Tim flies

Tomorrow I head off to Nicosia to keynote the Cyprus International Conference on Educational Research. The event, hosted by the Middle East University (North Cyprus campus), will feature four keynote speakers and presentations of papers, workshops, posters, seminars and virtual presentations on a wide range of pedagogical research themes. In total, it looks as though there are over 400 presentations accepted into the three day programme.

The conference aims to "bring together educational scientists, administrators, counsellors, education experts, teachers, graduate students and civil society organizations and representatives together, to share and to discuss theoretical and practical knowledge in a scientific environment".

The three other keynote speakers are Janet Parker (Open University, UK) who will speak on the topic of 'Encouraging Early Career Researchers to become Expert Published Writers', Lejf Moos (NTNU Trondheim, Norway) whose theme is 'European Educational Research Today', and local academic Mehmet Çağlar (Near East University, Cyprus).

My own keynote will cover the proposition that social media, mobile technologies and the Web are together changing the way we perceive knowledge, learning and education. I'm going to  propose that we are witnessing a radical shift in the way knowledge is represented, consumed, created and shared, and that as a result, we need to reappraise the way we conduct research and disseminate our findings. I'm going to talk about adopting open access journal publishing as the best way forward for widespread and effective publication of research, and I'm going to champion open scholarship. Let's see how that will be received.

I'm going to blog again about the conference once I'm there and it's in full swing. Cyprus is a wonderful country to visit any time of the year, but doubly so at the moment, with the inclement weather here in the UK assailing the senses. The island's temperate Mediterranean climate will be very welcome, and the Cyprus culture and history are rich. It's a dirty job, but somebody has to do it. 


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Building the future

Like any other part of the training and skills sector, the construction industry depends upon the reliable and effective training of well qualified and competent individuals. Training is rigorous and comprehensive, because if a builder gets it wrong, the consequences can be catastrophic. At Unitec, in Auckland, New Zealand, they train construction workers in all the trades, but there seems to be a particular demand for skilled carpenters in the Land of the Long White Cloud. You see, almost every house in New Zealand is constructed predominantly of wood.

The construction training team Unitec (pictured) are particularly savvy and ahead of the field when it comes to the application of learning technology. During a break in the proceedings at the ICELF event I had the privilege of being shown around their training compound where Unitec delivers its Certificate in Applied Technology (Carpentry). What I saw impressed me.

The Smart Shed is one of the centre pieces of Unitec's technological advance. Situated at the edge of the construction zone, the smart shed looks like any other wooden shed, but inside it is bristling with digital technology. It has full wifi connectivity and web enabled desktop personal computers within. A roller blind on the outside of the shed is pulled up to reveal a multi-gesture interactive whiteboard and short-throw projector. Using these tools, on site demonstrations and interactive learning sessions can be conducted, a few footsteps away from the construction training site.

But it is the QR tag system that is perhaps the most radical departure from traditional on-site construction training. On many of the working surfaces of the houses under construction on site (every one is sold before it is started and later transported on completion to its final destination), QR tags are stapled to the walls. At the appropriate point in their training, holding up their smart phones, students capture the appropriate QR image, which takes them directly to relevant websites that explain building techniques, safety procedures or specialist tool use.

In conversation with the lecturers who instigated this scheme, I asked how long it would take for the construction industry to adopt such leading edge practices for on the job training. 'We don't think it will be long', they replied. 'As soon as these students are qualified, they will be working in the construction industry', they explained. 'It is only a matter of time before they become lead builders, and eventually business owners within the industry. Then they will introduce similar technology supported training for their employees on site'.

Application of new technology that supports learning within authentic contexts. This is situated learning at its best, but is it the future of construction training?


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Barefoot keynote

This week at the ICELF event at Unitec in Auckland I was given one of the highest honours I have ever received. My opening keynote at the conference was preceded by a Maori Powhiri (welcoming ceremony) in the Marae (Maori sacred meeting house) followed by the ceremonial welcome which included the pressing of noses and foreheads (Hongi) with several of the university staff and dignitaries. This was quite an amazing experience, because in effect, it made me a member of the extended family of the institution (Whanau). I have to admit it was quite a humbling and emotional experience, but what followed - an invitation to address the entire gathering of over 200 delegates inside the Marae, was just as great an honour because, I was informed, very few guests are ever allowed to do this. I imagine that now I am a member of the family, this was the reason. Everyone was required to enter the Marae barefoot, and I have to say this was the first time I delivered a keynote with no shoes on. Somehow though, it was very appropriate, in such a place rich with tradition.

The Marae on the Unitec campus in Auckland is an intricately carved structure which is used for social and sacred purposes - it's walls and pillars tell the story of the Maori people and their journey through history. The Mount Albert campus of Unitec is situated on a site that was once a part of the settlement area belonging to the Ngati Awa people. Later I had the pleasure to meet the designer and creator of the entire structure and discuss with him some of his wonderful creations. Unlike many of the more traditionally crafted Marae, the this meeting hall is a unique fusion of ancient craft and new technology. The centre post for example has been forged in metal with laser images engraved down its length. The fine carvings on each of the joists, central spine and walls of this very spacious building told a different story of the lives of the Maori people and included their first encounter with western seafarers who sailed into their harbour. Auckland is also known as the City of Sails, and this was clearly represented on the rear wall of the Marae. The front wall, in front of which I spoke, depicted a large white cloud (The Maori name for New Zealand - Aotearoa - means land of the Long White Cloud), and decending below the cloud are vast legions of people, emerging as created beings. The relevance of the cloud and the social throng was not lost on us as we discussed new forms of technology mediated learning and social media. The entire interior of the Marae is lit cleverly in a manner that enhances the spectacle, but the irony of the event was not lost on me. Here I was talking about the future, surrounded by a traditionally constructed space (not a single metal nail was used), and even with the evidence of technological influence, the stark contrasts between the past and the future somehow amplified the experience and made it even more poignant. A useful summary of my speech can be read here on this blog.

I am extremely grateful to the organisers of ICELF for inviting me to participate in such an excellent and inspirational event. Delegates travelled from more than 20 countries to attend, and they represented all sectors of education. Over the two days we heard a number of excellent presentations and attended some very engaging workshops on e-learning and technology supported learning. Outstanding sessions by Derek Wenmoth (Core Education, NZ), Thomas Cochrane (AUT, NZ), Agnes Kukulska-Hulme (OU, UK) and Judy Kay (University of Sydney, Australia) gave excellent value to the discourse. ICELF was the first event of its kind in New Zealand, but I strongly suspect that it will not be the last. As the organisers will no doubt agree, the impetus is now there for a strong movement for change in New Zealand education. The ICELF team deserves to be at the vanguard of that change.

Image source and ICELF


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The Melbourne set

We all thoroughly enjoyed our Big Fat Tweetup last night down on the riverside in Melbourne. Even the sudden early summer downpour couldn't dampen our enthusiasm for RL (Real Life) encounters with people we have all know for some years. Many have remarked on this, but it's true - when you eventually meet face to face the people you have been conversing with for years on Twitter, you feel you actually know them. You don't of course, but you can bypass a lot of the awkward social manoeuvring you often experience when you meet someone for the first time. It was a gathering for learning technologists and educators from all around.

Stephen Heppell (@stephenheppell) dropped by to share a glass with us en route to another event. Claire Brooks (@clairebrooks) and Dave Cummings (@daveymelb) were in great form, along with our tweetup host and organiser Joyce Seitzinger (@catspyjamasnz) and the excellent Mr. Mark Smithers (@marksmithers). Even Shelley Gibb (@mollybob) put in a surprise but very welcome appearance, all the way over from Sydney. It was great talking again with Colin Warren (@colwar) whom I first met face to face in Barcelona at last year's PLE conference, and to feel intuitively that we are kindred spirits. Good on ya mate! I met Jenny Ashby (@jjash) and Pam Kamande (@pamarasan) for the first time and we shared our experiences. I also enjoyed my discussions with Megan Colasante (@megacolour) about digital identity, anonymity and blogging as a professional practice. The weather remained warm and muggy, in spite of the heavy shower, and rich and varied conversations went on into the night.

Image by Joyce Seitzinger (from an idea by Mark Smithers)


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Be nice to techies

One of the best pieces of advice I can give to teachers is: always be nice to technicians, secretaries, librarians, and other support staff. They are the ones who make schools, colleges and universities work. They are professionals and they deserve your respect. And if you mistreat them, they have the power to make your life absolute hell.

Those who know my personal history will know that in a former career, I was a classroom technician. From 1976 to 1981, I was employed in my first job as an Audio Visual Technician where my role was to support lecturing staff. I did graphic design, illustrations and photography for them. Occasionally I also worked in the print room, creating the documents that would later be published in-house. I worked in the College's video studio, usually behind a camera, sometimes editing and producing. I repaired projectors and soldered cables, wheeled video recorders and televisions in and out of lecture halls, tested microphones and public address systems, and showed movies for the Film Society. It was a fast paced and varied job, given that I was one of only 3 audio visual technicians serving a very large teacher training college. Most of the academic staff were great, and treated us well, asking our advice on how best to present their lessons to the students, what technology to use (in the 1970s, the technology of the day was the new Philips 1500 video cassette tape which held 30 minutes, the Kodak Carousel Slide Projector, 3M Overhead projectors and the Bell and Howell 16 mm film projector - computers had not yet arrived, and copying of handouts was done using a hand cranked Banda Spirit Duplicator). Most of the lecturers treated us with respect, but there were a very small number of academics who looked down upon us as though we were very inferior to them.

One particular female lecturer - let's call her Sadie Stick - was well known for her impatience, temper tantrums and general arrogance. The staff were not particularly keen on her, and neither were the students. One day, after I had set up all of the teaching equipment for the morning lectures, and double checked it was all working in each room, I was back down in the AV workshop, about to launch into the day's scheduled repairs. The phone rang. It was Sadie. She was furious. She demanded that I come upstairs immediately into her lecture room, because the Overhead Projector she had ordered was faulty. I made my way quickly up the stairway and found her lecture room.

I walked in, and there she was, in front of almost a hundred students, hands on hips, glaring at me. I think she was having a particularly bad day. She launched into a diatribe about how incompetent I was, and how I couldn't even be trusted to provide a working Overhead Projector. Dr Stick berated me for wasting her time, and that of all her students (who I must say looked distinctly embarrassed by her tirade). She said she was going to report me for negligence, and see to it that I was disciplined. She pointed to the Overhead Projector, and demonstrated that it was not working. She clicked the switch on and off, on and off, on and off, to make sure that I received the message loud and clear exactly how angry she was. And at about that point, I think Dr Sadie Stick ran out of steam.

I looked around the room theatrically. I walked over to the power socket and flicked on the switch. The light from the Overhead Projector blazed gloriously on the screen. I then calmly, and without a word, walked out of the room... to absolute silence.

Image source by Alan Levine


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The next ten years

I spent yesterday at the JISC Annual conference in the Liverpool Echo Arena. It was a day packed full of seminars and workshops, and I will report on it later, when there is some space to think. For now though, here is JISC's own report on the keynote given by Eric Thomas:

Professor Eric Thomas, vice chancellor of Bristol University, today highlighted the importance of colleges’ and universities’ use of technology in encouraging student applications. He said: “An integrated, sophisticated use of [new technology] is going to mean that the university is seen as cutting edge and more attractive. I see JISC’s role as assisting us in making the university look as attractive as possible.”

JISC’s deputy chair Professor David Baker agreed: “Over the next 5-10 years JISC will have an ever more vital role to play not just in the education sector but across the UK. I don’t believe that JISC or higher or further education can afford to slow down.”

Against the backdrop of an increasingly demanding student body, Professor Thomas predicted that within ten years there would be more students studying in their home towns to save costs, and that they would also have the choice of non-degree entry to traditional careers like accounting. Professor Thomas also highlighted recent scrutiny of universities’ connections with Libya as an example of how the public see education as operating within a different value system.

He said: “It’s essential that we see ourselves as educational institutions and that we retain our values. People expect higher education to have different value set. It’s really important that we maintain that.”

Professor Thomas’ talk opened the JISC11 conference in Liverpool today, which is attended by nearly 700 delegates from across further and higher education in the UK, China, Denmark, Germany, Netherlands, South Korea, Spain and Sweden.

His keynote introduced a day of advice, guidance and future-gazing on the theme of ‘financial challenges, digital opportunities’ to help colleges and opportunities reduce costs and improve their efficiency.

Follow the conference online using the hashtag #JISC11Watch the live streamed sessions online today and after the conference here.

Press release courtesy of JISC Announce Mail Service

Image source by Eric Jones

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2020 Vision

I read a post by Tina Barseghian on the Mind/Shift Blog entitled '21 things that will be obselete by 2020' today, which prompted me to start a conversation on Twitter to discuss what we think school would look like in another decade or less. Discussions are still ongoing in projects such as Purpos/ed about what education should be for/about, and gazing into the future challenges our ideas similarly. By thinking about what the future may look like for schools, we reflect on what we would like to see. By doing this, we critically evaluate where we are and where we have come from. I took this picture at a hi-tech convention and trade fair in Germany last month. In among all the shiny technology vendor stands sat this anacronism - a replication of the school classroom that I recall from my primary school days. The only thing missing was the inkwells, knibs and paper. The organisers had obviously done this for a purpose. For me, the purpose was to cause people to remember where we have come from in our personal journeys through education. It was also to remind us never to go back to that kind of education, but instead to move forwards. I am left asking my own question - what is my vision for education in the future?

In 2020, will we wander around learning technology exhibitions (or museums) and see simulations of computers with keyboard and mice? Will there actually be any physical exhibitions and museums? Will we gaze upon exhibits of school ICT suites and smile? And will our grandchildren sit on our knees and ask us - did you really have to touch computers to make them work?

What will school look like in the next 10 years? Will be still send children to school? Will there still be classrooms? What will the roles of teachers be in the next 10 years? Will they still be doing the same things? What will assessment of learning look like and what forms will it take? What new forms will technology take to facilitate mobile, anytime, anyplace learning? What will the curriculum look like and what will it contain? Just as importantly, what will be left out? Will teachers still experience the same problems of state interference, time and space pressures and lack of resources? Or will there be other, even more serious problems? Over the next few posts on this blog I'm going to attempt to discuss these questions, and I intend to draw on the comments received from readers and those who have already contributed their ideas on Twitter. The hashtag to use is #learning2020. Let's have a dialogue which may help us to see where we have come from and where we need to go, to secure quality learning for the next 10 years and beyond.

2020 Vision by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

The futures market

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

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

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

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The social impact of disruptive technology

Steve Wheeler, Associate Professor of Learning Technology at the University of Plymouth, will give a public keynote on February 2 at the LEARNTEC Bildungsforum, in Karlsruhe, Germany. Being a self-declared 'disruptive activist', the subject of his speech 'The Future of Web 2.0 Technologies in Learning' is very close to the core of his professional interests and endeavours. In the following interview he talks about the necessity of harnessing the potential of Web 2.0 for education and training.

Prof. Wheeler, which technologies do you consider "disruptive” and what has Web 2.0 to do with it?

Disruptive technologies are game-changers, they fundamentally change the manner in which things are done. Let me give you the example of digital photography: Today there are only a few places left where you can buy non-digital cameras. There is hardly any need for them. The same can be applied to Web 2.0. Just take Wikipedia: Technically it is a collaborative work space for creating content. In fact it has thoroughly overturned the idea that you need to consult a printed encyclopedia to get expert information. If you find a mistake, you can instantly correct it yourself, you do not have to wait for the publishing house to decide on an updated next version. The internet has literally changed our lives.

Why do you think it still necessary to push for further change and to pursue "disruptive activism”?

We have to realize that the way teaching is conducted in many schools and universities is actually outdated. It no longer applies to the current world of young people and does not answer to the needs of society anymore. But change does not happen by itself. I am very much interested in learning psychology, in the way people behave, how they perceive technology and how they use it in teaching and learning, and I have learnt from my research that there are and always will be many people who are resistant to change or reticent about it, because disruptive technologies challenge their social and professional roles. This is also my personal experience, from the very first time I used computers to train nurses in hospitals in 1986.

There are around 7.000 authors for the German Wikipedia edition. Do you think this has a big social impact?

The basic idea behind Wikipedia is that everybody can be an editor and a commentator. This idea sways the balance of power between experts and non-experts, between teachers and students everywhere, because it rejects the privileged role of former knowledge mediators and contradicts the traditional idea that knowledge can only be generated by certified experts. People who take an interest in a certain subject are able to generate knowledge about it - and consider themselves capable of doing so.

Are these changes mostly discernible for internet researchers like you or do you think the people involved - teachers and students - are also aware of them?

The reactions are different. There are many who embrace these changes, probably more in the educational and academic sector than in corporate training. But there are also ostriches that put their heads in the sand and don’t want to see what happens around them. Others don’t accept the idea that students have the same status as lecturers. They don’t like Wikipedia to be referenced (in academic assignments) because they don’t trust anything which has not been formally peer-reviewed. Of course, what I write on my blog is not institutionally checked, which is different to a publication in a scientific journal which may go through two blind peer reviews. But in fact my readership reviews and comments on what I write, and this in a way is more valuable to me than a formal review. There is more immediacy to it and there is a personal bond between me and my readers. Wikipedia and weblogs were two of the most important applications of Web 2.0, when Tim O’Reilly coined the term in 2004.

Today everybody talks about Facebook and Twitter. What do they offer for learners?

Facebook is very interesting as it attracts a wide variety of people from teenagers to older people. But we should not confuse Facebook with formal learning. Some people try to harness it for this purpose, but I think the potential is quite limited. Twitter is less distracting, it is more streamlined and has a more appropriate range of features that makes it a better teaching tool than Facebook. You can share conversations and knowledge, but you cannot play. You can use filtering tools, if you do not want to read everything written by all the people you follow. If I want to know something about a particular topic, I go to my Twitter account and put a short message on the screen, asking for information. Within minutes I get some very clear answers. I get information fast and I get in contact with people who are experts in this particular field. You have mentioned a lot of disruptive software applications.

Is there also hardware with similar effects?

Smartphones are disruptive. Of course they can be used inappropriately, e. g. for cyber bullying. But imagine 30 children in a classroom, every one with a mobile phone: Why not use it in a controlled way, for example as a voting instrument, as a tool for messaging, or in order to link up with media that you cannot normally access in the classroom? Cell phones seemed to be a tool for talking to anyone in any place. But today they are much more: You can send text, gain access to the net, use your camera, orientate yourself by using GPS systems, capture augmented reality. We would be very stupid to ignore these possibilities.

The future of learning is about the mobile phone?

Definitely. It will be a platform for many future developments, such as context-aware technology. You will see more virtual content around you: overlays on billboards, in airports, on sightseeing venues. If you take students into a museum, the virtual information about the artwork, the artist etc. will be embedded into the painting you are looking at. At the end of the day you go back to your classroom and you download the complete information about what you have seen and decide what you are going to do with it.

What is the future of Web 2.0?

Well, this is the subject of my LEARNTEC lecture. Let me just tell you that the transition into Web 3.0 will be very semantic, very meaning-based. It will lead to the classification of knowledge through folksonomies and to the extended web which combines social and information richness. The future is very exciting.

For further information on Steve Wheeler see his weblog. Presentations are available here at slideshare. Vorträge: Public Key Note: The Future of Web 2.0 Technologies in Learning (Messebereich) 02.02.2011 13:45-14:45

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Learning without Frontiers

Although I am missing being at Learning Without Frontiers, after having had a tantalising taste of it during the Sunday Service (the free first day of the festival), I am following remotely via the Twitter stream (#lwf and #lwf11) and also watching some of the keynote speeches via the streaming media channel on the LWF main website. It is very high quality, both in audio and visual terms, and there is also a separate live stream for slides. It really is almost like being there in person. Congratulations must go to Graham Brown-Martin and his team for such a well organised and dynamic conference.

I was particularly impressed by the presentation from Sony UK managing director Ray Maguire, who seems to have monitored the pulse of the UK compulsory education sector. He made several important statements about the future of learning technology. Why can't we take the best teachers and the best lessons and broadcast/stream them to all interested schools? he asked. We have the technology. (Yes, and we did it over a decade ago during the Star Schools project I was involved in, in South Dakota). We need to encourage schools to let more kids create content and share it he counselled. And on the subject of institutional VLEs, although he didn't go as far as to claim they were outmoded, he did admit that they had been instigated before the advent of social media, and VLEs were premised on behaviour and practice of a decade ago. In his concluding statement, Maguire called for collaboration between Sony and schools to extend and enhance provision for education, particularly with games and other handheld technologies. Maguire also called for decisions to be made at government level and for an operational budget to be made available for wide implementation. We won't hold our collective breaths on that one, but guess there's no harm in asking, is there?

Learning without frontiers by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Living in the future

Berlin in December, with all that snow? It was quite magical. And a little scary, perhaps. Spare a thought for all those who attended the Online Educa Conference this year, and then found themselves stranded in Berlin because the snow had closed aiports across sub-zero Europe. I was one of the lucky ones. I made it back from Berlin to Bristol airport with only an hour or so of delays. I arrived back home at around 2 am this morning. Others are still in Berlin, waiting for their flights to be rescheduled, and the weather doesn't look as though it is going to let up....

But travelling to OEB10 (for that was the official hashtag) was worth the risk. It was worth it because Berlin is a great city, and the location for the conference - the Hotel Intercontinental - is an excellent venue. The company was great too. I met up with many, many old friends, and made some great new ones too. Some, such as Clark Quinn and Chahira Nouira have been familiar Twitter buddies for some time, but to meet them in person was, as always, a very great pleasure. I was also the man responsible for connecting together two of the luminaries of the learning world during the Educa speaker's reception. Here's the picture of the first meeting of the guru of informal learning, Jay Cross, and the prime mover behind the Horizon Report, Larry Johnson. It's an honour to know and have conversations with such wonderfully intelligent, influential and passionate people. One of the keynote speakers on Day 1 asked us if we were disappointed in the future. Shouldn't we by now be living on the Moon, and travelling around using personal jetpacks? Well, the keynote speakers on Day 2 brought us back down to earth with a pragmatic look at how technology is being used to support and enhance learning.

Larry Johnson's opening keynote had many of the OEB delegates smiling and murmering their praise - his photographic images were breathtaking, evocative, emotional and engaging, and were fitting embellishments to his narrative. Larry talked eloquently and movingly about his own family - from his grandparents to his granchildren (pictured left with an image of his mother and grandson) as he traced the history of technology down through the years. Our perceptions of technology, he told his audience, are not the same as those of our children. Many used to gather around the television to share events as they happened as broadcast by the news networks. Now, says Larry, we are the network. We are the ones who create and distribute the breaking events from around the world. His optimistic perspective on the future sees young people and older ones too, populating shared digital spaces, learning from each other as a living network.

Josie Fraser's keynote followed, focusing on the needs of young people in a digital age. Josie, who in 2008 was awarded the UK's Learning Technologist of the Year award, is these days discovered as the e-Learning Strategist for Leicester City Council. She concentrated on digital literacies, and argued that they are vital because they extend beyond the functional into the socio-cultural in their influence. Josie also dealt with issues of e-safety and digital identity, applying danah boyd's categorisations of digital affordances, including scalability, persistency and searchabillity to illustrate how images, text and sounds can work for good or for bad. These features, she argued, brought many challenges to schools in the digital age. Josie also sees an optimistic future despite the challenges we are facing. Larry Johnson has a favourite phrase: 'I love living in the future'. OEB showed us many glimpses into this future. I don't think we will be too disappointed.

Living in the future by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

It's not really learning anymore

The final keynote of this morning's first plenary session at the EDEN Research Workshop in Budapest featured the Open University's Grainne Conole, who in her own inimitable style, crammed so much content into just 30 minutes of fast paced presentation, I found it difficult to take down any meaninful notes. It wasn't her fault though - it was rather a distinct lack of wifi connectivity and technology failure on my part that made me resort for the first time in ages to taking notes with - shock horror - a pen and paper! Well, at least I discovered that I can still write with a pen, albeit a lot slower than I remember doing when I was an undergrad. It's like riding a bike, apparently you never forget - but you do slow down with age. I still wish I could have typed down the notes though - it would probably have done Grainne a little more justice for a great speech. But, here goes:

Grainne talked about educational policy in relation to research, teacher practices and learner responses, and this triumvirate of outcomes can reveal a whole host of influences, including a clash of local culture versus global hegemony. Here she listed a host of learning theories, and linked them to existing pedagogies before weaving them into recent high profile e-learning projects. She cited the abject failure of Google Wave, and suggested that it was the shortfall between how the software could be used (its potential affordances) and the actual perception of its usefulness by users that did for it.

One statement Grainne made will stand out, and should be repeated to all undergraduate students. Acquiring knowledge and recalling it, she said, is no longer adequate - it's not really learning anymore. Anyone can copy and paste from Wikipedia and construct an essay (and I daresay pay for pre-written essays on just about any subject under the sun if they wish to get into wholesale plagiarism). Teachers, she argued, are not fully exploring the full potential and power of learning technologies in the classroom, or indeed outside of it. They perceive a lack of time, lack of skills and few rewards as the key barriers to adoption of new technology for learning. She recommended that we all need to choose between two models: the belief based (implicit) model and the design based (explicit) model.

It's not really learning any more by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Branching out

Gilly Salmon opened the EDEN Research Workshop in Budapest this morning with a keynote entitled 'The tree of Learning: Nurturing the Growth. In it she used her now very well known drawing of a tree with its branches bathed in 'Techno-shine', representative of her argument that all education, whatever it's hue, is now dependent upon and influenced by technology of some kind or another. I guess this is true for the Western industrialised nations of the world, but in Africa and parts of Asia, the shine has a little farther to go to reach their branches. But I digress slightly. Gilly traced the history of education from it's roots to it's new shoots - and in doing so reminded us all that although we have a rich history of pedagogy, some of the branches are falling away, and others are growing in surprising directions. Her metaphor extended to the evolutionary theory of Darwin, and a prediction that some of the unfit practices would not survive. But how to nurture the new growth necessary to keep education healthy? 'The longer you have been in education' she argued, 'the more difficult it will be to shift resources and energy into new ways of teaching and learning.'

There's nothing special about web based learning (and in particular distance and open learning) she argued. They're normal now and anyone who is in education, she said, must use technology. This of course opens up an entire area for discussion - what of the digital divides we still see in society? What about those who cannot or will not engage with new technology in education - will they simply fall away like dead branches on Gilly's proverbial tree of learning? Or will they need to be cut away? Her parting shot was interesting: Quoting John Richardson she pointed out that when it comes to the future, there are 3 types of people: there are those who let it happen, those who make it happen, and those who wonder what happened. I guess regardless of what happens though, the tree will continue to grow - it just depends on how fast, in what direction, and how much fertiliser is required.


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

ALTernate reality

This year's Association for Learning Technologies Annual Conference alternated between highs and lows, controversy and comfort. Let me explain: One of the most controversial parts of the conference was the opening keynote, which I and many others have already reported on. I have heard just about every possible reaction to Donald Clark's speech, some mirroring the invective he unleashed, even the profanities. Enough said.

Other (slightly less) controversial aspects included a difference of opinion from delegates about the merits of the live Twitterwall in the main auditorium. Some considered it a distraction, a few thought that it was tempting subterfuge, while many more decided they liked it as an additional amplification feature - a conference back channel if you will. My own session, a panel presentation shared with John Traxler, Frances Bell, Andy Black, Karl Royle and Mark Childs (pictured), discussed issues around ethics in Web 2.0 interventions and research. While arguably less controversial than last year's VLE is Dead debate, the symposium still attracted over 100 delegates, and there was some cut and thrust from all those involved.

Many predictably complained about the poor quality of the student accommodation offered on campus. I suppose I didn't help matters by boasting to anyone within hearing distance that my bed and breakfast room was a double en suite, with wifi, satellite TV, microwave oven, refrigerator and a private car port right outside my ground floor window. And I paid less for it too. I digress.

There were also many highlights during the conference. Besides enjoying the energy generated by a gathering of over 500 passionate, inquisitive and knowledgeable learning technology professionals and academics (heat and light were generated in equal measure), there was the opportunity to meet other like minded individuals from all over the world, and to say - Yes, I have that problem too! It was the start of many friendships, and probably a lot of future collaborations and creative liaisons too. Many met for the first time people they had connected with for months or even years online. It is always a great experience when that happens. The now traditional Fringe ALT meeting of Edubloggers took place at the Nottingham Playhouse, with impromptu debates where participants names (and surprise topics) were drawn from a bucket. We all had to think on our feet that evening.

Sugata Mitra (University of Newcastle) delivered what was promised in his Day 2 keynote. A wry, inspirational and thought provoking presentation on the promise of self-organised learning mediated through 'hole in the wall' web enabled computers. I won't say any more here, as this speech has been better documented by others elsewhere, but I will say that many people left the room smiling, relieved that keynote 2 was as divorced from keynote 1 as Cheryl and Ashley.

The individual Learning Technologist of the Year was awarded jointly for the second time in as many years. Cristina Costa representing Higher Education (University of Salford) and Kevin McLoughlin, working in the compulsory education sector (St Peter's CofE Primary School in Whetstone) shared the accolades of their peers for their leading edge work in learning technology. The team award was picked up by David White and the TALL team at the University of Oxford. The full list of awards can be found here. The conference dinner was a triumph as usual, with cooking, presentation and service of a very high standard from the local catering college students.

Unfortunately, our final keynote speaker, Barbara Wasson, could not attend the conference due to illness. In her place, 6 stawarts of learning technology sat in a panel and took on all comers around the question - what would you concentrate on as the one activity that could bring in a sea-change? Gilly (1000 years of experience) Salmon, John (my middle name is Nigel) Cook and Haydn (shouts across the valleys) Blackey and their colleagues regaled us and provoked us, and the Twitterwall rolled, live on the wall, for all to see.

ALT-C 2010 is history now. All that is left is an empty suite of rooms at the East Midlands Conference Centre, littered with plastic cups, empty dishes and discarded vendor flyers. They will be cleared up by the large team of helpers, but the true detritus of the event will be whether what has been said and done in the last 3 days actually does cause any semblance of sea-change in education, through the intervention and use of learning technologies.


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

What's so innovative about ICT?

I was recently invited to write a post for the Dell Education blog. Below is my article, which first appeared on the Dell website on 22 April, 2010.

In my role as an academic researcher in learning, I am often asked the same question: What is so innovative about ICT in schools? I assume that people ask this question because they are so used to seeing computers they have forgotten what the world was like before they arrived. I usually respond by starting off with an examination of what ‘ICT’ actually means. ICT - Information and Communication Technology - is more than just computers. In education, it’s really better referred to as ‘learning technology’ and I made my views clear about this recently in a blog post entitled ‘Stop calling it ICT!’. Whatever we call it, it’s a term that embraces an entire spectrum of tools, including the Internet and World Wide Web, telecommunications, cameras and audio, mobile phones, computer games, and other interactive devices in the classroom, such as Interactive Whiteboards, turtles and pixies (small programmable floor robots) and voting systems. We limit our vision if we simply see learning technology as ‘computers’, but I concede that computers are often the gateway into many of the above tools.


So just what is so innovative about this spectrum of tools? There are three key points I want to make to answer this question, and they all relate to what I term ‘affordances’ – the attributes of the technology that we perceive are useful to us. I wrote about this recently in a post on my own personal blog which I called ‘Angels in the Architecture’.

The first innovative quality of learning technology is that it has a flexibility and provisionally that supports learning across the sectors, from reception classes through to higher education and lifelong learning. Remember the time when you had to retype something, or use Tippex, if you made a mistake? You probably won’t if you are under 35 years old. When word processors were first introduced into education, they were an absolute Godsend to many people, particularly students who were writing long essays or teachers who had to create a large amount of content. The provisionally of the computer, not only in terms of text manipulation, but also images, sounds and video, means that the computer and learning technology in general have become indispensable for most people who find themselves studying or teaching.

Secondly, learning technology can be a platform for creativity. Creativity is often overlooked in learning – especially if it’s not art or music. We need to acknowledge that creativity is an important aspect of learning across the curriculum. We need to think laterally when trying to solve some mathematics or science problems for example. When we write essays, read literature, or learn a new language, we need to call upon our imagination and creative skills to make sense of the learning resources. Learning technology supports, and often extends our creative skills, and can act as a ‘mindtool’ for us to develop our thinking skills too. We can store all our thoughts, useful collections of knowledge and questions in the memory of our device, and then leave it there until we next need it, thereby freeing up thinking space for the immediate problems at hand.

Thirdly, and probably most importantly, learning technology is very effective in connecting people together, and enabling them to share their ideas, resources and comments online. Social networking tools, blogs and wikis are just a few of the tools that are in common use in education, where students and teachers can create content, share, discuss, vote, and otherwise participate in a community that extends beyond the boundaries of the traditional classroom. We are only at the start of the innovation curve of learning technology. The provisionally and flexibility of the tool, its capability to harness and amplify creativity, and its ability to connect people together wherever and whenever they are in the world, will ensure that learning technologies will continue to be innovative in education.

There are many more things I could say about the innovative nature of the tools that we call ICT – the learning technologies – but space and time do not permit. In conclusion, I will give this word of advice to any teacher in any sector of education: Don’t be afraid to take some risks with technology – if you can think of an idea to use in your classroom, it is very likely that there is a learning technology tool out there that can help you realise it.


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Learning with 'e's 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.

Getting there ....by degrees

In December last year, the UK's very own Prince of Darkness, Lord Mandelson, declared that 2 year degrees would be the future of higher education. The Business Secretary ordered a 'shift away' from traditional three-year degrees, despite warnings that shorter degree programmes might dilute academic standards. His reasoning is that 2 year degrees would free up more spaces for undergraduate study across all disciplines, and ultimately, there would be less expenditure, and less student debt. All well and good. But to deliver the so called 'fast track' degrees, universities will need to work smarter than ever before, and will need to adopt better flexible learning methods. This is where learning technologies will come to the fore.

We are holding the first UK national conference here at the University of Plymouth, on June 18th (which just happens to be the anniversary of the infamous Battle of Waterloo - I don't know why I pointed that out - may be an omen) where keynote speeches, workshops and other activities will highlight what universities will need to do to ensure standards are maintained whilst adapting to fast track degree delivery. Among the speakers at this free event will be Professor John Traxler (Wolverhampton University) who will talk about: 'Mobile Learning vs Fast Learning: On the Same Track?' and Mark Stubbs (Head of Learning and Research technologies at Manchester Metropolitan University). It should be a great day - and if you are in the region and free on that day, you may want to attend. Remember - it's a free event. Go to the conference website to register.

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Push or pull

Whenever I am trying to explain the concept of affordances, I use the idea of a door handle like the one in this photo. I point out that for a right handed person, the door handle has an affordance for twisting clockwise and pushing (or pulling) - to open the door. The design features of the handle help the user to perceive what action can be made with the object.

Many technologies used for learning have several affordances. Some are more apparent than others, and this is sometimes the problem. Hartson tried to categorise between affordances in the context of interaction, identifying four types: Cognitive (thinking), physical, sensory and functional (Hartson, 2003). One of the overarching affordances of learning technologies though, particularly those that fall into the category of Web 2.0 tools, tends to cut across all of Hartson's categories - the social affordance of the tools.

Wikis for example, have a number of social affordances - users can perceive a co-operative affordance that enables them to create content that may not agree, but which can sit side by side to provide a balanced and measured take on a given subject. There is also a collaborative affordance where users can combine, interweave and mix their content to create a comprehensive account of the topic. I use both these approaches to encourage students to explore thoroughly the topics they need to learn about and published the results of my research in articles in two papers, The Good, the Bad and the Wiki, and Using Wikis to Promote Quality Learning (both full papers for download). By cooperating, and in some cases (more difficult) collaborating on the wiki, students can become more critical in the way they acquire knowledge and synthesise their ideas. The discursive affordance is probably the most powerful affordance of wikis. The perception that no knowledge or opinion is fixed or immutable is a powerful attribute of wikis. Negotiation of meaning and an ongoing dialogue between students yields a number of positive outcomes, not least that learners can all contribute to the ongoing generation of content, and that the wisdom of the crowd will ensure that in most cases, content will be reasonably accurate and can be reused and repurposed to good effect.

Social affordances are obviously important if we are in the business of promoting socially constructed learning in all its forms.

Reference

Hartson, H. R. (2003) Cognitive, physical, sensory and functional affordances in interaction design. Behaviour and Information Technology, 22 (5), 315-338.

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Push or pull by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.

Squeezing out the good stuff

Yesterday I wrote a post concerning the concept of affordances, and I promised a whole series examining the affordances of digital media - learning technologies. One of the best articles I have read on affordances in digital media has to be the one written by Matt Bower which looked at matching learning tasks to technologies. It's a sensible, no nonsense take on the spectrum of possible digital media affordances, and it provides some simple, clear models of how they relate to each other. Bower shows that affordances - i.e. the perceived attributes or features of the technology - determine the actions that can be performed by the user with that technology. He quotes Donald Norman to clarify this point:

"The term affordance refers to the perceived and actual properties of the thing, primarily those fundamental properties that determine just how the thing could be possibly used. A chair affords ('is for') support and therefore affords sitting. A chair can also be carried" (Norman, 1988, p. 9).


One of the key affordances of digital media for me anyway, is its educational affordance. That is, all digital media have properties that allow them to be used to learn. That's important to acknowledge. Not all technologies used in education were designed for the purpose of learning. Podcasting for example, was originally designed so that people could listen to music downloaded from the Internet. Yet many schools, colleges and universities have been able to effectively harness podcasting so that its pedagogical value can be squeezed out. Although there was no special 'educational-ness' designed into podcasting, people have perceived its potential to support learning through downloaded audio files that can be sequenced and archived. And some educational podcasting projects have been very successful.


Another example is the mobile phone, which was first designed so that users could communicate at a distance and while on the move, without needing to use a fixed line telephone. Although we are seeing the demise of the telephone box on many street corners in the Western world as a result, and although we are often annoyed in public places by irritating little ring-tones, we are never-the-less able to learn on the move. We have done this by perceiving the affordance, and then creating learning objects that can be accessed through the mobile phone. These affordances go beyond its original design, tapping into the open potential of the web browser each mobile phone comes complete with.


Tomorrow I will explore another affordance of digital media, and try to make sense of it in the context of current e-learning practices.


References
Bower, M. (2008) Affordance analysis: Matching learning tasks with learning technologies. Educational Media International, 45 (1), 3-16.
Norman, D. A. (1988) The psychology of everyday things. New York: Basic Books.


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'Squeezing out the good stuff' by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.

Can we afford to ignore learner perceptions?

When the psychologist James J. Gibson first published his book The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception in 1979, he was probably unaware of the far reaching consequences of his proposals. In the book Gibson proposed his top-down model of perception, and developed the idea of affordances which he had earlier proposed in an article in 1977 entitled 'Theory of Affordances'. The Wikipedia entry on affordances states:

He [Gibson] defined affordances as all "action possibilities" latent in the environment, objectively measurable and independent of the individual's ability to recognize them, but always in relation to the actor and therefore dependent on their capabilities. For instance, a set of steps which rises four feet high does not afford the act of climbing if the actor is a crawling infant. Gibson's is the prevalent definition in cognitive psychology.

There are clear implications for affordance theory in the design of digital learning environments, and as Donald Norman has argued, designers need to study people, 'to take their needs and interests into account.' Far too often, (and here I think in particular about the disasterous, constricting nature and abysmal navigation tools of some institutional Virtual Learning Environments - see my Two fingered salute post) the design of learning technologies and environments tend to reflect the needs and aspirations of the designers and the company they work for than the needs of the end user. I addressed some of the issues of design flexibility in Angels in the architecture on this blog a few days ago, and want to continue this trope for the next few blog posts. We cannot afford to ignore learner needs. We need to create learning enviroments (and tools) that reflect what they need. Therefore, we must research how students perceive their environments, and design accordingly. Over the next few days therefore, I'm going to examine some of the affordances of learning technologies and attempt to evaluate them from the perspective of the individual (but socially connected) learner.

References

Gibson, J.J. (1977) The Theory of Affordances (pp. 67-82). In R. Shaw & J. Bransford (Eds.) Perceiving, Acting, and Knowing: Toward an Ecological Psychology. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Gibson, J. J. (1979) The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. Boston: Houghton Mifflin
Norman, D. (1998) The Design of Everyday Things. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

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'Can we afford to ignore learner perceptions?' by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.