HeadspaceJ: Instructional Design and Technology Blog

Edubunk

2008-06-06T13:40:00.000-07:00

I had limited my involvement in the "edupunk" discussion to a few pot-shot comments from the outside, both on Stephen's post, and over at Brian's. It was fun, especially when an anonymous commenter tried to make the point that there was nothing in the world more punk than education. Seriously. Stephen and Brian might be the closest to actually being punks in the field (relatively, and in the best way), but I suspect they're both smart enough to see the hilarity of government and corporate employees (teachers, tech coordinators, etc) trying to co-opt the identity and ethos of a musical/political movement that was dedicated to tearing down the establishment.

There were a few posts on the theme that made sense to me, even one from (gasp!) a very smart student. I'm not sure I understood the criticisms I saw or the associated rebuttals, but much of it seemed to miss the point. Today I enjoyed Leigh's reflections and ranted a little in response...most of what appears below is from that comment.

If you’re going to consider punk as a sort of watered-down label for “alternative”, minor boundary-pushing, or low-grade anti-authority views (kept to yourself, mostly), then it can almost be married to the edu- prefix without being automatically oxymoronic, but that really misses the point. In practice, it seems to mean that these are people within the education system who sort of wish they weren’t, but don’t really want it to change much either. No whiff of revolutionary fervor. It also evokes a sort of mid-life crisis about our chosen field, perhaps wistfully remembering our younger days of idealism and techno-dreams...then looking around at what’s been accomplished with our ed.tech network-friends and asking hopefully (and collectively), “We’re still cool, right?”

Real punk, with a strong affinity for anarchy and disdain for authority of any kind...well, that is the opposite of education (not learning, which is something different altogether). If you bring punk into a conversation about the education system, you basically have to pull an Illich and suggest that the whole thing be dismantled. Or better yet, dismantle it yourself. If being an edupunk is about tearing down a dysfunctional system and replacing it with something that lets everyone learn what interests them most without institutional coercion, sign me up. But finding new ways to get your students to perform better on standardized tests (the aim of most education, sadly)? That's not even a valid evolution for learning, never mind revolution.

That's not to say that there isn't fantastic work being done in the field -- it's just not transformative or revolutionary, and you might even argue that the impact has been negligible in schools so far. Punk never really changed anything either, so maybe this actually supports the edu-punk connection. Anyway, what words could we use to better describe what the best people in ed.tech are trying to do? They’re DIY, change agents, hackers, mercenaries, members of skunkworks, tinkerers, inventors, synthesizers, mentors and facilitators, moonlighters working underground or on the side from their day jobs. A few might even be pretty rockin'! Some of them (thankfully) are borderline shit disturbers. But they’re not really punks.

I did some thinking about this a few years ago when I started my Lifestylism project. I just liked how the word fit what I was trying to do, and thought I might have even made it up...but then found out that it had a fairly long history in anarchist literature. In this context, lifestylists are people who are aware of the problems (inequality, exploitation, etc) in society and choose to deal with those problems only within their own lives -- making choices informed by that awareness, but not making any effort to change or confront the system itself. Of course true anarchists dismiss these people as cowards, because growing organic vegetables and recycling is nice and all, but the lack of social action will never bring about revolution (the anarchist's goal).

I'm not an anarchist, and I identified strongly with their derided concept for lifestylism, even after I understood it better. I don't want to tear down the system, and I think I can make a difference by aligning my lifestyle choices with my values as a quiet form of activism. I think most of the people who like the idea of being "edupunk" feel the same way about their work. The goal isn't to destroy the system, or even to create a better system to replace it -- the goal is to find ways to make our work (and the impact of our work) reflect our values better.

Drive, Curiosity and Ethics

2007-07-04T14:44:00.000-07:00

Christian at think:lab takes a look at what Netscape founder Marc Andreessen seeks in new hires and connects it to what the evolving purpose of education might be. I was struck by Andreessen's top three things he's looking for in potential employees, which seem a lot more important to me than most current measures of educational "success":

DRIVE: "First, drive. I define drive as self-motivation -- people who will walk right through brick walls, on their own power, without having to be asked, to achieve whatever goal is in front of them. People with drive push and push and push and push and push until they succeed."

CURIOSITY: "Second criterion: curiosity. Curiosity is a proxy for, do you love what you do? Anyone who loves what they do is inherently intensely curious about their field, their profession, their craft. They read about it, study it, talk to other people about it... immerse themselves in it, continuously. And work like hell to stay current in it. Not because they have to. But because they love to.

ETHICS: "Third and final criterion: ethics. Ethics are hard to test for. But watch for any whiff of less than stellar ethics in any candidate's background or references. And avoid, avoid, avoid. Unethical people are unethical by nature, and the odds of a metaphorical jailhouse conversion are quite low."
Drive, curiosity, ethics. We do an admirable job of testing for linear capacities and occasionally producing projects that "engage" and "inspire". All well in good for keeping kids motivated in the moment and also getting them into college, for example.

Christian's analysis goes all over the place, and deep too. Some great big-picture thinking worth checking out.

Micro-Assessment vs Project-Based Learning

2007-06-14T15:39:00.000-07:00

A while back, Christian from think:lab posted a bit about a new kind of "micro-assessment" that reminded me of a conversation conversation I had with a teacher friend a week or two before. I left a few comments over there, but wanted to include the original story here as well, because it goes to the root of my issues with the type of curriculum that currently drives the education system (and the assessment that goes with the curriculum). Anyway, here's the story:

He was telling me about this new grading system he's implemented -- identical to what is described here. Every test broken down into its component learning outcomes, with remedial steps and re-tests only on the parts the students haven't performed well on. At first I was thinking, "wow, pretty innovative and individualized." Then the reality of it hit me, and I blurted out, "that's pretty much the opposite of my educational philosophy!"

He was stunned, because he's made a bit of a splash in his division with this system(of course the administrators adore it, the teachers...not so much). It helps individualize assessment, yes, but the entire focus to ensure that students perform well on the standardized test, covering all areas of the standardized curriculum. It's a "better" way to do something that I don't think should be done at all.

So my friend was a bit irritated with me, understandably, and he asked what I would propose with my opposite educational philosophy. So I described, off-the-cuff, what I would like.

I want students to arrive in his classroom in September and sit down individually with him to figure out the overlap between his abilities/knowledge as a coach and their interests in the subject. Not doing away with disciplines, necessarily -- he's still a history teacher. But maybe the course is called World War 2 (because that's his area of passionate historical interest), and maybe the students' goal is to study some aspect of it that topic interests them...maybe two projects for the whole year that have to be somewhat different. Go REAL deep on one or two things they care about and really DO history, learning the skills of investigation, research and collaborative work. Let them work together. Let them choose how they want to present their findings. Give them great resources and teach them how to use them.

He looked skeptical as I started talking, but I saw the lights coming on...and then he interrupted me: "I've done exactly that before."

So I questioned him on it, and he used to do a unit on land mines -- basically chucked the curriculum for a month and let students explore the topic of land mines through whatever lens they chose, and had them present to the class. He said he learned more from those presentations than he ever learned in school. One techie-type kid researched the cutting-edge of land-mine detection using different frequencies of radio waves. A kid who was really into animals discovered a reabilitation program for elephants injured by mines in war-torn regions. Another who liked working with his hands learned everything he could about the actual construction and technology used in the mines themselves, building a scale model of his own. Another looked at the medical and economic challenges facing amputees injured by mines.

So instead of crafting individualized strategies for acing the test (covering 487 topics at the shallowest depth possible), he got 30 entirely different projects, each with a focus reflecting the motivation and interests of each student. Taken together, they covered the topic in a way that made the kids care about history and geography, curious about geopolitics, and wanting to know more. Assessment took care of itself because they were truly engaged. No need for micro-re-tests because what they presented reflected something they cared about.

Unfortunately, this teaching approach is nearly illegal, and people could argue that his students suffered (on their standardized tests) as a result...but which system would you rather have your kids learning in?

The Met School

2007-06-13T17:46:00.000-07:00

Apparently there was some buzz about The Met school a couple of years ago, but I totally missed it. Sounds like a really cool learning model, emphasizing individualized programs for each student:

"No two students have the same curriculum. There are no bells, no 45-minute classes, and no one-size-fits-all curriculum. Rather than the ordinary top-down approach, where students learn everything in the order in which it's laid out in a textbook, we build a personalized learning plan around each student's needs, interests, and passions."

Many of the elements they've selected from the buffet table of methodologies and approaches are ones I've wished someone would assemble to see how it might all work together...and they've been doing it for years already: small schools, portfolio/presentation-based assessment, advisors who stay with the same small group of kids right through high school, community internships working on meaningful projects. The cool thing is that it's actually working, and other places are looking to emulate the best of what they're doing:

"Also in 2003, the Rhode Island Board of Regents issued new high school regulations declaring that by the spring of 2004 every public high school in the state would submit a plan to enact these policies. These new requirements come straight from The Met's design and include an advisory system, internships, individual learning plans, senior exhibitions and portfolios."

So there is hope that these ideas could lead to systemic change. Check out this list of articles about it from the mainstream media.

Update (July 17): Stephen links to Ewan McIntosh's post, which includes a video of a student talking about her experience at the school. The most interesting thing to me about The Met is that it's pretty radically different from traditional, but people respond well to it because it still looks like school -- it doesn't freak people out like the free-for-all approach of the Sudbury Schools. There's still a building kids go to, lots of paid grown-ups to help, and very specific (and stringent) standards to meet. Yet the pedagogical approach is revolutionary. So maybe this is a necessary half-step between old-school models and a new model with even more freedom, support and real learning.

Webjay Closing

2007-05-31T18:18:00.000-07:00

Probably of interest to some ed-tech folks, although it's not really news anymore: Webjay is closing the doors. This bums me out -- it was one of those simple, cool earlier web apps that I really embraced because it was useful and fun. Over the years I put a lot of work into my Webjay playlists, collecting songs, podcasts and videos from all kinds of sources. The interface was quirky, but got the job done, and the page-scraping import function was invaluable.

Saving my old playlists will be easy enough (as m3u files, or archived at grabb.it), but another bummer of losing the service is that all the connections and comments will disappear. In a few years of use, I must have hundreds of comments on my playlists and ones I've left on others. It's not that there's such rich value in them, but those comments formed my networks within the system, and it sucks to have them vaporized as if they never existed.

From my perspective, the beginning of the end happened when the MySpace masses discovered that they could run a flash-based player of their Webjay playlists on their profile pages. A diverse, supportive Webjay community was soon flooded by whining teenagers and derivative Top-40 and emo songs, making it much harder to find the really interesting, unique stuff. The crowds seem to kill the experience, and site performance suffered badly.

I suppose that the increased traffic caught the attention of Yahoo, who snapped it up. I was stoked for Webjay creator Lucas Gonze, a very smart (and nice) guy with a great vision. It sounded like Yahoo intended to keep it around, but I'd say that the quality of the site has been in decline ever since -- occasionally the speed has been ok, but at other times the service has been intermittent and the "popular" lists were often static or broken. The forums seemed to be largely ignored and I think many of the old-schoolers drifted away. Traffic seemed to be on the general decline as well. Farewell, old friend.

Designing Schools for the Present Age: Thoughts on a Recent Editorial by Bill Gates

2007-04-11T09:04:00.000-07:00

An older post from the Eide Neurolearning Blog: Designing Schools for the Present Age: Thoughts on a Recent Editorial by Bill Gates. They actually agreed with most of what Gates had proposed, which surprised me at first -- I remember dismissing it at the time because he was basically insisting that every kids should go to university, which I just don't believe. But anyway, the Eides push those ideas further into the realm of individualized learning plans, and I thought they were especially on track with questioning these three assumptions about traditional education:

"· The notion that all students should master a core body of information at the same rates and in the same ways, using identical educational materials and informational pathways. Basic skills can be acquired in many ways, and each child's instruction should be tailored to his or her optimal learning style.

· The notion that students are best educated in age-based cohorts. The rates at which children develop vary as greatly as their learning styles, and clustering by age makes no more sense than clustering by height or weight. The whole notion of grade-levels is equally questionable. There is no reason to assume that each year every child should make identical progress in all subject areas, nor is there any justification to prevent a child from making progress in one subject (e.g., math) because he is having difficulty in another (e.g., reading). Flexible, modular instruction could eliminate this problem.

· The notion that lecture-based classroom instruction should be the primary--even a major--route of learning for all students is unsupported by data on children's learning styles. For enormous numbers of children lecture time is not only a waste but a strong provoker of misbehavior and dissatisfaction of school."

Only Connect

2007-04-10T15:50:00.000-07:00

Anyone know what ever happened to Stephen Harlow's Only Connect? I was thinking about some his stuff from a couple of years ago, then went googling and couldn't find anything recent from him -- any clues?

Update: I got a great e-mail from Stephen in NZ and he's doing well. He's got most of Only Connect archived on the site he's set up for his digital storytelling sideline.

Remote Access: Studio Classrooms and Flow

2007-03-29T13:50:00.000-07:00

Great post from Remote Access: Studio Classrooms and Flow

"Studio work involves lengthy periods of time where the kids are concentrated on one project or one issue. We may start off together in a group discussing hot issues from the previous day or with me teaching a new skill or concept, but we move as quickly as possible towards the kids being active as creators, designers, and researchers, this being our focus."

Doesn't that sound fantastic? How many students in "normal" classrooms are getting to do these essential things? Clarence floated this idea last year, and it triggered some reflection on my part. At that time, he was partly lamenting the dichotomy between real learning and jumping through curriculum hoops:

"In our splintered systems where kids need to "cover" hundreds of outcomes in a single school year, the studio may provide too much depth and not enough breadth to make legislators happy. Make no mistake about it, kids can focus and be creative for long periods of time if they are working on issues they are concerned with and about."

Now it sounds like he's doing it anyway. I wonder how? Chucked the curriculum? Managed to blend a bunch of subjects together and devoted whole days to projects?

Thanks to George for the pointer...

The Tyee Education

2007-03-28T11:32:00.000-07:00

Three interesting articles related to online learning and education choice in my home province, all from The Tyee, a pretty solid lefty publication online. I suspect that the same things would apply in most provinces and states where distance learning is rising in popularity (probably all of them). The common thread is an issue of control. Who should control learning?

Why I Left the Classroom is a fairly standard account of teacher burnout. It rings true for me, but I was most interested in this ex-teacher's take on individualization in education:

"Teachers now stand before a group of individuals. Each of their learning styles, their needs, their contexts, abilities and disabilities needs identification, respect, modification and thought. In one split class of 29 students, I was faced with 19 different 'labels,' nine of which required completely individualized education plans. After countless meetings and forms, at June's end that particular year, I waved good-bye to a group who seemed not to be significantly hampered by my inability to meet their needs. I, on the other hand, was mute with both exhaustion and a sense of personal failure."

Now, I think the author was generally viewing this shift toward individualized learning as a bad thing, because it makes the job much harder. But isn't it the best possible thing if we can reframe the entire system to support it? Why should only students with learning disabilities get ILPs or IEPs? Why not reconceptualize the teacher's role as a sort of super-librarian, coach and tutor who is available (online and in person) to help individuals (of any age) with whatever they're working on? You don't need a giant concrete building to achieve learning, and you don't need one teacher teaching one thing to 30 kids who are all the same age.

The Quiet Revolution in BC Schooling was written by a teacher taking an ed-tech program. It's almost like he's just tasted the technology koolaid, and sees the potential, but finds it so at odds with the traditions and long-term interests of his field that he can't really rally behind it. The main criticisms of the province moving toward more distributed learning is that the teachers weren't properly consulted, that the courses vary in quality and that they're harder than kids think? What about the benefits? He eventually gets around to those, but even the idea that kids could take courses on their own schedule (and year-round) gets reframed as a threat to the future viability of public schools (he "could actually hear the sledgehammers thudding on the school's outer walls.") The final section finally dips a toe into the amazing potential in using the web for learning -- it's a shame we don't get to hear more about the positives coming out of these changes:

"That said, well-designed online courses can accomplish wonders for students who have been properly prepared to engage in them. These students develop genuine technology skills which are second to none, because the skills, such as creating documents and presentations, and interacting within a web interface, are not tacked on to their educational experience as enrichment, but make up the educational environment itself, much in the way that French immersion teaches language skills."

Click-and-Drag Education is unfortunately pretty poorly done. Anonymous sources, blatant pro-union bias, techno-fear-mongering...I only include it here as an example of how the mainstreaming of distributed learning will become profoundly political. As students and parents realize that they can create their own learning plans, seeking out only the resources (teachers, materials, information, communities, courses, facilities), enrollments in public schools will drop further and faster, if for no other reason than the keen kids will be graduating sooner as they accumulate credits more quickly. Less enrollment will equal less funding, which will affect teachers' employment -- unfortunately for the teachers, I can't see them winning that inevitable battle.

The Power (and Peril) of Praising Your Kids

2007-02-16T08:58:00.000-08:00

New York Magazine published this excellent article on The Power (and Peril) of Praising Your Kids. Although the focus is on parenting, much of the amazing research cited is taken from studies in schools, and the results are fascinating. It sounds like building self-esteem isn't everything, and praise is only effective when it is very specific and process-oriented -- praising effort instead of saying "you're smart". A quote:

"Scholars from Reed College and Stanford reviewed over 150 praise studies. Their meta-analysis determined that praised students become risk-averse and lack perceived autonomy. The scholars found consistent correlations between a liberal use of praise and students’ “shorter task persistence, more eye-checking with the teacher, and inflected speech such that answers have the intonation of questions.”

Dweck’s research on overpraised kids strongly suggests that image maintenance becomes their primary concern—they are more competitive and more interested in tearing others down. A raft of very alarming studies illustrate this."

Passion

2007-02-07T22:25:00.000-08:00

I thought this post on Passion-Based Learning read like a provocative manifesto...great stuff.

Best Field Trip Ever

2007-02-02T15:11:00.000-08:00

Real learning should look more like this -- Project Happiness:

"Project Happiness follows a senior high school class from the Mount Madonna School near Watsonville, California on a journey to discover the true basis of human happiness. Joining them on this quest are the Tibetan and Indian students from the Tibetan Children’s Village in Dharamsala, India and the Dominion Heritage Academy in Jos, Nigeria.

Using the internet, video cameras, and other new communications technologies, the students will explore and create a new curriculum for His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s book Ethics for the New Millennium."

UIE Web App Summit

2007-01-23T10:23:00.000-08:00

I'm getting some notes together from the UIE web app summit in Monterey. Overall, I was struck again by how expensive and difficult conferences are compared to learning online (or on your own from other resources). I learned lots of interesting things, but I didn't learn them any better than if I had come across the same presentations online. I'm not a real networking type, and I was there with co-workers, so there wasn't that big social incentive to attend. But if nothing else, going in person ensures that you're not doing anything else, so you pay attention and learn a fair bit by default. I would much prefer the Downes vision of a learning bazaar or fair. Some of the sessions I attended that made some impact:

Product Strategy and Planning Tools by Peter Merholz and Brandon Schauer

We split up the all-day sessions and this is the one I ended up picking. The focus was more on process and methodology, specifically in developing commercial products. The business focus was mostly new to me; I haven't had to think much about what business goals a product might be addressing. The assumption has generally been that if you're addressing user needs and your business model works, the business will be sustainable, but this forced me to look a bit deeper.

One of the thorny issues in working for a company selling educational software is that the products are usually purchased by people other than the ones who will actually be using it. We might build a site for a state-level department of education that gets paid for by a state lending agency, managed by district administrators, facilitated by school-based counsellors and educators, and used by students in high schools and middle schools. Although everyone in the chain would report that the needs of the students are the purpose of the whole thing, people at each level are motivated by different values and goals. These goals are often in conflict.

The presenters pushed a model of integrating well with the web -- open APIs, building only what you can't borrow elsewhere, mashups, sharing content, user-generated content. Obviously that's a successful model, right? Judging by the questions from the participants, who were mostly from commercial software/web companies, it wasn't ringing true. Many of those companies are sustainable because they offer security, proprietary content/services, and business models that depend on closed systems, not open ones. It was fascinating to recognize that dichotomy.

I took piles of notes in this session, mostly related to project management and the process of defining not only what is being built, but why things are being built. When done right, that process can tease out needs and goals you wouldn't have otherwise come across. Sadly, the contrived "group activities" they had us doing were pretty much useless -- I would have much rather heard from participants about their experiences in initiating and managing their own large web-app projects.

Design Patterns and Principles by Bill Scott, Yahoo

I wish I had attended the full-day version of this seminar, digging into some of the most interesting design patterns (widgets, controls, interaction flows) from the Yahoo Design Pattern Library. It's an incredible toolkit of about 100 design patterns that can be combined in different ways to achieve different goals. He also went through examples from other sites doing fancier AJAX interactions, showing the tradeoffs and benefits of different approaches. Several examples illustrated how designers are overusing AJAX methods like drag 'n drop selection screens just because they can, when it is often better to use basic interactions. Excellent presentation -- very practical and geeky fun -- and his presentation notes/slides are loaded with goodness.

Web Application Structure by Hagan Rivers

The format of this short seminar seemed to provide just enough time to identify the main challenges in creating navigation and structure for web apps. I was pretty into it, because in her examples, she was running into many of the same problems I've been seeing in my recent designs. It's difficult to combine several web-app components (usually one place to do a number of data-heavy tasks) with traditional page-based navigation structures. Unfortunately we didn't really get to solve the problems in the seminar -- I wasn't happy with many of the choices she made in the example, which made it feel more like commiserating than learning.

The one thing I did find valuable was the method she uses to map out the different components in a site -- like a site map, but early in the process, the structure is more like little disconnected islands of tasks that you have to connect in a meaningful way.

Page Hierarchy by Luke Wroblewski, Yahoo!

Another fantastic presenter from Yahoo -- well-prepared, well-spoken, and cramming an incredible amount of practical, useful information into an hour. I wish I had also attended his seminar on form design, but the presentation notes (no link yet) stand fairly well on their own. On one hand, this talk on the hierarchy of information on a screen or page was a basic review of good design principles, but the examples were so sharp that they stuck with me -- lots of before-and-after redesigned screenshots that illustrated how big a difference great design can make.

Flickr: How a Bright Star Changed the World of Web Apps by Stewart Butterfield, Flickr/Yahoo!

I was probably most looking forward to hearing Stewart Butterfield talk about how he developed Flickr, but he didn't show up. Jared Spool and Peter Merholz filled in. After having used the site for a couple of years, hearing it described isn't particularly valuable, so this was a waste of time. One funny moment: Spool opened with an intro on Web 2.0 and left out any reference to user-generated content. When Merholz called him on it, he claimed that the important thing about Web 2.0 was the technology: feeds, dynamic interfaces, etc. Granted, defining these things is probably a dumb idea in the first place, but he blew that one.

Building Great UI, The Netflix Way by Sean Kane, Netflix

I've never used Netflix, so this was all new to me. The user experience looked fantastic, especially around recommendations (which I've often thought Amazon did very poorly, despite always being used as an example) and the smart use of rich interaction where it made sense to do so. Most fascinating was the presenter's description of their development process, launching something new every two weeks, and how they test new features on the site. Their user base is so huge and so active, that they can test a new feature on a 100,000 people over a day or two, then compare the results to a similar-sized control group to see the effect of the change, then decide whether to keep, revise, or trash it. I liked seeing some of he failed experiments -- usually you only get to see successful ones.

Design Strategies for Web-based Recommender Systems by Rashmi Sinha, Uzanto

This wasn't a bad presentation, but I was disappointed because this is a real area of interest of mine and my expectations were too high. It started out strong with a review of the earlier recommender systems (circa 2001) and their weaknesses. One good point was that people love to hate these systems -- if the first couple of recommendations are way off, you just mock them and stop paying attention. Then the presenter went into an analysis what she called social recommenders like Last.fm and del.ici.ous that make connections between people in the system and often use tags to connect content. She seemed pretty sold on this approach, but I couldn't help thinking about how much I dislike many of these systems for one reason alone -- they seem to recommend what's most popular with the majority of users on the site, rather than what really matches my needs. Need to ponder this some more -- are social networks yielding better recommendations?

Career and Technical Education

2006-12-15T13:38:00.000-08:00

Christian at think:lab posted some interesting thoughts back in December about The Evolution of Vocational Schools. He brings up the old stigmas about vocational education as a path for the non-college-bound kids who can't make it in the "real" courses, but he then suggests that there may be hope for this model of learning despite the old stereotypes. A quote:

"Well, it has nothing to do with the evolution of vocational training in my mind, but the future demand to offer 'relevant' and 'engaging' learning opportunities for all students, as well as the blurring of the line between 'real world' and 'college' as acceptable options once you graduate."

The article he links to from St.Louis implies that the trend back toward career and technical education may be a reaction to growing awareness that four-year college won't be for everyone, and that a degree doesn't guarantee good-paying work. But I wonder how difficult it will be to swing that pendulum -- Doug wrote recently about how parents think getting more kids into the trades is a great idea until you suggest that maybe their kids should consider it.

In another post that isn't quite as old, Christian reflects on how guidance counsellors will prepare kids for career planning in future schools -- excellent stuff.

Welcome to the War Zone

2006-11-02T09:25:00.000-08:00

These articles are nothing new, but since it's the school district my daughter is in now, it feels more personal: B.C. school district locks down desktop access to iTunes, MSN. It's not a bad article, giving us a glimpse inside the IT workings of a school district and outlining the challenges...but this quote just killed me:

"Managing a high-school student is akin to being in a war-zone, said Danny Francisco, IT manager at SD67 in Penticton."

A war-zone? I'm trying to be sympathetic, and acknowledging that on the ground it's not all about dreamy-self-directed-self-actualization-web-as-universal-translator-knowledge-base-etc...but treating students like enemy combatants can't be the way to teach them to use the web. And what's with the military metaphors? Last week it was minefields.

I mean, blocking MSN? This is how young people communicate about their lives, their friends and their homework.

"Video games can reshape education"

2006-10-19T15:31:00.000-07:00

Forgive me for being skeptical about "U.S. scientists" saying that video games can reshape education. It sounds like there was a study of some kind that showed that kids don't learn much if they watched TV and played video games all evening. Through some convoluted path I can't really follow, the author attempts to connect this to the vast learning potential of video games, as if they just appeared this year.

A couple of years ago, I was interested in this contest to create "stealth learning" games, and three years ago I was thinking similar things about Why Video Games Won't Thrive in Mainstream Education . Although the quality of the games and consoles have improved since then, what's changed about education to make them thriving in schools more likely?

A Scary Minefield of Ideas!

2006-10-19T11:56:00.000-07:00

I guess this is supposed to be a good news story, and really it's just a relaunched school district site, but the slant of the article just seemed so wrong somehow that I wanted to post it -- County education Web site unveiled:

"Already in place in some Pajaro Valley schools, in a month, every student and teacher in the county will have free access to subscription encyclopedia sites that are aligned with California state education standards and are designed to keep kids from culling half-baked or just wrong information in a general Internet search.

On Google, for example, typing Martin Luther King Jr. pulls up www.martinlutherking.org, a site that acts as platform for white supremacists.

'The great myth is that if it's on the Internet, it must be true,' said Thom Dunks, director of technology for the county office. People think of porn and that which is harmful for kids, but there's also a whole minefield of ideas out there.'"

Yeah, porn is one thing, but imagine kids having access to IDEAS! Lock the doors! Shutter the windows! They just don't get it.

Recommender Systems

2006-10-15T23:25:00.000-07:00

Stephen Downes linked to this older (1999) page on Recommender Systems in his recent paper on Learning Networks and Connective Knowledge. It pre-dates the social-software boom, but still acts as a nice overview and notes the value of recommendations in finding people in addition to movies, books and other items:

"Although currently recommender systems are mostly used for finding things, such as books and CDs, Resnick thinks that one promising application may be recommending people. You could use recommender systems to find the right consultant or colleague - or even a potential mate."

Most people sharing a learning goal in 43 Things aren't necessarily looking for people to collaborate with (although there is functionality to form explicit groups to pursue a goal together). It could be used as a sort of recommender system for finding people ("I'm looking for people sharing my goals"), but it looks to me like it's being used more as a recommender system for things you might like to do or learn. The network that emerges around a goal does loosely connect people to each other, but that may not be as valuable as the connections between the artifacts themselves: the entries outlining what their experiences have been in pursuing the same goal, why they decided to pursue it, what they hope to accomplish, how the learning helped them, pitfalls to avoid, etc.

Perhaps it's more important as a way of finding content (advice, resources, opinions, possible applications) than as a way to find like-minded people. The primary "pivot" is the goal itself, with the people associated with each goal as secondary pivots. It is interesting to find out what other goals someone is pursuing besides the one you share with them -- that function is more exploratory than the process of figuring out if you want to pursue a specific goal.

Elgg for Professional Development

2006-10-13T11:03:00.000-07:00

Dave linked to this story a while back, and I finally got around to checking it out: Saugus Union School District creates hot spot for collaboration, distance learning. The cool thing about this approach is that a school managed to get educators excited about social networking for themselves -- as personal professional development and as a communication tool -- before wading into the oh-so-scary world of students using the tools. Now that they're seeing the benefits, they want to get kids using it too. From there, it probably improves the chances of getting kids really learning as part of the wider web...help them learn in a safe place first and then gradually open things up. Elgg makes that progression relatively easy with flexible permissions. While I'd love to see schools diving straight into the deep end, this kind of approach probably makes more sense for most institutions.

New Systems for Sharing Learning Goals

2006-10-11T11:57:00.000-07:00

I think the intersection between learning goals and social software is heating up. The popularity of 43 Things must be contributing to the interest, and maybe some of my babbling here has helped moved things along, but I think there was probably a certain inevitability about it -- in environments where people are deciding what to learn, who to learn with and figuring out how to go about it, these tools could be really valuable.

George Siemens introduced the U of M's Virtual Learning Commons a few weeks ago and linked to a backgrounder on the project. I had it saved in Bloglines for too long, and thankfully Brian nudged me to take another look at it. It's a system for students to post their learning goals as a way of recording them, finding related resources and connecting with others who share the goal. It seems to be pretty slick, and even in the current closed mode (registered students only) with relatively few participants, it looks like there could be the critical mass to make it useful. George's note about it:

"It sets learning in a conversational spaces...knowledge as a pathway through connections with others...learning as a constant in life. I'm confident that this implementation of social learning (integrated with institutionally provided academic support) is a first indicator of more prominent trends. Learning not as an explicit task...but as a constant action."

I also got an e-mail about Learning Flow and Lee Kraus explains what it's for:

"LearningFlow is a web-based application that allows (you) the learner to identify learning goals, then associate resources from across the web to that particular learning goal. The goal can also be shared with others interested in learning that goal."

It's also got a pretty nice, simple interface and some cool features for sharing goals. The kicker with any system like this is that it depends on large numbers of users and goals to start being really valuable. Until you have a few people sharing a (often quite unique) learning goal, it's just a place to store yours. So we'll see if it catches on. Elgg integrated this kind of functionality last year as well, in the context of a much richer feature set -- I should ask Dave if he's received any feedback about it.

Update: Roger Stack is paying attention to these goal-based networks as well. He describes a cool program at his school where mentoring/counselling groups have formed around areas of interest.

Groups and Networks

2006-10-10T00:00:00.000-07:00

I've been enjoying Stephen Downes' recent writing, talking and showing on the distinction between groups and networks. On Half an Hour, he has two solid posts called Groups and That Group Feeling, and digs in really deep on a full-length paper: Learning Networks and Connective Knowledge. In multimedia territory, he's also got a video explaining the differences (Google Video), as shown in this whiteboard full of goodness, and also audio of one of his talks in New Zealand (mp3), covering somewhat broader territory.

I like how the concept of the personal learning environment pops up in all the right places, but I've been stewing on other personal connections to some of these differences between groups and networks. I got thinking about the kind of angst I had after blogging here for a year. I had been naively (and egotistically, I guess) expecting some sort of community to form around my blogging experience, but I didn't know what it should look like. I thought it should feel like joining and belonging to a group. At that time, Seb Paquet wisely pointed out that I had actually become part of a network, but Stephen's ideas now have really helped clarify what exactly that meant.

I also realized that some of my initial investigation into 43 Things was misguided because I was looking for people learning in groups; something more like the classroom discussion boards in the courses I had been taking. I thought that once you found a bunch of people who shared a learning goal, you would really have to become a "group" to learn much of anything that mattered. I noticed that there wasn't much evidence of conversation or interaction between the people sharing a learning goal and interpreted it as a potential weakness of the site as a learning space. But of course the people sharing a learning goal are part of an emergent, informal network. Stephen's main network words all apply: diversity, autonomy, openness, and connective. There is the potential for powerful learning, but it won't look like a cohesive, unified group of people busy learning something together.

The third thing that popped into my head was my grown-up hockey experiences. I played as a kid, up until I was 16 or so. In recent years, I've half-heartedly started playing again. Last winter, I tried two very different formats. I played a few games for a local old-timer's team, and I played noon-hour drop-in hockey a dozen or so times. It hit me last night that the contrast between the two formats is very similar to Stephen's differences between groups (the old-timer's team) and networks (noon-hour drop-in).

The team was all about unity (us vs the bad guys), coordination (scheduled games, annual fees, obligation to show up, set lines), closed (you had to be invited) and distributive (core group ran the show, stars were central). The noon-hour drop-in hockey was all about diversity (whoever shows up today plays, regardless of skill level or age), autonomy (you decide when you want to come, when you want to rest), openness (everyone welcome every time), and connective (over time you talk to many more individuals than you would have on a single team).

While it is true that there are benefits to playing on a team -- added motivation to support your teammates, more cohesive relationships, and beers after the games -- I found that the drawbacks way outweighed the benefits for me. At drop-in hockey, I played more often, learned more (more ice time, more variety), spent less money, met more interesting people, and just had more fun. It may be a personality thing (some people really do seem to thrive in groups of all kinds), but I think networks make more sense for me.

Space Blog

2006-09-26T13:46:00.000-07:00

So interesting to see someone's personal reflections on life in space: Anousheh Ansari Space Blog. Not sure if it counts as citizen journalism when she paid $20 million to get up there, but there's just something so cool about photos from the space station showing up on Flickr.

Xapped

2006-09-14T12:02:00.000-07:00

Web sites aim to open doors -- some positive coverage of the work being done by the new corporate parent of the company I've worked for since 1999.

U of M LTC

2006-09-01T11:29:00.000-07:00

George Siemens is going through Ch-ch-changes and moving over to my old alma mater the University of Manitoba as a research associate in their Learning Technologies Center. Looks like a great move, and I'm sure we'll all see the benefits of George being able to devote even more energy and time to this field. Congrats!

Paradox of Choice and Usability

2006-08-28T17:19:00.000-07:00

Interesting Interview with Barry Schwartz, who I've been paying close attention to for his work on decision-making and the paradox of choice. He makes the point that our institutions (health care, for example) are trying to move toward offering more choice (and not always for altruistic reasons), but that in many cases, people aren't properly prepared or supported in making these new decisions. A fair bit of the article deals with design issues, and how more choices on screens/pages isn't always better either...but I was most interested in his comment about choice in post-secondary education:

"And you see this all over. In the domain I know best, the world of academic institutions, increasingly, especially in the more selective places, they essentially don’t tell students what to do. They give you this gigantic list of courses, 'Take 10 of these and you will have met our liberal arts requirement. We don’t care which 10.' Here are these 18 year olds who don’t know squat, and people who do know something aren’t willing to tell them what they ought to do."

I think this is the sort of thing that 43 Things is providing for people who are trying to figure out what learning to pursue -- advice of others who have already pursued the same kinds of things and the support of others choosing the same goals. Things like professor-rating sites also add more to the mix in helping individuals make better-informed decisions about their learning. I expect lots of growth in this area...

Technocentric Reminiscing

2006-08-23T12:08:00.000-07:00

Seymour Papert wrote a version of this paper in the mid-'80s -- Computer Criticism vs. Technocentric Thinking -- shortly after the first time I was plunked in front of an Apple IIe and taught how to steer a turtle around the screen with LOGO, Papert's gift to the educational world at the time. It's interesting to me as a reminder that issues surrounding technology integration in education (and problems with research in the area) haven't changed much in 20 years:

"The 'treatment' methodology leads to a danger that all experiments with computers and learning will be seen as failures: either they are trivial because very little happened, or they are 'unscientific' because something real did happen and too many factors changed at once."

Using technology to its full potential in helping people learn will always require different goals and measures of learning than the ones currently propping up the education system. Although I remember enjoying time spent on TRS-80s in the '80s, our engagement was so old-school -- the exercises were completely abstract and disconnected from anything I knew or cared about. It was fun because it was new, but like everything else we were taught at the time, we had no idea why it mattered.

Of course a few kids "got it" and computers in general became a passion for them; the kind of thing they did for fun, programming simple games and other apps in BASIC. The rest of us quickly forgot what we had been taught, and didn't bother with computers again until we had to start handing in assignments written on word processors -- the first IT tools that had a tangible point for us.

Random Thought: Heresy

2006-08-16T16:01:00.000-07:00

A veteran educator compares student engagement in class with how they engage in outside activities, adding a (baker's) dozen observations and suggestions of his own.

"Let me give you my baker's dozen of answers why students are tuned into teams, troupes, units, fraternities, sororities, clubs, ensembles, combos; why these are a turn-on for students while they're generally turned off and tuned-out in the classroom; why the outside activities are indelibly tattooed onto their souls while the inside the classroom activities are seldom more than temporary ink:"

Paradoxes in Decision Making

2006-08-14T18:09:00.000-07:00

I've been researching decision making in my lit review, and I'm seeing that others are poking around the topic as well:

Fascinating thoughts from Artichoke on educational freedom and choice in The New Zealand Curriculum Draft for consultation 2006: A scaffold for dissatisfaction and depression. It's an exploration of the paradox of choice and how the research might apply to educational reforms designed to increase the amount of choice at many levels in the system.
I'm not sure about Lovaglia's Law -- "the more important the outcome of a decision, the more people will resist using evidence to make it" -- but there does seem to be some research indicating a kernel of truth. I also was looking into this stuff earlier in the year, and my thought then was that better tools and learning could help us make better complex decisions, rather than just throwing up your hands and following your gut (ignoring the evidence) when there are too many variables.
Psychologist Daniel Gilbert is studying how people envision the effects of their decisions (affective forecasting pdf) and finding that most of us are terrible at forecasting the future impact of decisions and events in our lives (check out illuminating Edge.org interviews here and here).
Paul Sas has studied what he has dubbed the Delmore Effect, which basically shows that "most people tend to set much more explicit goals for low priority domains than for their most important ambitions". There seems to be a common thread between his findings in goal-setting and decision-making, particularly in how we decide which goals to pursue (or learning goals, translating this to my research interest).

These few strands are all mixed up in a counterintuitive set of assumptions that seem all wrong:

the more important a decision is, the less likely we are to make a good (reasoned, evidence-based) decision
a decision with too many choices makes it so difficult to decide that the result tends to be disengagement rather than improved motivation
we make decisions based on our projections of the possible outcome, but those projections tend to be way off the mark, especially overestimating the impact of individual decisions
we tend to be better able to articulate (and probably pursue) goals that are less important to us

Instructional Music Mashup

2006-08-13T08:28:00.000-07:00

Brian was reflecting on his own learning a while back and I thought it was spot-on: Instructional music mash-up, and my inability to learn alone. He's learning to play the guitar, and finding no shortage of excellent resources to help him learn techniques and strategies, but he's finding that there's something missing:

"What I find myself wanting is some means of online social interaction that might begin to replicate the vastly superior learning experience of sitting down with a patient, friendly musician willing to share a few licks and tips."

As I mentioned in a comment on his post, I think this is something the 4600-ish people in 43 Things who are also learning to play guitar could benefit from too. The "network" that has formed around the learning goal there isn't so much about helping each other achieve the goal -- it seems to be more focused on helping people decide whether to pursue it in the first place, and how to get started. Once they've adopted or rejected the goal, very few return to participate in any meaningful way. It's like the assumption is that once you've started, the learning will take place in isolation (or at least elsewhere).

Update: Only obliquely related through the guitar theme, but I enjoyed this post from Bill Kerr about how offical education will be (or is being) left behind as people realize they can learn more about what they care about on their own, seeking out other people and resources as necessary. He was bouncing off of a video of a young guy playing a ripping version of Canon in D on his electric guitar, which has been viewed over 7 million times on YouTube...talk about reach.

Artichoke

2006-08-10T16:26:00.000-07:00

Artichoke's writing is seriously mindbending stuff. Check out this wickedly smart post: Why we will struggle to enculturate the key competencies. A quote:

"As any student will tell you our schools are not about preparing students to 'live a good life in a well functioning society' through the key competencies, and the current MoE focus on introducing them is exposing this. As one student claimed this year, 'how can schools be about developing student understanding of "managing self", when all they offer us at school is the "experience of being managed by others"?'"

This isn't just a throwaway criticism of the education system, though -- as boring and irrelevant as "competencies" sound, they are a valid attempt to balance the reach of curriculum with personal goals and skill development. In the process of exploring these ideas, Artichoke invokes some classic Gatto and links to one of my favourite interviews of all time: "Truth, Beauty, and Goodness: Education for All Human Beings" with Howard Gardner. Worth digging into...

Learning Is Messy

2006-08-09T17:19:00.000-07:00

Brian Crosby asks: Your Child's Dream Best School Day - What Does It Look Like? What Should It Be? He's been listening to the buzz on problem/project-based learning and throwing out a challenge to see what a real day of learning in a school setting would like like.

"If you are reading this you probably have some opinions, probably strong opinions about this, but have you ever thought about or planned a whole “typical” day? Here’s your challenge. Take your thoughts and biases and ideas and opinions and learning and experience and conversations and put them all together. Make it a comment here, or make it a post on your blog."

I'm only a few weeks away from sending my oldest daughter off to Kindergarten, so I have been thinking about these things. My challenge right now is more in accepting of what is, rather than spending time and energy envisioning better ways. Overall, it sounds like Kindergarten might be a better model for schooling than the grades that follow it, which lessens my anxiety about the coming year somewhat:

provide an environment with different kinds of learning areas or stations in the room, with lots of rich resources
provide lots of time where kids can choose which stations they want to spend time at, who they want to hang out with
have caring grown-ups available for resources and guidance, and to help guide behaviour when necessary
focus on personal expression and the arts, with lots of music and drawing
a focus on practical life skills (tying your shoes, telling time) and interpersonal skills (playing and working in groups)
have the kids in class two-and-a-half days a week, not five

The parts I'd like to change:

ringing the bell every 45 minutes to change to some new arbitrary task
starting at a set time every day -- why not start arrive and commence learning when it suits?
age segregation -- why not have more mixing of ages and abilities?
lessons paced to the slowest learners -- why force a five-year-old who is already writing her own stories to sit through "today, we're learning the letter D!" lessons?

So, I guess I've diverged a bit from Brian's original challenge...but I'm enjoying thinking about this one.

Why do we go overboard?

2006-08-07T22:38:00.000-07:00

Nancy White had a nice reflection on Blackboard, DOPA, and Control: Why do we go overboard? I was as interested in Chris Corrigan's passionate comments below it, triggered by the discussion of control in education. That reminded me that I've been saving his advice to graduates from around grad time, bouncing off of an inspirational post from Will and some collective genius:

"My advice would go something like this: forget everything school has taught you about what it means to learn. From now on you will grow and learn and acquire new skills and knowledge from the most unlikely places. Don’t look at the people at the front of the room for the answers, look at the four people sitting around you and engage them in a deep conversation. The answer lies there. Or if not the answer, the next question, and it is finding the next question that is going to keep you going for the next 70 years."

Self-Directed Learning Terms

2006-08-03T22:17:00.000-07:00

Any time you start studying something new, you realize pretty quickly that each area of interest has its own unique vocabulary. It's challenging to sort it all out, especially when individuals in each field seem to be intent on inventing new labels and terms for their own pet theories and ideas that aren't really that different from existing ones. In looking at self-directed learning, I found this very helpful list of Most Frequently Used Self-Directed Terms and Concepts, showing the main "Terms, Acronyms, and Concepts In All Books followed by Total Times Used" from ten years of research in the field:

Autodidactic (learning) 85 (2) Derivative 124
Autonomous learning 56 (2) Derivative 36
Learning projects 231 (149)
OCLI (Oddi Continuous Learning Inventory) 102 (15)
SDLR (Self-directed learning readiness) 188
SDLRS (Self-Directed Learning Readiness Scale) 1299 (35)
Self-directed learner 436 (59)a
Self-directed learning 2833 (502)
Self-direction in adult learning 104 (2)
Self-direction in learning 82 (24)
Self-education 105 (5)
Self-efficacy 107b
Self-planned learning 118 (41)
Self-taught adults 109 (2)

Source and Value

2006-08-02T14:55:00.000-07:00

David Warlick has been taking a look at the role of libraries in learning. One thread running through his posts is on the importance of a learner determining the value of information in relation to their own goals. As I'm paying close attention to the value and formation of learning goals right now, I wanted to save a bit of Libraries: Shift 2:

"As you recall, I suggested that as information continues to change, becoming more and more critical to our endeavors and, at the same time, less finely defined by its containers (or lack there of), then its consideration becomes less based on its source and more on its value, in terms of the goals we are trying to achieve."

B.C. Grad Portfolios Scrapped

2006-07-27T11:30:00.000-07:00

This is pretty big news here in BC. One one hand, it's frustrating to think of all of the wasted time and money that went into this portfolio initiative, but on the other, it's a fascinating case study in the difficulty of implementing these programs on a large scale. It makes me wonder if this will be the first of many similar portfolio implementations that quietly go away now that the e-portfolio buzz has cooled. A quote:

"The program was designed to showcase students' efforts in arts, sports, employment skills and health — to help them get jobs and enter post-secondary education.

But Bond told CBC Radio that parents, teachers and students have been complaining about the time it takes to put the portfolio together."

Well...ummm...yeah, these things do take time to put together properly. Perhaps that's why they should have allocated some time and guidance through Grade 11 and 12 to help kids do them right. The writing was on the wall two years ago and in Helen Barrett's more recent take on the same issue.

Dandelife

2006-07-27T08:18:00.000-07:00

Dandelife is a neat tool for creating personal histories, complete with a very nice timeline view and connections to other people's stories. It slurps in Flickr photos and you don't have to stretch it too far to picture it as an interesting e-portfolio representation. Check out a profile for a taste.

High School Confidential

2006-07-22T09:34:00.000-07:00

In High School Confidential, author Douglas Coupland reminisces about his experiences in high school while participating in an art project that involves demolishing parts of a decommissioned school:

"I say the smartest—well, basically smart, and yet not at all. High school wasn't hard. I don't think you have to be smart to get through high school. High school's a reasonably easy-to-decode game. Half the people in my class could have finished the academic requirements by grade nine. I read these gee-whiz articles about home-schooled kids who 'graduate' five years early and say to myself, 'Yeah, well, duh.' I think high school is mostly about crowd control and keeping young troublemakers off the streets."

Lit-Review Concept Map #2

2006-07-20T16:40:00.000-07:00

For those following along at home, I've done an updated concept map of the literature I'm reviewing for my thesis. The primary difference is that I've combined social and self-directed learning into one big section, and added a third section for decision-making.

Finding anything related to decision-making in educational research is proving difficult, probably because the there are so few real decisions for most students. I'm interested in how people decide what to learn when they are intrinsically motivated. How do we decide which learning goals to pursue out of the infinite pool of potential knowledge and skills?

I also changed the title of the diagram to reflect the fact that it's not really my thesis yet -- it's just what I'm digging into for the framework.

Free Training (Buy Our Stuff)

2006-07-19T11:02:00.000-07:00

Interesting use of online learning materials for marketing products by Nike Bauer. Their current hockey-themed ad campaign focuses on off-season training, and they've included short, high-quality instructional videos for at least 60 different excercises (click "Training" in the top toolbar, then "Exercises"). They can be downloaded as well. To get a full training program ("My Regimen"), you have to register, which I suppose signs you up for an advertising barrage.

Self-Directed Learning

2006-07-15T22:53:00.000-07:00

A quick and useful Eric Digest on Self-Directed Learning. A taste:

"Learners exercise a great deal of independence in setting learning goals and deciding what is worthwhile learning as well as how to approach the learning task within a given framework."

Choices Planner Review

2006-07-14T15:45:00.000-07:00

I keep forgetting to link to this review of Choices Planner from last year. A good chunk of my work life in the past two years has been devoted to the design, enhancement and maintenance of this particular career and education planning web app, so I was happy to see that it didn't get slagged -- a very friendly review overall.

Jere Brophy

2006-07-13T13:44:00.000-07:00

I'm doing some research into motivation and learning right now. It's surprising how rare it is to see people openly acknowledge that most educational research on motivation implies coersion -- basically trying to answer the question: "how do we get people to do something they otherwise would not?". I'm not finding much research focusing on how people choose what they want to learn, a process which inherently reflects motivation (what do I want and why?).

In An Interview with Jere Brophy (pdf), this psychologist, researcher and educational leader outlines the paradox of motivation and education:

"What we know about optimal conditions for motivation is difficult to apply in classrooms, for several reasons. First, school attendance is compulsory, and curriculum content and learning activities are selected primarily on the basis of what society believes students need to learn, not on the basis of what students would choose to do if given the opportunity. Schools are established for the benefit of students, but from students’ point of view, time spent in the classroom is devoted to enforced attempts to meet externally imposed demands."

And another:

"I believe that the constraints under which most teachers work make it unrealistic to adopt intrinsic motivation as the model of student motivation that one seeks to maintain on an all-day, everyday basis. It is more realistic for teachers to seek to develop and sustain what I call motivation to learn, which I define as a student tendency to find academic activities meaningful and worthwhile and to seek to get the intended learning benefits from them, whether or not they find the content interesting or the processes enjoyable."

Thesis Concept Map

2006-07-05T11:42:00.000-07:00

I've been struggling a bit with my literature review this week, mostly because I get overwhelmed by the possibilities when I start following rabbit trails. My challenge is to narrow the scope and not go so deep on every topic. To help me focus, I've done another concept map showing my main areas (goal-setting/motivation, social learning and self-directed learning), along with subtopics and influential authors for each.

A few people pointed to Gliffy a couple of weeks ago, and I remembered to try it when I needed to do this concept map this week. It makes it so easy to create diagams online -- you don't have to download any software, the interface is slick and intuitive, exporting and saving is easy, it's got a collaborative workspace...methinks this one is a winner. Makes you wonder if anyone will be purchasing basic software five years from now.

E-Learning Queen on Goal-Setting

2006-06-27T14:06:00.000-07:00

Susan Smith Nash posted Goal-Setting and Self-Regulation in Online Courses (and an accompanying podcast) late last year. She focuses on the role of goal setting and motivation in learning (not just in online courses), which I'm digging into right now -- fascinating stuff.

Etienne Wenger on Communities of Practice

2006-06-26T16:56:00.000-07:00

Like most of what I've been thinking about and linking to this week, this isn't really new. I just hadn't seen this excellent page containing an interview with and presentation by Etienne Wenger on Communities of Practice last year. It's all Flash videos, nicely chunked and indexed (although it would be great to be able to link to individual pieces). It covers all kinds of meaty concepts, including the shift to learning as "negotiation of mutual relevance" between people. Powerful stuff, methinks:

"You see the difference between 'learning as curriculum' and 'learning as a journey of the self'. One of the most important aspects of the course is, people discover a new identity, they get connected. The meaning of the technology is mostly, I'm connected to the world in a new way. So I ask, to what extent can learning with technology create new possibilities for learning, a journey of the self, a social journey, of moving through the world..."

Digging around a bit, I found Stephen Downes' summary notes from a similar presentation (the quote above is from the notes), some slides and an older paper of Wenger's (1998) that still rings true: Communities of Practice: Learning as a Social System. Wenger's homepage appears to be down, but may be up later.

Next-day update: His site is back up, and through it I found another great interview that's bending my brain right now.

Informal Learning Practices

2006-06-23T17:47:00.000-07:00

Exploring the Icebergs of Adult Learning: Findings of the First Canadian Survey of Informal Learning Practices (pdf)
Excellent overview of informal learning, including workable definitions, and the results of the study are fascinating:

"This paper summarizes the first large-scale, country-wide survey of the informal learning activities of Canadian adults (N=1562) which was conducted in 1998. After defining informal learning and briefly reviewing prior studies, the major findings on Canadian adults' schooling and current participation in both further education courses and informal learning activities related to employment, housework, community work and general interests are presented. According to their self-reports, Canadians are now averaging about 15 hours a week in informal learning activities--regardless of prior schooling or current further education involvement."

This also reminds me that I've had Jay Cross's excellent article What is Informal Learning? saved in my bloglines account for a whole month already. It's full of gems like this:

"Informal learning and formal learning are at opposite ends of the learning spectrum. Informal learning is the unofficial, unscheduled, impromptu way most people learn to do their jobs. Informal learning is like riding a bicycle: the rider chooses the destination and the route. The cyclist can take a detour at a moment’s notice to admire the scenery or help a fellow rider."

Learning Communities

2006-06-23T17:02:00.000-07:00

I've been digging into the concept of learning communities today and had good luck in Stephen's topic page for learning communities. Some good finds, which were mostly review, but still valuable:

Stephen's Learning in Communities article for Australian Flexible Learning a couple of years ago. Good learning communities foster better learning, a sense of commitment to the community, learning beyond the content, and reduce the workload of experts in the community as people help each other. He also shares eight points on what makes a learning community successful.
George Siemens' article on Learning Ecology, Communities, and Networks was also good to read again -- it's clear and practical, with some interesting examples. I'm realizing that my research focus is very narrow, captured by one small sentence in his paper: "Exploration, decision making, selecting, deselecting are all preparatory activities before we even enter the learning experience (the learning experience being defined as the moment when we actively acquire the knowledge that is missing in order for us to complete the needed tasks or solve a problem)."
I like the characteristics of a good learning environment in Distributed Learning Communities: An Alternative to Designed Instructional Systems (Word doc) --"distributed control; commitment to the generation and sharing of new knowledge; flexible and negotiated learning activities; autonomous community members; high levels of dialogue, interaction, and collaboration; a shared goal, problem, or project that brings a common focus and incentive to work together."

The question I'm grappling with is whether 3245 people sharing a learning goal like "learn Japanese" in 43 Things is a learning community by existing definitions. One guy in there even built his own learning object and shared it. If it does fit the definitions, then 43 Things has hundreds of learning communities, which is remarkable, really.

Linking thinking: Self-directed learning in the digital age

2006-06-23T15:53:00.000-07:00

At more than 350 pages, Linking Thinking: Self-directed learning in the digital age (pdf) is a full online book -- even just the executive summary is a significant read. The Australian focus isn't so localized as to be intrusive. This is an impressive overview of current trends in self-directed learning by Philip C. Candy from 2004. I appreciated his distinction between self-direction and learner control:

"At the beginning of this chapter I alluded to the fact that there is a large body of literature pertaining to the phenomenon of online learning. Of that literature, the greater proportion focuses on learning in the context of being taught, although there are many references to concepts such as independent, self-paced, self-directed, autonomous or otherwise learner-managed learning. On closer examination, however, the majority of this literature actually turns out to refer to a severely circumscribed kind of independence, in which the learner is ‘permitted’ to take control over a relatively narrow range of choices."

Less is More

2006-06-23T12:01:00.000-07:00

Jason Fried of 37 Signals talks about the process of building great web apps, with a focus on simplicity and choosing to create very specific tools. Lots of good common-sense advice with some smart counterintuitive ideas. Listen on the post page, or download the 5mb 12-minute mp3.

Self-Direction in Adult Learning

2006-06-22T15:20:00.000-07:00

Self-Direction in Adult Learning is a book from 1991 that was put online by the authors after it went out of print (gotta love that). I was most interested in Chapter 5, which focused on qualitative studies on self-directed learning, and includes a look at historical figures who became experts in their fields without formal training or education. I was interested in this one about how people decide on and pursue self-directed learning experiences:

"Spear and Mocker's conclusions, which seem to challenge the oft-accepted view that self-directed learning is a clearly deliberate, well-planned, and linear series of episodes are reflected in the following statement: 'Because self-directed learning occurs in a natural environment dominated by chance elements and is in contrast to the artificial and controlled elements which characterize formal instructional environments, it seems useful to investigate the possibly differing effects of the natural environments on the learning process.'"

I think it is generally true that informal learning tends to not be very goal-oriented, but I wonder why this is. Are we more process-oriented when we pursue learning for ourselves? Is it because we don't have good tools or experiences to set goals and seek out specific resources that match those goals?

Another section summarized the findings from a study on self-directed learning done in the '80s. A couple of them:

"The ways people talked about how they go about their self-directed learning varied, but most referred to visualizing the end state of the learning goal before they entered into the effort. Suggests further exploration of the process of visualization as a guide or motivating phenomena in self-directed learning.

Learning since leaving school has been varied, challenging and meaningful. People commented on how much more they have learned outside of the public school context. They enjoy self-directed learning because they can do it at their own pace and without anybody judging them. This is consistent with findings from other research on self-directed learning. Suggests self-directed learning should be taken seriously as an alternative form of learning."

Following this section, there's a bit about libraries as resource centers for self-directed learners. It's ok, but the absence of the web from older articles like this is downright jolting: "As for the resources made available to learners, it is clear that the book remains the primary resource utilized by library learners." This seems almost hilarious now, at least to those of us who have spent the last decade learning as much online as from books or libraries. It makes me wonder how much the web (and our recent experience using it to learn) has raised our expectations for self-directed learning and forced us to question the fundamentals of traditional schooling more than ever.

Online Self-Organizing Social Systems

2006-06-21T12:35:00.000-07:00

David Wiley was kind enough to direct me to a paper he wrote with Erin K. Edwards a few years back: Online Self-organizing Social Systems: The Decentralized Future of Online Learning. I had seen references to it, but couldn't find a copy. This look at online self-organizing social systems ("OSOSS") from a learning perspective is similar to papers I found earlier from David Passmore. Passmore also looked at PerlMonks (my thoughts here) and investigated learning in Slashdot (my thoughts here), and came to similar conclusions. From Wiley and Edwards:

"While none of the existing OSOSS consider themselves learning communities, learning is happening among their users, and happening in an extremely innovative manner."

I'm seeing some evidence to support this in 43 Things, especially in reference to explicit learning communities that form around learning goals.

The Failure of Constructivism

2006-06-20T17:46:00.000-07:00

When you title a paper like this, you're bound to attract some attention in educational circles: Why Minimally Guided Instruction Does Not Work: An Analysis of the Failure of Constructivist, Discovery, Problem-Based, Experiential, and Inquiry-Based Teaching. From the abstract:

"Evidence for the superiority of guided instruction is explained in the context of our knowledge of human cognitive architecture, expert-novice differences, and cognitive load. While unguided or minimally-guided instructional approaches are very popular and intuitively appealing, the point is made that these approaches ignore both the structures that constitute human cognitive architecture and evidence from empirical studies over the past half century that consistently indicate that minimally-guided instruction is less effective and less efficient than instructional approaches that place a strong emphasis on guidance of the student learning process."

It provides some really good food for thought, and the authors support their positions well. After the first quick read, I thought it introduced sufficient doubt about the effectiveness of these approaches. I suspect they're measuring "success" differently (and in different areas) than I might, and probably haven't gone far enough in assessing the difficulty of properly implementing these approaches in educational systems built on an industrial model...but I'm going to have to let it linger a bit.

Thanks to Evan for the tip.

Subversive Use and Volatile Design

2006-06-19T14:09:00.000-07:00

Papers from 1999 are starting to sound like old news, but it's a shame when gems like this one are overlooked -- Educational Software and Learning: Subversive Use and Volatile Design (pdf) by the late David Squires. It charts the movement toward learner-centred constructivist experiences and environments and the inherent contradictions in trying to create them for a system which dictates what, when and how things should be learned in education:

"The focus of constructivism is on learner control, with learner’s making decisions which match their own cognitive state and their own needs. Thus we are left with a paradox if a we accept a constructivist view of learning: In trying to design effective learning environments we may at the same time constrain the levels of freedom necessary for learners to make decisions about their own learning."

As I read this, I envisioned a scenario where an enthusiastic, progressive instructor opens a course by saying, "I know this course was required (you didn't choose it), was scheduled according to the school's timetable (not yours), the curriculum and assessment standards were pre-determined (without your involvement) and my teaching is being assessed based on your scores on a standardized test at the end of the course. Within those constraints, I'm going to try to make the course as learner-centred as possible." Good luck with that. This is certainly what I was trying to get at in my post about personal learning environments:

"I'm not even sure that it can be created or designed by someone for someone else. Just as each person's desires, abilities and past experiences are different, each person's personal learning environment should be their own unique combination of tools, networks and methods that help them accomplish their goals."

Can an instructional designer, curriculum developer or instructor actually create learning environments for someone else that are truly personal? Back to Squires' paper, where he proposes two solutions to the paradox of constructivist learning in top-down education systems:

"First, educational users of ICT can subvert the design of software to meet their own needs, i.e. through the way in which they use software, teachers and learners can recast the designer’s intentions."

And the next:

"The second solution is to recognise the essentially subversive nature of the educational use of ICT and deliberately design for such use. Rather than design with constraint in mind, design with freedom and flexibility in mind. From a design perspective I call this ‘incorporated subversion’."

Most people in ed.tech circles will recognize that nifty phrase as the name of James Farmer's online home, which was was inspired by the paper. Ever practical, he referenced this ethos again three years ago and concluded: "Quite simply until the prevailing approach of online education steps away from passivity, control and the figures, simply providing the tools won’t work." I think James nailed it here.

Although I love the spirit of Squires' paper and feel that the paradox he identifies is perhaps The Big One in education, I wish he had been able to take his prescriptions a few steps further into the realm of true learner-centred experiences and environments; ones where individual learners chose their topics, learning peers, resources and schedules that reflected their personal goals, needs, interests and limitations.

Via Mark van Harmelen's PLE wiki.

Trends in Social Networking Sites

2006-06-18T11:49:00.000-07:00

Fred Stutzman is researching social networking and finding some very interesting things. In Social Networking: Five Sites You Need to Know, he covers some of the less well-known social networking sites with more global reach, and expands on three of the main trends he's seeing:

"Social networking is becoming content-centric.
Social networking is the vanguard of micropayment.
Social networking for the sake of social networking just doesn't cut it."

Via Michael Habib

Teacher's new "PET"

2006-06-17T15:50:00.000-07:00

In this interview from 2000, the late David Squires outlines his vision for Peripatetic Electronic Teachers, freelance instructors who attract students globally. While the idea isn't new (as he points out), he covers all kinds of interesting ideas in the subsequent discussion:

"Higher education is becoming much more market driven with a heavier emphasis on client led delivery. Learners now want bespoke learning experiences that match their needs and interests. This corresponds with the notion of the Internet as a market driven social space. Within this space there will be a role for entrepreneurs - freelance teachers who use the features of new technologies to create and deliver learning experiences."

And this:

"It is essential that the Education Establishment engages in the Information Society issue now so that it can have an influential - hopefully the most influential - voice in the developments of technology-mediated learning and teaching. If not other agents - the mega-publishers, telecom infrastructure providers etc. - will take sole/primary charge of education."

Required High School Portfolios

2006-06-16T14:27:00.000-07:00

Helen Barrett's take on Required High School Portfolios rings true for me, partly because she's using my home province's graduation portfolios as an example of how not to do it. It reminded me of some of the feedback I heard from teachers two years ago when the intitiative was announced.

Via Downes

Won't You Be My Neighbor?

2006-06-15T12:51:00.000-07:00

Why link to this video of Mr. Rogers speaking at a Senate hearing in 1969? Because it's a passionate defense of an earlier educational technology, and of good teaching in general. He talks quite emotionally about offering an "expression of care" to children as the main purpose of his show. The gruff senator warms up throughout and says at one point that he's got goosebumps. Mr. Rogers' response:

"Well, I'm grateful, not only for your goosebumps, but for your interest in our kind of communication."

Fascinating stuff.

MySpace or SchoolSpace?

2006-06-12T13:05:00.000-07:00

Dave asked last week: Why worry about Myspace/Facebook?

"The thing is, education is never going to be as attractive for most as sex, music, relationships and so on - so why even bother wasting time thinking about it? Surely the question is; how can we utilise the potential this connective software has given us to enhance formal and informal learning for those who want to use it?"

He summarizes some of the recent discussion about attempts to adopt/integrate/co-opt the success of social-networking sites like MySpace and The Facebook for educational use in schools. Although he's finding it a "little dull" , I think it he's hitting something important here, and we've been continuing the discussion in the comments section of his post.

Learning and Failing

2006-06-12T11:09:00.000-07:00

George linked to, and pulled a great quote about the difficulty of real learning out of Lanny Arvan's post:

"'Learning is about failing, repeated failing.' It is uncomfortable being in a state either of complete ignorance or having the awkward feeling of partial knowledge, it is ego deflating when initial stabs produce less than satisfactory results, and to the extent that learning is viewed by students as a competitive sport, it also raises the fear that the others are progressing along so nicely and it is only this particular student who is not getting it, so he is falling behind."

This is what I was trying to articulate about the the choice to pursue learning goals -- although we say we want to learn to surf, the reality is that the learning is likely going to be painful and difficult. We want to be able to surf, preferably without the pain of learning. Lanny also touches on the issue at the core of personal learning environments and self-directed learning:

"What I want to talk about in this post is teaching really bright kids, especially early on in college, and getting them to make intellectual leaps in their thinking and to begin to get them to consider that is their lot in life and how they should spend their time."

Students (me included) have always had the latter decision made for us in school, which means we haven't properly developed our skills in deciding how to spend our "learning time". We might get very good at time management within the parameters set out for us, but we're not good at deciding what is most worth our attention and how it fits into the goals for our lives.

Engagement with Electronic Portfolios

2006-06-10T17:00:00.000-07:00

I've had Engagement with Electronic Portfolios: Challenges from the Student Perspective saved for a while. The main strength of the paper is that the researchers focused on how students were receiving e-portfolio implementations in their programs, rather than looking at the usual institutional impact. A quote:

"Therefore, it is important that the e-portfolio is not viewed like other forms of assessment or assignments which students are required to undertake but may feel little sense of ownership in. The e-portfolio is (or should be) part of a student-owned, student-centred approach to learning which makes it possible for students to actively engage in their learning rather than just be the recipients of information."

I agree with these goals, but I'm still having a hard time seeing this happening in the context of our existing education system. There is so little in formal education (characterized by courses, scheduling, curriculum, and traditional instruction) that gives any real power to learners that I think our expectation for their ability or desire to embrace e-portfolios (as currently conceived) in the context of courses and programs is unrealistic.

That said, I also think that the philosophy underpinning good e-portfolios could be a driver for change in that same system. It's not difficult to envision a university degree that was really personal -- letting learners choose topics from any discipline and any school, helping them work in self-assembled networks, directing them to people and resources that will interest them most, letting them work at their own pace, valuing (and offering credit for) experience and learning outside of the institution (PLA), etc, etc... Once you go down that road, the e-portfolio (or personal learning environment, or whatever you call it) becomes essential for the people managing all aspects (topics, applications, networks, projects, timing) of their own learning experiences.

A Typology of User Experience Pleasures

2006-06-05T13:08:00.000-07:00

Great teachers would probably understand immediately how each of these examples of cognitive seduction help people learn things. Kathy Sierra is talking about designing experiences for users of software, but wouldn't it be great if school was set up with these goals in mind? When's the last time you took a course that stimulated or contained even a handful of these feelings or elements? Her checklist could be used for designing learning experiences:

"1. Discovery
User experience as exploration of new territory
2. Challenge
User experience as obstacles to overcome, goals lying just beyond current skill and knowledge levels
3. Narrative
User experience as story arc (user on hero's journey) and character identification
4. Self-expression
User experience as self-discovery and creativity
5. Social framework
User experience as an opportunity for interaction/fellowship with others
6. Cognitive Arousal
User experience as brain teaser
7. Thrill
User experience as risk-taking with a safety net
8. Sensation
User experience as sensory stimulation
9. Triumph
User experience as opportunity to kick ass
10. Flow
User experience as opportunity for complete concentration, extreme focus, lack of self-awareness
11. Accomplishment
User experience as opportunity for productivity and success
12. Fantasy
User experience as alternate reality
13. Learning
User experience as opportunity for growth and improvement"

More on Personal Learning Environments

2006-06-05T02:47:00.000-07:00

Although I haven't been posting much lately, I've still been following the ongoing discussion on personal learning environments. Of particular interest were Graham Attwell's in-depth coverage and this PLE wiki page initiated and maintained by Mark van Harmelen.

Let's Face(book) It

2006-05-29T23:35:00.000-07:00

Good post on the growing desire for schools to integrate (co-opt?) technologies students are already using on their own: Let's Face(book) It. As I've said before, I think this strategy is doomed. Institutions creating their own social software spaces (blogging apps, e-portfolios, social-networking systems) to try to harness student interest will soon see tumbleweeds rolling through and not much else. Even educators who figure out how to use the tools for meeting curriculum goals will only ever get students to jump through hoops with these apps -- the needs of the institution and the real goals of students are too different. Stephen's comment is spot-on, and he also links to some further discussion.

Interest Level More Important Than Marks

2006-05-29T13:29:00.000-07:00

Not really surprising, but still interesting -- high-school students' level of interest in the sciences is a better predictor of their success in the field later in life than their marks in science courses -- Early education key to scientific career choice:

"The findings suggest that mandatory testing policies, such as the No Child Left Behind Law promoted by the Bush administration as a solution to low-performing US schools, might worsen the nation's output of scientists by distracting teachers from field trips and other activities that stimulate student interest in sciences, Tai said."

New Skills For A New Century

2006-05-24T11:22:00.000-07:00

Practical and powerful article from Edutopia on project-based learning: New Skills For A New Century. They've also got a whole content section devoted to the topic.

On a related note, Stephen linked to Christopher Sessum's excellent account of visiting a school doing project-based learning. My current interest in this topic stems from my thesis work, which is partly dealing with how people choose interesting projects (through learning goals). What if curriculum wasn't pre-defined and people could choose what (and how) to learn?

Change Happens

2006-05-24T10:28:00.000-07:00

A little e-learning industry news: Xap Corporation To Acquire Bridges Transitions (pdf). This is significant for me because Bridges has been my employer here in the Okanagan since 1999, and Xap is a company from California. Should be interesting to see what happens.

Communicating Design Concepts

2006-05-15T13:16:00.000-07:00

Just a virtual bookmark for this wise article on communicating design concepts -- these are issues I deal with every week in designing features and sites with prototypes, wireframes, mockups and design documentation...and don't always get it right.

Literature Review in Informal Learning

2006-05-11T23:14:00.000-07:00

I still need to dig further into Futurelab's literature review in informal learning with technology outside school:

"This review focuses specifically on children's informal learning with technologies outside school. It brings together the existing research in the field to create a map of this digital ecology of education, discussing what we know about which children have access to these technologies, what they are using them for and the implications of this use for learning. Most significantly, however, it summarises the extent to which the research in this area is beginning to raise fundamental questions about how children learn and, consequently, whether we need to re-examine the design of our formal education system."

Flat Classrooms and New Schools

2006-05-11T23:07:00.000-07:00

All kinds of big-thinking goodness about self-directed learning models in education:

Holistic and Integral Education: Flat Classrooms, bouncing off Warlick's Flat Classrooms
What if everything we think about school is wrong? This one was triggered by the fantastic Fairhaven School video, which seems to have popped up all over the place (more info here).
Karen Remeis responded with: A different approach to school, somewhat skeptical about how many students will be motivated to learn in any kind of self-directed way.
Albert Ip's follow-up post goes deeper.

Mostly via Stephen.

Seb's Open Research

2006-05-05T10:08:00.000-07:00

I seem to have missed the return of Seb's Open Research a couple of weeks ago, but I'm glad to see it back. In the first volley of excellent posts, I thought his coverage of a conference session by Intuit's Scott Cook was top-notch, digging into innovation, user-focused design, and smart software development.

Social Software and the Co-Creation of Knowledge

2006-05-03T10:14:00.000-07:00

Social Software and the Co-Creation of Knowledge is a quick post with a fairly simple question: "If social software supports the notion of individual choice, how does it best serve formal educational environments?" I know there have been examples of creative teachers finding ways to integrate these tools effectively, but I think they're really having to swim upstream, often having to ignore or stretch their curriculum constraints. And I'm glad they are -- in radical moments, I'd just as soon see most teachers chuck the curriculum in favour of guiding students toward the topics and projects that fascinate them most, regardless of the subject area. For that process, social software could become the primary way to learn. Anyway...great discussion in the comments to Christopher Sessum's post, and his follow-up post is excellent as well.

Designing Interfaces

2006-04-10T12:19:00.000-07:00

Designing Interfaces is a book, but the accompanying site is a valuable resource as well. It lists interaction patterns for web sites and applications, describing each one and explaining when, how and why it is used. A nice toolkit if you're looking at designing something new for the web.

Close Down the Schools

2006-04-06T13:01:00.000-07:00

Pat Kane's big idea for 2006 channels some Ivan Illich. He visited a group of pre-teens to talk to (and ask them about) digital tools in their lives, and found a total disconnect between the richness of their online worlds and what they're "learning" in class:

"All of them were actively involved in digital creativity in one form or another, from making fan websites with up to 60,000 hits, through coding Flash animations for their friends, to arranging music downloads for underground Glaswegian rap artists. But none of them saw any connection between this intrinsically motivated, rawly enterprising lifestyle -- where trade, hacking, self-skilling and peer-to-peer co-operation was the norm -- and any part of the curriculum they were receiving at school. And this was a computer studies class."

OLDaily

2006-03-21T11:21:00.000-08:00

I miss OLDaily. Not in a crying-in-my-beer sort of way, just feeling the absence.

Electronic Portfolios for Whom?

2006-03-21T09:07:00.000-08:00

Javier I. Ayala is looking at the literature on e-portfolios and seeing that the current research focuses almost entirely on assessment and meeting curricular outcomes instead of student-centered learning: Electronic Portfolios for Whom?

"To date, administrators and other change agents have capably articulated the importance of electronic portfolios; hence you might infer that the talk is matched with a walk in line with student needs and concerns. I argue that this is far from the case. In fact, much of what passes under the rubric of student needs and concerns in relation to electronic portfolios is nothing more than an attempt to solve curricular issues that have plagued higher education for decades, the least of them being student learning."

Thanks to the FutureMeter at XplanaZine. I keep rediscovering it, thinking how awesome it is, and then forgetting to subscribe -- a reminder from think:lab finally sealed the deal today.

Emergent Learning and Connecting with the Field

2006-03-08T10:57:00.000-08:00

My friend Chris Corrigan shares some of his family's experience with unschooling in emergent learning and connecting with the field. The unschooling label scares many people, even more so than the homeschooling label. But what the Corrigans are doing isn't scary at all -- it's a rich, varied, caring approach to learning that really rings true for me.

"So this is what my kids continue to teach me. Create a caring and supportive environment, live by the principle that whenever it starts is the right time, and watch as learning happens."

A Space on the Web That We Control

2006-03-06T21:40:00.000-08:00

Elgg is getting some much-deserved positive attention these days -- this mainstream article from the Guardian gives a nice overview of the basic uses: A Space on the Web That We Control.

Individualized Education Plans

2006-03-04T21:51:00.000-08:00

I Speak of Dreams links the concepts of the Personal Learning Environment (PLE) with Individual Education Plans (IEP) and Personalized Learning Plan (PLP) in her post about Differentiating Education. IEPs have traditionally been used for special-needs students, but she points to a charter school now offering/requiring a version of them for every student -- and really, why shouldn't every learner have an individualized plan for what they're going to be learning and how they might do that best?

Classrooms as Studios -- Personal Doing Environments

2006-03-02T10:33:00.000-08:00

Great thoughts from Remote Access (bouncing off an excellent post from David Warlick) on the idea of classrooms as studios:

"It is an intense, team-oriented, creative space where people are driven to create high-quality products. Studios are focused areas, and unfortunately in the case of the classroom, they may be too much so. In our splintered systems where kids need to 'cover' hundreds of outcomes in a single school year, the studio may provide too much depth and not enough breadth to make legislators happy. Make no mistake about it, kids can focus and be creative for long periods of time if they are working on issues they are concerned with and about."

So here you've got a motivated, innovative teacher who wants to let kids focus on the stuff that matters to them...but is finding it at odds with the goals of the system. I love the studio metaphor, and you could add others as well: lab, workshop or any other place where you learn the things you need to know in order to actually do something of value, to accomplish a goal you care about.

Perhaps this is the real model for the personal learning environment -- an organizing concept for an individual's physical and digital spaces containing the physical and virtual tools they will need to accomplish their goals. In an educational mindset, we might think the learning itself is the important thing, but really we're talking about doing, with learning as something that happens in the process of pursuing meaningful goals. Sometimes learning for its own sake could be the goal, but I suspect that most people aren't motivated in that way. Working on projects, creating new things, solving difficult problems -- these all require learning, but if I could accomplish those things without learning anything, I'd still do them, as long as the projects and problems were worth spending time and energy on.

This wouldn't interest me quite so much if I wasn't immersed in the idea of learning goals. I'm studying explicit learning goals in 43 Things, goals like "I want to learn to surf" and "I want to learn to speak Spanish". But when I think about my own experience, I realize that learning can be painful and disruptive and embarrassing enough to make me not want to try something in the first place. My actual goal is probably more like: "I want to surf" and "I want to speak Spanish". The learning might be what will get me there, but it's not the goal itself.

Thanks to George for the pointer.

Update: Clarence is reflecting more this topic...great stuff.

Seblogging PLEs

2006-03-01T09:22:00.000-08:00

Sebastian Fiedler captures much of the recent PLE buzz and offers his own excellent take on the topic:

"I treat personal learning environments more as a psychological perspective. What forms my 'personal learning environment' at a given point in time, and for a particular purpose or goal (that drives a learning project), is largely determined by the range of resources that I am able to perceive, locate, link to, access, manage, and so forth."

Google Scholar

2006-02-28T15:07:00.000-08:00

I've been doing my lit review and searching for things like learning goals on Google Scholar. While the service works well, it makes you realize how much academic writing is still controlled by for-fee journals. It's so frustrating to find a great reference and then only get access to the abstract without paying $40 or whatever to read the rest. The web has changed our expectations for content like this.

Community Study

2006-02-24T12:27:00.000-08:00

43 Things is still relatively new, so it's not surprising that there hasn't been much research done on it yet. A month ago I found 43 Things: A Community Study by Michael C. Habib, but I keep forgetting to post about it. It's more of an overview than an in-depth study, but there are some gems inside:

While some goals are related to 43 Things or elsewhere on-line, most goals will be carried out in a users offline life. Consequently, many of the entries are about progress in a users everyday life. It would then follow, that suggestions and ideas gained from other users of 43 Things are primarily being utilized off-line. This makes 43 Things a wonderful example of how weak ties and social networking online can be integrated into one's everyday life. This backs up the ideas presented in "The Internet and Everyday Life" (ed. Wellman and Haythornthwaite, 2002).

Usability for Rich Internet Applications

2006-02-24T10:27:00.000-08:00

Not explicitly education-related, but Usability for Rich Internet Applications covers some of the patterns and design elements emerging in the current web apps. Think Flash is dead for primary web interfaces? Check out Fidelity Labs' Mortgage Search -- it's got clean navigation, a nice look, and quick interaction -- this could make a great learning object.

Tower of Babel

2006-02-21T22:19:00.000-08:00

Babel Fish is hilarious sometimes. I got this gem translated from a Dutch post:

"Therefore here a vaster diagram of Jeremy Hiebert comes."

Wouldn't that make a great new blog tagline for headspacej? It would be fun to see a diagram of myself, more vast or not. I've been noticing a lot more international traffic lately, including another person in Spain who translated my PLE diagram into a Catalan version and posted it. Has the web finally moved beyond its early English-only roots?

It's easy to make fun of the garbled stuff coming out of these online translation tools, but in the bigger picture, aren't they just so Star Trek? It's amazing that I can plug the URL of German or French posts into a page and be able to understand enough of the translations to get the basic ideas. It's still difficult to use the tools to participate in a conversation -- I haven't had the courage to paste translated text into a comment box on someone's non-English site -- but it seems likely that the tools will keep getting better.

Update: Christian Long does some digging into the idea of the web as universal translator...

12 Days

2006-02-17T12:59:00.000-08:00

Like I wrote in my comment on the post, this feels a bit like when you discover incredible new music and then find out that the band has just broken up: think:lab closing its doors in 12 days. It reminds me of my own blog-soul-search a couple of years ago, so I think I understand some of the reasons (read the whole post for some interesting insights on the challenges)...but this is a bummer.

Update 3/21/06: I haven't expressed how psyched I was when Christian decided to keep think:lab going, and he's been totally on fire ever since. This week he covers Time's cover story asking whether kids are too wired, with his usual depth and intensity...along with piles of other great stuff. So, extending my metaphor of the just-discovered-but-broken-up-band, I'm so glad this band decided to reunite and start touring again.

Personal Learning Environment Model

2006-02-17T00:47:00.000-08:00

Thanks to some valuable feedback from Dave Tosh, Aaron Campbell, James Farmer, Aaron Nelson and Graham Attwell, I've spent some time fixing up my midnight-brain-dump e-portfolio model. As Aaron C. and James pointed out, the e-portfolio label just isn't working for these concepts anymore. It was easy to take potshots at institutions and vendors for wrecking the potential of e-portfolios, but it's not really true. It might have been the label itself that was too limiting from the beginning -- people believe that we store stuff from our past in portfolios. Maybe that past stuff shows some evidence of a learning process over time, but it exists almost entirely as artifacts of the past. That's still a valuable thing, and tools to help people store and display their stuff are now easy to find and use.

The standard models (and perceived purpose) of e-portfolios fall apart when you expect them to reflect something more holistic about who you are, what you're working on or thinking about right now, who you're reading and collaborating with, and what you plan to be pursuing and learning in the future. Better e-portfolio applications or methods will help us collect and publish our stuff, but we haven't (and maybe shouldn't have) really expected them to connect us to a network of people with shared interests and goals, or help me synthesize connections between my past work, current projects or future goals. It looks like the PLE (personal learning environment) is taking on those weighty expectations instead. Just as a PLE is not meant to be an LMS, the e-portfolio was not designed to be a PLE.

So how will the PLE escape the limiting shackles that kept e-portfolios from growing beyond glorified CVs or assessment hoops for students to jump through? I'll oh-so-humbly quote myself from my response to Dave's thoughtful post on the topic:

"The main differences could be that PLE's will be seen to exist inherently in a social context, connecting data and contacts from multiple (and often free) tools, as well as being owned and controlled by the learner. All of these were key in your initial framework for Elgg, which is perhaps why people seemed to have a hard time seeing it as an e-portfolio solution -- it didn't fit their mental model. If those elements (social context, multiple tools, free/open, learner-owned and controlled) emerge as defining characteristics of a proper PLE, then it actually will be something really different..."

Instead of "really different" at the end, I should have said something like "way more valuable for someone trying to actually learn stuff." Anyway, I went back and revised last week's e-portfolio model and came up with a PLE diagram I'm happier with. The main changes:

Changed the name of the whole exercise from E-Portfolio Model to Personal Learning Environment
Removed the e-portfolio label from the unifying box in the middle and distributed it throughout the whole environment as a contributing tool with several specific functions
Renamed the unifying box in the middle to "Self-Directed Learning Tools" to reflect the types of tools and functions that connect these concepts above and below -- although the label still sucks, this is a significant conceptual shift -- we're not talking about a PLE (or e-portfolio) as a tool itself. I'm not even sure that it can be created or designed by someone for someone else. Just as each person's desires, abilities and past experiences are different, each person's personal learning environment should be their own unique combination of tools, networks and methods that help them accomplish their goals. If the learning environment is truly personal, the tools and the learning are self-directed by definition.
Changed the contents of most of the boxes to reflect more specific tasks, tools, activities and data -- the more people-friendly language of the last one was quickly swamped with acronyms and jargon, but I resisted the urge to label each arrow with RSS. The most interesting to me right now: sending data to and from LMSs in courses (most self-directed learners take courses occasionally), the inclusion of IEP (individual learning plan) and PDP (personal development plan) in the "What You Want to Do" and the PLA (prior learning assessment) in the "What You've Learned" box -- these are all concepts with huge potential...leverage points in revolutionizing education systems.
Changed a label from "What You Can Do" to "What You've Learned" so it reflects a broader range of knowledge, rather than focusing exclusively on doing. That led me down the path of splitting "What You're Doing" into doing and learning as well, which made it natural to do the same to "What You Want to Do"...the result is more buckets for learning.
Labeled the top boxes more explicitly with their relationship to the past, present and future
Made most of the arrows bi-directional to reflect the flow of data in both directions

So, here it is past midnight again and a week later and this is still a messy work in progress. The key flaws in the whole thing are the lack of relationship between the boxes, the ugly embedding of a network within someone's "identity" and the minimized role of information -- it's implied in several places, but seems like it should be more important in any diagram about learning. Feedback welcome, of course.

UK e-Portfolio Roundup

2006-02-16T16:03:00.000-08:00

Dave and Stephen pointed to this interesting e-Portfolio roundup from the UK. More good thinking about the possible future direction of e-portfolios, and a nice recommendation for Elgg.

E-Portfolio Model

2006-02-10T01:06:00.000-08:00

I've been thinking more about personal learning environments and pondering how they might be different than e-portfolios. Is the PLE just a new label that seems to focus more on individual needs and has more latitude to include different kinds of tools? Did vendors and institutions kill the initial promise of e-portfolios by trying to turn the concept into a single tool (product) used to measure student achievement?

Some of this pondering came out of another attempt to represent what I'm trying to do with my thesis in a concept map. The last one was a bit of a mess -- at the start I thought it might be too narrow, but ended up putting out tendrils into everything else. So with this one I stepped back a bit, attempting to simplify the language (removing the jargon and getting away from protocols/tools/tech terms) and concepts to distill what a person might actually want to do with a proper personal learning environment.

I'm still most interested in that one box called "What You Want to Do", which is where learning goals and 43 Things comes in. Having tools to help learners chart the future has not really been considered a big part of the e-portfolio/PLA scene, but I think it is coming. Overall, this is a much bigger vision than I had anticipated, which means I'm probably off-track and going too broad for the thesis again. I ended up changing the label in the middle to "E-Portfolio" as I saw some old familiar elements emerging. Now I'll have to go back now to see how Dave, Helen, George and others did a way better job of conceptualizing this a year or two ago when e-ports were all abuzz...all part of the learning process, I guess.

Get a GRIP

2006-02-09T22:43:00.000-08:00

Not much to report on the thesis this week -- I finally finished the mandatory Graduate Research Integrity Program that somehow fell between the cracks when I took a couple of leaves of absence earlier in the program. Mostly just hoops to jump through, but I was interested to find out which kinds of research do not require review by the school's ethics committee.

Not that I'm trying to sneak through some unethical practices...but it would likely save some time if I could design the research so that I was only reviewing data that is already publicly available on 43Things (or in blogs, I presume) to meet this criteria: "Research about individuals in the public arena using only publicly available or accessible records without contact with the individual/s."

Push and Pull

2006-02-06T10:05:00.000-08:00

A nice mix of ideas on differences between formal and informal learning and changing perceptions of e-learning in corporations: Push and Pull.

College Students Lacking Literacy Skills

2006-02-03T11:09:00.000-08:00

Most College Students Lack Skills:

"More than 50 percent of students at four-year schools and more than 75 percent at two-year colleges lacked the skills to perform complex literacy tasks.

That means they could not interpret a table about exercise and blood pressure, understand the arguments of newspaper editorials, compare credit card offers with different interest rates and annual fees or summarize results of a survey about parental involvement in school.

The results cut across three types of literacy: analyzing news stories and other prose, understanding documents and having math skills needed for checkbooks or restaurant tips."

I know business and government leaders tend to rally around the need for more math/science/tech skills for workforce development, but if college-educated citizens can't understand a newspaper editorial, we've got way bigger problems than competitiveness and productivity.

Shamash Says

2006-02-03T07:51:00.000-08:00

Shamash has a great personal reflection on finding life balance while working in education. It's a record of some of her journey through work and life and she appears to be approaching the crossroads:

"Maybe it’s time for me to switch careers: pursue my Ph.D. and teach at the university level or go to art school.

Maybe it’s time to take a year off and finish my novel.

Maybe it’s time to find a job that’s a better match with my values of living a balanced life."

In an earlier post, she used 43 Things as the inspiration for a writing assignment she gave to her students. The richness and variety of the results had her feeling hopeful and refreshed:

"Because, with a list like this, you have to think: If these kids are in charge of the world, it might not end up being such a bad place, afterall."

Her own reflective post has the feel of a good 43 Things list too -- big-picture to-dos full of desire for learning, creativity and engagement.

Comparing Formal, Open and Self-directed Learning

2006-02-02T22:25:00.000-08:00

Stephen linked to Terry Anderson's excellent paper this week: Comparing Formal, Open and Self-directed Learning. Although he downplays the originality of the essay, this strikes me as a very clear, smart delineation of the different types of learning we're somewhat familiar with. It's not easy to classify these things in any meaningful way, but I think this is a great start.

Like Stephen, I'd probably quibble with some of the individual scores assigned to the different types, but I think that may be part of the point -- to get people thinking about different paths to learning and how each might be optimized. I'd swap the scores for Self-Directed and Formal learning on the "Freedom of Relationships" -- in my experience, I've had a much richer network of contacts and relationships in my self-directed learning (represented by this blog) than I ever did throughout my "formal" coursework for my masters program. And I was free to choose them from a vast pool of professionals all over the world, rather than being thrown together in an arbitrary class grouping with 25 people I had nothing in common with.

His focus on Open Learning is most interesting to me. It helps me understand his desire to integrate personal learning environments at Athabasca and makes me wish I had tempered my tone on my "expecting a screwdriver to work as a hammer" comment. These are worthy goals:

"Of particular personal interest is the capacity for Open Learning systems to increase their acceptance and attraction to learners by providing opportunities for social connection –- even while retaining control over the pace, place and time of that learning (see Anderson, 2005)."

I have also been saving a post from Choice Learning that references Terry's work and outlines another interesting project at the University of Alberta: Personal Life Recorder, Elgg and Personal Learner Space. Michael sees promise, but is also recognizing the difficulty arising from institutions providing "personal" learning spaces for students:

"We hope this social overlay of Elgg will enhance their learning experience, assist them in building an interactive, sharing community, and allow the 'mobile continuity' of their learning. In practice Elgg space should be owned by the learner – it is a collation of their portfolio of work and reflections. The learner Elgg space should live past the course, and could be integrated into the next course of the program or wherever they continue their studies. However as long as it resides on our school server, whether a student who is no longer registered can use that space is open to question."

Informal Learning with Technology Outside School

2006-01-31T19:27:00.000-08:00

Stephen linked to the literature reviews at NESTA, and it is a treasure trove for me right now. Probably the one that will prove most valuable for my thesis is the one on informal learning with technology outside school...just skimmed it last night, but it will require a thorough read. Extensive, deep and surprisingly interesting to me these days.

More think:lab

2006-01-27T22:01:00.000-08:00

Don't you love it when you discover a blog in your field that you've never seen before and then it proceeds to blow your mind over and over in the next week? So you go back and read nearly every post the author has ever written? That's what happened with me and think:lab. In Imagine: Blogging for People Who Do Not Read, he skewers some of the pointless debates in education and returns the conversation to Stuff That Matters. It's not specifically about blogging, although the title reminded me that my four-year-old already adores blogging and sees it as a communication medium. No, this is more than that:

"Learning without passion is not learning. They make velcro-closure sneakers and spell check for all the rest. Or they simply outsource it (skill, knowledge, 'fact') to India or via TurboTax. Period. Without something profound pushing your soul, without a journey, without a Bilbo returning the ring, without a blind turn in the woods, without finding your absolute best self facing the blind trust fall of adventure, there is no learning worth fighting for that should divide communities based on bond increases or place technologists against administrators within the professional debate hamster-wheel or incite home schoolers to mock public schoolers (vice versa) or to ask anyone to worry about 21st century skills (and the tests that will get you there)."

All of this revolutionary talk had me pondering Brian's Enquiring Minds as well -- he's always thinking about these issues in similar incendiary ways, and he's already wondering how we'll make sure that the good ideas we implement soon will actually last:

"I believe that projects like Enquiring Minds are very worthwhile and needed in education. But after you have created and implemented a few of them yourself, you come to realize that in spite of the efforts of people to promote change, the education system itself does not evolve as a result. Why is this? It certainly does not mean we should stop trying. We ask students to take responsibility for learning, but are the systems we create responsible?"

Digital Apprentice

2006-01-21T17:38:00.000-08:00

So how are real, live, tech-savvy, smart teachers thinking about this idea that learners should be able to focus their learning on things they care about most? It's obviously a difficult balance if they're expected to keep up with the curriculum. One of the best teachers I had in high school completely discarded the curriculum -- he distilled it down to a couple of major concepts and assigned one massive project for the entire course, giving us tons of latitude to pursue our own paths within a very broad topic. It was fantastic.

Clarence is probably too conscientious to chuck the curriculum (and they probably have provincial exams now, which we didn't back in 1989 in Manitoba), but I appreciate his front-line thoughts on the topic -- Personal Learning and Personal Networks:

"Along with this time advantage comes thoughts of personalizing learning for kids, allowing them to capitalize on their interests and the learning infrastructure available at the school for their greatest benefit. Like most other jurisdictions in Western nations today, my classroom follows a prescribed set of outcomes that have been closely mapped by our provincial department of education. I've been thinking of how these things fit together. How can we personalize the learning of the students in our classes while still making certain that we are meeting the required components of our over - prescribed curricula?"

I was also inspired by his reflection on the educational experience of a student at his school who is pursuing audio engineering:

"Certainly her classroom hours will make her into a well rounded person with a (hopefully) fuller understanding of the history of our nation, of literature, science, and math. She is a smart kids and I'm sure the hours spent in a classroom were not wasted, but given a more flexible schedule at school, a schedule which allows her to pursue the interests that she has, would have certainly made her time in our building more productive and useful for her."

Learning 43 Things

2006-01-21T17:27:00.000-08:00

There were so many social networking sites launching a year or two ago that it seemed like 43 Things was lost in the shuffle in the ed.tech network that I've been following. People who did notice back then didn't seem to see much potential (or focused on the Amazon conspiracy theory), although a few thought it might impact online learning. This week, two ed.tech'ers I respect were poking around the site, and they're at least curious: Alan Levine writesOne Thing Out of 43 and D'Arcy Norman thinks about 43 Nouns and Verbs of Social Software.

Lifelong Learning at University-Linked Retirement Communities

2006-01-20T14:58:00.000-08:00

I made a note offline yesterday to take a deeper look at "lifelong learning", and then today stumbled across Lifelong Learning at University-Linked Retirement Communities over at Think : Lab...all kinds of goodies there.

Learners as Contributors...a Revolution

2006-01-20T14:25:00.000-08:00

Anyone else feeling overwhelmed trying to keep up with all the incredible big-picture thinking floating around these days? It's like a hundred of the best ed.tech bloggers included "revolutionize education" as their only New Year's resolution.

In Learners as Contributors -- The End of the Industrial Model, Harold Jarche uses some great personal examples of the contrast between his kids' learning in school vs outside of school. He bounces off a fantastic (and in-depth) Think : Lab post from a designer of physical learning spaces on how blogging will change the future of learning.

Christian Long also bounced off of David Warlick, and in the process declares (rightly, methinks) that "school is no longer the default 'place of learning' or the 'center of information'." This from a designer of schools! Occasionally cantankerous Tom Hoffman is in the mix as well, and he linked to this fascinating historical account of educational revolution: The New Curriculum brought about by students at Brown University in the late '60s. Brain. Turning. To. Mush. And. Loving. It.

PXN8

2006-01-20T08:42:00.000-08:00

PXN8 is free photo-editing web app. Very simple and slick -- it behaves like you'd expect it to. Upload photos or "fetch" one from a URL, make your changes, then save to your machine or upload to Flickr. It's fast and doesn't require any plugins...stuff like this reminds me why I love the web. (Valentine's Day must be coming; I think I've used "love" a half-dozen times this week in posts.)