Jared Stein – Education, Technology, Culture, and the Internet

These notes pertain to Brian Lamb‘s keynote on Feb 23, 2009 in Portland, Oregon at the ITC 2009 e-Learning conference. Resource/pres page: http://blogs.ubc.ca/open/open-up/ (more…)

Chris Lott captured most of my thoughts and feelings about the Personal Learning Environments All-Day Workshop that we conducted with Scott Leslie, however I wanted to reciprocate to my co-presenters and the participants by posting a few comments and observations (more…)

Now that Open Ed 2008 is over (I think I’ve written more PHP in two weeks than in the past two years to kick out the re-release of our open educational resources mod for Moodle … more on that next week), I am finally able to direct my energies toward the Next Project: an all-day pre-conference workshop for the 2008 WCET conference held this November in Phoenix, AZ. This workshop is titled Creating Personal Learning Environments with Web 2.0, and I’ll be collaborating with the inestimableChris Lott and Scott Leslie (more…)

George Siemens gave a great end-of-first-day keynote session at 2008′s Distance Teaching and Learning conference, in which he addressed connectivism. It was forward-thinking, heady, and deep, which I love in a keynote; unfortunately, I think a number of attendees were expecting it to be “keynote lite”.

George put his slides for this keynote online on SlideShare. Here are my fast-and-furious, almost-at-George’s-pace notes (which I hope to come back in and edit);

Task of education is to “combat” for lucidity

Knowledge is in the connections
more college students in china than in any other country
we are not in control of where education is going
we are not in control of these tbs of information

Complexity
putting together a puzzle
metaphor of a weather pattern – that’s why we can’t predict (Photo)
education is meant to be more like a puzzle
too much information
we end up with extra nuts and bolts
fragmentation
(I remember reading EVERYTHING in a book, in a newspaper, in a magazine, in a comic—hungry for knowledge. Now there’s too much)
“Fragmentation requires re-creation”
Fragmentation challegene coherance”
freedom of creation = abundance
(how do we filter)
There’s something else I need to read.
Need to filter out the noice, but that’s beyond the capability of our tools
fast-paced deep stuff. I feel like I’m a smooth stone George has skipped across a deep water
Brings up Kerr’s challenge
“Something is happening.
“But is it sufficient to warrant a reconsideration of learning theory?”

Web 2.0 is hype. “I never thought I’d hear myself say that blogs are hype.”

oh shiny object slide (George should use more of these—great response, great illustration)
Long timeline ofslwo change: Information (great slide showing transition upwards)
what do the tools allow us to do that they didn’t before
reminds me of the idea that technology returns us from individual thought (intraspersonal/intraspective) to collective though, or thought heavily influenced by the sometimes rash opinion of others (interpersonal/extraspective). Can we have a balance of these when everything is published open, for everyone.

Gutenberg press was one of those technologies that spilled blood

Let’s look at this; don’t look at the tools. It’s about those bigger factors of openness, access, creation, control.

Connectivism.
Tagged his critics on his del.icio.us account—great modeling of the true scholarly approach toward getting at truth.
How is this unique?
(pause. Man, he’s a bullet train barreling down the track)
a unity of learning and knowledge
not a significant difference between learning and knowledge
learning != process; knowledge != product
Abundance
I say overabundance. Scarcity of quality may remain proportional? Of course not exactly, but there will be a quantity of crap that may equal the proportional quantity of silence we had before the Internet. Now instead of not having enough I have too much information. Instead of being hungry and savoring the crumbs of information, I am overfed and nauseous at the sight of more platters of information.

Levelsof networked learning
Neural-biological
Conceptual
External-social

neural
connectionism and ai
what fires together wires together
biologically learning is creating a network

conceptual

when we make a concept map it makes explicit what we know

the occurrence of words reveals connectedness of concepts to create meaning

do network properties exist at a conceptual level?
We do have network attributes to knowledge seems intuitively right
PERSONAL BRAIN
novak on concept maps (see his delicious)
our concepts are understood by filtering through networks
simulations dont teach us steps, they teach us sequences of patterns
enable individuals to form patterns

external and social
we are connected to each other

On Friday, August 8 2008 I presented at Distance Teaching and Learning 2008 with Marc Hugentobler and John Krutsch. I’ve posted the the slides and the rubric from that session as the page, “The Cheatability Factor”.

Presentation Slides

cheatability_factor.ppt

For this session I added several slides that illustrate my gut reaction to a number of the new technologically-based approaches to inhibit cheating in assessments which I hope you will find amusing.

We had a lively and interactive discussion of the problem of cheating in online courses, and possible approaches to inhibit it. We took one participant through our cheatbility rubric explaining criteria and concepts along the way.

For the first time John administered Buzzword Bingo live in-session with bingo cards printed with key terms from our presentation. We did this not (only) as a self-deprecating joke, but as a means of focusing participant attention on the presenters and the dialog. I believe at least 6 participants scored a prize during this session while playing Buzzword Bingo, though John and Marc had to coax more than one participant to simply shout out BINGO instead of raising their hands!

Notes taken at Distance Teaching and Learning Conference 2008 in Madison, Wisconsin.

Presenters: Sarah Bryans Bongey, Diana Johnson

This presentation initially focused on showcasing a faculty professional development course on teaching to Gardner’s multiple intelligences. The course tries to model MI approach for faculty who are in the online course as students.

Example: Using a guest speaker for interpersonal intelligence

Shows detailed lists of course’s activities.

Some interesting options for participants: interview an online faculty, write a syllabus, etc.

What about a rubric? Faculty know how to write a syllabus. Seems like writing a rubric would appeal to logical-mathematical-strong learners.

All-in-all, the lecture approach to this presentation generally let me down. The second half was more engaging, as it showed explicit examples that purported to approach different learning styles. The hard part about teaching to multiple intelligences is (1) thinking of teaching strategies that will efficiently affect learning in the different intelligence strengths, and (2) finding or making materials or activities for each of those intelligence strengths. Another approach would be to teach students to find their own learning materials or activities online using search engines and repositories, but I fear too much time would be spent by students finding (and hopefully evaluating) the learning resources, not learning and applying the information.

Show more activities, like “podcast videos” (i.e. downloadable mp4s without RSS) for visual-spatial learners.

Listening to the presenters flounder at times with activity ideas for some of the intelligences makes me suspect that it’s at least untenable to teach any subject to all of the supposed intelligences. Thus, I have to ask if it might not be as useful in the long run to try to develop a few core intelligences necessary for learning through student learning skills training.

Show more activities, like online articles for linguistic learners.

Exit, Mr. Stein.

On a similar note, I read Clayton Christensen’s Disrupting Class this month, and much of it’s premise is based on Gardner’s multiple intelligences theory. Christensen suggests that online tutoring resources and tools will help education better address these intelligence strengths. His emphasis on disruptive technology makes it seem possible by suggesting MI approaches can only thrive through user-developed, user-networked access to these resources and tools. And, having recently authored a few pages of content for a learning module that bridges Disrupting Class with open educational resources and learning branches, I think I may have found a new presentation topic.

Notes taken at Distance Teaching and Learning Conference 2008 in Madison, Wisconsin.

Presenter: Dam Lim

Learning games are built for mobile devices using SWF and XML. Mr. Lim talks about how he would like a single interface, and comments on possibilities for inter-institutional collaborations. I’m sure John Krutsch will be talking to him afterwards.

How does this work cross-(mobile-)platform? I know you can play YouTube videos, but you can’t generally run Flash content on iPhone or on Treo’s Blazer. Mr. Lim is using Windows Mobile on a PocketPC to demo this.

Plays a YouTube.com videos that show how making of the game works.

YouTube.com video is too small to see. Should make it full-screen.

Quickly demonstrates how the game is made and loaded in PocketPC.

I’d like to see the game itself in greater depth, and discuss how these are implemented into a course structure, and at least the predicted impact on learning.

Sums up with plenty of design challenges–so many broad and disruptive challenges leave me pessimistic.

Shows what Krutsch labels “simulated screenshots” of what a game might look like on iPhone (if it supported Flash).

Exit Mr. Stein.

Notes taken at Distance Teaching and Learning Conference 2008 in Madison, Wisconsin.

Presenters: Tina Parscal, Maureen Hencmann

Session presents an extremely brief overview of cognitive apprenticeship. Uses obnoxious, unnecessary terms “more knowledgeable other” (MKO) instead of “expert”, and “less knowledgable other” (LKO) instead of learner.

Implementation aspects of cognitive apprenticeship educational approach:
Content
Modeling
Coaching
Scaffolding and fading
Articulation
Exploration
Reflection

Let learners decide what tools to use to solve a problem

Idea for application: Would it be neat to give 3 lessons that are optional, and give 3 different projects that may use some or all of those lessons?)

As part of cognitive apprenticeship, “facilitators” should “encourage discovery”. Learners should “Learn to learn”

Does this help learners learn? If so, why? Does it cement or reinforce the important information or skills?

Prompt students to seek answers in a (general) document (learn to navigate the course and use resources–not spoon feeding).

Is this annoying, inefficient? Is there a faster way to deliver the information? Or is learning to navigate a system (that they may never use again, or use infrequently) that important? (Counterpoint: you could send them to a system that they should use, but is this now an information management task? E.g. Google, Wikipedia, etc. Is that appropriate here, or better in a learning skills course? Do computer literacy courses require this?)

Write good questions and robust feedback.
Discussion – articulation, reflection, exploration

In a lot of ways, my DGM 2120 and 2740 courses are modeled on cognitive apprenticeship, though I’ve found that in 2120 greater structuring was necessary.

Course design has a lot of cute representative icons relating to the content. Are these useful? Will these symbols be used beyond the course? I’m always looking for how what we learn or do in class is applicable beyond the class. That’s the epitome of education.

Shows off interactive Flash “office” to simulate a few questions principals might have to deal with daily, with MC options for responses to e-mail, phone call.

Presenters walk through these pretty intensively, but I got lost thinking about the tool and the scenario as a learner. Participants need to be reminded to think about this as an example to reflect upon as an educator. We do reflect on this at the end.

Break into groups for corrabolative discussion.

Exit, Mr. Stein.

Unexpectedly, I began reading a lot of blogs this evening when I was supposed to be going home thanks to Darren Draper’s summative review highlighting criticisms of and ideas to improve Steve Hargadon‘s trailblazing Edubloggercon 2008. Just as with Educause ELI 2008, I learned a lot about ed tech conferencing (or unconferencing) from a conference I didn’t even attend thanks to blogs and Twitter. I read these reviews greedily, as I am anxious to continue to morph the Teaching with Technology Idea Exchange into one of the most engaging ed tech conferences for presenters and participants.

So I’ve collected here a bunch of quotes that speak to the good and the bad of Edubloggercon in it’s first two years that I personally am going to think about as we begin planning TTIX 09. As I said, I wasn’t at Edugbloggercon so I can’t speak to the accuracy, yet I do think they communicate something about ed tech conferencing in general.

Content

Didn’t we talk about this stuff last year? And the year before? Not to mention in many places online in the interim?

Tim Stahmer

[Get] outside the echo chamber… I look at the title of the session above and think: Yeah…we know that.

Jeff Utecht

[This year's conference was] more about tools and vendors than about the real work of getting our brains around how learning and networks and the very essence of how teaching and schools are being pushed by the shifts that are occurring.

Will Richardson

Structure

Start … with a set of questions, and then ask attendees … to collaborate in answering those questions from what they’ve learned from the conversations

David Warlick

Set up a space with two (or more) mini-presentation areas (not unlike the bloggers cafe actually), many “round tables” for people to retreat to for further conversation (this is key!), and plenty of power and wi-fi. … [Impromptu facilitators] sign up for [5-15 minute] time slots at the presentation areas

Mark Wagner

Engagement & Participation

…the breakout groups were too large which turned what should have been conversations into something more like panel discussions

Tim Stahmer

[In the informal area of the Blogger's Cafe] multiple conversations could occur and overlap – and we were able to ‘play’ in a serendipitous fashion

Mark Wagner

[At Blogger's Cafe] I would engage in a conversation to my right, over hear something on my left and turn and join that conversation.

Jeff Utecht

…the scanty fortunate [engaged in the impromptu 'edupunk-esque' sessions at Blogger's Cafe] … represent less than 1% of the people that actually attended EduBloggerCon. Moreover, as others gradually attempted to join in on this cocktail party of learning, when the party became too large, those that were truly invited quickly dispersed…

Darren Draper

[Last year] the focus was on having conversations with people without the intrusion of [technologically mediated] methods of communication. … The back channel … got in the way.

Vinnie Vrotny

It felt more like Monday than Saturday…

Will Richardson

That last quote is my favorite–I think ed tech conferences should be more fun and relaxed than a Saturday, yet be more productive and enlightening than a Monday.

John K. read these quotes and mused, “Where do we take these ideas?” I’ll think that through myself over the next little while, and let any readers post their comments to assist.

Today I am presenting at the SFo MoodleMoot on how Moodle can be used to deliver Open Educational Resources, especially through our modification of Moodle, the Open Meta Mod.

Presentation slides are now available and you are welcome to participate in the backchannel through the chat window provided below.

Presentation Slides

openmod.ppt

Web Sites Referenced

• OpenCourseWare Consortium
• Open Educational Resources Commons
• David Wiley’s OpenContent Wiki
• David Wiley’s OpenContent blog
• Utah Open High School
• Creative Commons licenses
• MIT’s “Making the Case for OCW”
• Why a Reputation Economy?
• UK’s Open University LearningSpace
• OpenContentDIY
• Leigh Blackall’s slide on Another Way

P.S. After my presentation was over, I came back to my hotel to find this bus in the parking lot. It’s nothing less than a sign for a questioning open education convert.