robyn jay

It was suggested to me yesterday by a senior manager that we should not focus on the new and emerging technologies that only 5% would embrace but stick to the ‘basics’. Unfortunately the ‘basics’ do not include the new and emerging tools and applications that provide ease of mastery, or which enable multimodal spaces for creation, engagement and collaboration… instead think LMS, anti-plagiarism and assessment.
It’s a depressing state of affairs that promulgates antiquated teaching practice and unengaged learners.

But even where contemporary applications are promoted and supported there is poor take up. Why?
In some cases support mechanisms are ineffective, in others there is lack of policy level encouragement, lack of time, lack of resources, etc etc – an endless list of excuses that does not explain why a small number DO take up new approaches and opportunities. Even in an ideal context where excellent applications are carefully chosen, and time and resources are allocated to mentoring staff in their use I suspect take-up would remain low.
I’m starting to wonder if the key issue comes down to culture and personal philosophy.

The underpinning philosophy behind many of the contemporary learning applications is openness. They support a collaborative learning community that positions the learner as a valued content creator; that values sharing, discovery, connections, opinion, reflection, partnerships. Unfortunately however openness and collaboration are threatening and foreign to many educators. They are not a part of their lives and they are not a part of their teaching practice. It’s a very difficult task to live one set of values and to cast them aside at the workplace gates.

In higher education academics are part of a system that dictates the PhD hurdle be jumped to obtain permanency; a PhD that in essence requires secrecy and non-collaboration lest ideas be stolen and which results in a piece of work that is read by 1.8 others. Without knowledge of contemporary education practice they lecture, providing content and grading papers. They teach as they were taught in a system that prizes paper publications and revenue generation, not which celebrates and expects innovative teaching. So presented with, and trained in the use of, social media/software spaces and applications the focus is on two things: content and assessment. Wikis look good (if kept private) because they allow PDF uploads or easy authoring of lecture notes and are used for such until the users is lured away by LMS assessment and grading admin functionality. Blogs and podcasts (if kept private) might be used to post concepts. FlickR is used to illustrate course content (we’ll use the work of others but not put anything back). And that’s as far as it goes until told that you can do all of those things together in one place via the LMS and its automatically private – no risk, no exposure.
The few that do embrace new applications and approaches I suspect live that life of openness and collaboration. They gravitate towards technology that supports their core values; that position learners to embrace (or at least be exposed to) what they themselves are passionate about; a different way of living.

How can the minority reculture the majority? Should they?  The developers of collaborative/ social applications and open content, and the few that can model effective use, are change agents. They are laying at the feet of the masses a new approach to life and learning and working but what does it take to value what is offered in its entirety?

CC FlickR image by anmuell

I’m doing some design and facilitation work at present on projects that essentially focus on equipping and inspiring teachers to rethink and redesign their practice. It has led me to reread a load of approaches to learning design but also to ponder why it is that we see so little in the way of exemplary contemporary practice.

I think that many (but not all) senior managers and Ministers are genuinely interested in providing ‘quality’ education services. Misguided often its true; outrageously bad decisions are made by incompetent incapable advisors, out of date practices continue or alternatively the latest ‘fad’ wastes inordinate amounts of public monies. But I’m going to be generous and say that its ignorance, and not evil (Mike) that is the cause.

And most teachers too have hearts in the right place. Unfortunately in post-compulsory settings most ‘teachers’ lack education training that allows time to read, revise, connect, deconstruct and reconstruct the models of being a teacher they carry in their minds from their own life experiences. (How some people end up in teaching roles I have no idea – good conditions and reasonable pay I suspect. I watched my sons suffer in the hands of a science teacher who spent each class writing notes on a blackboard for them to transcribe.)

Good teachers are genuinely interested in how people learn. The really dedicated stay in touch with the latest trends, opportunities and theoretical approaches in their own times and by their own means. They are what George Siemens describes as master learners; not only reflecting on what works as a learner in a metacognitive sense, but continually looking at how they can do it better.

“Good teaching may overcome a poor choice of teaching, but technology will never save bad teaching.”

(Tony Bates, 2005)

Good teachers are an inspiration no matter what approach they take;  good teachers armed with effective educational technologies are mighty. Bad teachers are simply a drudge no matter what medium. Tragically education largely reflects the model of 100 years ago. It IS still predominantly something that by and large is DONE to people in courses that run over X weeks…. transmission of ideas happens via hideously bad lectures, readings etc.

So let’s focus on those with potential. A window of opportunity exists if we can capture the good teachers and support them to grow and re-establish momentum. We’ve dangled tools and strategies as carrots until we’re blue in the face but that’s not enough.  What we get in reply is ‘but now what, how do I use these in my teaching?’ For some, models and a kick start are all that’s needed but if your teaching approach is instructivist in nature the best we can achieve is to adjust PDFs to video or the inclusion of quizzes. We give them the tools but not the inspiration and scaffolds to rethink practice. It’s no wonder people cannot see beyond the walls of the LMS – why would you if your world as a teacher is to instruct?

Good friend and mentor Robby Weatherley suggested last week that the pendulum has swung back to a focus on learning design. But we need to think very carefully what that looks like before we turn the clocks back. Too often what WE ourselves provide is instructivist in nature. I’ve seen leading thinkers in contemporary educational thought stand and lecture.

We need to model contemporary learning design in our staff development programs.

We need to acknowledge and what learners (teachers) bring to the environment – their strengths and experiences and passions.

We need to provide the scaffolds for teachers to become independent networked learners beyond their time in staff development programs and under our gaze.
We need to acknowledge their lives and interests and identify areas as launching pads for experimentation and risk taking.

As George Siemens suggests ‘our learning institutions have been created in the spirit of research and openness, yet they have acquired their own neurotic tendencies. Yes we need a dynamic alternative to address our ambiguous, tumultuous personal learning needs and that scares the heck out of most educators.

No it’s not really about resourcing Mike . Some of the very best learning happens in small, community based, lowly resourced programs. It’s about WILL not dollars. And while I agree that stagnant dinosaurs of institutions will and DO lose the innovators its not necessarily to an emerging educational counter-culture -  That has always been present. We are lured to job security and better pay that institutions offer but that’s not where satisfaction lies.

Relationships grow in communities – thats where uniqueness and individuality are valued, cherished and encouraged – within communities of shared values and goals.  Don’t fear the reactive policy measures – they will come and go – thankfully most of us at least in Australia live with freedom and choice. We can opt-out.And we should if it becomes soul destroying.

So in the coming weeks I’ll be working with some excellent minds to play with new designs, and hopefully to give inspirational teachers room to grow and embrace the complex and chaotic beauty of contemporary learning possibilities. I’m looking forward to the challenge.

cc licensed flickr photo shared by radiobrain_

Another Australia Day week has come and gone. This year more than ever I simply tried to ignore it but Michael Coghlan’s image deserves some backup.

While it was great to see the show of multiculturalism in Michael’s photostream I’m getting a sense of an increasing proto-nationalist undercurrent in any show of Australian ‘pride’ these days.

The flag flying, tattoo and towel-bearing yobbos, and the ‘If you don’t like it (read – if you don’t like the way we behave towards you) – LEAVE’ sticker messages, are simply a more crass and explicit pronouncement of a much larger groundswell however. The number of apparently intelligent people succumbing to the paranoia and ‘one world government’ conspiracy theories represent another movement I’m finding disturbing.

In Sydney it has reached a point where laws must be enforced to stop all alcohol consumption in and around many public places on Australia Day. It wouldn’t take much for another Cronulla riot scenario to eventuate.

Increased press about finite resources and panic about water may have replaced terrorist fear for now; it seems we’re only happy to be warm and fuzzy about embracing diversity when there’s plenty to go around. But at the same time global warming conspiracy theories and redneck demands to be unaccountable for destruction of private land holdings indicate an unwillingness to act with foresight and adjust personal ways of life. Goodness knows how the old ‘Think global; act local” message would be now misconstrued.

There’s a lot we DO need to celebrate about living in Australia but at present it feels as though we’ve lost our way. How we get back on track is the question I can’t answer.

“Only when the rivers run dry, the trees are all gone and the animals are all dead will humans realize that we can’t eat money…” Unknown.

I’d been pondering the skills and capabilities and attributes I think the contemporary education system needs to support in young people today when I came across the following video thanks to a post from Rod Lucier in his The Clever Sheep blog. I first saw it a couple of years ago but it was good to revisit ….

So what do young people need to effectively operate, and be the change agents, in a world that will see substantial change in their lifetimes ….

In his post – Empathy: An Overlooked 21st Century Skill – Christopher D. Sessums reflects on the same.

He refers to the work of Henry Jenkins et al who in 2006 list …
•    Play — the capacity to experiment with one’s surroundings as a form of problem-solving
•    Performance — the ability to adopt alternative identities for the purpose of improvisation and discovery
•    Simulation — the ability to interpret and construct dynamic models of real-world processes
•    Appropriation — the ability to meaningfully sample and remix media content
•    Multitasking — the ability to scan one’s environment and shift focus as needed to salient details.
•    Distributed Cognition — the ability to interact meaningfully with tools that expand mental capacities
•    Collective Intelligence — the ability to pool knowledge and compare notes with others toward a common goal
•    Judgment — the ability to evaluate the reliability and credibility of different information sources
•    Transmedia Navigation — the ability to follow the flow of stories and information across multiple modalities
•    Networking — the ability to search for, synthesize, and disseminate information
•    Negotiation — the ability to travel across diverse communities, discerning and respecting multiple perspectives, and grasping and following alternative norms.

and to Tony Wagner’s seven survival skills:
•    Critical thinking and problem solving
•    Collaboration and leading by influence
•    Agility and adaptability
•    Initiative and entrepreneurial-ism
•    Effective oral and written communication
•    Accessing and analyzing information
•    Curiosity and imagination

To these Christopher himself adds empathy.

So, what’s missing?
Here’s my own additions. I’d like to hear what you would add….

• creativity and lateral thinking
• compassion and civility
• perseverance and persistence
• the ability to critique and validate
• the ability to filter and synthesize large amounts of information
• cultural awareness
• resilience
• balance
• risk-taking
• the ability to self-promote and manage a virtual identity/ presence and content

The big question is of course, how well does the current education system acknowledge and focus on these?

In light of my post – Education: right or privilege – this morning I came across the Jan 5 post - Innovation needed now – Education, by Jeffrey Phillips on the Innovate on Purpose blog. It’s interesting to read to further elaborate on the issues at hand. While it focuses on the US, the same issues exist here in Australia.

The post responds to a query re “what product or sector is in most need of innovation” and outlines why the education system should be a focus.

In summary he suggests that:

• the primary and secondary education system is based on learning models from the 19th century; it is irrelevant to today’s world

• we aren’t teaching kids relevant skills or how to learn, and we often channel all of kids into a collegiate (university) experience – “  Why do we continue to prepare the students for “knowledge worker” jobs when clearly there are many demands and opportunities, and proclivities for other skills?  We need to resurrect the concept of apprenticeship and place more emphasis and value on learning skills beyond the classroom.  We need better definitions about what kids need to know, and more importantly, we need to teach them how to learn and how to teach themselves and others.”

• since most educational systems are government monopolies rather than private enterprises, there’s little innovation and little incentive for new entrants

• the educational system is clearly failing – failing the students, failing the teachers and failing to create people who can join the workforce or create their own companies.  “ At this point we need disruptive innovation – a complete rethinking of the pedagogy, curriculum, technology and intent of education, followed by a restructuring of how education is offered and consumed.”

More on the need for educational change coming…..

cc licensed flickr photo shared by State Library of New South Wales collection

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”
Martin Luther King Jr.

Yesterday was MLK day and I’m commemorating his life and work by listening to his famous speech once again. This was 1963 and I was not quite 4 years old. We still have a long way to go to achieve King’s dream.

TED Talks has also republished the video. Their bio of King says…

” Son of a Baptist minister, student of theology, adherent of Ghandi’s teachings and the writings of Henry David Thoreau, Martin Luther King Jr. brought his supreme oratory skill and a visionary message of nonviolence to the fledgling African-American civil rights movement, leading it to historic influence. He spearheaded the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott, spurring the United States Supreme Court to declare segregated busses unconstitutional, and the 1963 March on Washington, where he delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech to a gathering of supporters 200,000-strong.
In the early ’60s, King’s all-encompassing message — addressed to men and women of all different creeds — drew support from major leaders, among them President John F. Kennedy, and laypeople of every color. The youngest man to receive the Nobel Peace Prize (he accepted the award in 1964, at age 35), King is remembered for his unbending commitment to the improvement of the lives of all people, even as the stormy ’60s brought out leaders promoting more radical, separatist and militant ideology. His hopeful voice came to fill the hearts of millions, and still strongly resonates today, as citizens in America and elsewhere enjoy a world he envisioned but didn’t live to see: more equal, more whole. ”

King was assassinated in 1968.

We now live in a country where the right to a free, general education pretty much ends at age 18. Young people have known no different. They are excluded from improving their skills if money is tight, and are burdened with debt at the time of their lives when they need those savings most. Sure places like TAFE offer subsidies but its far from ideal. Education now equals money earning citizens not enriched lives.

Recent discussions by Mike Bogle and Simon McIntyre reflect a reaction to this contemporary position.

When I was 19 I undertook a free undergraduate higher education degree.  In my late 20s, with little money, I enjoyed so called ‘hobby’ courses at TAFE. If I paid fees, they were minimal. In my mid-30s I worked in the field of adult literacy and numeracy. The students who attended could choose whether to pursue a qualification (generally their Yr 10 equivalent) or simply to focus on their particular need. For people with a disability this was often money focused, for youth – getting their licence, and for older people-being able to read to their children and grand-children. The important thing was that they had a choice, and it was free – no question.

Under the Howard Government in Australia, the education of its citizens became aligned to skilling up workers. The days when a grandmother could gain free informal but professional literacy support disappeared. By 2006 NO provider in NSW was able to offer literacy assistance to adults that was not aligned to a qualification. From that time on grandmothers and people with intellectual disabilities were force fed through a qualification encompassing competencies they would never use, for a piece of paper they did not care about.

During this period we also saw Adult & Community Education (ACE) colleges move from centres of community enrichment and wellbeing, to a mix of so called ‘hobby’ courses and vocational education and training (VET) to a situation where, if non-accredited courses are run they come hand in hand with a pretty hefty fee to offset the lack of adequate Government support. Number crunching became the requirement, and creative mapping of personal enrichment courses to potential VET outcomes and future careers was what enabled centres to stay afloat but still meet community needs. And quite rightly so.  A creative drawing course can easily inspire an individual to take up a career in design etc. The benefits of engagement in learning for individuals and their families is well documented.

Post-compulsory non-accredited education in Australia is now only afforded to those with superfluous income, OR those with the skills and motivation to establish and manage their own personal learning environment (PLE). In terms of the latter, not many have those capabilities.
Set this against a changing world where working lives are complex and ever changing; where the need for generic skills of resilience, flexibility, knowing how to learn and locate information, team work, innovation far outweigh specific practical skills. In the VET world leaders are documenting the need for students to be supported in picking and choosing from multiple qualifications, with a resulting portfolio of competencies rather than a rigid qualification. The needs are changing but organisational structures are NOT.

Higher Education has the potential to truly focus on community education and enrichment but is totally hamstrung by archaic power structures, and an elitism that will be its undoing. It is of course at the mercy of Government funding and priorities place it’s staff on a treadmill of research and time demands that distract from innovative teaching, but it’s whole position is outdated and irrelevant.

In terms of informal opportunities at a University level  I think there are other options apart from trying to squeeze people into a mould.  They say courses are full but I have not yet seen a lecture theatre or tutorial room that does not have any empty seats. What would it take to offer a small number of places for people to sit in? Imagine the benefits of having mature community members engage in conversations with enrolled students. No assessments, no grades. For young people it’s a good opportunity to decide whether the course is indeed for them; for older community members it’s an opportunity for extending their skills and sharing their wisdom. People attend actual courses, rather than simply watching recorded video because they seek interaction; this would offer that.

So the issue that started all this was what to offer young people who miss out on their university place. I’m going to be quite radical here and suggest that they simply should get out in the world, travel and work, and have time to think about their true interests. Too many young people move straight from 13 years at school to another 4+ at university. They make bad choices based on parents and school content and accrue debt as a result.The worst result is for these individuals to accept other courses simply because they are all they could gain entry to. I saw this in Education and the result is a bunch of mediocre teachers. I’ve seen it in Science where students have gained entry with an entrance score of less than 50/100.

If you build it, they don’t always come…

The desire for ‘a degree’ is driven by a society where recruitment and progression is based on those bits of paper instead of real skills. Universities are a classic case in point; where a PhD in an obscure topic is deemed more important than actual capability and experience for jobs that do not require high level research. Higher level positions are almost unobtainable unless you’re a life long academic and yet the pay rates offered are abysmal. It’s no wonder they cannot get good staff when needed.

Universities need to get their act together if they wish to remain relevant in the middle to long term. They need to focus on quality teaching, innovation, openness, community connections and education in its truest sense. They need to recognise the skills and knowledge that people bring to a course as a result of life. And they need to be seen as a flexible and welcoming place for conversation and learning. We are now in a space where students will vote with their feet and pick and choose from the talented educators who typically are open and accessible. Perhaps what is need is a new model of educational organisation; one for the future.

cc licensed flickr photo by Seryo

I came across Eva Cox’s 2010 Sydney Festival session – Hope: crisis catharsis and renewal, reported on The Stump which is worth a read.

The session transcript concludes…

“So let us start in 2010 to unravel the knots and tangles that have damaged the links that make us social beings and prioritise ways of making society more civil. This activity requires our time and commitment because asking questions is easier than finding answers. Combining hope and thoughtfulness gives us the power to work out what we can do – and be, by making our lives more civil, more fun and more creative!”

Her suggestions resonate with me, particularly in light of my last post ….

• Be fair and kind to strangers as well as those we know
• Be generous and prepared to share
• Recognise and respect what we have in common as well as our differences
• Budget time not money so we can spend time on what we value
• Collaborate and co-operate as a first strategy to meet social ends, not competition
• Act with civility and respect, even when we disagree
• Retain goodwill and optimism about the good will of others, even when it seems tough
• Build ethical cultures by both doing the right thing and recognising the rights of others
• Recognise and respect autonomy as well as connectedness that work
• Value risk takers and boundary pushers who also reflect the above criteria
• Recognise the value of shared experiences, such as tonight, including with strangers.

[CC FlickR image: finofilka]

My last post highlighted the current Edge project exploring how the internet is changing the way we think.

One of the contributors is Sherry Turkle, psychologist from MIT who studies the culture of the internet.

In her post she refers to Erik Erikson who argued that adolescents need ‘an experience of “moratorium,” a time and space for relatively consequence-free experimentation. They need to fall in and out of love with people and ideas’.  She herself argues that while ‘the Internet provides such spaces and is thus a rich ground for working through identity’, it has become clear that ‘the idea of the moratorium space does not easily mesh with a life that generates its own electronic shadow. Over time, many find a way to ignore or deny the shadow. For teenagers, the need for a moratorium space is so compelling that they will recreate it as fiction. And indeed, leaving an electronic trace can come to seem so natural that the shadow seems to disappear. We want to forget that we have become the instruments of our own surveillance.’

Very interesting.

Certainly I agree that ‘in democracy, …  everyone has something to hide, a zone of private action and reflection, a zone that needs to be protected.’ So how is this privacy ensured?

We are still in a space where employers are lauded for finding their employees out. Recruiters dig up all they can on prospective employees. Naive employees find themselves sacked. But when are we going to draw the line and allow individuals some rights.

A good first step is to make these practices transparent. If used in recruitment, individuals must be told. If used to monitor staff, they should be made aware of this potential and have the freedom to act accordingly.

[CC FlickR image: publik16]

The 2010 question for the Edge World Question Centre is “How is the Internet changing the way YOU think?”

With over 167 responses, it is clearly designed for a long day curled up by a cosy wood fire in the snow bound Northern Hemisphere!
I haven’t had a chance to read them all yet but am inspired to respond and hope you will add your personal response too…

I’m not sure that the way I ‘think’ is as significant as the way I live, respond, learn, engage and create. Kai Krause aptly describes this as a redefining of ‘ how we perceive the world and ourselves in it, new models of how we work and research, entertain ourselves, communicate with our family and friends, how we learn about the past and preserve our memories, what we expect of the future and how we plan for it, what we watch, read, listen to: all greatly influenced by technology in general and the Net in particular.’

I mustn’t be ‘normal’ for one my age in this regard. Quite frankly I am sick and tired of people using their age as an excuse for non-engagement. It’s not about age. Being at the tail end of the ‘boomers’ I spent the first half of my life with pen in hand and nose in a book; all my undergraduate degrees were hand written, so I have as much excuse for non-engagement as anyone (excluding those who are truly disadvantaged through poverty or lack of connectivity).

Of course there’s good and bad, but I couldn’t imagine a life unconnected. The internet overlays my life; work and relaxation.

I engage with the lives, ideas and creativity of people who live in places I’ll never see in real life.

I can independently create content and share it with the world

I can collaborate with wide-spread teams and communities.

I feel closer to people on the other side of the world than I do to the couple in the apartment next door.

I can converse with people with interests as obscure as mine

I can send a few words of kindness across the globe right when they are most needed

I see the images of great photographers the day they are taken, and share my own with like-minded people globally.

I share ideas and work with a global audience.

I am equipped and empowered.

I have knowledge and skills at my finger tips -  to grout a mosaic, play the guitar, heal a wound

I can trade and operate a business without jumping on a plane

I can ask for and receive help and access my support network [almost] anywhere anytime

What frightens me is that after all these years the education system still fails to engage. Still fails to support the development of skills to enable critical, effective, creative users. Of course young people learn from their peers, they are comfortable connecting within walled gardens and private chat. But in my experience very few are equipped to use the internet as a learner and eventually, professional.

In his contribution Howard Rheingold – says

“Those people who do not gain fundamental literacies of attention, crap detection, participation, collaboration, and network awareness are in danger of all the pitfalls critics point out — shallowness, credulity, distraction, alienation, addiction. I worry about the billions of people who are gaining access to the Net without the slightest clue about how to find knowledge and verify it for accuracy, how to advocate and participate rather than passively consume, how to discipline and deploy attention in an always-on milieu, how and why to use those privacy protections that remain available in an increasingly intrusive environment.”

and Evgeny Morozov adds…

“Today we are facing the emergence of the “cyber-lumpenprolitariat”, of people who are being sucked into the digital whirlwind of gossip sites, trashy video games, populist and xenophobic blogs, and endless poking on social networking sites. The intellectual elites, on the other hand, continue thriving in the new digital environment, exploiting superb online tools for scientific research and collaboration, streaming art house films via Netflix, swapping their favorite books via e-readers, reconnecting with musical treasures of the bygone eras via iTunes, and, above all, perusing materials in the giant online libraries like the one that Google could soon unveil. ”

The cause and solution sit squarely on the shoulders of an schooling system that not only ignores the issues, but actively blocks access to the spaces that require explicit engagement and critical discussion. As I have mooted many time, it is a breach of their duty of care.

[CC FlickR image: Lee Carson]