments will probably insist on it and legislate accordingly when they realise just how much data can be mined from personal activities across the web. Eye tracking and attention tracking will also emerge as useful behaviour management tools for teachers in the next few years. Gamification and games based learning will establish a stronger foothold in classrooms as teachers realise just how powerful self-paced, self-assessed task oriented and problem based learning can be.

Probably the most important development I foresee though, is the emergence of student developed applications. As technology increasingly takes its hold on the school classroom, so students will become increasingly adept at coding. There is more scope than ever for children to experiment with computers. The Raspberry Pi is just the first of many tools to support this. The result will be the creation of a vast array of student games, mobile apps and eventually new forms of hardware (See this TED talk by 12-year old app developer Thomas Suarez). Many of the new apps and games will be made commercially available. Schools working in partnership with commercial companies will ensure it happens. We may even see some children achieve millionaire status before they leave school, and it will become commonplace for young people to be entrepreneurs before they reach higher education age. Now there's incentive.

A lot of learning comes from doing, making and problem solving. One of the most important contributions technology has made to education over the last decade can be found in its provisionality - that with digital, nothing is necessarily graven in stone, anything can be changed, upgraded, edited, revised, deleted. Learning in digital classrooms will be much more exciting, because learning through failure and experimentation will engage learners thoroughly in the right conditions.

Finally, a word of warning. We don't know how long these developments will take, nor do we know for sure  if they will materialise, because it is very hard to predict the future accurately, and schools are conservative places where change can be very difficult to achieve. What we do know is that the future will be very different from anything we can imagine right now. As ever, your comments and views on this article are very welcome.

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

The future of intelligence

This is Part 3 in a series of blog posts on the future of learning and technology. In my previous blog post I examined the debate about whether we are becoming more intelligent or less intelligent as a result of our prolonged and habituated uses of technology. I believe that if we are to fully apprehend the many issues and nuances of our relationship with future technologies, we first need to begin to appreciate the complexity of human intelligence(s) and the problems associated with trying to model these digitally.

Many commentators express concern about the negative impact technology may have on our ability to think critically, construct knowledge and read/research more deeply. The argument is that we are becoming increasingly dependent on search engines and other tools, that trivialise knowledge and simplify what we learn. A secondary argument is that there is a large amount of content on the web that is spurious, deceiving or inaccurate, and that user generated sites such as Wikipedia and blogs undermine the authority of professionals and academics.

Futurologist Ray Kurzweil's argument looks beyond these issues, holding that the tools we have available to us as a result of networked social media and personal devices, actually enable us to increase our cognitive abilities. He argues that we are becoming more creative and have the potential for endless cognitive gain as a result of increased access to these technologies. His position is reminiscent of the work of American cognitive psychologist David Jonassen (1999) and his colleagues, who proposed that computers were mind tools, and that our cognitive abilities could be extended if we invested our memories into them. Others, such as George Siemens and Karen Stephenson hold that we store our knowledge with our friends, and that connected peer networks are where learning occurs in the digital age. British computer scientist and philosopher Andy Clark, is of the opinion that we are all naturally aligned to using technology. In his seminal work, Natural Born Cyborgs (2003), Clark sees a future that combines the best features of human and machine, where we literally wear or physically internalise our technologies.

There are examples of how such cyborg existence might come about. Recently, demonstrations of Google Glass, eyewear that connects you via augmented reality software and gestural control to information beyond your normal visual experience, and Muse, a brain-wave sensing headband, have veered us in the direction of cyborg experience. I predict that other devices, wearable, natural gesture based, and sensor rich, will appear in the next few years, and these will be affordable to many. And yet, as science fiction writer William Gibson intoned, the future may be here already, but it's just not evenly distributed. He is right. A persistent digital divide exists between the industrialised world and emerging countries. Mobile phones may be proliferating rapidly, but Divides are also evident within western digital society where some invest in new technology, and a whole spectrum of other responses, from mildly enthusiastic to outright rejection are present in the population. There are even divides between those who can use the technologies and those who can't. Technology remains unevenly distributed, and will be for some time to come. But the digital divide will not stop the march of technology. What might wearables and non-touch interfaces achieve for us?

It is debatable whether wearable and invasive technologies will increase our intelligence. What such tools might be able to do though, is free us up physically, enhancing our visual capabilities, and enabling us to control devices hands free. They will also enable us to free up cognitive resources, by distributing our thinking and memory, enabling us to focus on important things such as creativity, intuitive thinking, critical reflection and conducting personal relationships, while the wearable computer navigates, searches, discovers, stores, retrieves, organises and connects for us. It will not make us smarter, but technology will enable us to behave smarter, work smarter and learn smarter. That's if we accept that ultimately, the success or failure of such tools is really down to us and us alone.

References
Clark, A. J. (2003) Natural Born Cyborgs: Minds, Technologies and the Future of Human Intelligence. New York: Oxford University Press.
Jonassen, D. H., Peck, K. and Wilson, B. (1999) Learning with Technology: A Constructivist Perspective. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill Prentice Hall.

Photo by Jussi Mononen


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

Things ain't what they used to be

Not so long ago, objects were simply objects. They only came alive in Disney cartoons, or after a heavy drinking session. Most of the time, objects were simply there to be used to perform a task the user required. Now that is all about to change,  as we advance into the next phase of Web evolution. We are about to see the emergence of what Kevin Ashton called 'the Internet of Things'. In a recent blog post, Jamillah Knowles wrote that a revolution is about to begin where the objects in our homes and workplaces will become smarter, more context aware, and will be able to interpret data fed to them, before taking action. As physicist Michio Kaku wrote recently, 'now we can say to Siri, move my meeting back an hour from 3 to 4, soon we will be able to say to Siri, mow the lawn.' The difference is, at present we can use our devices to interact directly with virtual space, but with smart context aware objects surrounding us, we will be able to interact through virtual tools into the real world.

Already we have QR codes and RFID embedded into objects. These are very effective, but they are superficial compared to what comes next. The next stage, according to this generation of Internet gurus, is to embed smart chip technology, so that objects can have a conversation with our devices. Not only does that have promising implications for health care, engineering, architecture, business and entertainment, it also makes a bright future for ambient learning. Imagine a group of children going on a visit to a museum. Each is equipped with a smart phone. An app on their phones interacts with all of the exhibits in the museum. If they stand in front of a statue, or a model of a dinosaur and hold their phone up, the object will send information to the phone. The longer they stand in front of the exhibit, the more information it will feed them. When they return to their classrooms or homes later, they have a complete archive of all of the objects they have seen that day. They can use this information for projects, essays, blogs, podcasts. It can then be used in whatever content they create to show what they have learnt in the form of text, images, sounds and video. The real learning happens when the kids begin to integrate their experiences, the information they have captured and their interaction with it into creating, organing and sharing their own content.

All of this has been made possible because of the disaggregation of computer and microchip technology. In 2011, the number of smart objects connected to the Internet surpassed the number of people on the planet. This trend will accelerate exponentially in the next few years to the point where we see ubiquitous computing. No longer do we need to carry computers around with us to be able to interact with digital media. Using the smart device in our pockets, and the ubiquitous computing power that is being embedded in objects all around us, we will soon be able to learn from those objects, invest our memories inside them, and even get them to do our bidding.

Things ain't what they used to be. Things are about to get a whole lot smarter.

Photo by Rod Senna


Things ain't what they used to be by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

The architecture of learning

One of the characteristics of Web 2.0, according to the man who coined the phrase, is to be found in its architecture. As far as Tim O'Reilly is concerned, Web 2.0 tools are configured in such a way that they 'get smarter the more people use them.' This facet was explained very clearly in Michael Wesch's excellent video Web 2.0 .. The Machine is Us/ing Us, which shows how web tools work better the more people use them. Social tagging for example, becomes increasingly stronger as people populate it with content and links. Blogs rely not only on content, but on users, and ultimately on the dialogue that ensues between all those who read the content. In his famous Wired article, Kevin Kelly predicted this by suggesting that Web 2.0 was about leveraging collective intelligence. Web 2.0 has marked a shift in emphasis from the personal computer to the web, and the services it conveys. Web 2.0 is qualitatively different to what preceded it. Essentially, where Web 1.0 was about pushed content, and a 'sticky internet' where users could change very little, the evolution of the web into Web 2.0 has been viewed as epitomising the power of participation, and arguably, it's also about the democratisation of the internet.

So how does Learning 2.0 fit into this landscape? In order to deconstruct Learning 2.0 - Stephen Downes was the first to coin the phrase eLearning 2.0 - we first need to decide what we mean by Learning 1.0. For me, Learning 1.0 (if there ever was such a thing and it can be equated to Web 1.0) represents a relatively passive individual learning mode where expert generated content is pushed at the learner. It represents a top-down, hierarchical delivery of content (and content really is king in this mode), which ideally demands specific (observable) behaviours from the learner that can be measured and assessed objectively.  Behaviourism and Cognitivism are theories that could comfortably be applied to describe the activities seen within a Learning 1.0 scenario. Bloom's taxonomy is also a framework that might be applied to underpin and explain the levels of activity that would ensue from Learning 1.0 type activities. It is reminiscent of the 1980s Computer Assisted Learning model, where learners sat at a computer, received linear sequences of content, responded to it by answering multiple choice questions, and were presented with remedial loops or 'relearning' when they failed to reach the required standard of understanding.

By contrast, Learning 2.0 is recognised by more active and participatory modes of learning, and they are rarely isolated learning activities. As Web 2.0 has evolved, we have seen an increasing amount of interactive content becoming available. This content is generated not only by the experts, but also increasingly by the learners themselves, and tends to be organised by the community rather than by the experts. It is not a hierarchy and it does not obey top down rules, but in more likely to be a heterarchy. The emergent properties of content organisation are folksonomies, and are the product of loose organisation that is bottom-up rather than top-down. One of the best theories to describe how learning is organised in Web 2.0 environments is social constructivism, because learners increasingly rely on social interaction, and appropriate tools to mediate dialogue. Collaborative, shared online learning spaces such as wikis and discussion forums are characteristic meeting places where content can be created and shared, and the community also organises and moderates this content using specialised services such as aggregation, curation and tagging tools.

When we talk about web versions, we inevitably travel down a road where significant step changes in the evolution of the web mark new ways of using it. If there really is a Web 1.0 and a Web 2.0, then we can expect eventually to see a Web 3.0, and can expect to see new forms of learning and social interaction advancing as a result. In my next blog post, I will try to describe what we can expect from Learning 3.0 using a similar explanatory framework.

Photo by Steve Wheeler


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

The changing Web

This is number 4 in the series of blog posts entitled 'Shaping Education for the Future.' Yesterday's post can be found at this link.

The web is constantly changing. Social media - often referred to as Web 2.0, or the participatory Web - is shaping up to be one of the most important tool sets available to support the promotion of change in education. Almost everyone, it seems, is using some element of social media in the planning, development, delivery, management or evaluation of teaching and learning. One of the greatest changes (and challenges) for education over the last few years has been the proliferation of user generated content. My own students create a lot of their own content during their study, usually in the form of podcasts, videos, wiki and blog content, and are encouraged to share these publicly online to gain additional feedback. Doing this, they tend to engage more deeply with learning, and find themselves collaborating more and learning from each other, as a result of using Web 2.0 tools. Essentially, Web 2.0 enables them to take more responsibility for their own learning. They like to share their ideas, and they enjoy playing their part in the production of knowledge. Learning is changing, and their experience is being shaped by the participatory Web. The Web is constantly changing, but it is also a change agent.

We need to acknowledge that 'Web 2.0' remains a contested label for new and emergent properties that are found on the Web. It is a complex network of dynamic resources that we all acknowledge is constantly changing to adapt to the growing demand for entertainment, communication and access to knowledge. Debate focuses on whether the emerging social applications constitute a sea change or revolution in the Web (cf. Van Dijk, 2002) or simply another phase in its relentless progress. Personally, I find myself in agreement with Brian Winston (2003) who views the Web as a facet of gradual evolution rather than symptoms of sudden revolution. Essentially, the Web has become more social. As with most other technology innovations, Web 2.0 applications have grown out of the need for people to connect together, share experiences and knowledge, enhance their experiences and open up new possibilities in learning. Social software is software that enables people to both read from, and write onto web spaces. It truly is the ‘architecture of participation’ (Barsky and Purdon, 2006) and demands active engagement as a natural part of its character (Kamel Boulos and Wheeler, 2007).

Web 2.0 tools include popular applications such as blogs, wikis and podcasting; social networking sites such as FaceBook and LinkedIn; photo and videosharing services such as Flickr and YouTube; familiar utilities such as RSS feeds, social tagging (e.g. Delicious, Diigo), microblogs such as Twitter, mashups (e.g. geotagging). Web 2.0 has spawned concepts such as folksonomy, ‘Darwikianism’ and the ‘wisdom of the crowds’ (Kamel Boulos et al, 2006). Also, we need to pay attention to the growing power, ubiquity and utility of the mobile phone and the central role it is already playing in enabling ‘anytime anyplace’ learning for students.

More is becoming known about the effects the changing Web is exerting upon teaching and learning. We know of some of the benefits and the limitations it brings to education and training. But there are still many questions to be answered. How for example, does this architecture of participation help to scaffold remote learners and how can it promote quality learning outcomes? What is the extent of the capability of social software to encourage a culture of sharing and collaboration? How much will Web 2.0 applications help to shape the education provision of the future? What roles will online games and mobile, personal technologies play in developing the skills young people need to study independently? These are questions we are beginning to address in some of our current research. More on this in future posts on this blog.

References
Barsky, E. and Purdon, M. (2006) Introducing Web 2.0: Social networking and social bookmarking for health librarians. Journal of the Canadian Health Libraries Association, 27, 65-67.
Kamel Boulos, M. N., Maramba, I. and Wheeler, S. (2006) Wikis, blogs and podcasts: a new generation of Web-based tools for virtual collaborative clinical practice and education. BMC Medical Education, 6, 41. Retrieved 14 April, 2008 from: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1472-6920/6/41
Kamel Boulos, M. N. and Wheeler, S (2007) The emerging Web 2.0 social software: An enabling suite of sociable technologies in health and healthcare education. Health Informatics and Libraries Journal, 24(1), 2-23.
Van Dijk, J. (2002) The Network Society. London: Sage.
Winston, B. (2003) Media Technology and Society: A History: From the Telegraph to the Internet. London: Routledge.

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

Amplified

Below is an interview I did for the EU funded Links-Up Expert Testimonial video series on Web 2.0 and e-Learning, in the bright sunshine of Dublin, during the EDEN Conference. Halfway through, watch out for my Roy Orbison impersonation. I talk about amplified content, sharing and collaborating online, and personal learning networks. I also discuss disruptive technologies, risk taking, learner control and the changing landscape of learning.




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

Future directions

The first EDEN (European Distance and E-learning Network) Fellows day was a thought provoking and absorbing event. Held as a part of the celebration of EDEN's 20th anniversary, 24 Fellows, as well as members of the EDEN Executive Committee and invited guests met to discuss the future direction of technology enhanced learning in Europe and beyond in the grand surrounds of Christchurch Cathedral, Dublin. (Pictured - Fellows discussing a proposal for a position paper). EDEN Fellows are awarded the honour as "an expression of acknowledgement of professional merit by the Association, for NAP (Network of Academics and Professionals) members, who have demonstrated excellence in professional practice in the field of flexible and distance learning and provided valued support to the evolution and progress of EDEN."

Each Fellow was invited to give a 5 minute flash presentation addressing the question: 'What do you consider to be the most surprising development in e-learning over the last 5 years?' as well as what might be the direction of the organisation's future research efforts. Many of those who presented identified similar themes, including the exponential rise and popularity of social media (blogs, wikis, podcasts, social network tools), open educational resources and mobile learning. Some talked about their surprise that many institutions had failed to capitalise on these trends, and in some cases had virtually ignored their potential. Some, including me, called for the learner voice to be incorporated more into EDEN's activities, whilst others argued that we should go beyond the analysis of cognitive gain, and begin to more deeply examine 'softer issues' such as student attitudes, motivations, emotions and values. There was also a call to now put aside once and for all the inconclusive and possibly misdirected research attempting to find 'significant differences' between traditional and distance forms of learning.

Sir John Daniel (Commonwealth of Learning) provided an excellent opening keynote to those gathered on the theme of 'Open Schooling - the next frontier for distance education.' He presented a number of statistics which showed a gradually and welcome decline in the number of children aged 6-11 worldwide who are outside of school, but warned that the number may yet rise again to around 72 million by 2015. In secondary education he told us, the number is even higher, because it is at least twice as expensive to deliver as primary education. He cited Keith Lewin who is of the opinion that the cost of secondary education militates against many developing nations ever being able to implement it. The alternative, said Sir John, was to implement a worldwide policy where distance and open learning can be delivered to the unschooled. Citing his new book, Mega-Schools, Technology and Teachers, he suggested that structured teaching and high quality learning materials, delivered via distance learning methods would reach many children who are currently outside education. He warned though, that implementing any form of technology without first putting into place the 'building blocks' (teacher preparation and infrastructure to support learning) would end in disaster.

The EDEN Fellows day was merely a warm-up for the main event which begins on Monday, on the campus of the University College Dublin. You can follow the live stream from the Conference, including the keynote speeches here at this link and via the #edendublin Twitter hashtag. Keynote speakers include Sir John Daniel, Graham Attwell and Clare Dillon (Head of Microsoft Research).

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

User generated content

We had some quite heated debates at the Concede Project meeting yesterday on the nature and direction of user generated content (UGC). When we met in Erlangen, Germany for our last project meeting in May this year, we came up with a definition of UGC: User generated content is "content created and shared freely by students and/or teachers that has not been formally peer reviewed". We think this definition works, and it appeared recently for example, in my keynote slides for the Budapest EDEN Research Workshop. The debate centred not upon what UGC actually is, but rather upon what happens to it once it is being used (or re-used) by others. For example, does UGC lose its informal nature when components of it are incorporated into say, a peer reviewed journal article, or an assessed essay at a university? My view is no, it doesn't. The wiki page, or blog content, or whatever the UGC format is, remains informal in nature, regardless how elements of it are being used or repurposed. But here lies an interesting point that we made at the project meeting - one of the aims of Concede is to enhance the quality of UGC so that it can be incorporated into higher education provision. It could be argued than that any UGC that has been incorporated into a formalised, peer reviewed piece of work (e.g. as a citation) is an indicator of high quality.

Further, we discussed the idea that although UGC is not formally peer reviewed, it is constantly being informally peer reviewed. Blogs like this one for example, are open for comments from all, novice, enthusiast and expert, to provide feedback, suggestions, even refutations, via the comments box under each post. This is of course, one of the most instant forms of peer review available. We had a very interesting time yesterday, locked into our room on the 11th floor of the Technical University of Budapest's tallest building. I will be writing an interim evaluation report on Concede in the next month or so, as we are nearly midpoint in the project. I will share some of it here on this blog later...


User generated content by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

A marriage made in Heaven?

Some readers of this blog may recall that I presented a keynote speech for the 'Let's Talk About Txt' conference organised by Txttools Ltd, at the University of Bath earlier this year. It's an excellent, small conference series that attracts delegates from both the public and private sectors of education and training, and is always well attended. My last talk was entitled: 'Everything you always wanted to know about txt but were afraid to ask', and is available in slideshow format at this link.

Well, I am delighted that I have been invited back again to keynote another of their conferences, this time at the University of Leeds, on November 16. Let's talk about txt 7 will be held at Bodington Hall, on the University of Leeds campus - details here. I must have done something right last time then. Below is the title and abstract of my keynote:

Combining Mobile Tools and Social Media: A Marriage Made in Heaven?

In the last decade we have witnessed an exponential rise in the use of participatory media on the web. Tools such as blogs, wikis, podcasts and social networking sites are flourishing, and boasting huge numbers of adherents. Alongside this rise in the use of social, participatory media we see an almost ubiquitous use of mobile telephones. Even in the developing nations of the world, the use of mobile phones is widespread and impressive. The advent of smart phones has raised the stakes even further affording developers major opportunities to create applications that will dramatically impact upon the daily lives of millions of subscribers across the globe. This presentation will examine these trends and will pose several questions: What happens when we combine the power of these two sets of tools? What happens when learners hold the power of the web in their hands? How will such possibilities impact upon education and training? What will be the new skills teachers and students will need to acquire to exploit the full potential of mobile social media? The answer of course, is that we don’t yet know all the answers, but we are beginning to find out, as research is conducted into for example, the mobile blogging (moblogging), mobile learning (m-learning), geo-caching, augmented reality and handheld teleconferencing. Such combinations of visual and textual media will advance learning and teaching in all sectors into a new phase, potentially changing irrevocably our conceptions about what it means to ‘learn’, the nature of knowledge, and the long established division between the roles of teachers and learners.


A marriage made in Heaven? by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

When worlds collide

In yesterday's post I gave the first part of a review of the latest issue of the journal Interactive Learning Environments, which is a special issue entitled: 'Towards eLearning 2.0 University'. There are 7 papers in the issue, each of which focus on social media that are being used to support and enhance learning in higher education. I promised I would continue the review today, right here on this blog, so here goes...

The research by Wopereis et al, with the title 'Weblogs as instruments for reflection on action in teacher education' set out to analyse how student teachers used them during their training. The paper concludes that although some reflective content was created by students, blogs do not naturally promote deeper forms of reflection without some scaffolding through tutor intervention. Interestingly, the students reported that they found the blogs useful for reflecting on action, and the authors postulate that with tutor support over a greater period of study time, meta-reflection might emerge as a result of prolonged blog writing, and revisiting of content.

Two papers reporting on research into the implementation of personal learning environments using social media provide a little controversy for the special issue. The first, by Valjataga and Laanpere, focuses on learner control of the environment, and how it poses a challenge for instructional design. This is reminiscent of the discussions held at the recent PLE conference in Barcelona, where some theorists attempted to defuse the tensions between didactic institutional provision and individualised PLEs by proposing a compromise. To reconcile the two seemingly polemic positions of learner control vs institutional provision, the authors of this paper propose that the PLE requires an elaboration, which 'integrates important instructional functions for learner control'. They argue that learners are in varying stages of readiness to create and adopt their own personal learning environments and that a deeper understanding of this is required to ensure future success.

The second PLE paper by Cascero et al, proposes an even deeper form of compromise, suggesting a middle ground between institutional provision and personalised tools and spaces. The iPLE (institutional PLE) sounds like a contradiction in terms but the authors are actually proposing 'a shift from the monolithic model of traditonal virtual learning environments to a more heterogenous and open model'. The authors propose a conceptual architecture of the iPLE and show how they propose it could merge the best functions and features of both worlds. Cascero et al justify the iPLE by arguing that 'iPLE is an attempt to build a PLE from the point of view of the university, so that every institutional service can be integrated, but flexible enough to interact with the wide range of services learners could consider important during their lifelong learning'. Sounds like two worlds are about to collide....

An institutional PLE? Impossible or feasible? This last article certainly offers a controversial and fascinating read, and will doubtless provoke some fierce debate.

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When worlds collide by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Going geographical

I remember a quote from Ed Horowitz: 'if you are not on the Internet, you are history'. I had an answer: 'If you are on the Internet, you are geography.' I was playing with words, but a message emerged from it - we can connect with others from all over the world using social media, and if you build it, they will come. The number of visits to this blog has risen dramatically over the last year or so. The month of July saw more than 10,000 visits. See what I mean? I've gone geographical.

Now it all comes home to roost. On September 2, I will be keynoting the Innovative Learning Spaces session track for the Royal Geographical Society Annual International Conference in London. I'm very pleased to have been invited, because although I am not a geographer, geography was always one of my favourite topics in school, and is a social science to which I have great affinity. I keep dozens of back copies of the National Geographic journal at home and I'm an avid viewer of the National Geographic channel. I used to love reading about intrepid explorers of the likes of David Livingstone, Mungo Park and Robert Falcon Scott. I'm grateful then to Professor Derek France (Chester University) for inviting me to speak at such a prestigious event and excited to be able to attend. Here are the title and abstract of my presentation:

New Spaces, New Pedagogies: Harnessing the Power of Social Media in Education

A rapid emergence of social media – the so called ‘Web 2.0’ – has opened up new opportunities for participatory learning in all sectors of education. Students now have the capability to create and share their own content through blogs, wikis, video- and photo-sharing services such as YouTube and Flickr. They can easily connect into and maintain contact with multiple communities of interest, gaining access to experts using social networking tools such as Myspace and Facebook. They can organise their own resources through free and easy to use tagging and social filtering tools. In this presentation I will argue that this rapid rise of user generated content is blurring boundaries between novice and expert, and challenging the traditional notions of knowledge, ownership, privacy and identity. In tandem with this, the proliferation of personal devices such as iPods and smart mobile phones is enabling students to move beyond the boundaries of the classroom into ‘any time, any place’ learning. In the light of these developments I shall explore new teacher roles, examine new learner expectations and explore some of the new learning territories that are emerging beyond the walls of the institution. I will offer some examples of how Web 2.0 tools have already been harnessed to support professional mentoring and to promote deeper engagement in learning through collaboration and reflection. I will discuss the concept of the personal learning environment and its potential to enrich student experiences. I shall speculate on the potential impact of emerging technologies such as augmented reality and touch screens and their potential in shaping the future of education.

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

What if they threw a party and none of us came?

Academic publishing is changing. Has to, because the old model of academic publishing is sadly outmoded. As Brian Lamb said recently at the Open Educational Resources Symposium, it seems perverse to hoard knowledge in any form, particularly in the light of the current economic crisis. Why should knowledge be a commodity? Why should publishers charge so much money for access to important ideas, new findings and vital knowledge that can make the difference in people's lives? Before anyone points out the fact that paper based journals cost money to produce, edit, review, print and distribute, I want to make the following points: Most academic journals are run by academics on a voluntary basis - those who review for my journal don't get paid a penny. They receive a free subscription to the journal, (and of course the kudos of working on a journal run by me - priceless!) but that's their lot. The real costs come in the production of the paper version. What if the publishers all went over to solely online publishing? How much could costs be reduced then?

Some publishers, particularly those running open access journals, are reversing the business model - and offering all contents free to any reader online, whilst the authors pay to have their work published. This model has come in for some criticism of course, because there is then great pressure on the editors to publish as many submissions as they can, so the journal can optimise its revenue stream. This criticism has been countered by said journals imposing more rigorous peer reviews. One of my recent open access journal articles (which I did not pay to have published btw) was peer reviewed by no less that 5 experts for the excellent journal Future Internet. Other business models involve advertising and/or sponsorship. Some, such as the highly successful International Review of Research in Open and Distance Education (IRRODL) and the Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education (TOJDE) are supported by parent institutions or organisations (as is the case with EURODL - the European Online Open Distance Learning Journal run by EDEN).

Whichever way we go to ensure academic publishing is economically sustainable, there is a growing movement to ditch traditional publishing because it is prohibitive, discriminatory and increasingly outmoded. Many of my academic colleagues are now refusing to publish in standard publications, preferring to throw their lot in with the open access journals.

Some are turning their back completely on the hard nosed, monetizing operation that is global publishing, and are instead using free tools such as blogs and other social media services to publish their work. They argue that they can reach a larger audience more quickly, and in a more interest driven and user-centric manner. There is no waiting for peer review, no publishing contracts to sign, and no production fees to pay. They argue that peer review comes later - and in a continual stream. Rather than as a barrier to overcome, peer review through comments and feedback directly to the author, becomes more open, honest and accessible for all to read and learn from. I can see their point, as increasingly, I am publishing my ideas and research up here on this blog, so everyone can see it and access it freely, rather than waiting for it to be published in a reputable peer reviewed journal a year or so down the road, when it is out of date. I agree with Brian Lamb that we should not hoard knowledge, nor should we restrict it, by charging others for the priviledge of reading it. Further, academics should not be constrained by the old economic models of publishing that still prevail. We should make our knowledge freely available to anyone who wants to read it using free and open services. That is the 'prime directive' of the open access, open educational resources movement. The powers that be don't like it, and neither I assume, will the publishers if everyone starts doing it. What if they threw a party and none of us came?

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What if they threw a party by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.

New spaces, new pedagogies

I'm kicking off the new academic year by presenting a keynote paper at the Annual International Conference of the Royal Geographical Society in London on Thursday, September 2nd. The session is entitled Innovative spaces of learning: debating their origin, nature and pedagogical significance, and is a sub section of the main RGS conference. Others speaking in the session include Derek France (University of Chester), Ruth Weaver (University of Plymouth) and Wendy Woodland (University of the West of England). Here's the abstract for my keynote:

New Spaces, New Pedagogies: Harnessing the Power of Social Media in Education

A rapid emergence of social media – the so called ‘Web 2.0’ – has opened up new opportunities for participatory learning in all sectors of education. Students now have the capability to create and share their own content through blogs, wikis, video- and photo-sharing services such as YouTube and Flickr. They can easily connect into and maintain contact with multiple communities of interest, gaining access to experts using social networking tools such as Myspace and Facebook. They can organise their own resources through free and easy to use tagging and social filtering tools. In this presentation I will argue that this rapid rise of user generated content is blurring boundaries between novice and expert, and challenging the traditional notions of knowledge, ownership, privacy and identity. In tandem with this, the proliferation of personal devices such as iPods and smart mobile phones is enabling students to move beyond the boundaries of the classroom into ‘any time, any place’ learning. In the light of these developments I shall explore new teacher roles, examine new learner expectations and explore some of the new learning territories that are emerging beyond the walls of the institution. I will offer some examples of how Web 2.0 tools have already been harnessed to support professional mentoring and to promote deeper engagement in learning through collaboration and reflection. I will discuss the concept of the personal learning environment and its potential to enrich student experiences. I shall speculate on the potential impact of emerging technologies such as augmented reality and touch screens and their potential in shaping the future of education.

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New spaces, new pedagogies by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.

Swabbing the decks

I'm swabbing the decks me hearties! Yep - it's time to do some spring cleaning, so I just deleted my Friends Reunited account. Had to really, because firstly I have never really used it - it feels just a little old and outmoded now - and secondly, I kept receiving annoying little updates via e-mail. I wouldn't have minded so much if the FR message didn't persist in starting with 'Stephen...' Look, no-one except my mother and Graham Attwell (no they are not the same person) has called me 'Stephen' in a very long time. If they do I'll not answer. I'm Steve to my friends and colleagues (note the distinction) and Tim to those who are a little confused about my digital identity. Not Stephen. That's guaranteed to get my back up every time.

I got shot of my Friends Reunited account in the same way I did with Plurk, Bebo, Myspace and a whole host of other not so useful tools. Facebook survived by the skin of its teeth, mainly because at the time I was (just a little bit) obsessed with Farmville, and also because a lot of my friends still communicate with me on my Facebook wall. (It's also a sureptitious way to keep tabs on my two teenage daughters, but don't tell them - they don't read this blog, so I hope I'm relatively safe mentioning it here... maybe). Facebook has some uses, so I'm keeping it. However, Twitter and my blog are now my most important Web 2.0 tools. There are a few others - you can read here about my top ten web tools.

On reflection, the reason I have been shedding so many of the services I so naively blundered into during my early days using the social web, is because they become a little like old clothes. I'm told that if you don't wear a garment for 6 months, you are probably very unlikely ever to wear it again. It's the same with many web tools. Suddenly they aren't so useful anymore. You leave them derelict, and don't use them for a few months, and they become like old clothes. You forget your password and can't be asked to request a reminder. Unwanted, probably outgrown, and looking slightly worse for wear - these old spaces go past their sell by date. I give my old clothes away to charity shops, or dump them if they are beyond repair. A purge now and then of old web tools I no longer frequent feels like another part of my life laundry.

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'Swabbing the decks' by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.

Very social software

A veritable feast of articles on social media is appearing in the academic press at the moment.

Two articles that have caught my eye deal with social software in education, and both have landed on my desk in the last few weeks.

If you're interested in the impact blogs, wikis and social networking can have on the social and cultural dimensions of education, then take a read of them. Below are the abstracts, references and links to both full papers.

Social Software: new opportunities for challenging social inequalities in learning? by Gwyneth Hughes

Enthusiasts for new social software do not always acknowledge that belonging to e-learning communities depends upon complex and often unresolved identity issues for learners. Drawing on the author's previous research on belonging in social learning, the paper presents a theory of identity congruence in social learning and brings to the foreground the importance of identities which arise from expressions of gender, class, ethnicity, age, etc. in the social, operational and, in particular, the knowledge-building aspects of learning. These three dimensions of identity congruence are used to evaluate the potential of new social software. While social software might encourage some learners to engage in social and operational identity work, there are disadvantages for others, and learner-generated knowledge and e-assessment practices can be divisive. Inclusive e-learning depends upon pedagogies and assessments which enable learners to shift and transform identities, and not solely on widening the range of technologies available. Such caution should underpin future research.

Keywords: social software; Web 2.0; inclusive; inequality; belonging; identity.

Reference: Hughes, G. (2009) Social software: new opportunities for challenging social inequalities in learning? Learning, Media and Technology, 34 (4), 291-306.

Culture, learning styles and Web 2.0, by Bolanle A. Olaniran

This article explores Web 2.0 in interactive learning environments. Specifically, the article examines Web 2.0 as an interactive learning platform that holds potential, but is also limited by learning styles and cultural value preferences. The article explores the issue of control from both teacher and learner perspectives, and in particular the cultural challenges that impact learner control. From the control perspective, the issue of access to Web 2.0 technologies from both cost affordability and government censorship is also addressed. Finally, the article concludes with implications and recommendations for Web 2.0 learning environments.

Keywords: Web 2.0; interactive learning; cultural preferences; learning styles; learner control.

Reference: Olaniran, B. A. (2009) Cuture, learning styles and Web 2.0, Interactive Learning Environments, 17 (4), 261-272.

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Doing the research

I have just been through an extremely busy two weeks, with seemingly endless bus, taxi and car journeys, 10 air flights and I don't know how many miles travelled. In 17 days I have been to Cork, Barcelona, Frankfurt, Heidelburg, Darmstadt, Weinheim, Worms, London and Leeds.

Thankfully, my trekking is over (at least for a while) and I can now sit back and reflect on what I have learnt from my 'research'....

Experimental research: Firstly, I have discovered that students enjoy wine tasting, but don't know how to do it properly (spit not swallow) and I have gathered the empirical evidence to support this hypothesis. The photos of our trip to a vineyard and the bumpy ride around the countryside on tractors (made in 1941), belching fumes (the tractors not the students) and towing wooden carts equipped with tables and copious samples of wine, constitute the raw data which I am currently scrutinizing. The participants (n=24) were divided into two groups - a control group (those who drank alcohol) and an experimental group (those who drank even more alcohol and can't actually remember what they did). A caveat applies to this experimental design however. Students should never be allowed to drive tractors, because they tend to crash them and cause varying amounts of collateral damage. There is also a confounding variable of alcohol intake which proportionately influences this effect (Worms, Germany).

Social research: The research done naturalistically on the streets of Cork is worth a mention. The Irish are wonderfully friendly people who will do just about anything to help you out. So many times we were asked if we needed help, often we received it without asking, and once or twice we got help when we didn't need it at all. The taxi drivers were a real hoot, and the teachers in the school we visited were extremely dedicated professionals. Ireland's education system appears to be in good hands (Duglas and Cork, Ireland).

Experiential research. Feed enough 3 course dinners to a bunch of students and eventually they will get 'fed up' with it. That was the finding of the gastronomic reseach I conducted. Toward the end of the second week one of my student participants said he never wanted to see another 3 course dinner in his life. The Atlantis Project became known as 'Fatlantis' as we were all overfed each night due to the more than generous funding of 'Herr Oberst' Udo Bleimann (Ireland and Germany).

Cultural research: There is more fun to be had in Barcelona than you can shake a stick at. Making paella in a workshop restaurant, and then eating it. Strolling down Las Ramblas and gazing at the amazing architecture as you follow the footsteps of Antonio Gaudi, Pablo Picasso and Joan Miro - these are great memories of three days spent there this month. The summit meeting produced some challenging action points which will be published later in a respectable journal (Barcelona, Spain).

Corporate research: We visited SAP AG which was an excellent place to hang out for a few hours - it felt more like a university campus than a software company. It's one of the top multi-national software development companies and was recently voted one of the best places to work. The interviews we conducted with the Human Resources and Training personnel supported this as a viable claim. We could see why, and it was all I could do to prevent two of my group from absconding there and then (Walldorf, near Heidelburg, Germany).

Research into the spiritual domain: If you want to put the fear of God into your students, tell them they are going to be unreasonably charged by Ryan Air for overweight suitcases > 15 KG. They are observed to discard all sorts of stuff including toiletries, bottles of beer and hairdryers so they don't have to pay extra out of their meagre student grants. The study revealed that Ryan Air are not to be trusted though - the hidden charges they impose are ludicrous and they lack any consistency in their policies (Frankfurt Hahn Airport).

Research into e-Learning: Web 2.0 tools are being used for teaching in the physical sciences, and they are experiencing similar problems and successes as we have seen in teacher training. My keynote to the HEA Physical Sciences Centre conference at Leeds Metropolitan University was well received. I talked about some of the educational principles that underpin the use of wikis, blogs and other Web 2.0 tools and there was much animated discussion.

And finally, some autobiographical narrative: I'm very tired, and I am losing my voice (blame the laryngitis fairy), and yet I'm strangely satisfied by the entire experience. I've learnt a lot, and all the travel, onerous though I found it, was worth it in the end. And the sleeping animal in the picture? That's me, that is.

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Learning space mashups

The open access article I mentioned in yesterday's blogpost Access all areas has been published online, exactly 12 days from the date I submitted it. The review process was exceptionally fast. Apparently it was blind reviewed by up to 5 reviewers, so it would seem that the review process is more rigorous than many other journals I have published with. My paper appears in the first edition of an exciting new journal entitled 'Future Internet'. The journal is so new it looks as if my article is the first to be published in it. More will undoubtedly follow. Here's the link to the pdf of the article and below is the abstract:

In this paper, Web 2.0 open content mashups or combinations are explored. Two case studies of recent initial teacher training programmes are reviewed where blogs and wikis were blended to create new virtual learning spaces. In two separate studies, students offer their views about using these tools, and reflect on the strengths and weaknesses of this approach. There is also discussion about aggregation of content and a theorization of how community and personal spaces can create tension and conflict. A new ‘learning spaces’ model will be presented which aids visualization of the processes, domains and territories that are brought into play when content and Web 2.0 tools are mashed up within the same space.

Keywords: mashup; wiki; blog; Web 2.0; collaboration; reflection; learning

Wheeler, S. (2009) Learning Space Mashups: Combining Web 2.0 Tools to Create Collaborative and Reflective Learning Spaces. Future Internet. 1 (1), 3-13.

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Breaking eggs

One of my recent book chapters starts with the statement 'You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs.' It's my opening gambit in a chapter called 'Destructive Creativity on the Social Web' in which I discuss the volatile and contentious nature of wiki content generation. I argue that wiki content generation is both creative and destructive, and you need both to ensure quality. My chapter appears in an edited volume by Stylianos Hatzipanagos and Steven Warburton on Social Software and Developing Community Ontologies. The book is a weighty tome of almost 600 pages, and contains 32 chapters by some of the leading thinkers of educational Web 2.0: Terry Anderson, Grainne Conole, Jon Dron, Marc Eisenstadt, Mark Lee, Andrew Ravenscroft, Martin Weller, Scott Wilson, the list goes on to more than 80 contributors. The list of reviewers is also a 'Who's Who' of the e-learning luminati. Stylianos and Steve really are to be congratulated for putting together such an impressive line-up of chapters, reviewers and editors.

The book covers a lot of ground including the use of blogs and wikis in education, social structures, knowledge media, information literacies, ambient pedagogies, social presence and interactivity. It is a solid reference manual for best practice of social software tools in teaching and learning. There are some good reads within it, but you probably wouldn't want to purchase a copy at £183.95. As is the case with all IGI Reference books it is very overpriced. Now I know you shouldn't judge a book by it's cover, but if the price doesn't put you off in this credit crunch economy, you may be unimpressed by the bland and somewhat dour jacket. I received my copy free as a thankyou for sitting on the Editorial Advisory Board, so I am priviledged to get full access. I note with interest that within a few short days of the book being released, it was already available in part on Google Books, so you can at least sample some of the contents. Here's the abstract for my chapter, which discusses wiki cultures and Darwikianism (the survival of the fittest - or most accurate - wiki pages):

The use of group oriented software, or groupware, encourages students to generate their own content and can foster supportive and dynamic communties of learning. One form of open architecture groupware known as the Wiki is freely available online in several versions, and enables tutors to quickly set up online spaces which can be edited by students, at any time and from any location. Online social spaces of this nature can be used to encourage creative writing and to engage students in critical discourse through focused discussion, but Wikis also have disruptive potential and can cause dissent and disharmony within the group. This chapter aims to highlight some uses of the wiki as a social writing tool, reporting on student perceptions of the limitations and benefits. The chapter also focuses on the tension between creative and destructive uses of wikis in mainstream higher education. The use of interview data gathered from a study conducted with a group of student teachers in 2007 is included to support the key messages of this chapter.

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Getting the bloggers to write

I'm currently gathering and analysing data on two different blogging studies.

The first involved a group of students who are in their third year of teacher training. They had to do a personal research project on ICT in education as a part of their studies, and I set up a group blog for them (which they themselves called 'Idiot's guide to research'). They reported (those who have responded so far) that they really appreciated the extra 'safety net' and that they also benefited from commenting on and reading other people's posts. The limitations were cited as 'not knowing whether someone else had posted a reply' (can be remedied by an RSS alert) and waiting for a response from someone else that is a long time coming (a cattle prod can be applied to remedy this problem).

The second blog study was called MentorBlog and was funded as a small scale project through the Peninsula CETT (Centre for Excellence in Teacher Training). Here we set up two groups of students, those who would blog with their mentors (and possibly not come into contact with them at all) and those who would maintain a conventional face to face mentorial relationship. It's too early to summarise findings as we are only half way through the interviews, but there are some interesing emerging themes. These include affordances of e-mail and blogging as 'immediacy', the ability to reflect, and 'bringing some distance to the relationship' when it gets a little too intense and 'overbearing'.

So, I shall press on and find out more about this wonderful thing we call blogging....

The Downes side

Reading Stephen Downes' blog Stephen's Web yesterday caused me to think more deeply about the nature of blogging. Stephen very kindly makes links to three of my recent blog postings from the ICL Conference in Villach, Austria. But Stephen my friend, I think you missed the point.

Here's a quote from him, er, quoting me.... "Summaries could be more informative and less, um, colourful ("two papers that shone out like diamonds in the mud in an afternoon of mediocrity")."

Hmmm... my first response is that it's my blog and I can use whatever poetic licence I like to convey my thoughts. But it goes deeper than this. Words are powerful, and often, metaphors can provide a lot more meaning than mere description. There are other conference blogs that are more informative. Go read those. Those who regulalry read this blog, I hope, have gotten used to my 'colourful' language and 'tongue in cheek' approach, and realise that this is the style these postings will take. It's a happy situation, I think you will agree... that blogs are not all the same, and that bloggers should use any devices they want to, to get their messages across. It would be a pretty boring blogosphere otherwise!

Thanks though, Stephen, for remarking that my links to the presenters were useful. It's certainly driven more readers to my site over the last few days. Oh, and I really like your 'colourful' picture on FaceBook! Cheers mate.