order / disorder

New Zealand has an Enviroschool scheme where it tries to support schools with sustainability. One of the local schools here in Hamilton has just been on the telly detailing what they have been doing.

They started a garden to grow veg and teach the children elements of sustainability. The project grew as they decided that the kids could learn to cook too, using the veg that they had grown.

Now it was a project on a roll. How do you make sure that the plants are cared for in all conditions? Set up a weather station and start making your own forecasts. What can you do with the surplus of food? Sell them to the local community. How can the community find out? Set up a publicity machine that includes a local radio station for the school. The kids are doing all this and now they want to set up a 200 seat café so they can feed themselves at lunchtime!

What a range of learning opportunities developed through making a vegetable patch. And it’s all pretty authentic learning. I’m sure that there are some other great examples out there too. Feel free to tell us about them in the comments.

Edupunk seems to be the word on everyones lips at the moment - well at least those that are talking about it!

See D’Arcy Norman; Lesley Madsen Brookes; Stephen Downes; Brian Lamb; Doug Noon

A conjunction coined by Jim Groom, however, as both commentators and protagonists seem to be agreeing, creating a name and a definition runs counter intuitive to the underlying Dogme of Edupunk. (and see also this article referencing Dogme and punk dogme in the context of English Language Teaching)

I was a teenager when punk exploded on the British music and social scene. A repeated comment at the time from anybody with a mohican or a piercing that the media could get a soundbite from, was that they were individuals and not part of a group. There is an inherent difficulty in talking about an idea or concept that bears no name - or that can’t utter its name for fear that this will cause its downfall - a la the ‘Scottish Play‘ quandry or liar paradox

Nevertheless, some have dared to name it and while I don’t think that it is about to turn into an Ouroboros and eat itself, I do wonder what the tipping point would be for educators to adopt this philosophy wholesale.

I ask that question because it is undoubtedly education that should be the beneficiary of the conjunction. I’m sure that it is for those who have nailed their colours to the mast and for many others too. However, raging against the machine requires a machine, which in this case is the business of education, particularly when promulgated through educational technology.

What I’m not sure of is whether education needs to (or can currently) change through a revolutionary act or if it has to be through a steady chipping away at long held beliefs. If it requires revolution then how is a critical mass achieved? Is Edupunk building that critical mass or is it but a skirmish on a long road of attrition against the establishment? Who knows? What I do know is that the beliefs, realisations, understandings happenings, events of the ideals of edupunk can be important in the same way that Dada and surrealism were important, that Ike Turner and Elvis Presley were important, that Thomas Paine and Abie Hoffman were important and that Hutton and Darwin were important. These are not trivial names to be raising - that is because education is such an important thing for life, for freedom, for happiness that it can’t be taken lightly.

Yesterday, we had a quick demo of Mahara by Mark Nichols as part of a wider day of information exchange. Mahara has been built as an eportfolio tool and appears to have taken some influence from Elgg. It contains a blog tool which has the ability to be kept private, shared selectively or made public. Individual posts could also be gathered as part of a presentation or viewpoint on one’s portfolio.

Recent discussions in the office have been around micro-blogging or the phenomena that is Twitter. Today, reflections on the Mahara demo stimulated some discussion around the role of (’normal’) blogging and the differences between that and journaling and discussion fora. One argument was that the format may be different, but the process was the same and that essentially the end result for learning could all be achieved through a discussion board. The counter argument was that the process was different in each case as it was defined by the format. Similar divides appear to have been running through the Moodle.org blogging forum for nigh on two years now! Matt Croslin published an interesting diagram on the intersections of these 3 tools and Joseph Fall made some salient points about ownership and the cycle of reflection.

My own feeling is that the differences are quite nuanced and factors such as context, ownership and emotion and their interplay are all important For instance, people can be quite happy to blog away without ever knowing if people are reading their posts. How many people stuck at contributing to an empty discussion board? From the act of blogging I gain insight and reflective opportunities; from empty discussion boards I get frustration and a feeling of loss, of negativity toward the arena and to the others who aren’t there to ask me questions or answer mine and to stimulate my thoughts to new insights.

Serendipitously (I just love serendipity!) when I got home, a twitter connection led me to Tony Karrer’s blog which I knew from a while back but had somehow lost track of. He was posing the question as to whether, in certain situations, blogging should be made mandatory. A good blog post and title - make it provocative and lots of people will comment, which they then proceeded to do. Through all the comments, no one stated a whole-hearted agreement and most were quite negative about the idea. Tony suggested the case of an employee attending a conference or beginning some new learning activity. He also noted that in formal education, students can be required to blog as part of the assessment process.

I don’t think that all his commenters were strictly correct in being so negative to the idea since I think that this is an instance of context having a place. Tony is quite capable of supporting his own argument but I noticed that the reason that many gave as being against mandated blogging was that it removed the informal and personal learning that they engender. I’ve already noted that personal learning effect above. However, I think that these arguments are really couched in the realm of ownership and the emotion that goes with that.

In a circular way it brings me back to Mahara and the eportfolio concept. This is because eportfolios have similar issues of ownership of learning; of the value of reflection for assessment; and of the context in which the content will be used. I remembered discussing some of these concepts 3 years ago in what was then elgg.net. So where is this post going if not round in circles (I spend too much time reflecting and not enough getting my typing skills up to speed!) Well I think that underneath the surface I am watching the tension between, on one side, institutional desires to authenticate learning through assessment processes and on the other side, the notions of the learner being at the centre of their learning and owning the process. The questions I am still asking are:

How do we nudge institutions into changing assessment practice to evaluate learning without removing that process from the learner?

How do we enable academics to become effective educators in this context?

How do we ensure that learners take advantage of this?

Answers welcome!

Have been doing a lot of reading recently and assessment is a theme that keeps recurring. Ewan McIntosh and David Muir both blog a recent talk by Stephen Heppell where he revisits the idea of assessment equivalence. I heard him talk on this theme some time ago and I don’t think that the idea that he is picking at is going to go away. Education in all sectors is immersed in written assessment. Exams and coursework require significant written output, which is fine if these are the desired learning outcomes. How do we approach communication and collaboration skills in today’s information age?

Heppell talks of podcasts and animation among others as examples of alternative ways of demonstrating learning. I think that they are all valid and to some extent society has recognised this in the past. Remember “A picture is worth a thousand words”? The huge difficulty for education is moving from the 19th century precept of writing to the 21st century reality of multi-modal exposition. Shana Albert has a handy comparison list of pre-web education versus web2.0 enabled education, however, a key element missing is assessment. Biggs talked of constructive alignment between outcomes, assessment and teaching. My feeling is that assessment is often misaligned but how do we change education to utilise the opportunities afforded it by the step change in information and communication availability? How do we change assessment and how do we change the assessors? Answers welcome!

[Einstein graphic used under a CC license with kind thanks to Arianne McCarthy http://www.flickr.com/photos/ariannemccarthy/513021005/ ]

A few days ago, Christopher Sessums posted an article about a talk he had been giving on social networking. In his post he notes

At the end of my Social Networks talk, I asked participants what they would like to see in a social networking application. A young undergraduate student promptly raised his hand and said (I am paraphrasing),

“I would like to be able to belong to a university network where each course had a socially managed website where students could upload their notes for a particular class, engage in discussions, share resources, collaborate on assignments.”

The student was not satisfied that the university’s current learning management system was adequate for such student-centered activity. He went on:

“This site would be a resource hub, provided to the students by the university, and would be accessible to all students so they can get a sense of what kind of work is associated with a particular course or instructor”

Christopher then asked his blog audience if anyone had suggestions as to how this could best be achieved, suggesting himself that some sort of wiki might be the answer. I replied, suggesting both Ning and Elgg as non-wiki solutions that could allow the level of participation suggested by the student.

I also stated that the suggestion by the student highlighted a more fundamental problem with the attitude that educational institutions can have to their learners. That is, they see themselves as providers of education rather than enablers of it. I believe that the difference is key to understanding some of the problems that educational institutions get themselves into when dealing with technology. I was about to say emerging technology but hey, blogs have been about since the mid to late 90’s and yet we can struggle to get acceptance at strategic levels by senior management and understanding by teachers of their use and power in a constructivist paradigm. I’ll look at both of these actors in reverse order …

At the moment, in tertiary education, students are likely to get their lecture notes made available online and some of them may have discussion boards. In the case of the former we are back at the transmissive model of education. The mileage with the latter varies; frequently boards are created but then not facilitated. (This fits with Charlotte Neuhauser’s Online Course Design Maturity Model at level 2.) I see discussion boards as being akin to tutorials and seminars that undergrads would have traditionally attended. Tutors didn’t get 10 students to turn up and then put them in an empty room with no instruction and no ongoing guidance yet this is what can happen in an online discussion space. The students might learn something - but that’s most likely to be that forums are a waste of time and to be avoided. I’ve been there myself as a learner.

So that gives us a baseline when we want to start suggesting to academics that they might want to use some tools that can support social construction or public reflection and peer review. Those that haven’t engaged with educational ideas of constructivism and constructionism, with andragogy and pedagogy already, will struggle to see the benefit of blogs and wikis. Start throwing Twitter and Second Life into the mix and their eyes roll back into their heads

Even those that have engaged with learning theories can still struggle with the idea of free social engagement. They can be alright with the idea of social engagement in a controlled arena but have more difficulty when students are outside that control. The common argument about shared social space is that of plagiarism. Only a couple will do the work and everyone else will copy it. This I believe, is not an argument that has been properly thought through by its proponents. Students already talk to each other and share things. Plagiarism is an issue where assessment allows it. If in fact students can share materials and interpretations and arrive at a common understanding of a topic then is that a problem?

My comments so far come down to an argument for staff development around the needs and capabilities of learners. This development probably needs to push for attitudinal change and pedagogical understanding. Empathy even! Academia can often be entrenched in attitude and significant change among wide swathes of staff will need leadership at senior levels. This takes me to the second aspect of problems that institutions have with learning in a technology rich environment.

So why does an institution as a body fail to see the strategic importance of 21st century tools? George Siemens notes that an established system is the greatest barrier to change and innovation within that system. Academia has been locked into the lectures, readings, essays, exams system for longer than any of us can remember. When new technologies appear, it attempts to use them in ways that replicate or conform with the existing system. The self-perpetuating nature of established systems therefore means that significant impetus is required from key players in an institutions hierarchy. I think that this also includes a required level of grass roots acceptance coming from the exposure of academics to learning opportunities in this technologically rich and connected society. In respect to the acceptance and utilisation of new technologies, tertiary education could therefore be likened to the Titanic: difficult to change course and oblivious to the changing environment that it sails in.

Two days ago, six school children and a teacher were washed to their deaths in a flash flood on a NZ mountain stream (see stuff.co.nz and NZ Herald).  A terrible accident and it brings back poignant memories of a similar accident in the Yorkshire Dales, UK when two schoolgirls were swept to their deaths.  In both cases, the children were staying at an outdoor centre as part of a school trip.

One aim of such centres is to introduce kids to things in the outdoors that they might not normally have a chance to experience.  There is a sense of adventure and fun - climbing, caving, abseiling, kayaking, gorge-walking etc.  However, the more important goals are making the kids more self-confident as well as understanding the importance of the team, trust and camaraderie.  These are life skills that can be applied anywhere.  Working in the outdoors, in environments that are alien to most of the participants, forces kids to confront their fears, to rely on others and to help others in order to get through the day.  While outdoor instructors will not normally take kids into places that are overly hostile, often the environments can be outwith their comfort zones.  The sense of achievement that the kids have at the end of a day is palpable (without claiming that every kid will go away saying that they enjoyed it of course).

It is a shame therefore, that while parents and friends are grieving, before an investigation and inquiry have taken place, there are media pundits calling for such centres to be closed down.  This knee-jerk reaction is perhaps understandable but is doomed to be of the “Act in haste, repent at leisure” variety.  I cannot prejudge what any inquiry may come out with as I have only media reports to go on; an error of judgement may or may not have been made.  What hasn’t been mentioned are the thousands of kids that have passed through such centres without a scrape and come out the better for it.  The benefits are unlikely to be visible in an individual immediately at the end of a week; I think that a lot of that accrues when the child returns to their home environment and reflects on what they achieved.  There can also be the change in the group dynamic when classmates realise that they have revealed and seen in others quite deep emotions during these experiences.

Calls for OE centres to be closed are short-sighted, selfish and ill-informed.  I was in the UK when the Lyme Bay disaster happened.  Two things came out of that event: regulation of outdoor activity providers and a climate of institutions becoming risk averse.  My experience was in caving and many people came to caving through university clubs.  Suddenly that influx of new blood dried up as university athletic associations refused to provide support for anything that was seen as being a ‘dangerous’ sport.  Never mind that you were more likely to have a serious injury playing rugby or attending a football match in certain parts of the country.  With regulation, all instructors had to have a ‘ticket’ for any activity that they might lead.  This is positive in one way as parents can be assured that instructors have the correct pieces of paper.  It also meant that to get work, new instructors had to get tickets in a variety of activities.  People might be highly skilled at the main pursuits that they were involved in but still have to get other certificates to increase their chances of being employed.  While they could get those tickets, say in caving, they didn’t have the depth of experience to apply sound judgement in every situation that they might come across, especially where gross variables such as weather play a part.  Prior to regulation, that experience would be gained by mentoring from other instructors at a centre.  Post regulation and with increasing financial constraints, someone with 3 months caving experience and a cave leaders certificate could be ‘trusted’ on their own since the certificate said that they were competent.  They were in fact on an even keel with cavers with 10 or 20 years experience in terms of pieces of paper.

Post Lyme bay, there was an element of knee-jerkedness (?!) which provided some benefits but generally was negative in terms of the risk averseness and false sense of security in bits of paper that it engendered.  After the Stainforth tragedy, there were similar calls and calls for the prosecution of the teachers leading that party at the time.  Stainforth was different since the group in the stream were being led by teachers inexperienced in that environment (See HSE report on Glenridding incident and Marcus Bailie report on Stainforth inquest) but tasked with undertaking it.  Fortunately the calls for summary justice were resisted in this case.  Kids from Leeds and Bradford are still able to go up to the Dales and stretch themselves and pump some adrenaline round their bodies.  We must hope that calls in NZ are similarly resisted.  That is not support for a gung-ho attitude but a recognition that kids need to learn at the boundaries and be physical as well as mental.  The centre involved is an Edmund Hillary centre, a man who is a  Kiwi icon, and his first experience of the outdoors was going on a school skiing trip from Auckland.  He reckoned that the most important thing that he did after that was not climbing Everest but helping others when they needed help.  Let’s not stymie others from extending kids education offline, out the class and firmly rooted in First Life.

Had some wide ranging conversations about various aspects of education in New Zealand today.  All are anecdotal and several relate to personal experiences of my family.

Before we emigrated to NZ, we read up about what opportunities there were in learning, elearning, learning technology etc.  The government made a big thing about how NZ was at the forefront of technology use.  One thing that sticks in my mind is a statement that major IT companies use NZ as a test bed for new technology and often NZ has things before anywhere else in the world.  That was mentioned in one of my conversations today and the comment was that NZ cherry-picks lots of fancy bits of technology, programs, etc but then doesn’t put in the infrastructure to support them.  The fancy bits can get used in an academic or commercial environment but there is no spread out to the general populace.

Broadband is a case in point.  At a very rough guess going from anecdote and support calls, NZ seems to be where the UK was about 5 or 7 years ago in terms of broadband provision.  I was told that Telecom used to advertise that you could get broadband anywhere in NZ.  This was by someone who has been told that they will never get broadband where they live (in the country but not remote).  They can’t even get satellite broadband because of the topography.  In terms of speed, home Internet connection seems slow here but that is perceptual as I don’t have any UK figures to compare with.  In relation to education (which is what this post is about!) there are effects relating to the disparity of access between people and locations.  Working in the tertiary sector, this is particularly evident where academics can access resources at LAN speeds and students at a distance are struggling with dial up.

You also have the effect that students aren’t exposed to the range of materials that they could be.  They get guided to standard resources through the LMS / VLE but much of the increase in quality learning should come through serendipitous and informal channels.  If you are on dial-up, not only is cost a factor but there is the tediousness of waiting for documents to resolve on your screen.  I remember that well.  Mentioning cost reminds me that students here are charged for internet access from campus if they are accessing any site that is outwith the university Intranet.  I was quite shocked when I first heard that and in fact still find it hard to come to terms with.  I’m not sure where the culture divide is - were we just mollycoddled in the UK are is NZ HE penny-pinching? Whatever, the result is a restriction on the resources that students could have access to.

Back in schools, access to computers by students seems limited, as is access to technology by staff.  There has been a scheme to provide laptops for staff but our local school doesn’t seem to have then been enabling in terms of letting staff use their laptops directly in teaching.  They can prepare and print but there are few data projectors, no digital whiteboards and no student access to computers in the class.  This of course is a single example and may be atypical - I have heard that there are clusters of schools with extra IT provision.  By itself, this doesn’t mean that education in schools is any less effective than what was happening 10 or 20 years ago.  It does seem to imply though that kids aren’t being exposed to the tools and resources that they might be expected to work with when they leave school or graduate.

The above might seem like a bit of a whinge and parts probably are!  Education and its environment in the UK wasn’t perfect by any means.  That doesn’t mean that comparisons aren’t worth making.  It also helps me mull over what are the really important changes and how that effects what we suggest as elearning options to staff.  There was actually a lot more said today which I’m too tired for at the moment.  It might perhaps come up in a later post with more reflection on my part.

Wikinomics » Blog Archive » Wiki collaboration leads to happiness

Great graphic of principle of a wiki compared to the method (email) that most folks use for collaboration.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Tags: wiki, email, graphic

In a post on workload management strategies for elearning, Christopher Sessums notes the following from Ragan & Terheggen

Start with a course development model
Define your objectives, learning outcomes, exit competencies, and an explanation of how the learning process will be evaluated.”By developing a course development model at the begining of the course authoring process, faculty members can avoid inconsistencies in content presentation, misapplication of technologies, and confusion regarding roles and responsibilities” (Ragan & Terheggen, 2003, p. 14).

Christopher D. Sessums :: Blog :: Notes on Workload Management Strategies for Online Educators

This to me is a restatement of Biggs’ ideas on Constructive Alignment for teaching in HE. My simple interpretation is that we need to start with what we want our students to have learnt - the Learning Outcome. This should then tell us how to appropriately assess the achievement of these outcomes. What we then teach is the final piece of the jigsaw so we have
Outcome > Assessment > Teaching
as the flow when designing learning activities.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

It’s long been recognised that the tell me, show me, let me, division in learning effectiveness holds true. Often students are asked to do stuff that their lecturers don’t do - or at least not in ways that are visible to the students. The students are just told what to do and are passive consumers of information.

This video is of a group of education lecturers from the Uni of Hertfordshire who wanted their students to learn how to blog. That’s the ‘Let me’ bit. The lecturers also started blogging too so they participated in the learning experience at the same time and could authentically do the ‘Show me’ bit as well. Here, the lecturers reflect on the process of blogging and using it with their students. I would have liked a little more on the student experiences although the real benefit to their learning may be intangible in this timeframe and may come through attitudinal adjustments to learning.