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.

Who will survive?

This is the first in a series of posts entitled 'Shaping Education for the Future'

The dynamics of education in the 21st Century are very different from those witnessed in previous years. In the last century, education (in all its forms) was based on the assumption that knowledge content was scarce, and that formal education (university, college, school) was the only place it could be accessed. Then along came the World Wide Web. Things changed, and they changed dramatically. Within a short space of time, user generated content in all its forms began to assume prominence. In the age of social media, content is no longer scarce.  It is abundant, and although questions still remain over the accuracy and provenance of some content, much is usable and useful for informal learning. Do you want to know how to make Baked Alaska? (with Gordon Ramsay as your personal tutor no less!) Need to know how to build a computer? Like to learn how to waltz, or play blues guitar? Interested in the link between quantum physics and consciousness? It's all there on YouTube, waiting for you to watch it. For free. Wikipedia, the online crowd-sourced encyclopaedia, hosts over 14 million articles on just about every subject under the sun. They are constantly being updated as events occur around the globe. Citizen journalism is now a regular feature in much of mainstream media news coverage. We could go on, but I think the point has been made. Content is now abundant, accessible, and can be created as it is required. Content isn't king anymore. Context is.

What will the future hold for education? The education systems of the previous century are outmoded, based on factory models of mass instruction that was fit for the period. There is a new world of work now. It demands change from education. Many universities and colleges are traditional and conservative, but change is constant and exponential. Institutions will need to respond to these changes if they wish to survive. Fortunately, new models of education are now emerging, many of which avoid content and instruction, and instead focus on expertise, tutoring, mentoring, guidance and specialism. Student centred approaches focus on personalised learning, and exploit the potential of personal technologies that enable any time, anywhere learning. This is quite a departure for education. It is a seismic shift that will have profound implications for formal education in the coming years. We can expect to see many institutions scrabbling to change their business models over the next decade as they compete for ever shrinking markets, and more demanding students. The more conservative institutions, placing their trust in their tradition and past reputation will stay as they are, resisting change. Many of these will die. In the worst case scenario, we can also expect to see many institutions going under, because they will not be able to respond to the new demands, or compete in the new market. At best, some institutions might expect is to be subsumed into more successful institutions.

The successful institutions will be those that see the gaps and exploit them; they will be leaner, more efficient organisations that understand why knowledge is no longer a commodity. They will be institutions that can clearly discern the connections between learning and business, between technology and pedagogy, between individuals and society. The successful, surviving educational organisations will be those who have the ability to adapt, respond quickly to global trends. They will be the universities and colleges that are agile enough to change when needed and stand their ground when required. Will we see the death of the educational institution? No, we will not. There will always be a need for sound, organised education. What is in question is the nature of that organisation. The factory model of educational provision is no longer relevant, and no longer desirable. Universities and colleges that persist in this mode can expect hard times. What we will see is a drastic pruning of the dead wood, to make way for new shoots of growth to emerge.

Next time: How institutions can respond to the challenges


Who will survive? by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.

Libraries without walls

I recently wrote about how libraries are adapting to the digital age. The traditional library is viewed by many as a place for stacks of books to gather dust, and where stern librarians in tweed jackets tell you to keep quiet. Libraries are shaking off this image, and embracing new technologies and approaches to support learning in the 21st Century.

In Library 2.0 I outlined some of the changes that are taking place in libraries as they align their services toward technological developments such as the digitisation of content, social media and the widespread use of mobile devices. To extend this discussion, I recently sat down for a conversation with some of my colleagues in Plymouth University's library and resources centre to ascertain their views on how libraries are changing in the digital age.

I firstly wanted to find out what the contemporary library had to offer today's 'tech savvy students'. The answer was four-fold - libraries provide content, services, spaces and skills. My library colleagues then proceeded to elaborate on these four key areas of provision.

Content

Content has been the mainstay of libraries throughout the ages, whether in paper form or in the form of other media. However, the nature of this content is changing radically. One of the first questions I asked our library staff related to some news that had broken the previous day, when Encyclopedia Britanica announced that after 224 years in print it was finally going exclusively digital. This came on the back of reports late in 2011 that the online store Amazon was now selling more Kindle and e-book versions than paper based. Was this a trend that was a threat to the library? The library staff told me they actually welcomed these developments, pointing out that digital content could more easily be updated when errors were discovered. It is better, I was told, to have up to date digital Britanica, than out of date text books on the shelves. Britannica has admitted that it has more content in its database than would comfortably fit into a print set, so digitisation is a prudent step forward. The conversation around online encyclopedias inevitably led us to discuss Wikipedia and its relevance in academic study. Wikipedia is good as a starting point, but students need to be aware that there is more in-depth knowledge available elsewhere in journals and books.

Services

Many libraries are now exploiting the power of social media to expand their reach, beyond the traditional walls of the institution. Although still in its infancy, Twitter, Facebook and other social networking tools can be strategically employed to issue alerts and news updates, whilst SMS text can be sent to individual users to remind them that their loans are about to become overdue, or that a new service has been introduced. Students want personalised SMS alerts, direct to their mobile devices - 'push' for personalised content, 'pull' for everything else as and when they require it. However, this can be expensive for the average campus library to implement. Libraries now need to make services available at any time and any place, because students and academics are increasingly mobile.

Many libraries are also offering services which reach out to the local community, providing them with opportunities they would not be able to access anywhere else.

Spaces

Users of libraries need to be aware that the model of management of the physical space is changing. Learning is now much more social, and students tend to gravitate to areas that are conducive to study in groups. The on campus library is in a strategic place to offer such social spaces and specialist services.

As a study space, the Plymouth University library is a busier physical space than it has ever been, despite the reduction of physical content on shelves. The library encourages flexible learning spaces where furniture and other items can be moved around to suit the needs of students. Many of the traditional constraints are being relaxed, and the library space is becoming more agile. It is clear that Plymouth University students are looking for spaces where there are few (or no) distractions, and the library is able to offer these environments. Whether it is quiet study space or group space for collaborative project work, today's academic libraries have to respond in a flexible manner. As is the case with most university libraries in the UK, every part of the Plymouth University library is wireless enabled and students can bring their own devices to support their learning. The library space is a haven in the midst of a bustling campus that supports over 30,000 students. It is a dedicated space for independent study, and students will not be ejected to make way for a lecture, but can stay as long as they wish.

Skills

One of the key development areas of learning in the 21st Century is the ability to use technology to support study in a variety of modes. Often referred to as digital literacies, the ability to harness the power of new technology to enhance, extend and enrich learning is becoming a key graduate attribute. Libraries are in a unique position to offer students training in digital literacy, whether it be searching for academic content, systematic retrieval of library resources, or simple making the very best use of what is available.

The web is 'the wild west' of learning, I was told, and students need to have savvy to survive it. Students need to know the provenance of content - who wrote it and in what context. What students need to discover is how to drill deeper and triangulate content in a wider knowledge context. Sourcing content for reference purposes is more involved than Google searching.

Consumption of content on the web is not the only area for skills development. Students need to be aware that they leave a digital footprint wherever they go in online space. This digital trail What they say, do and search, may do them out of an interview in later life. Another skill is media literacy - the ability to creatively use a wide variety of formats of content, including gaming, video, text and images - is a new literacy students and researchers need to learn. Learners have to be confident in how they collaborate with others and how they collate and apply content in academic contexts.

The future

What will the future hold for the library? Libraries will become increasingly disaggregated from the publishing world, and will become highly specialised in serving their academic community. They will continue to extend services beyond their walls to serve students everywhere, ragardless of geographical location. It is also clear that libraries will continue to develop their digital collections, and increase their connections to share this content. The future of the academic library will be to act as the intermediary and enabler that connects learners and knowledge.

Image by Steve Wheeler


Libraries without walls by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.

Play the ball, not the man

I read Wikipedia founder Larry Sanger's blog with interest this week. In response to my post Content as Curriculum? he had written a protracted and elaborate response. Although I was gratified that someone with such a standing in the academic community had taken the time to read my post and respond so comprehensively, I admit I was also a little disconcerted to find that not only had he misapprehended my original message, but had also apparently resorted to name-calling. Now, anyone who knows me reasonably well will understand what drives me to blog. It is to provoke discussion, to agitate, and to disrupt, with the long term goal to hopefully improve aspects of education and training. Sometimes I deliberately take a strong position to achieve this. Readers will disagree or agree with me - see for example this response from another blogger - and we all learn. I am open to criticism and my ideas, theories and contributions are there to be shot at, or built upon. But for Sanger to label me as an 'anti-intellectual' on the basis of the reading of one of my blog posts seemed somewhat reactionary. I'm not convinced there should be a place for this kind of tactic in reasonable discourse. Unfortunately, his stance serves to detract from the otherwise serious debate that I tried to instigate around the current state of curricula in schools. Before anyone else treats my ideas with similar disdain, let me clarify a few points about that blog post.

Firstly, let me deal with the misapprehension: Larry Sanger seems an intelligent, eloquent man, and if you can steer around his personal references, his response analyses my post almost line for line and he has produced some interesting commentary to counter my views. It is a useful contribution to the debate, and is exactly the kind of dialogue I wish to promote. It is the reason I continue to blog provocatively. I won't attempt to respond to him verse by verse as he has done, but I will make some key points. In my post I held that schools need reform, and at the heart of that reform should be an overhaul of the curriculum. For some time now, many highly respected commentators (see for example Stephen Heppell and Sir Ken Robinson) have argued that the majority of school experiences are still organised around old industrialised models. Many have called for a radical change in the way schooling is conducted to improve the chances of young people when they leave school. In my post I suggested that a possible way forward would require a reappraisal of the current curricula, with more emphasis on competencies and literacies. I wish to make something clear: My remark that some knowledge was susceptible to obsolescence was not a call for all knowledge to be removed from curricula - that would indeed be ridiculous. I am not attacking knowledge, as Sanger asserts. Rather, I am calling for schools to re-examine the content of curricula and to find ways to situate this knowledge within more open, relevant and dynamic learning contexts. I am also calling for more of an emphasis on the development of skills that will prepare children to cope better in uncertain futures. It was probably an error to use poor illustrations and analogies to underpin this call. Regardless of any argument thrown against it however, the call still stands, and I am not the first to make it. John Seely-Brown and Doug Thomas (2011) have argued that the majority of school experiences are mechanistic and need to be better contextualised. Regarding current school practices they state: 'The goal is to learn as much as you can, as fast as you can. In this teaching based approach, standardization is a reasonable way to do this, and testing is a reasonable way to measure the result. The processes that necessarily occur to reach the goal therefore, are considered of little consequence in and of themselves. They are valued only for the results they provide'. (p 35). Clearly, this situation is far from ideal. Teachers are pressurised to deliver an over-stuffed, content-laden curriculum in the limited time available, which leaves little time for experimentation and play, conversation or self discovery.

I also called for an end to the compartmentalisation of subjects within the curriculum. Studying a subject in isolation from other subjects suggests to children that there are no connections, as surely as using computers only in an ICT suite suggests that there are only some conditions within which the use of computers can be conducted. Again, context is required, and as Gerver argues: 'learning should be an expansive, personal and unpredictive journey' (p 62). Yet how can we achieve this, he asks, when school becomes an increasingly defined, predictable series of divorced lessons. How can we maintain the interests of children when they know exactly what is coming next - dull routine? Here lies the argument that context is now king, and content has become a tyrant.

But let's go back to the personal comments. At the heart of Sanger's argument is a concerted attempt to establish that I am an anti-intellectual. He does this on the basis of a belief that I am calling for an end to knowledge. But his belief is misfounded, and I have attempted to offer clarification in my recent blog post Conversation as Curriculum. He admits in a previous comment that he was confrontational and pointed. It seems a contradiction that he can view me as a 'serious theorist' and then spend the majority of his post trying to convince his readers that I am 'anti-intellectual'. Surely the two cannot be compatible? His descent into hectoring tones of name-calling detract significantly from his otherwise reasonable arguments. Larry Sanger and I have never met, so we don't know each other. How then is he able make such sweeping judgements about me on the basis of the reading of one of my posts? The answer is, he can't, and I would not presume to reciprocate. To label me as 'anti-intellectual' suggests that he has already made his mind up, and no amount of argument will change that.

I am sure that my academic achievements come nowhere near to Larry Sanger's. My list of peer reviewed publications and the frequency of my invited speeches around the world will not compare with his. Considering my track record, however, I feel that I deserve a little better than to be ridiculed as 'anti-intellectual', and it is ironic that Larry Sanger's act of ridiculing could itself be construed as anti-intellectualism. If by anti-intellectual he meant that I oppose the ivory tower mentality endemic within academia, then I would gladly accept the title, and he might also consider inserting 'dangerous' as a prefix. Sadly, this is not what Sanger intends. Instead, the title is meant to suggest that I am against knowledge, and that therefore my arguments must be dismissed because they are merely 'popularist'. Well, he is entitled to his opinions. Just don't be fooled by the rhetoric - examine the evidence yourself and then make your own mind up: Do current school curricula make sense, or should they be changed? Whatever the outcome of this debate, you can name me, but you'll never tame me. I will continue to provoke, cajole and disrupt via this blog, and I welcome all conversations from all comers. Just make sure you play the ball, not the man.

References 

Gerver, R. (2010) Creating tomorrow's schools today: Education - our children - their futures. London: Continuum.
Seely-Brown, J. and Thomas, D. (2011) A new culture of learning: Cultivating the imagination for a world of constant change. Create Space.

Image by John Garghan


Play the ball, not the man by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Me and Malcolm McLaren

This is the story behind that photograph. Malcolm McLaren was notorious for a variety of reasons. He was in a relationship with the avant garde fashion designer Vivienne Westwood, introduced fetish-wear, managed various punk rock bands including the Sex Pistols, and was agent provocateur and innovator in the art and music scenes for decades. It could be claimed that he was not only the originator of punk rock, but also one of the prime movers in the New Wave and Hip Hop music genres. He earned the nickname 'The Godfather of Punk' during this period, but in his later years, he seemed to have mellowed out to a more avuncular version of his younger restless self.

When I heard that he was to speak at the 2009 Handheld Learning Festival in London, I made sure I had a front row seat. I wanted to hear what McLaren would say about learning and about technology. Further, what would be his take on education and its place in society? Would he be controversial, caustic, conciliatory? Predictably, McLaren did not disappoint, polarising the audience with a very personal, sardonic and provocative account of his own learning journey. His reference to Karoake culture resonated - where anyone through the medium of technology, especially the reality TV shows, can become famous ... for simply being in the public eye for long enough. His key message was that failure and messiness are the key to the best kinds of learning. None of us at the time were to know that he had very little time left to live. A few days after this public appearance, he was diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer, and died 6 months later, in a hospital in Switzerland.

I took several photographs of Malcolm during his speech. The one I considered to be the best was posted up onto my Flickr account, and I labelled it for free reuse as I always do, under Creative Commons licencing. I also used the image in my subsequent blog post entitled Karaoke Culture. It turned out to be one of the last photographs ever taken of him. Later, someone saw my photograph on Flickr and uploaded it for use on his Wikipedia page. It was thereafter mirrored on all the other foreign language versions of Wikipedia. When Malcolm McLaren died, guess where many of the journals and newspapers went to find copyright free images of him?

This is why newspapers such as the Caledonian Mercury and the London Daily News, websites such as Shapers of the 80's and Compas, and Goldmine all carried the image when they reported on McLaren's funeral. It appears that my name (credited with the photograph) will forever be linked to that of Malcolm McLaren. What have I learnt from this experience? Just being in the right place at the right time is not always enough. Posting your content on social media sites and making them available for free use and reuse is not only an equitable way of sharing the love. It is often a precursor for widespread amplification of that content. Whether or not something goes viral is left to the whims of the social web, but giving your content away for free can give it an excellent chance. 


Me and Malcolm McLaren by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Just a minute

The sheer volume of content being created and posted to the web is overwhelming. In a post  brought to my attention today, Kelly Hodgkins claims that if we paused the web for 60 seconds we would miss the birth of more than 1500 new blog posts, almost 100,000 new tweets, 20,000 posts on Tumblr, 600 new videos (more than 24 hours) uploaded to YouTube and at least 12,000 new ads on Craigslist. Such a claim must also take into account that much of this content will be quite worthless to anyone but the person uploading it, of which more later. These statistics also fail to take into account all the other content that is being generated on, for example Flickr (more than 3000 images each minute), Wikipedia, Facebook (3 billion photos and 20 million videos uploaded every month), Myspace, Wiktionary, Vimeo, Picasa and innumerable other user generated content repositories. Many similar web user statistics can be found on the Royal Pingdom website. Be warned though that all web statistics, particularly those related to social media, go quickly out of date because what we are talking about here is exponential. We are overwhelmed by a tsunami of content on the web, and just trying to find what we need, even with the most intelligent search engines, can be compared to trying to take a drink from the nozzle of a pressure hose.

Volume of content is not the only issue. We are (and should be) increasingly concerned about the quality of content we find on the web. No teacher worth their salt would play young children a video they hadn't previously screened and vetted for suitability. That would be courting disaster. One wag at the foot of Hodgkins's web stats blogpost left a comment that in 60 seconds there would also be 800 hours of porn downloaded and at least 35,000 Twitter and Facebook posts about Justin Bieber. There is however, no indication if he was speaking as one of the main contributors to these statistics. Yes, we are all aware of the large amount of dross that sits on the web, but the most insidious and potentially the most dangerous, is content that is almost accurate, or blatantly wrong but believable. How do we filter out content that is good from content that is bad? More importantly, how do we educate students into being prudent about what sites they obtain their content from? How can we know that content is safe, appropriate, accurate and up to date?

Those and associated questions will be the focus for the Concede User Generated Conference that takes place on 14th September in Oiera, Portugal as a part of the EFQUEL Innovation  Forum (September 14-16). The Concede Project, which has concerned itself with investigating the quality of user generated content in higher education over the last 2 years, will host the event, and is giving away a number of all expenses paid delegate places to those who wish to present a paper at the event. For full details on how to apply for free all expense paid place, visit the Concede Website and follow application instructions.

Image source



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

Synching feelings

A lot of time has been spent studying the impact of user generated content. You know, all the stuff that gets posted up onto the web, and whether it is at all useful to us as teachers and educators. Some of the best content is often provided by amateurs - people who are not necessarily specialists or qualified in their field of interest, but who are never the less passionate about their subject. This is also the ethos of sites such as Wikipedia, which rely heavily on 'the people' and 'wisdom of crowds' to create and maintain the content held in its pages. Blogging has emerged in recent years as a strong contender for the number one spot as user generated content, driven as it is by people who are both passionate and knowledgeable.

But it's not plain sailing. Influential commentators such as Andrew Keen have sniped consistently against such amateur content, suggesting that it is not only dumbing down society, but also eroding the authority of professionals and scholars, and denigrating knowledge.

And yet where is the first place students will go when they want to glean some facts or information about a subject? A lot of academics and scolars scoff at Wikipedia and forbid their students to reference it in their assessed work. Even more anathema are the many thousands of specialist blogs that are written by avid fans of topics. I must agree that quality across such sites is variable, but I also point out to the critics that just like Wikipedia, there are real experts out there writing these blogs. What if these blogs did not exist? How much poorer would we be in terms of knowledge of the world? There is a criticism that blogs are not peer reviewed, contain mainly opinion and have no credibility when compared with peer reviewed journal articles. Let's examine each criticism in turn.

Journal articles are usually double reviewed by people who are deemed to be experts in their field. Once reviewed, articles are sent back to the author for correction and revision before they are accepted for publication. Such tasks are usually performed by editorial teams. Blogs are peer reviewed, not necessarily in a formal way, but certainly informally through reader comments. I certainly think long and hard about what I write on this blog, because with between 1000-2000 views per day, and a stream of comments coming in from those who either agree or disagree with my views, I sure feel as though I am being peer reviewed. The difference between journal articles and blogs is that blogs are peer reviewed within minutes of being posted. They can also be adjusted, revised and corrected quickly, and re-posted instantly on demand. There may be typos and spelling errors in blogs, but who can honestly tell me that they have never spotted an error in a peer reviewed journal article or book chapter?

Blogs contain a lot of opinion, whereas journal articles are usually based on empirical evidence and research. But what is research anyway? We can no longer argue that research is all about statistical analysis, because there are so many qualitative, narrative and experimental forms of methods available to us as researchers, so who is to say that blogging is not a valid means of research? But how often do we read and take in the editorials in popular newspapers, which are also opinion? I have even read peer reviewed journal articles that are openly 'fictionalised' in their methodology. Opinion is also an excellent trigger for discussion. How will we learn if we don't discuss ideas and negotiate meaning between us. How can we synchronise our activities if there is not a common understanding of what needs to be done? We don't have to agree - in fact it would be a boring, colourless world if we did - but we need to be able to understand each other to get on together.

Blogs are gaining credibility, particularly those that are being followed and read by many people, and those that attract awards and plaudits from peers. They have credibility in a different sense to peer reviewed journal articles. Blogs can become a rallying point - a tribal totem - around which people can come to terms with ideas, change their approach, exchange best practice, and generally engage with their community of practice. It is a lot more intimate than the community that gathers around a peer reviewed journal article. Journals perform a different function entirely, and are less immediate, more slow burning in their impact. Blogs tend to be transitory and ethereal in their presence. Although the archive of a blog is there for people to revisit if they wish, generally it is the article at the top of the stack that is most visible and therefore most visited.

You may already have noticed that blog addresses are beginning to appear in the reference lists of peer reviewed journal articles. This is a trend that I predict will increase as blogs begin to achieve a more respectable and accepted position in the academic world.

One final word: We need to remember that professionals built the Titanic, but an amateur built the Ark. It's not always about expertise - sometimes it's about passion.

Image source Wikimedia Commons


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

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

The social impact of disruptive technology by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Who are the Wikipedians?

I doubt if there is anyone reading this blog who has not used Wikipedia in some way in the last 12 months. The free online encyclopedia has become such a part of our daily lives I sometimes wonder what we did without it. And we all have one man to thank for it (all right, two if you also count Larry Sangar. Well, OK - also one or two others...).

The final keynote speaker at Learning without Frontiers was the Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales. He started with a statement that very few changes seem to be happening in the world of education. The most important changes, he argued, were happening in the world of informal learning and this was being led by technology, and particularly the web. And that is where services such as Wikipedia come in.

When people contribute to Wikipedia they are contributing to the entire storehouse of human knowledge, not just one encyclopedia, said Jimmy Wales. Wikipedia is not a text book, nor even a volume of content - therefore it should not be used as such in formal education, he warned. Rather it is a free online resource which is a growing treasure house of knowledge for everyone to use, repurpose and share. If you want to understand Wikipedia, he said, you need to consider all of the thousands of volunteers out there - the community of users, authors and editors, rather than the office staff - who have no direct official input into the content or its organisation. Wikipedia is a global phenomenon which means that it differs from culture to culture around the world. 408 million people each month edit and generate content on Wikipedia. For young people, Wikipedia is the prime source of knowledge for them. They don't reach for the encyclopedia on the shelf - they go to Wikipedia. It is such an important source of information today, that we should know who makes it - so just who are the Wikipedians? asked Wales. He showed a video to illustrate the diversity of backgrounds and cultures of those who are 'Wikipedians':



Two thirds of those creating and editing content are at least educated to graduate level and many contributors hold PhDs. They are sharing their knowledge and expertise freely. No-one writes an article alone, said Wales. They are collaborating with other people who have similar interest and knowledge around the same topic. That is both the beauty and the power of Wikipedia.


Who are the Wikipedians? by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Wise crowds (and stupid mobs)

I'm reading James Surowiecki's excellent book 'The Wisdom of Crowds' at the moment. I was particularly taken by his introduction in which he relates the story of Sir Francis Galton, and his discovery, against his own assumptions, that collective intelligence not only exists, it is generally correct in its judgements. Galton's experiment was based on a 'guess the weight of an ox' competition in which 800 people participated. His statistical analysis of the results showed that as a collective mean score, the people guessed accurately to within one pound of the actual weight. This discovery of the people's collective ability ('democracy' as he called it) to make decisions that are of the most benefit to the people, attracted me for a number of reasons. Firstly, Galton made his discovery in a farm show in Plymouth, England (my home town). Secondly, Galton was one of the UK's first psychologists (I trained as a psychologist too), and although I disagree profoundly with many of his ideas about intelligence, which led him to champion eugenics, I can't help but admire the way he trailblazed his ideas about human behaviour, forensic psychology and statistics long before other, more famous psychologists. Thirdly, his scientific integrity is inspirational. Against his own deep seated beliefs, and in opposition to his previous scientific studies, the results of his 'West of England' regional fare research showed that in fact, when a crowd is asked to make a decision, they usually get it right.

James Surowiecki goes on to argue that the principles behind this idea can explain everyday activities including the stock market, democratic voting processes, gambling and even the fact that when you go the a convenience store at 2 am for a carton of milk, there is one there waiting for you. The wisdom of crowds even explains the phenomenon of Web 2.0 and social networking tools, and specifically, as we have long understood, it defines why web services such as Wikipedia and Google Search have become so popular and accurate over the last few years. Surowiecki argues that in many cases, the judgements of larger diffuse crowds of people is actually more accurate than the decision making of smaller, more elite groups. I have clung to this ideal in the development of many of my recent teacher education programmes, into which I have incorporated collaborative and co-operative online tools such as wikis, so that students can create, share and negotiate their learning related content.

If you haven't read Surowiecki's book yet (it was first published in 2004), do try to get hold of it. You can purchase it quite cheaply on Amazon (another wisdom of crowds example) and I promise you, it is a very good read. It's also, dare I say it, an effective foil to Andrew Keen's book 'The Cult of the Amateur' which warns against the dangers of Wikipedia and similar web repositories, describes what I can loosely term as 'stupidity of mobs'. If anyone has read both books and cares to provide a valued judgement on them, the comments box below is ready for you...

Image source

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.

Networked noughties 2000-2002

The last 10 years will be known as the networked decade. At the risk of sounding Churchillian : "Never before have people been able to communicate so quickly, and never before has so much information been available to so many people". Sure, previous years saw the telephone, CB radio, television, the Web and e-mail, but this decade was the one when social networking came of age, and where unprecendented access to vast storehouses of knowledge became common place for millions across the globe.

The speed at which these technologies have become a part of our every day experience is quite astonishing and it is exemplified in the noughties. In this short series of blogposts, I want to look back over the years 2000-2009, to map the key moments when the digital decade changed our lives.

Once the frenzy of the Millennium celebrations had died down (Millennium - is this now a derelict term?) we began to see signs of what the future would hold. We didn't need to wait too long. July 2000 saw the launch of one of the first social networking sites: Friends Reunited. The basic premise of the site was to reconnect people who for some reason had lost contact with each other. The promise of 'reunion of old friends' became the basis for much of what was to follow. Within a year Friends Reunited had grown to over a million users, establishing that connecting and sharing online were going to become a very popular pastime.

The 'hive minds' concept was realised with the launch of Wikipedia in January 2001. Just about everything that can be said has already been said about Wikipedia. But for better or worse, Wikipedia is here to stay, has broken a lot of new ground about what is meant by 'knowledge' and has opened up the doors for a sea-change in open, collaborative knowledge building.

Other significant events in 2001 included the launch in July of Sky+, prompting a shift in our perceptions of what digital television could bring, and Interactive TV became a reality for many when it was made widely available in November of the same year. The ability to stop, start and replay live action, and to interact from a handset with TV was an exciting concept. Apple gave birth to the iPod in the US, bringing handheld technologies to the masses, and 3G mobile phone services were available for the first time in the UK in time for Christmas, opening up an entire new vista of telephony.

In 2002 there was failure and success for digital TV. May saw the closure of the fledgling ITV digital service, which had only been established (as a rebirth of ON Digital) in July 2001. But UK TV viewers rubbed their hands in anticipation when Freeview became available in October.

Our viewing habits were changing, and information communication technologies were beginning to take a more prominent place within the home, office and classroom. The first 3 years of the new decade were only a prelude though - these developments merely laid the foundation for the digital maelstrom that was to follow. This series continues tomorrow with a review of the years 2003-2005.

Image source

Never mind the quality, feel the width

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

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

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

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

Image source (edited)

Darwikinism (and monkeying around)

Finally, it seems that Wikipedia has got a handle on things. Several announcements over the last few weeks have dragged the popular online user generated encyclopaedia into a semblance of trustworthiness. With over 60 million users each month, perhaps it is about time, if only to convince my fellow academics and colleagues that Wikipedia does after all have a place in the process of educating our students. I know, I know, there have been some notorious debates about how Wikipedia is just as accurate as Encyclopedia Britannica - and there have been many detractors too, such as Andrew Keen who famously claimed that Web 2.0 was similar to content generated by monkeys with typewriters. There are similar debates too about whether or not students should be allowed to reference Wikipedia sources in their assessed work.

Recently, Wikipedia has drafted in a legion of volunteer editors to ensure that the contents of its pages are as trustworthy as possible. And here's the next news in the saga of its ongoing development: From this autumn, Wikipedia will introduce a new colour coding system where initially entered content will be flagged with an orange background to indicate that it is yet to be verified for accuracy. As more editors and contributors work on the text or content, so the background colour dissipates until it is pure white, indicating that the content is as accurate as possible. It's going to be the survival of the fittest content - a kind of textual evolutionary process that we will see from now on.

My colleague Maged Boulos and I wrote about destructive and creative evolutionary processes in the natural selection of online content back in 2007. We were by no means the first to do so, but we never the less outlined a number of editing and content generation styles that included deletionism, inclusionism and .... Darwikinism. Darwikinism is the name given to the social processes that shape the content of online collaborative spaces, and I would argue that it also refers to the generation and transmission of memes, in a manner similar to the passing on of genetic information. There is also the potential for memetic mutation of course, so there will inevitably be content that slips in under the net, so to speak.... Time will tell whether Wikipedia develops a better reputation among sceptical academics and teachers, but it is a move up the evolutionary tree, and the monkeys with typewriters may begin to look a little more human...

Image source

Safe Hans

The weather here yesterday in Leeds was appalling. It poured down from the start of the day until the evening, but were our spirits dampened? No they were not, because we enjoyed an excellent first day here at ALT-C 2008. The day started with a rousing keynote speech from Professor Hans Rosling, who soared to new heights when he suddenly decided to climb a step ladder half way through his speech. Mark van Harmelen (ALT Director of Development) rushed to grab the ladded to steady the speaker, and through his white knuckle anxiety, we could all see the health and saftey risks and potential litigation flashing through his mind (photo from Helen Keegan's Flickr stream). Hans was safe however, and proceeded to wow the assembled delegates with a virtuoso performance, and opened our eyes to demographic statistics of birth and death rates, economic rises and declines and carbon emissions across the globe, using a new piece of graphic animated software he and his son had developed. Known as Gap Minder, it reveals statistics in a way never before seen, except perhaps in a more simplistic way by the likes of visual search engines such as Quintura.

In a style reminiscent of that other great Scandinavian, Victor Borge, Hans Rosling made some pithy omments that had the audience both laughing and questioning their previous take on life. Encyclopedia Brittanica, he said, is read by people who believe it to be true. Wikipedia is read by people who know it is not true, and that is its value. The main global trend now, he declared, is convergence. And still the gems kept coming - 'TV stations use graphics and animation to brand rather than to inform, he told us'. 'Ignorance is the best friend of the teacher'. And finally.... 'there is no digital divide - only a continuum'.

For those who missed this most excellent keynote, the video on demand is now available on Elluminate here. Now for day two of ALT-C....

Chalk and cheese

The dialogue is hotting up here at Online Educa Berlin. Yesterday there was a clash of opinion between two of the keynote speakers. Andrew Keen, author of the infamous anti-Web 2.0 book Cult of the Amateur, failed to make many friends with his somewhat embittered attack on bloggers, Wikipedia and user generated content. As I have said before on this blog, there is irony in his statement that user generated content is simply a whole load of monkeys with typewriters - he publicised his own blog during his talk. Looking distinctly nervous prior to his presentation, once up on his hind legs, he launched into a diantribe against 14 year olds whose opinions are valued equally well as Harvard professors. He urged delegates to determine the difference between opinion and established truth - whatever that is. Andrew was clearly here to sell his book - he shamelessly mentioned it no fewer than a dozen times during his half hour speech, and immediately left for a book signing session.

By complete contrast, Graham Attwell, who stepped in at the last minute to replace a keynote speaker who failed to turn up, launched a blistering attack on the perspective of Andrew Keen. Self proclaimed as Andrew Keen,s nightmare, Attwell argued that the wisdom of the crowd is exactly that - knowledge that can be trusted because so may individuals are involved in the process of editing and strengthening the content on Wikipedia and that there are expert blogs out there that are trustworthy. If we fail to capitalise on Web 2.0, said Attwell, then we would miss a huge opportunity to transform learning and bring it screaming into the 21st Century.

I will leave you to decide who you think is the chalk, and who is the cheese....

Imitation - the sincerest form of flatulence

Just come back from talking to StudentNet, an influential group which meets regularly here at the University of Plymouth to discuss issues surrounding student use of networked resources. I spoke about 'Social Software in Higher Education' and several really useful questions were raised by the group over copyright, validity and reliability of sources such as Wikipedia, plagiarism and 'fit for purpose' issues.

Landed on my desk I find the latest issue (No. 21) of the Centre for Bioscience Bulletin. On the back page is an interesting featured article entitled: 'The Wonderful World of Wikis', which says much the same thing as StudentNet. Bizarrely, the author Viv Rolfe, from De Montfort University, then goes on to talk about a wikipedia page dealing with the subject of flatulence.... students were asked to look at the page and assess how accurate it was, and whether they should change it or add to it. I assume the lecturer wanted the students' gut reactions....?

The author also mentions 'Wikiphobia' - a subject not yet covered on Wikipedia, ironically - and reveals that 67 % of students who plagiarised, also quoted from Wikipedia. Well, there's a thing....

'When you copy one person's work, it is plagiarism. When you copy many peoples' work, it is research....' (I copied this)