Liquid Learning Landscape

Change doesn't happen overnight but the shift that has begun in the learning landscape due to the availability of web-based video will only accelerate and deepen each day. I feel that the potential change for learning will be in three fundamental ways.

1. Democratization of Educational Resources

For me, this is the most exciting change that is happening and it will inevitably continue to expand. We are moving from money-making textbook companies to e-textbooks (that are not only text and images but have embedded videos), many of which are collaboratively written (i.e. Wikibooks), and continuously updated online to remain current and accurate. The impact on learning derives from the available information that is based on collective knowledge and understanding and it is not filtered for political reasons. More importantly, these resources will be affordable by anyone who has access to the web. (I'm convinced that the free e-books or almost free will quickly make the costly ones obsolete.) Lastly, imagine the environmental impact of no longer printing millions of textbooks that are costly and quickly outdated. We are still in the infant stages of this process with the attendant difficulties, but e-books will inevitably continue to rapidly develop. The amount of piloting in this area is impressive. Read this great article: "Book Smarts? E-Texts Receive Mixed Reviews From Students".

We are also seeing high priced, high status universities opening their courses to anyone interested. Already Yale and MIT are putting their courses online with many others ready to follow. Those with less ambitious goals can also tap into the extensive resources on iTunes University and Wikiversity, two resources I've just recently discovered. Imagine what these resources will do for those who are truly motivated to learn who historically have never had access to the ideas and thinking now available at these venues.

2. From Literacy to Visuality

This is the 2nd Gutenberg shift, as Kevin Kelly calls it in his insightful article, "Becoming Screen Literate." He describes how we are moving from "book fluency to screen fluency or literacy to visuality." The impact for learning is far reaching. The boundaries that existed between text, image, and video are now blurred and soon to be non-existant. The possibilities this development offers to "bring learning alive" are endless, increasing options for self-directed learning and greater engagement for all.

3. The World is our Learning and Teaching Oyster

There are millions of potential teachers and co-learners available around the world at our finger tips. This phenomenon is already happening (think Wikipedia) and will continue to grow. Why this happens is most clearly explained by Jonathan Zittrain in a summer 09 TedTalk. His hopeful view of the future (because of the internet) is being created by the basic human desire to help others just for the sake of helping. Listen to this:



Do all of these developments mean the end of schools as we know them today? Inevitably. Does it also mean that teachers will be obsolete? Absolutely NOT. Teachers will always be necessary to ask questions that push thinking, facilitate construction of understanding, illuminate connections, and find engaging possibilities for diverse learning styles. Learning will remain as vibrant and alive as ever, but it will be more accessible and "liquid" in location and format.

Learning from the Journey or Doing Time

Reflection:
1. Process of creating a digital story.
2. Use of digital storytelling.

I have always believed that incomplete or inaccurate solutions can serve as entry points for learning (such as in mathematical problem solving and scientific investigative inquiries). However, sometimes, those mistakes don't easily fit into time frames of our reality.

Sitting next to two outstanding Middle School language teachers, Gaby Jimenez and Carole Henriot, when we were given a chunk of time to work on creating a digital story, we came up with the idea of creating an audio book. Finding ways to get students to have "comprehensible input" in the second language is a constant need for educators as it is the highest priority for second language learning. This is true for all languages so finding a way that we could create web based read-alouds with engaging visuals for students that could be easily adapted from one language to the next would not only give kids opportunity for maximum comprehensible input but would also be a way that our collaborative efforts would be multiplying the loaves and fishes as it were.

So we gave it a shot. Here was our process:
1. From a Spanish book in the ES library we selected a colorful story about a young boy eating . We selected it for the outstanding visuals, the fact that it would be applicable to topics all languages dealt with.
2. After discussing with each other and a few others in the vicinity, we decided to use iMovie (for those using a MAC) and Movie Maker (for those using a PC).
3. We then scanned pictures on a color scanner that can transfer the scans via email.
4. We retyped and recorded the story.
5. We then started attempting to import the visuals into our respective moving making program. We quickly discovered that we needed to do some converting of the scans in order to import.

We quickly ran out of time and never continued this project (thus nothing embedded in this blog) as we found out the following:
• This was turning out to be much more complex than if we had simply used powerpoint or key note, typed in the text and then recorded a voice.
• I Movie and Movie Maker can’t talk to each other (so the wonderful collaboration we originally envisioned wasn't possible). This was too time consuming without the added benefit of being able to cross languages so we abandoned.

So was this a waste of time? Surely not, as I definitely learned several things that day (perhaps not my colleagues who are already much more savvy in the area of movie making!!). I still developed some of the following knowledge and skills that will help me in future digital storytelling.
1. I fine-tuned my scanning abilities, learning some of the subtle differences in the settings.
2. I developed some rudimentary understanding of the new iMovie.
3. I learned some new quick keys for inserting accents used with certain languages for certain programs (these are unfortunately not universal, varying by platform and by program.)
4. I learned how to use the new snowflake microphone (and have since used it for a couple other projects.)
5. I learned some new tricks in manipulating jpegs and pdfs.


When listing these, it makes me wonder if that is why geeks are so proficient. Is it simply that they spend a lot more time than the rest of us mere mortals just mucking around? And through that immersion, into various tools and projects, develop the transferable skills that make them so digitally proficient? Malcolm Gladwell proves in his great read, Outliers, that high performing people in any give area (i.e. sports, music, etc.) have all spent at least 10,000 hours developing the related skills. So, is that the key to becoming a geek and why our kids these days are leaving educators in the dust?

Given my age and my other areas of passion, I don't risk geekhood anytime soon, but I do plan on continuing to pursue digital storytelling as I believe it has two powerful components that can help communicate a message: story framework and engaging imagery. So, the ways that I hope to tap into digital storytelling in the future will be more in creating messages of how learning best happens. I will begin, perhaps, by using a format similar to the video, "Pay Attention," below:

Zen Zone

How I cringe when thinking of all the text-laden presentations I've done in the past. Trying to mend my ways by following Garr Reynold's presentation zen ideas, I've definitely improved but still am a novice in this area. A typical slide for which I continue to use too much text is in listing meeting outcomes. So, I took a look at a new teacher orientation from the beginning of the year and recooked that page to be more visually based. Here it is:

BEFORE

AFTER

I think the biggest change I will be focusing on now is at the planning stage—avoiding going right to the template (such a lazy default with PPT and Keynote) and spending more time with paper post-its, clarifying my message before going digital.

In reflecting on what Zen is, I found this quote at dictionary.com:

• Note: Deliberately irrational statements are sometimes used in Zen to jar persons into realizing the limits of the common uses of the intellect. One well-known example is, “What is the sound of one hand clapping?”

I like how this quote relates to the idea that we need to jolt ourselves out of "common uses" in presentations and find ways to "jar" the audience into engaging and learning with visuals.

Lastly, I turn to Reynolds for inspiration in order to remain patient and peaceful with my personal progress in the "Zen Zone":

"Many people look for the short road and the quick fix to achieve presentation excellence. But it doesn't exist: there are no panaceas or off-the-shelf fixes. Learning to become an exceptional presenter in today's world is a journey. In this journey, there are many paths to presenting in a more "enlightened" way, a way that is appropriate for the world in which we live. The first step down the road to becoming a great presenter is simply seeing--really seeing--that that which passes for normal and ordinary and good enough is off-kilter with how we learn, understand, remember, and engage."

So, I'm hoping to follow Reynold's advice on how to improve:

• Read and Study
• Just do it
• Exercise Your "Right Brain"
• Get Out
• Lessons Are ALL Around You
• It's Within You Already
  

Question: How can we get more of this "Zen Zone" in our world of education and not just in our presentations?

A picture, worth a thousand conversations

When thinking about using Creative Commons images in the context of education, I decided to search for some powerful images that could be used to launch long term discussions to cultivate five key habits of mind.

Metacognitive

How can we be reflective and think about our thinking? How do we know what we know and how can we use that to become a more effective life-long learner?

flikr: TZA

Innovative

How can we find creative solutions so that all children enjoy the same rights?

flickr: INZAKI

Tenacious

“We only think when we’re confronted with problems” John Dewey. How can we learn to regularly engage in, stick with, and tackle problems that take time and demand lots of thinking to solve?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/colemama/3942606430/in/pool-858082@N25

Empathic

How can we take the perspective of others, walk in their shoes, reflect on the level of justice around the world and what can we do to make it better for one and all?

flikr:sibtainn

Inquisitive

What if we started each unit of study with a series of photos that simultaneously activated their background knowledge and elicited their wonderings, uncovering what they wanted to know more about?

flikr: ViaMoi

21st Century Savvy or a Digital Dilettante?

In reflecting on how this series of courses for the International School of Bangkok's Certificate of Educational Technology and Informational Literacy has impacted my professional life thus far, I've decided to use the lenses of the ISB 21’s framework upon which these courses are built: How have I become a more effective learner, communicator, creator, and collaborator?

EFFECTIVE LEARNER

http://www.flickr.com/photos/wallyg/1385069960/

In becoming a more effective 21st century learner, I feel I have progressed the most in using the reflection process required by writing the blogs. I have always been highly reflective (in fact, perhaps too much so) and have long realized the benefit of writing as a reflective tool. Having the options of embedding visuals, links, and videos have added 2.0 dimensions to my reflections and brought my references alive. More importantly, however, is the fact that my reflections are out there for the world, availing myself to a larger audience than just myself or “the professor” in a class situation. Having such an opportunity to share with a wider group is a motivator that holds the potential for increased quality and connection to other learners around the world.

The second area of progress as a learner has come through gathering information via my RSS feeder, which has helped me search for and receive timely information on given topics of interest or research. The most useful item in that arena is using the Google search RSS feeder option.

QUESTION: In thinking about developing more effective learners (myself included), I'm wondering How can we help students and ourselves become more tenacious in trying to solve real world problems and not simply being satisfied solving personal problems of entertainment, advancement or social connections?

EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATOR & CREATOR

http://www.flickr.com/photos/abhishek-kumar/429409641/

In developing as a more effective communicator & creator, I've become more aware of possible media options to communicate and create in a way that is more linked to the world. I still have yet to use these on a regular basis to create. The most powerful learning related to communication has been in reading and trying to apply the principles of Presentation Zen.

I now feel more equipped to be a more responsible communicator, finding effective visuals (rather than the former favorite Google image search) and giving due credit for these visuals using flikr and Creative Commons. As I move forward in this area, I look forward to creating more of my own visuals to meet specific needs.

QUESTION: Are we developing as effective communicators creators for a better world for all or just for those who are currently connected?

EFFECTIVE GLOBAL COLLABORATOR

http://www.flickr.com/photos/me_on_flickr/3489830404/

In becoming a more effective global collaborator, I remain a neophyte. I now more regularly use collaborative tools such as wikis and Google apps, but feel I have not really tapped into a global communication network or developed my own virtual professional learning network.

QUESTION: As I read more blogs and tap into sources from around the world, I wonder, How can we encourage more global collaboration across the social, economic, cultural, and ideological divides?

CONCLUSION

I am neither fully 21st century skilled nor simply a digital dabbler, but somewhere in canyon of the digital divide, hoping to help contribute to the bridge that will bring powerful tools and thinking to everyone regardless of where and to whom they happened to be born.

Mass Collaboration: My Muddled Mind or Misunderstood misnomer?

Unsure what is actually meant by “mass collaboration” I decided to consult Wikipedia, the one example that I believed to be a successful digital mass collaborative project. According to Wikipedia, “Mass collaboration is a form of collective action that occurs when large numbers of people work independently on a single project, often modular in its nature. Such projects typically take place on the internet using social software and computer-supported collaboration tools”


I next went to the recommended reading, the Wikinomics website. There, after some perusal, I came across “Beyond the Classroom” in the Wikinomics wiki, which is taking the ideas of Wikinomics and applying them to the educational setting. I have a few comments and questions:

• Are file cabinets really the current common shared curriculum storage option? Haven’t most schools been using shared servers for some time?

• Doesn’t a database of quizzes, lesson plans seem to be contradictory to the co-constructing of the curriculum as proposed earlier in the writing?

• Why are we talking of totally transforming education yet still discussing textbooks? In other areas text book learning is spurned so why are we figuring out how to do more textbooks?

"(In our classroom wiki) 97% of edits (over 9000 overall) were student-generated. . . . This is largely due to there being an explicit requirement to participate - without the reward of grades, I'm not entirely sure if there would be as much effort."
• So is this the 21st century extrinsically motivated hoop jumping? Can’t collaborative learning that encourages analysis, evaluation, and creation also be done in f2f situations?



I think all educators will agree (and have for quite some time)on the need for and benefits of developing collaborative skills in students. And I believe some of the web-based tools will facilitate such collaboration digitally. Perhaps we need to collaborate on the above mentioned wiki.

Meanwhile I’m still struggling with the term “mass”. According to dictionary.com this adjective is “pertaining to a large number of people: i.e mass unemployment; mass migrations." So, I’m curious to find examples of collaboration that truly involve masses. Even though I used to consider Wikipedia to be a good example of mass collaboration, Clay Shirkey in Here Comes Everybody explains that there are actually just a few contributors who do the majority of the writing and work on Wikipedia. Therefore the term “mass” seems to be a misnomer. Let’s look more closely at Shirkey’s analysis and explanation of the Power Law.

“The relationship between audience size and conversational pattern. The curved line represents the power-law distribution of weblogs ranked by audience size. Weblogs at the left-hand side of the graph have so many readers that they are limited to the broadcast pattern, because you can’t interact with millions of readers. As size of readership falls, loose conversation becomes possible, because the audiences are smaller. The long tail of weblogs, with just a few readers each, can support tight conversation, where every reader is also a writer and vice-versa.”

If this so, then how can collaboration ever be “mass”?

What if?

Even if mass collaboration is not realistic , we can all agree on the collaborative mind set that is so well matched to the Web 2.0 world. Therefore, why don’t we be the change we hope to see?

• What if we had created a collaborative ISB wiki on copyright and related issues rather than individually blog about it? Imagine how powerful the collective knowledge, creativity, and original ideas might serve our community?

• What if we had created a collaborative ISB wiki for online safety (rather than individually blogging about it) to be contributed to and consulted by students, teachers, parents, and the world?

How about next time we all put effort in creating a greater “collaborative footprint”

http://www.flickr.com/photos/neloqua/11486115/

Web Power--which one?

Where does the power of the Web lie?
I am not sure what this questions means. What do we mean by power in this context? According to Dictionary.com, power means "ability to do or act; capability of doing or accomplishing something." So let's explore some possible powers in the webbed world.

Power needed for Web Power
Before we get too intellectual about power, perhaps we need to first look at the power (meaning electrical energy) needed to permit the more esoteric and varied powers the web potentially holds. Here is a great article by the Guardian:
Web providers must limit internet's carbon footprint, say experts: Soaring online demand stretching companies' ability to deliver content as net uses more power and raises costs

Question: What is being done by the biggest users in this arena? Is each of us aware of our own impact and how we might diminish that? There will be no power in the web if there is no power for the web. What if we put everything in the cloud but can no longer reliably reach it?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/naughton321/136464207/

Potential Powers

If the energy source can be sustained, there is enormous potential for powers such as:


Power of knowledge: As Sir Francis Bacon is know to have claimed in his Meditations, 1597, Knowledge is Power. The Power-knowledge is a concept coined by the French philosopher Michel Foucault: "Power is based on knowledge and makes use of knowledge; on the other hand, power reproduces knowledge by shaping it in accordance with its anonymous intentions. Power (re-) creates its own fields of exercise through knowledge." If this is so, just imagine the power potential with those connected to Google, Wikipedia, Wikibooks, MIT open courses . . . .

http://wwwdelivery.superstock.com/WI/223/1555/PreviewComp/SuperStock_1555R-1095.jpg

Power of Persuasion: Visuals have always been a powerful key to persuade the viewers. For example, look at these Posters of WWII, some of which still are recognizable today.

http://blog.oregonlive.com/idiotbox/2008/05/large_uncle-sam.jpg

For those wanting to tap into this visual power in their persuasive presentations, I encourage you to read Presentation Zen and add Presentation Zen webiste to your RSS feeder!


Power to organize oneself: For those of us who have never enjoyed organizing papers, files, personal documents, etc. the new organizational tools hold huge potential power to tap into one of our dearest resources--time. As a novice, here are a few of my favorites:

• Delicious
• iGoogle
  
• RSS Feeder

What other ones to you suggest?

Power to communicate: None of you are probably old enough to remember living as an expat prior to the internet, but I'll assure you that is was a drastically different life simply because it was much more challenging to stay closely connected to those living elsewhere. Even though many are seeing email a thing of the past, it is still used extensively to connect people. Yes, the social networking, Skype type communications have virtually made the distance seem to disappear.

http://www.bi.no/FellesFiles/_NY DESIGN FRA 2007/artikkelbilder/508 pixler/kommunikasjon508.jpg

Power to take action, make change: Of all of the potential powers, the power for individuals and groups to make a difference is for me the most important one. For an excellent reflection on this, I encourage you to read Social Movements 2.0: Harnessing the Power of the Web for Change.

So, where does the power of the web lie? Potential power is there for the taking--for those who have the energy source and tools to tap into it.

Is the power of the web, like most power throughout history, once again inextricably linked to one's socio-economic level?