Connecting in a Connected World

National VET E-learning Strategy - South Australian Information Session - CoveritLive

2011-10-23T22:10:00.000-07:00

&amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://www.coveritlive.com/mobile.php/option=com_mobile/task=viewaltcast/altcast_code=34492b67a6" &amp;amp;amp;gt;National VET E-learning Strategy - South Australian Information Session&amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;gt;

TEDx Adelaide (#TEDxADL)

2010-11-05T16:41:00.000-07:00

TEDx Adelaide (#TEDxADL)

Exploring the ePortfolio Platform 'Mahara' - Uni SA

2010-10-07T15:40:00.000-07:00

Exploring the ePortfolio Platform 'Mahara' - Uni SA

2010-09-21T17:51:00.000-07:00

Creative Commons Roadshow - Adelaide

Using Skills Productively Conference - Day 2

2010-09-06T16:18:00.001-07:00

Using Skills Productively Conference - Day 2

2010-09-06T16:18:00.000-07:00

Using Skills Productively Conference - Day 2

Using Skills Productively - Day One

2010-09-05T16:42:00.001-07:00

Using Skills Productively Conference - Day 1

Moving governments from solely being service providers to community/civic enablers

2010-08-13T07:08:00.000-07:00

This blog post about 'Code for America' explains why/how 'local governments' (aka city governments in the US) should be moving to more of a community/civic 'enabler' role, as well as improving its services, by utilisting technology better (see the 'How can 'the next generation of Gov 2.0 apps for city governments" help address some of these issues' section).

The following are some other ideas for better use of technology (cloud computing and mash ups) in local government includes:

- Water Quality Officers using data aggregation to compare and share real-time suburban wetland data can immediately report any health safety concerns.
- A Health inspector investigating a local restaurant after receiving notification of a food poisoning incident shares relevant data and can immediately source similar incidents in the area via a ‘Food Poisoning Outbreaks’ visualisation map.
- Environmental Land Management students are about to source, map and contribute to a group database of toxic waste incidents.
- A Building Inspector has received numerous complaints about XYZ Trading Pty Ltd, and is able to contribute to a collection of data about their poor workmanship by uploading images taken on her mobile phone to a workplace repository.

This will require the 'early adopters' (that's us) to take some risks and have a 'crack' and so I am interested in establishing a similar non-profit entity as 'Code for America' in Australia so we can help make this happen sooner.

Businesses are already developing the applications to enable this to happen, but as this blog post explains, local governments need to make sure that their data is available through 'platforms', ie websites which can be shared freely (Platform thinking)

Always open to ideas and input :)D

AAEEBL 2010 National Conference - Day 3 - 22 July

2010-07-22T05:43:00.000-07:00

AAEEBL 2010 National Conference - Day 3 - 22 July

AAEEBL 2010 National Conference - Day 2 - 21 July

2010-07-21T08:07:00.000-07:00

AAEEBL 2010 National Conference - Day 2 - 21 July

AAEEBL 2010 National Conference - Day 1 - 20 July

2010-07-20T05:24:00.000-07:00

AAEEBL 2010 National Conference - Day 1 - 20 July

AAEEBL Workshop - Web 2.0 and your digital self - Helen Barrett

2010-07-19T05:45:00.000-07:00

AAEEBL Workshop - Web 2.0 and your digital self - Helen Barrett

Making educational resources available to all through OER & OCW

2010-07-15T18:03:00.000-07:00

For a long time I have believed that access to education is a basic human right.

I follow with great interest the Open Education Resource (OCR) and the Open Course Ware (OCW) movement, which has just over 13,000 OCW courses available in 20 languages (OpenCourseWare (OCW) Consortium Newsletter, June 2010 edition), and I admire MIT's, the UK's Open University's and others' leadership in this area.

I also have a strong belief that any educational resources development with government funding (ie our money) should be licenced as open resources, and so it is refreshing to see some countries are taking this lead, including:

- Brazil's OER movement aiming to transform a law to allow all publicly funded educational material to be made available as OER
- The Netherlands' Minitry of Education initiating 'Wikiwijs', a national repository of digital teaching and learning materials published under open licenses
- Korea's K-OCW website where all e-learning content produced by government grants are available as OER
- Indonesia's NEXUS national repository containing open content from around the world
- USA's ManorLab, which aims to strengthen continuing education of the 6,500 City of Manor, Texas citizens because the government 2.0 agenda "cannot succeed without catering to the educational needs of citizens"

The African Virtual University (AVU) states that sustaining an OER website is difficult but see their OER website as an opportunity to make their organisation 'more relevant' as it will attract more partners to work with them.

To support the growing open content movement, the OCW Consortium supports online 'Communities of Interest', covering such areas as:

- OCW in Developing Countries
- Primary and Secondary Education
- Policy and OCW/OER,
- OCW for Business
- Technology in OCW
- OCW in Community Colleges
- OER Health

The OCW Consortium also runs regular webinars on the first Thursday of each month.

As OER allow people to not only share their content but offer others the ability to adapt it, educators can contextualise and translate existing OER content for their own learners, making it possible to increase the diversity of educational content even for 'thin markets' like remote indigenous learners.

However, in order to make OER/OCW mainstream in education, we will need to see major changes in educational policy, as currently in Australia any content developed by government employees, including educators, becomes the 'property of the Minister of Education' and can not be licensed as 'open content'.

By making all Australian government funded educational content available as OER, we as a nation not only have the opportunity to showcase the breadth and quality of our work to the world but we will attract partnerships with other nations to work with us. We will also encourage a culture of openness and sharing in our own educational communities, something which is sadly lacking in education and training at the moment.

Similar blog posts:
Open Courseware (OCW) and Open Educational Resources (OER) – the pros & cons
The different dimensions of open content and resources

Getting to know NCVER Workshop: Finding and using data and research

2010-07-08T18:13:00.000-07:00

Getting to know NCVER Workshop: Finding and using data and research

NCVER No Frills Conference - Day 2

2010-07-07T18:41:00.000-07:00

NCVER No Frills Conference - Day 2

NCVER No FrillsConference 2010 - Day One

2010-07-06T17:47:00.000-07:00

NCVER No FrillsConference 2010 - Day One

Expanding, supporting and sustaining lifelong and lifewide learning

2010-06-22T04:51:00.000-07:00

Learning is a continuous, collective, life long process.

A lot of vocational learning occurs in our workplaces and in our communities through informal learning which complements our formal (accredited) vocational (VET) learning experiences. Learning can be individual but quite often it involves others in the learning process.

To ensure equity and recognition of existing skills, individuals need mechanisms (such as e-portfolios) to capture their informal individual and group learning experiences. This requires teachers/trainers/educators to shift from being information sources to information mediators and guides, and that learner have effective information and digital literacy skills to access, evaluate and transform information. These skills are best learned in the context of a workplace/community and so learners need to be given the strategies to build their confidence to be life long learners who can seek new knowledge as required (just in time learning).

New knowledge is gained through our workplace and community networks, however, sometimes this new knowledge may cause conflict in our existing networks (ie family or community) as the new knowledge challenges existing knowledge and traditions. Learners need support mechanisms to manage these conflicts.

Learning involves our cognitive minds, our emotions and interaction with society. The changing nature of learning has implications on our education systems through changed pedagogies, funding structures and support mechanisms, however, it is unrealistic to place all of our society's learning only in these places, as we also need to support the learning which naturally occurs in our workplaces, families and societies.

This blog posted is based on some writing I recently read by a colleague which is currently in draft format.

Commercial Marketing 2.0

2010-06-14T16:41:00.000-07:00

Commercial Marketing 2.0

My thoughts on what needs to happen for workforce development in SA

2010-05-13T15:13:00.000-07:00

The South Australian Training and Skills Commission (TaSC)is the peak advisory body to the South Australian Government on skills and workforce development and recently circulated a ‘Stakeholder Consultation Paper’ to help inform their 2010 Five Year Plan for Skills and Workforce Development.

The following is a summary of my response to this Paper:

Foundation and generic skills
Knowledge can be shared and gained in a number of ways, and in more traditional cultures this was done through story, song and dance. However, being able to ‘codify’ knowledge into symbols (ie letters and numbers) enables us to capture and share information more effectively and permanently through words, sentences, paragraphs, timeline, graphs etc. These symbols allow knowledge to be externalised and they don’t rely on another person to directly provide the information.

The skills to be able to interpret this codified information are known as ‘language, literacy and numeracy’ (LLN) skills. These skills are the foundation skills to all learning and development, and if Australian society is going to be able to move to more of a 'knowledge economy', it will need innovativers and entrepreneurs and people willing to participate in community and civic activities with these skills. This requires an adult working population with these LLN foundation skills, as well as digital and critical literacy skills and a range of generic skills.

Statistics about adult language, literacy and numeracy skills (from Skills Australia’s Australian Workforce Futures, A National Workforce Development Strategy (2010)) include:

“- A one per cent higher national literacy score has been found to be associated with 2.5 per cent higher labour productivity and an associated increase in GDP per capita” – source: Coulombe et. al. (2004), Literacy scores, human capital and growth across fourteen OECD countries, Statistics Canada)
“- 2006 Adult Literacy and Life Skills Survey indicates that 40 per cent of employed Australians and 60 per cent of unemployed Australians have a level of literacy below the accepted standard needed to work in the emerging knowledge-based economy” - Australian Bureau of Statistics (2008), 2006 Adult literacy and life skills survey, Australia, Cat no. 4228.0

There are a number of adult LLN programs, including the Workplace English Language and Literacy (WELL) Program. This program has just received an increase in funding in the Federal Government’s 2010 Budget in recognition of the need to raise adult LLL in Australia.

However, if Australia is going to be able to increase these foundation skills of its population, it will also need to improve people’s attitudes toward 'life long learning' and its associated benefits ie we need to develop a culture which values and utilises learning.

For example – when low paid workers gain higher skills and qualifications they are often not utilised in the workplace for fear that the workers might take the managements' jobs and/or ask to be paid more. (Pocock B. (2009, Low-paid workers, changing patterns of work and life, and participation in vocational education and training: A discussion starter, Centre for Work and Life, University of South Australia, NCVER)

Employers need to understand that the productivity of their business will improve as their employees' skills increase. They also need to know how to effectively manage their employees to utilise these improved skills.

Another major change to support improved skills and knowledge in Australia will need to be the way our current schooling system fosters a culture of 'academia' and if you don't fit into this neo-liberal view of the world that you are not consider to be a 'learner'. Culturally we are sending unspoken messages that if you can't get to university you can't be a very good learner. Hence, the likelihood that you will return to formal education and/or training later in life is very slim. Hence, people’s LLN skills decline.

And if people do return to formal education and/or training it is done so poorly in terms of learning and assessment and looking after the general well being of the learner that it re-enforces people's attitudes that this type of environment is not for them.

Skills for the ‘new economy’
The key skills for a ‘new economy’ of innovation and advancement in Australia include:

• Independent thinking – being able to analysis information and apply it to new situations.
• Reflective thinking – analysing the past and applying to the future
• People and community skills – willingness to help others develop and grow – empathy and concern for other's well being
• An understanding of the benefits of applying a 'continuous improvement cycle'

This will only happen when there is a major paradigm shift in the way people are learning in formal learning environments ie when we need to move from a 'transmission' model where the educator is seen as the holder of all knowledge and determines who has skills and who doesn't, to a 'participatory' model where learners learn how to learn, self assess and are not just asked to regurgitate facts, and where the educator is a 'facilitator' of learning, and fosters a culture of life long learning.

We need to develop an Australian culture which values life long learning.

This would happen though increased funding and reduced political interference into our educational institutions, as education and training organisations are managed by budgets and bureaucrats and the learner is the lowest factor of concern in the equation. Our schools and training organisations are simply 'factories' churning out 'numbers of faceless students' and they are not funded well enough to enable effective and innovative teaching and learning.

Also, our teaching and education support staff are not innovative themselves, and often don't have the higher order skills which we are seeking for our workforce. We need to start by upskilling the teaching and education support staff first, and improve front line and middle management leadership and people management skills of these organisation to help them value and utilise their workforce's skills.

Currently, innovation and bureaucracy in education and training is a miss-match.

Some of the ways we can overcome the barriers to the adoption of entrepreneurial practices in education and training include:

• Allowing public RTOs to retain the profits they make to be invested in Research and Development strategies, and establish Research and Development departments which have the resources to apply their outcomes to a wide audience.
• Encouraging education and training organisations to use Open Education Resources (OER) to promote quality and consistency of content.
• Providing learner content and records in digital formats which are easy to share, aggregate and search.
• Developing life long learning skills ie helping people to develop the skills to manage their own learning better.

Completion rates
Some of the reasons why so many people never complete their qualification is:

• Lack of support for student well being (ie supporting the whole person and recognising their external needs)
• Not everybody needs a whole qualification
• Poor teaching and learning practices
• Qualifications which are not relevant to them or their job and/or a miss-match in the course chosen to the individual’s training needs – ie not enough easily accessible and searchable information about what's involved in a course and course outcomes
• Lack of career development skills ie having the ability to map one's skills against the course requirements
• Lack of cultural perspectivenees of the value of life long learning and qualifications

What I believe defines ‘successful’ outcomes from publicly funded training is:

• Employment outcomes
• Happy functioning communities
• Improved workforce productivity
• People happy in their lives/jobs
• Matched skills to the economy
• Skills sets/clusters relevant to industry standards and needs

One possible way that funding arrangements could promote completions of qualifications could be bonus payments to RTOs for students who actually complete their qualification as an initiative to support their learners better.

Professional development for the tertiary workforce
Currently the Certificate IV in Training and Assessment is not a suitable entry requirement for trainers in VET as it only focusses on the understanding of the jargon used in the sector and not about what is learning? What is life long learning? What is assessment for learning, as well as of learning? What are the philosophies around learning? etc. The ability to get a Cert IV in TAA in less than 7 days at some RTOs demonstrates the lack of quality of this qualification in the industry.

Imparting knowledge and helping people learn is a skill developed over a number of years through continuing professional development (CPD), mentoring and professional conversations.

Some of the ways that VET practitioners could be encouraged to pursue pathways from VET qualifications to higher education and then post graduate studies could be:

• Salary structures and career pathways linked to qualifications
• Qualifications relevant to current job roles
• Flexibility in the way qualifications are offered, the cost and release time to do the study

Some of the key elements of a workforce development strategy for the South Australian tertiary workforce could be:

• Development of a competency matrix for the different skills required for different job roles in the tertiary sector, then mapping/creating qualifications for these competencies
• Effective performance reviews/management processes which aim to help staff gain the competencies identified in the competency matrix mentioned above
• Mandated continuing professional development (CPD) and re-registration of teaching staff

Recognition of Prior Learning
The impact of recent funding of RPL initiatives has had on the uptake and delivery of quality RPL services to clients include:

• More client focussed services
• Resources to support client focussed RPL
• Skills profiling of retrenched workers ie Mitsbitshi and Bridgestone

The factors impacting on South Australia’s progress towards achieving its RPL targets are:

• Lack of understanding about effective RPL process and what auditors expect in an RPL process
• Lack of trainers with the skills to undertake holistic RPL
• Lack of training, mentoring and coaching available to gain these skills ie not part of the Cert IV in TAA
• Lack of opportunities to have professional conversations about what works and what doesn't
• Limited ways to effectively share good practice amongst the VET community

The way employer knowledge of, and confidence in, RPL could be increased includes:

• Use language suitable to employers ie don't use the term 'RPL' but skills profiling of staff
• Employers valuing life long learning and the need for qualifications
• Helping employers understand how to manage their employee’s productivity better, and deal with issues around increases in salary or retention issues related to increased skills/qualifications
• RPL'ing employers first so they know what's involved and what they will need to do to support their staff when they go through the RPL process. Also, demonstrate how RPL provides an opportunity for continuous improvement in their business

Training Packages
I don’t really have many thoughts on the impact of Training Packages as I am currently not working with them directly, however, a ‘coaching and mentoring’ approach to improve the way RTOs are using training packages would be useful, as would a more State wide co-ordinated approach to professional development (ie Victorian TAFE Development Centre) and the development and sharing of quality content through Open Education Resources (OER) and Creative Commons Licensing.

We can now only wait for TaSC’s next Five Year Plan for Workforce Development in South Australia and HOPE that the State government allocates the necessary resources to deploy this plan.

What are your thoughts on regional, jurisdiction and/or national workforce development planning???

Requested review of a Mahara E-portfolios Beginners Guide (for a freebie)

2010-04-15T01:12:00.000-07:00

I've been asked by Packt Publishing to do a blog review of a recently released Mahara E-portfolios Beginners Guide:

Mahara 1.2 ePortfolios - Beginner's Guide -
Create educational and professional ePortfolios and personalized learning
communities By: Kent DM, Bradbury GG, Hand RW, Kent MA

in exchange for a 'free e-book' version :)

"This book is for:

- learners who want to maintain online documentation of their projects and share it with a particular teacher or trainer (a learning / assessment portfolio) for feedback,
- educators who want to set up an ePortfolio for their students in order to encourage and advance personlised and reflective learning, or
- professionals who want to share journals and project doucment with their team, capturing and sharing their existing knowledge and creating new knowledge in communities of professional practice (knowledge management/organsiational development)" pg 2

There is also a chapter for 'Institution Administrators, Staff Members, and Group Tutors' too, and appendixes which help you consider what's involved in implementing your own instance of Mahara and installing Mahara.

The book is well written and presented, using simple language and scenarios (case studies) to describe what are e-portfolios and how to create an e-portfolio using Mahara. I like the 'sense of humour' style of writing ie "Have a go hero" activities which encourage you to get amongst it and create your own e-portfolio.

The book is structured for 'inchworms', who like to be 'taken through a new process step by step' pg 24 (which I find a lot of educators and people new to ICT like) - but don't fear you 'grasshoppers' (like myself), you will still be able to 'hop around bits of information' as they are needed.

[Bracketed Exerts] help highlight and explain concepts ie 'What is a view' pg 11, and there are activities to ensure you understand the information being presented ie 'pop quizzes', 'Time for action' activites, and 'what just happened' recapping of information. A thread of 'Case studies' throughout the book illustrate how and why information can be presented in your e-portfolio. There's even answers to the 'pop quizzes' in the back of the book (of course).

The book offers some great reasons why you would use an e-portfolio (pg 9-10 - Ways of using Mahara, pg 16-18 Why Mahara?). There are even references to 'presentation' styles ie considering the 'aesthetics' of a 'view' (pg 103).

Although not a cheap resource (Book = around 22-24 UK pounds or e-book = 14-17 UK pounds), when you calculate how much of your time it would take (cost) to produce such great step-by-step resources you can quickly justify the outlay.

Demonstration Mahara site to practice using Mahara here:
http://maharaforbeginners.tdm.info/

AVETRA 2010 Conference - Day Two

2010-04-08T15:39:00.000-07:00

AVETRA 2010 Conference - Day Two

AVETRA 2010 Conference - Day One

2010-04-07T15:27:00.000-07:00

AVETRA 2010 Conference - Day One

Victorian Applied Learning Association (VALA) Conference - 19 March 2010

2010-03-18T15:16:00.000-07:00

Victorian Applied Learning Association (VALA) Conference

IDEA 2010 - Technology in Education Open Forum - Friday 12 March 2010

2010-03-11T14:01:00.000-08:00

IDEA 2010 - Technology in Education Open Forum - Friday 12 March 2010

IDEA 2010 - Technology in Education Open Forum - Thursday 11 March 2010

2010-03-10T14:43:00.000-08:00

IDEA 2010 - Technology in Education Open Forum

IDEA Lab - Workshop - Wednesday 10 March 2010

2010-03-09T15:00:00.000-08:00

IDEA Lab - Workshop - Wed 10 March 2010

Technical Standards for Digital Education (Focus Group Notes)

2010-03-08T14:44:00.000-08:00

Technical Standards for Digital Education (Focus Group notes)

Creating an 'Innovation Ecology' in education and training

2010-02-24T12:38:00.000-08:00

In 2009, Jane Figgis and Yvonne Hillier wrote research reports and carried out workshops around innovative trends in teaching and learning in vocational education and training (VET) from within Australia and from an 'international' perspective for NCVER.

Figgis and Hillier's work describes what's required to enable an 'innovation ecology' for educators and trainers. Not unexpectingly, the 'culture' of an organisation plays a major role in nurturing and supporting innovation, with aspects like supporting:

- the development of critical reflective skills
- providing incentives and opportunities for learning especially informal

through personal/continuing professional development (CPD) which enable educators to take risks and not have to be 'perfect'all of the time.

Developing this type of workplace culture requires:

- supported mentoring,
- development of partnerships, including team building,
- developing networks and having networking opportunities, and
- deploying effective change management and continuous improvement processes

It also needs to consider:

- the individual educators' existing values and experiences,
- the different perspectives of the educators/trainers about the innovation and change process,
- the timing of introducing something 'new' into an organisation, from incremental ie you need to learn how to walk before you can run, to disruptive, where changes to work place practices is almost immediate.

The flood of technology into the education and training environment is building, but still a lot of education and training organisations have not fully embraced this 'innovative practice'.

The internet is creating an "emerging force of the collective" which "will shape the direction of society and business", which will mean that education and training organisations are going to be forced to take a 'disruptive' approach to adopting innovative ICT practices. So instead of ignoring (and blocking) technology, they should be embracing and learning how it can enable innovation and improved business practices. ("Shape of things to come", Beverly Head, Campus Review, 2 February 2010)

Can innovation become mainstream? Or is it no longer considered 'innovative' when everyone's doing it?

Open and Public - but for everyone?

2010-02-08T13:09:00.000-08:00

A recent article on an 'Open Source Embargo' highlights that US Law prevents 'sanctioned nations' from accessing Open Source software from websites hosted in the US, such as SourceForge.net.

US Law states that sanctioned nations such as North Korea, Cuba, Sudan and Syria can not post to or access content from SourceForge, the "largest Open Source applications and software directory", prevented through having an identified sanctioned nation IP address.

I understand that these 'sanctioned nations' are embargoed by western nations due to their poor human rights or potential terrorist activity, but surely offering the people of these nations the opportunity to 'better themselves' should improve diplomatic relations.

I don't imagine that by allowing the people of these sanctioned nations to download the 'hottest software' they will treat their people any worst or lead to more terrorist activity.

But these type of restrictions are not just restricted to 'sanctioned nations'.

Whilst investigating a UK Mobile Learning Network - MoLeNet - I discovered that because I didn't have a UK educational domain email I was not allowed to join and participate in their 'community of practice'.

And locally, we have similar 'embargos' on accessing educational resources, with some jurisdictions not allowing their neighbouring states/territories to freely access their publically funded 'intellectual property' - as this should only be for the benefit of their residents.

And finally, the 'closed shop, re-selling of public resources' attitude ie content and resources developed by public education and training organisations, whereby anything produced by an employee of these organisations 'belongs to the Minister', even if the resource is produced in the person's own time.

Surely Open Source ethos means EVERYBODY is allowed access?

And with the emergence of Creative Commons licencing for Australian Government information, publically funded educational resources should also be put into this category?

Content and Media Creation - fraught by digital evils?

2010-02-04T12:35:00.000-08:00

Over the last decade, the Internet has shifted the power of access to information and knowledge, potentially making content the 'lowest common denominator' in learning, just like it did (together with cheaper storage and burnable DVDs/CDs) to the media, music and movie industry.

Jane Hart,and Jay Cross, and their colleagues at the Internet Time Alliance, state from their experience that the real strength to learning online is 'social learning'.

And with the release of the Apple iPad, the move to 'reading' content electronically will become status quo.

However, this week we've had a couple of media giants, Rubert Murdoch and Mark Cuban, speak out about how 'content not just king, it's the Emperor', and "Google as a Web giant ... reaps rewards from the labors of others" (respectively).

Locally, we've also had the media trying to sue an Internet Service Provider (ISP) for 'allowing' their clients to illegally download copyrighted material - isn't that like sending parents to jail when their children have broken the law?

Are we at the 'cross roads' of 'free' access to content, music and movies? And is it morally ethical to freely use the 'labors of others'?

Or are we seeing the captains of media (and shortly educational organisations) rambling as they are going down with their 'sinking ships'?

Or is the internet forcing companies and educational organisations to re-think their business models to cater for the emerging expectations of 'digital tribes'?

Effecting the change of Assessment and Teaching of 21st Century Skills

2010-02-02T13:32:00.000-08:00

In my thoughts about what's required for effective 21st teaching and learning I realised that the key to changing teaching pedagogy, policy and practice is 'assessment'.

This realisation came after speaking with some young Year 12 teachers at a national event, who stated that they couldn't introduce anything extra into their teaching program as they had to make sure they covered what was going to be in the 'end of year' exam.

A light bulb went on.

I know as teachers we don't want to 'teach to the exam/test' but the actual reality is that we all want our students to be successful, so making sure they are competent and confident to tackle the final summative assessment becomes paramount over innovative teaching and learning.

This realisation attracted me to be a participant of an international project called "Assessment and Teaching of 21st Century Skills" (ATC21S).

This project, sponsored by Cisco Systems Inc, Intel Corporation and Microsoft Corp, and in Australia managed by the University of Melbourne, states:

“What is learned, how it is taught and how schools are organized must be transformed to respond to the social and economic needs of students and society as we face the challenges of the 21st century”

This project has recently published their Working Group's 'White Papers' about the project's progress.

The ATC21S project recognises that:

"Assessment plays a critical role in setting standards and influencing curricula at the local, regional, national and global level, so it is expected that these new assessments will motivate schools to do more to instill 21st-century skills."

Some key points I found interesting and progressive were:

- Finding new ways to measure, monitor and assess how people process information - "Evaluating not just students’ answers, but how fast they arrived at them and the processes they used — what the working group called making the students’ thinking visible" - GROUP 3 : Working Group on Technological Issues

- Determining how people collaborate to generate ideas/outputs to create change/improvement - "Collaborative knowledge building — how individuals work together to understand new material — as a key feature of modern workplaces and an important 21st-century skill. It noted that assessments in the future need to look not only at individual performance, but also at group performance." - GROUP 4 : Working Group on Classroom Environments and Formative Evaluation

Have you seen or been involved in any interesting/innovative projects to influence "Assessment and Teaching of 21st Century Skills"?

E-learning 09 - Tuesday 8 December 2009

2009-12-07T14:09:00.000-08:00

E-learning 09 - Tuesday 8 December 2009

E-learning 09 - Monday 7 December

2009-12-06T14:16:00.000-08:00

E-learning 09 - Monday 7 December

ConVerge 09 - Thursday 3 December 2009

2009-12-02T13:51:00.000-08:00

ConVerge 09 - Thursday 3 December 2009

The different dimensions of open content and resources

2009-12-02T02:09:00.000-08:00

Structure of the internet is anti-pre-packaging
George Siemens, Socializing Open Learning, Barcelona, 30 November 2009

Whilst listening to Harriet Wakelam, the Australian Flexible Learning Framework's Toolbox Business Manager, talk about the need to re-think how 'content' is presented in Flexible Learning Toolboxes it made me ponder about the different ways 'open content and resources' are readily available on the web, but in different ways:

Open Education Resources	User-created content
Open quality controlled	Open non-quality controlled
MIT OCW (Massachusetts Institute of Technology Open Courseware), USA Open Learn, Open University, UK	Some Creative Commons content/resources Wiki-educator Wikipedia
Provide quality assured resources from 'expert' sources	Non pre-packaged resources from the 'masses'

I'm sure there's room for both types of content on the anti-pre-packaging net, as perhaps they serve different purposes/needs?

New Ways of Learning (Conceptual & Technical) - Interesting points from "Handbook of Emerging Technologies for Learning"

2009-11-26T13:27:00.000-08:00

The "Handbook of Emerging Technologies for Learning" by George Siemens & Peter Tittenberger was released in March of this year, but I've only just had a chance to read it. Here are some of the points I found most interesting about how the 'new ways of learning' are enabled by technology:

- education is currently facing "a duality of change - conceptual and technological" (pg 1)
- "Our learning and information acquisition is a mashup" (pg 1)
- "not everyone has aspirations of creating content, (but) everyone has interest in organising and packaging information" (pg 2) - which is where 'e-portfolios' would work well
- "Instead of content being pre-packaged, information can today be packaged according to the needs and interests of each individual learner" (pg 2) - ie moving away from the 'default LMS' mode to where the LMS meets 'Open Social'
- "Making sense of fragmented information through networks of peer learners offers an indication of future learning tasks and even pedagogical models" (pg 2) - where sensemaking is making sense of fragmented information through networks of peer learners
- "validation of information has also experienced change ... " (pg 3) - where we are moving from information validation by some (experts) to the many (communities, networks) and we are seeing a democratisation of information validation
- "content co-creation and re-creation (is) becoming the norm for online participants" (pg 3)
- "Unfortunately, ..... "web technology ... (is) ... primarily used for support of logistical processes rather than for pedagogical change" 12 Collis B & Moonen J (2008), Web 2.0 tools and processes in hihger education" (pg 3)
- "networked models of learning will replace existing curricular models" (pg 7) - ie moving from a 'regurigated' (epistemology - knowing) to creating and understanding (ontology - being), where learners ""forage for knowledge", instead of passively consuming knowledge" (pg 17)
- there is a movement (back) to 'guild learning' were "increased assistance (through tutors or instructors) (is) provided to learners", and greater emphasis on

self-governed problem solving and collaborative learning processes (pg 10);
active learning vs knowledge acquisition (pg 21)
"the notion of start/stop learning" (pg 36) is investigated

- "being an educated person means being able to see connections" (William Cronon) and patterns, so the need to eliminate the 'barriers to (connecting) is the greatest systemic challenges our institutions face", with "the role of teaching (being):

one of guiding, directing, and curating the quality of networks learners are forming" (pg 13),
helping learners "stay connected to a community even after completing a course or program" (pg 18)

- Embedding the use of technology in learning involves an "IRIS" model of moving from 'Innovations to Systemisation' (pg 20):

I - Innovation - What's possible? - (idea, need for change, change agent)
R - Research - How does it work? (existing models, theories)
I - Implementation - What is the real world impact? - (trial, test & evaluate - re-assess - re-research)
S - Systemisation - How do we duplicate it? (replicating, contextualising the model, communities of practice, sharing, professional conversations)

- our "brains process different media differently" - audio/visual (video) vs text (books) (pg 21)
- the process of selecting the right media type to achieve learning outcomes involves (pg 22):

clarifying the learning intent (outcomes)
determing and evaluating the media's functionality (product selection matrix)
selecting the media (based on criteria, policy, network input etc)

- "Use of aggregators, reading and visualising data, mashing up various types of information, and recognising new patterns in existing informations are key skills", with additional skills of: anchoring, filtering, connecting with others, being human together, creating and deriving meaning, evaluation and authentication, altered processes of validation, critical and creative thinking, navigate knowledge landscape, and acceptance of uncertainty (pg 28)
- in the new ways of learning, "many learning objectives can be achieved without direct guidance" (pg 29), with the "demarcation between what learners can (and should) do for themselves and what the instructor (and designer) should do for learners" (pg 35) being realised through the use of technology ie viewing 'how tos' videos on YouTube, user created content etc

As well as providing information about the "new ways of learning", this handbook also describes the e-tools available for teaching and learning (pgs 43-50)

Who is controlling and managing your personal data online?

2009-11-24T13:22:00.000-08:00

“One of the main reasons for (a) lack of trust in the Internet is the fragmentation of personal data and the lack of control, by individuals, on how it is being stored, secured, transported and exploited.” (www.iosf.org)

Personal hosting systems like 'Google e-mail' track, 'mine' and exploit personal data. Have you ever noticed that the 'Google Ads' on the right hand side of your g-mail are very much 'related' to the topic of conversation in the actual (personal, and some might consider, private) email communication. I first noticed this during an email communication about 'restaurants' and I had responded about 'Indian restaurants', only to be presented with 'Google Ads' about 'Indian Restaurants'.

As more interest and acceptance is gained in the use of technology in health care (e-health) and our interaction with the government (e-government or government 2.0). Married with our existing experiences with e-learning (e-education) and e-business (e-commerce, online banking etc), we are moving further and further towards an 'e-ecology' which requires digital literacies (and some say all literacies) to be effective global e-citizens.

There's no escaping the fact that we need to have secure online spaces where we can store our e-lives, without the side effect of having this information utilised (or exploied) by the storage host.

The Internet of Subjects (IoS), an independent not-for-profit organisation dedicated to making the internet a more secure place, is working towards creating a trustworthy internet (IoS) architecture, “based on a clear separation between hosting and exploitation of personal data”. IoS architecture aims to end the fragmentation of personal data and improve internet data security.

The IoS architecture will require “personal data stores (PDS)”, which enable individuals to take control of the storage and transportation of their own personal data, while being able to monitor its use by others. The IoS architecture aims to provide “interoperability across heterogeneous services and organisations”, enabling individuals to unify their personal data.

"The components of the IoS architecture will require:

· independent Personal Data Stores (PDS) to securely store and share personal data

· Personal Circles of Trust (PCT) to securely share personal data within communities

· Citizen Dashboard to control and monitor how personal data is secured and exploited by service providers

· Service Providers to provide services based on data collected from and written to personal data stores, with respect to the policies defined by their owners

· IoS Foundation to provide the architecture's framework and the means to control the contractual relationships between the different stake-holders

To achieve its mission the IoS will create the conditions for a trustworthy internet by:

1. providing a citizen dashboard to help individuals have a unified view of their fragmented personal data in the current architecture, currently not possible by existing internet architecture

2. implement a reference model of a person-centric architecture, the IoS architecture, with a complete separation between the hosting and the exploitation of personal data, under individuals' full control

3. work with technology service providers to join and benefit from the IoS architecture federation.

IoS aims to create “an open and trustworthy architecture based on the strict separation between hosting of personal data and their exploitation by web services. This will require system architects, decision makers and business leaders to change their vision of the Internet to move towards a person-centric architecture."

IoS states that this type of internet architecture provides a more person-centric internet and enables an individual to create personal circles of trust with whom they choose to interact with.

This type of internet architecture provides a potential model to ensure that we as e-citizens can effectively operate in the 'e-ecology' we are moving towards and manage our:

- social networks, user created content and online identities

- e-portfolios, personal learning environments (e-learning) for life long learning

- personal citizen information (e-government), and

- personal e-health and e-business records

IOS is scheduled to be launched in January 2010, during MISC 2010 (www.miscforum.eu)

Industry E-learning Showcase and Exhibition - Tuesday 24 November 2009

2009-11-23T14:09:00.000-08:00

Industry E-learning Showcase and Exhibition - Tuesday 24 November 2009

Learning Technologies 09 - Friday 20 November 2009

2009-11-19T14:39:00.000-08:00

Learning Technologies 09 - Friday 20 November 2009

Learning Technologies 09 - Thursday 19 November

2009-11-18T13:46:00.000-08:00

Learning Technologies 09 - Thursday 19 November

Edayz 09 - Friday 13 November 2009

2009-11-12T13:53:00.000-08:00

Edayz 09 - Friday 13 November 2009

Edayz 09 - Thursday 12 November 2009

2009-11-11T14:30:00.000-08:00

Edayz 09 - Thursday 12 November 2009

Open Courseware (OCW) and Open Educational Resources (OER) – the pros & cons

2009-11-10T14:47:00.000-08:00

Open Courseware (OCW) and Open Educational Resources (OER) – the pros & cons

Based on “Get it out in the open” Times Higher Education http://bit.ly/1XLGXz) -24 September 2009 -

Advantages of making educational courses and resources open and freely accessible:

- supports self-motivated learners and provides pathways between informal and formal learning (accredited)

- increase the quality of teaching resources and ensures information is up to date as the information is “on show” to the world, including other teachers, trainers and academics

- this in turn provides a 'free' peer review process

- allows learners to 'try before they buy' or enrol in a course

- reduces replication and duplication of resources as teachers, trainers and academics can use, re-use and re-purpose existing quality resources

Disadvantages of making educational courses and resources open and freely accessible:

- the expense of updating existing resources to suit an online environment

- identifying copyright issues

Young people: Finding their way in a new era - Policy forum

2009-11-09T13:59:00.000-08:00

> Home > News & Events > Policy > Young people: Finding their way in a new era - Polic

Capability Builders - Assessment - Fri 23 Oct 2009

2009-10-22T17:28:00.000-07:00

Capability Builders - Assessment - Fri 23 Oct 2009

Capability Builder - Assessment - Thurs 22 Oct 2009

2009-10-21T20:05:00.000-07:00

Capability Builder - Assessment - Thurs 22 Oct 2009

VET E-portfolios Showcase 09

2009-10-15T14:47:00.000-07:00

VET E-portfolio Showcase 09

Macquarie University Unconference

2009-09-24T19:43:00.000-07:00

Macquarie University Unconference

Macquarie University - ePortfolios - Our life in pixels

2009-09-23T17:10:00.000-07:00

Macquarie University - ePortfolios - Our life in pixels

UniSA 2009 ePortfolio Showcase

2009-09-22T21:04:00.000-07:00

UniSA 2009 ePortfolio Showcase

Collaboration and Joining Up Government

2009-09-13T12:00:00.000-07:00

COLLABORATION AND JOINING UP GOVERNMENT

What does 21st Century Learning Look Like?

2009-09-10T09:00:00.000-07:00

What does 21st Century Learning Look Like?

Building VET Capability Forum - Adelaide

2009-09-07T16:34:00.001-07:00

Building VET Capability Forum - Adelaide

Government 2.0 Taskforce - Adelaide

2009-09-01T00:09:00.000-07:00

Government 2.0 Taskforce - Adelaide

The Workforce of Tomorrow and the Global Financial Crisis

2009-08-31T00:05:00.000-07:00

The Workforce of Tomorrow and the Global Financial Crisis

ACPET 2009 National Conference - Fri 28 August 2009

2009-08-27T15:58:00.000-07:00

ACPET 2009 National Conference - Fri 28 August 2009

ACPET 2009 National Conference - Thurs 27 August 2009

2009-08-27T14:31:00.000-07:00

ACPET 2009 National Conference - Thursday 27 August 2009

Individual's Engagement in Vocational Education: Systems and Drivers Affecting Low-Paid Workers in UK, US and Australia

2009-08-16T18:01:00.000-07:00

Individual’s Engagement in Vocational Education: Systems and Drivers affecting Low Paid Wo

Tric 09 - Fri 7 August - CoverITLIVE

2009-08-06T19:12:00.000-07:00

TRIC 09 day 2

Tric 09 - Thurs 6 August - CoverITLIVE

2009-08-05T16:49:00.000-07:00

&amp;lt;a href="http://www.coveritlive.com/mobile.php?option=com_mobile&amp;amp;task=viewaltcast&amp;amp;altcast_code=0a562ae75f" &amp;gt;TRIC 09&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;

I'm still active but in new spaces

2009-07-26T02:25:00.000-07:00

I haven't been active in this space of late, but you can find me active in other spaces:

My e-portfolio - this is where I'm writing, reflecting and sharing - http://eportfolio.vetsa.net.au/user/view.php?id=24
My Facebook - this aggregates my Twitter, Flickr, Delicious etc - http://www.facebook.com/theother66

Allison's contact details

What becomes of the teacher? New roles for educators

2008-11-09T01:17:00.000-08:00

There were no ‘set’ readings for this week’s topic. Was this because “This is a heavy assignment week” or is it an attempt to get participants to research and discover their own learnings – ie apply a Connectivismistic approach to the course? Either way, I felt I needed to do ‘something’ towards this topic, and as I’m not an active member in the course through the discussion forums or the live sessions, finding my own reading was where I’ve headed.

So what is the role of the ‘teacher’ in Connectivism?

There is a lot of lip service given to creating more ‘learner centred’ experiences, where the ‘teacher’ becomes the ‘guide on the side’ rather than the ‘sage on the stage’, and how technology can support this type of learning.

But what does it actually mean to the ‘teacher’ – how do move from being a ‘teacher’ to being a true facilitator of learning? What’s required if we are to see a major shift in the teaching and learning paradigm?

It is recognized, that technology-enhanced learning (TEL), and individual-centred learning is more chaotic and the learning process takes longer. Teachers also work in a system whereby the learning process is often overshadowed by the actual outcome, and they’re expected to meet the requirements of standardized testing, like the NAPLAN

Is it that teachers don’t have the skills or attitudes required, when it is “clear that there is a gap in experience, expectations and technical experience between many young people and their teachers and administrators” (Light & Luckin, 2008)

Involving the learner in their learning design process will require that teachers/facilitators will need to better understand ‘learner motivation’ (D’Mello and Graesser 2007), and develop systems and environments which support learners’ help seeking behaviours. (Aleven et al 2004)

And, is individual centred learning appropriate for all forms of learning? How can specific technical skills, such as building and construction, be developed via the internet/use of technology. Or is Connectivism more appropriate for the more ‘generic’ skills, ie communication, problem solving etc.

Does learner centred learning foster ‘individualism’ at the determent of the group or the community ie as individuals seeks to meet their own individual needs?

Marie Montessori developed a learning system over a century ago which is about guiding the learner through their own natural learning experiences, however, Montessori education is anything but mainstream, and is only gathering some momentum in the ‘pre-school’ arena.

We recognize that web 2.0 environments enable wider user-generated content but how do we help break down the traditional top-down hierarchical model of education, whilst ensuring equity, power balances, democracy, culture, privacy and how might we ensure that TEL can improve learning for all.

The potential for learners to have a greater voice in their learning, the resources they access, including the technologies, and the nature of the physical or virtual environment in which they learn, is central to the considerations of the 21st century ‘educator’.

CCK08 - week 9 – What becomes of the teacher? New roles for educators

2008-11-09T01:16:00.000-08:00

No recommended Readings this week

Other useful resources for this week:

Designing for Social Justice: People, Technology, Learning – FutureLab - Ann Light and Rosemary Luckin, 2008

This publication is partnered by a practical handbook; Designing Educational Technologies for Social Justice, available from: www.futurelab.org.uk/designforsocialjustice

Notes from readings:

Designing for Social Justice: People, Technology, Learning – FutureLab - Ann Light and Rosemary Luckin, 2008

User centred design (UCD) - some attention has been paid to gathering users’ requirements; or it can mean treating all participants as contributing their particular knowledge and skills

Technology-enhanced learning (TEL)

‘participative design’ approaches in which users and professional designers have a more equal say in taking design decisions … participative design processes are more difficult to handle than designer-driven procedures and usually take longer.

Social justice is an interventionist standpoint, in that it seeks to reorganise society’s resources and structures to create a fairer social order.

all members of society do not need or desire the same things and show how changing society to be fairer can be seen as a design challenge

a design approach that allows for the possibility for everyone to be involved is more egalitarian than one which believes only in exclusive talents or professional systems.

The Liberty principle expresses the view that everyone is equally entitled to basic rights and liberties, as long as that does not infringe upon the rights and liberties of others. The Difference principle states that social and economic inequalities between individuals should be tolerated if, and only if, they are of most benefit to the worst off in society.

Milne applies the ‘veil of ignorance’ experiment to designing computer interfaces, asking “how should we design the interface to ensure that User X would enjoy a sufficient degree of usability, regardless of their characteristics?” (Milne 2005).

If everyone wanted the same thing, it would be easy to design society. Allowing for choice and individual difference is a problem for both philosophers and designers.

In Sen’s view, justice requires us to enable people to engage in the activities necessary to achieve what they want, rather than to give them what they want. Thus, developing one’s ability to satisfy one’s needs and desires is itself a very important good to be distributed as broadly as possible. ‘Development as Freedom’ (Sen 1999)

users in the design process, are intrinsically more socially just than others.

(1996). Schön sees unpredictability as an important characteristic of the design process …. that design is not a predictable activity

Process is often overshadowed by outcome

TEL research recognises and contributes to the move towards a learner directed style of learning, such as that described by Knowles (1984) as ‘andragogy’, and the more self-determined learning paradigm proposed by Hase and Kenyon (2000) referred to as ‘heutagogy’. Researchers are now particularly concerned with the role of motivation and the way that systems can recognise a learner’s motivational state (D’Mello and Graesser 2007), and the role of metacognition, through for example developing systems that support learners’ help-seeking behaviours (Aleven et al 2004).

What does seem clear is that there is a gap in experience, expectations and technical experience between many young people and their teachers and administrators

The fact that user-generated content breaks with the traditional top-down hierarchical model of education raises questions about power balances, democracy, culture, privacy and how we might ensure that user generated content can improve learning for all citizens

The potential for learners to have an greater voice in the nature of the subject matter being learnt, the resources, including the technologies, being used to support their learning, and the nature of the physical or virtual environment in which they learn, is central to this agenda.

Is VET vocational? Occupational destinations of VET graduates

2008-11-04T22:50:00.000-08:00

Notes from a presentation by Sandra Pattison, General Manager, NCVER – research paper: http://www.ncver.edu.au/publications/2013.html

Are you in an occupation for which you were trained for?

based on ANZSCO Australian and New Zealand Standard Classification of Occupations statistics

Nationally:

Managers = 14% trained to be managers are in a managerial position within 6 months of undertaking training, however, 85% of the people trained in the ‘trades’ area will be in their trained area.

Most Graduates agree that any type of training is ‘relevant’, except in the Arts and Media Professionals.

About 20% of people who’ve undertaken vocational training didn’t find their training relevant to their current occupation.

In South Australia in 2008 student survey:

High (75%) to Very High (95%) rates of employment for people who’ve undertaken vocational training.

These statistics are important for planning ie where there’s a high outcome of people getting employment in what they’ve been trained, then it makes sense to put the training funds into these areas.

Not a lot of data on ‘pathway destinations’ – need some more recent longitudal data in this area.

Learners who have successfully completed lower level qualifications ie Certificate I/II are more likely to be successful later on in their career and undertake further training.

Statistics are not supporting the COAG agenda that if an individual has a higher level qualification they are more likely to support a better economy.

Some occupational areas are more specific in nature (ie trades), and some are more ‘generic’.

Power, Control, Validity and Authority in Distributed Environments

2008-11-02T02:38:00.000-08:00

Information on the internet is no longer ‘scare’. Facts and figures, on just about anything, is now available at your fingertips, and within seconds.

However, has the advent of the internet been an equally ‘freeing’ experience for all?

Just because the internet exists, it doesn’t mean that everyone has access to it.

Consider some of the following:

- Kevin 07’s Digital Education Revolution might be trying to address the lack of computers in schools but there is still a huge digital access divide in our homes. A colleague this week heard on a daily current affair show that 87% home in Adelaide’s Eastern suburbs have internet connection (broadband no doubt), compared to 27% in the Northern suburbs, and regionally remote individuals have poor or no internet access.

- A recent ‘coffee chat’ with a project manager, deploying an e-portfolio system to manage a senior secondary school unit, described the vast chasm between the technical infrastructure and technical support of private/independent schools compared to their poor cousins, the public school system. Surely school connectivity, ranging from a 10mb connection down to a 256/512 kb connection, must influence the adoption of effective e-learning strategies, and therefore effective use of the internet.

If information is power and you can’t access information due to costs and poor infrastructure, are you then powerless? And if you do have access to this information, who is controlling/managing the information (ie Google, MSN etc)– is this ‘controlled’ power?

Consider: Google’s vested interest in influencing its search results; ICT manager’s and politicians need to manage information access through controlled firewalls and internet filters; and teachers dictation over who should/shouldn’t access their knowledge through their walled gardened LMS and what information students should/shouldn’t view ie Wikipedia.

@jhawtin tweeted that “the net offers ease of sharing ;-)” but this practice isn’t as widely spread as it should be as many want to 'own' information and hence retain their power stronghold, so sharing is not encourage and enforced through controlling copyright and trademarks regulation.

Increased influence or popularity, and therefore connectivity, offers some internet sites engendered ‘Power Laws’ – allow them to restrict what information people view or access by what’s feed through these sites.

Manuel Castells cites that “power no longer resides in individual institutions (even states) but in what he calls the ‘switchers’ through which networks regulate terms of entry and privilege or exclude particular interests or positions.” Hence, accountability can no longer be a linear process, whereby one party is held accountable by another, but “something more complex and messy, with lines of accountability that are: multiple; overlapping; and based on deliberative as well as procedural processes.”

There is some socially democratic existence on the web through the ‘open source’ movement, an approach that originated in software programming through things like the Linux computer operating system, and through the sharing of content, images and video, by ‘Creative Commons’ licenses.

The internet may not be a truly free and accessible space, so individuals need to be aware of its imbalances and inequities by knowing how to think and question – the Russians knew they were being feed propaganda during the Cold War – but do you know that Google and Facebook is mining your data?

The internet allows access to free information but is it truly freely accessible?

CCK08 - week 8 – Power, Control, Validity and Authority in Distributed Environments

2008-11-02T02:35:00.000-08:00

Readings

The Fifth Estate — Through the Network (of Networks) .pdf

Network Logic: Who governs in an interconnected world? (.pdf) (this is a long paper/book. Skim sections that you find to be of interest) – edited by McCarthy H, Miller P & Skidmore P

Notes from readings:

The Fifth Estate — Through the Network (of Networks) .pdf – William H Dutton, University of Oxford

Fourth Estate – advent of the printing press, radio, television and other mass media created an independent institution in many nations – became known as the Fourth Estate = central to pluralist democratic processes.

Fifth Estate – new form of social accountability – enabled by growing use of Internet & ICTs

‘communicative power’ of ‘networked individuals’ is key

the Internet and related ICTs can play in ‘reconfiguring access’

The Internet and Web may be packed with material that is free, but they also contain much that is owned – trademarked, copyrighted, proprietary, licensed and more.

By enabling a huge range of people across the globe to reconfigure their access to information, people, services and technologies, the Internet and related ICTs have the potential to reshape the communicative power of individuals and groups in numerous ways. Of course, powerful actors and institutions – not only groups – can enhance their communicative power by strategically using the Internet. This is shown by the increasing influence of companies anchored in cyberspace, such as Google, and the growing online presence of traditional Fourth Estate media giants like News International or the BBC.

the access divide, the economic ‘haves’ get more access to the Internet than the have-nots. This underpins concerns that the Internet reinforces socio-economic inequalities in society.

‘digital choices’ about whether or not to use the Internet also comes into play - many people choose not to use it - individuals who do not find the motivation to go online when they could.

Internet has already achieved a critical mass, enabling networked individuals to become a significant force even though there are continuing digital divides.

beyond its mere diffusion the Internet is becoming a critical infrastructure of everyday life.

educated individuals are relatively more sceptical, but the most distrustful are those individuals who have never used the Internet. This leads us to call the Internet an ‘experience’ technology.41 As experience online continues to build, more users are therefore likely to develop such a learned trust in the Internet.

I will argue, the Internet is crucially enabling individuals to network in new ways that reconfigure and enhance their communicative power – as a type of Fifth Estate.

users of the Internet and Web will choose to access only a narrow spectrum related to what most interests them. In the words of Cass Sunstein44, users are ‘cocooning’ themselves, creating ‘echo chambers’ in which their own personal prejudices will be reinforced rather than challenged.

As discussed, it can flourish despite a digital divide in access. And it can be a significant force even though only a minority of users are actively producing material for the Internet, as opposed to simply using it. For example, only about 28 percent of current users even post pictures on the Internet. Less than one in five use a distribution list for e-mail (19%), post messages on discussion boards (16%), try to set up a Web site (16%) or maintain a personal Website (15%)

The gates the Internet opens to allow in those aspects of the outside world of benefit to the user also bring in those causing harm by intent or accident, including spammers, fraudsters, pornographers, bullies, terrorists, and more. - the Internet can empower the malicious in addition to the well intentioned. This has led increasingly for calls from citizens, governments, business and others to introduce online gatekeepers and other controls to govern what was originally conceived by the Internet’s designers as an open, end-to-end network with minimal central control, particularly in allowing a free flow of content65.

The vitality of Internet-enabled Fifth Estate networks rests less on new policy initiatives since its emergence than on preventing over-regulation or inappropriate regulation of the Internet.

peer production of Internet governance’ – ie Wikipedia & ebay

the Internet can be used to increase the accountability … or … as an alternative source of authority and as a check

Network Logic: Who governs in an interconnected world? (.pdf) (this is a long paper/book – edited by McCarthy H, Miller P & Skidmore P

we have taken advantage of the new connections: to earn, learn, trade and travel. But collectively we don’t understand their logic - a governance gap that needs to be bridged.

We are paying so much attention to networks now because of computerisation; it is electronic connections that have made the network such a ubiquitous and public organising principle.

our conception of accountability seems likely to evolve away from simple lines of answerability towards something more complex and messy, with lines of accountability that are:

multiple, so that any one actor was accountable to a number of other actors in a number of different ways

overlapping, so that at different times in different circumstances one source of accountability might take priority, but at no point could there be no accountability at all

based on deliberative as well as procedural processes – generating opportunities for genuine discussion and learning, rather than fostering defensive mindsets or going through the motions.

we can only connect the pursuit of freedom to systems of organisation that will not be undone by its exercise, a networked world can become a more sustainable and a more enriching place. Making it so requires us to change not just our tools of intervention, but also our ways of seeing the world.

Instructional Design and Connectivism

2008-10-26T01:21:00.001-07:00

The exponential increase and ever changing nature of information through hyper-connectivity means that we are required to engage in lifelong learning to stay up to date in our fields of expertise or employment. This learning and professional development needs to be self-sustaining, and traditional linear learning design models do not always provide this.

Designing learning around web 2.0 principles can provide individuals with a means of staying current whilst catering for their intuitive ‘what’s in it for mean’ mentality.

Conole (2008) describes a number of models by which learning design can be built around using the structure of social networking sites, as “sharing is a fundamental human activity” (McLeod, 2007), and “social networks consist of people who are connected by a shared object.”

Weller (2008a) defines a social object as: “something (it can be real or virtual) that facilitate conversation, and thus social interaction”, and is the basis of popular web 2.0 sites like Flickr, Delicious, Facebook and Twitter, by making activities such as uploading, viewing and sharing as easy as possible, and recognizing that an individual’s profile on these sites are also ‘social objects’, as they are a “constructed representation around which interaction takes place” and are social objects in their own right.

Knorr-Cetina (2001 - Objectual practice) states “that objects have become increasingly important in today’s society and that objects are increasingly replacing and mediating human relationships.”

“In education, the primary social object is content and … the educational value is not in the content itself but the social interaction, which occurs around the content.” (Weller, 2008a)

Engeström (2008) has five principles for design
i. Clearly define the social object your service is built around. ie designs, resources, tools and user profiles.
ii. Define the verbs that users perform on the objects, so that is it clear what the site is for ie ‘finding’ and ‘sharing’.
iii. Make the objects shareable and easy to use; they encourage users to input social objects, link to other related social networking sites, have interactive design widgets, and runnable learning design sequences, allow social objects to be virally spread through different communication channels and to different communities, offer deep-level integration with a number of other sites/communities and dynamic sharing across the sites appropriate objects, tagging
iv. Turn invitations into gifts. Provide fun interactive sessions, acknowledge, user generated favourite designs and linking to other events and activities, prizes for the best entries, will add dynamically to the user’s profile
v. Charge the publishers, not the spectators (may have less relevance in educationally social learning design)

Bouman (2007) considers other factors into this design framework: that which encourages socialization amongst the learning community: accommodating both the evolution of practices and the inclusion of newcomers; ensuring individual identity is also important ie mechanisms to enable the development of identities; people are more inclined to use software systems that resemble their daily routines, language and practices; metaphors and structures that mimic real life practices are likely to be more successful. … “The framework is based around four design domains: enabling practice, mimicking reality, building identity and actualising self.”

Siemens (2008) recognizes that the context of the learning will dictate how effective this style of learning design will be, and that traditional educational structures (ie timetabling, funding etc) will need the capacity to adapt in order to support them.

Conole (2008) also recognizes that “there is an inherent tension between the rhetoric of Web 2.0 and current educational practices. For example, today’s digital environment is characterised by speed and immediacy; … This seems contradictory to traditional notions of education; the need to reflect, to build cumulatively on existing knowledge and develop individual understanding over time.” and that we will need systems of ‘slow learning’ such as is happening in the ‘slow food’ movement, and that “if information is abundantly available, surely assessment processes which focus primarily on knowledge recall are inappropriate”.

Although there are working examples of learning design around web 2.0 principles, (Couros 2008; Phelps, 2003), I think it will require an individual educator to experience designing some learning themselves to truly understand this design process. Educators should be encouraged through supportive sites like Wikieducator and Cloudworks, where educators are encouraged to “find other people's learning and teaching ideas, designs and experiences” and share their own.

I would be interested to know about more learning examples which use a non-linear approach to their design.

CCK08 - week 7 – Instructional design and connectivism

2008-10-26T01:19:00.000-07:00

Readings
New Schemas for Mapping Pedagogies and Technologies
Cloudworks: Social networking for learning design .doc file
Instructional Design and Connectivism (George Siemens) 23 minute presentation

Other useful resources for this week:
n/a

Notes from readings:
New Schemas for Mapping Pedagogies and Technologies – Gráinne ConoleSchema (approaches or ways of thinking)- an outline or image universally applicable to a general conception, under which it is likely to be presented to the mind; en.wiktionary.org/wiki/schema

There is an inherent tension between the rhetoric of Web 2.0 and current educational practices. For example, today’s digital environment is characterised by speed and immediacy; the ability to access a vast amount of information at the click of a mouse, coupled with multiple communication channels and social networks. This seems contradictory to traditional notions of education; the need to reflect, to build cumulatively on existing knowledge and develop individual understanding over time.

‘slow learning’ as in ‘slow food’ movement

if information is abundantly available, surely assessment processes which focus primarily on knowledge recall are inappropriate?

user-generated content, user-added value and aggregated network effects … the impact of Web 2.0 on education has been less dramatic than its impact on other spheres of society – use for social purposes, supporting niche communities, collective political action, amateur journalism and social commentary. … Web 1.0 tools: whereas businesses transformed their systems and practices through embracing the potential of technologies, educational systems did not. This difference is due to a complex set of factors – technological, organisational and pedagogical.

A pedagogical framework for mapping tools in use – individual vs social; information vs experience; passive vs active ie … An e-portfolio used as part of a nurse-practitioner’s course as evidence of the students’ work-based experience, would be individual, active and experience-based.Mapping pedagogical principles - thinking and reflection; conversation and interaction; experience and activity; evidence and demonstration.

personalised tools verses institutional tools, between having integrated institutional systems and loosely coupled systems

we need new ways of thinking, not just to map tools to pedagogy, but to think about institutional structures and processes, to map changing roles, and to guide new thinking on strategic policies to guide the direction of change

Cloudworks: Social networking for learning design .doc file – Conole
one of the key challenges in encouraging more innovative uses of technologies is getting teachers to share designs … a social networking site for design – Cloudworks – which is built on the notion of ‘social objects’ associated with design and is applying web 2.0 principles to encourage widespread use and sustainability

Cloudworks - ‘object-orientated social networking’, for sharing learning ideas and designs
A key issue is sustainability, end-users rarely add resources; the sites usually require an investment in terms of someone entering resources and maintaining the repository.
teachers lack the necessary skills to assess the value of different technologies and then incorporating them into their teaching practice.

methodology consists of four interconnected facets:

• understanding design - through gathering empirical evidence about design,
• visualising design - as a means of articulating and representing,
• guiding design - with appropriate scaffolds and support,
• sharing design - to inspire and encourage uptake and reuse.

social networks consist of people who are connected by a shared object.

Cloudworks is built on the premise that there is a network of social objects associated with learning design – tools, resources, approaches to design and people and the site is designed to facilitate connections between these objects. There are five types of objects within Cloudworks:

- clouds – the practice of learning design
- stormclouds – request for help
- resources – actual resources to use in the learning design
- tools – learning design tools – guide through design process
- people & communities – the network

Tagging occurs around pedagogy, tools and discipline … and using RSS feeds

Engeström’s definition of the term social objects and his arguments for the importance of social objects as the key mediating artefacts that make social networks work. … ‘object orientated sociality’ … Knorr-Cetina argues that objects have become increasingly important in today’s society and that objects are increasingly replacing and mediating human relationships.

Weller (2008a) provides a useful definition of a social object as: “something (it can be real or virtual) that facilitate conversation, and thus social interaction” … He argues that in education the primary social object is content and that the educational value is not in the content itself but the social interaction, which occurs around the content. … make the activities of uploading, viewing and sharing as easy as possible … Profiles ARE social objects. They're not a real person - they're a constructed representation around which interaction takes place - a specific kind of social object.

Demsey (2008): The linking theme is that people connect and share themselves through 'social objects', pictures, books, or other shared interests, and that successful social networks are those which form around such social objects

Stutzman’s (2007) distinction between ego-centric and object-centric networks; myspace and facebook are ego-centric, where flcikr and Youtube are object-centric. … there needs to be a reason for people to connect together and to want to continue connecting.

McLeod (2007), who argues that sharing is a fundamental human activity … The most important word on the internet is not "Search". The most important word on the internet is "Share". Sharing is the driver. Sharing is the DNA. … The interesting thing about the Social Object is the not the object itself, but the conversations that happen around them.

Engeström - forward five principles for design
i. Clearly define the social object your service is built around. ie designs, resources, tools and user profiles.
ii. Define the verbs that users perform on the objects, so that is it clear what the site is for. ‘find’ and ‘share’.
iii. Make the objects shareable. easy to use; there encourage users to input social objects, link to other related social networking sites. interactive design widgets ad runnable learning design sequences. social objects be virally spread through different communication channels and to different communities. deep-level integration with a number of other sites/communities and dynamic sharing across the sites appropriate objects. Tagging
iv. Turn invitations into gifts. fun interactive sessions - user generated favourite designs and linking to other events and activities - prizes for the best entries, - dynamically added to the users profile.
v. Charge the publishers, not the spectators.

Cavalho (2007) comes up with a related set of ten principles for social design (KISS – Keep it Social Stupid, Define the objects of sociality, Objects invite play, To play, to stroke, Multiply the actions, Asynchronous interaction, Mind the bacon, Set the ‘dun’ bar higher, Reputation display and Building social capital).

Bouman et al. (2007) have developed a design framework based on sociality: accommodate both the evolution of practices and the inclusion of newcomers; individual identity is also important so there needs to be a mechanism to enable the development of identities; people are more inclined to use software systems that resemble their daily routines, language and practices; metaphors and structures that mimic real life practices are likely to be more successful. … The framework is based around four design domains: enabling practice, mimicking reality, building identity and actualising self.

Bouman et al. (2007) users value social software that adds value in terms of enabling or creating practices that are important to them … use of mechanisms and metaphors associated with ordinary real life … building identity social criteria are important – in terms of building trust and creating a sense of belonging. … ‘what’s in it for me’ … aligning individual interests … there is also a needs to shift and change practice

Instructional Design and Connectivism (George Siemens) 23 minute presentation
The primacy of the connection - Learner has greater control over content.

Understanding how and why connections form

How attributes of connections reflect learning

Neural, physical and social connections

Designing learning – historically - sequence of content, interactions, space/ecology of learning – teacher centred rather than learner centred – with a content focus –

The context of the learning will dictate how the learning will be designed. Systemic issues of timetabling, funding etc will also influence the learning design.

Capacity to adapt – the way we approach learning, how we stay up to date with ever changing – keeping current

Chaos and complexity – metaphors to think about the learning – learning is a lot more chaotic and complex than what traditional learning systems imply/design for – need to overcome the linear nature of traditional instructional/educational design

Patterning – quickly recognize patterns
Wayfinding – finding your way
Sensemaking – making sense of the information/learning

Connecting with learning through a variety of distributed approaches

Linear vs distributed learning design –

Focus on content, context and connections

Domain 1 - Analysis and validation – learning development cycle – stages – 1. Analysis 2. Evaluation & Representation 3. Validation
Domain 2 - Ecology design and network fostering – ecology, content, networks – design, develop, pilot, evaluate
Domain 3 - Adaptive Learning – skills/process for adaption – currency, developing skills, situated, tools, needs
Domain 4 - Review and Evalation – assess/evaluate – design, learning, content, process, revise/adjust

Impacting factors: context, readiness, tools, concepts, resources, change management, strategy, time

Cloud model of design -

WIIFM – designing learning around web 2.0 principles – self sustaining learning and development –

Complexity, Chaos and Randomness

2008-10-19T01:44:00.000-07:00

Ephemeralization, the ongoing increase in efficiency or productivity of all processes involving matter, energy and information, (Heylighen) has enabled an endless follow of information via the internet to occur, but at the same time created concepts such as ‘information overload’, ‘data smog’ or ‘spam’.

This ever increasing growth of information is limited by the amount of information people can actually process, creating ‘Information Fatigue Syndrome’ causing “anxiety, poor decision-making, difficulties in memorizing and remembering, reduced attention span, reduced work satisfaction and strained relations with collaborators (Waddington, 1996; Shenk, 1997; Wurman, 1990).” (Heylighen)

The ability to distinguish and filter out unreliable and irrelevant information is important (information hygiene), and an individual must also understand the impact of their contribution to ‘data smog’ – as “the cost for the sender (of information) is minimal, the cost for the receivers, while individually almost negligible, is collectively huge”. (Heylighen)

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Intelligence Amplification (IA) through computer generated “augmented” thinking and support systems, and Collective Intelligence, such as modeling how tribes of ants interact as a collective whole, there is potential to extend the limitation of human potential. Collaborative filtering (ranking) and the semantic web, whereby the web learns new links between information sources in the same way the human brain learns to create associations between information will also help support the human mind’s ability to process the avalanche of information available to it.

Although technology has allowed us to access information more readily and educate people more cheaply, leading to the understanding for the need for ‘life long learning’ to keep up-to-date with the ever increasing developments of information in our own field of expertise and society as a whole, the inertia of individuals and organizations to take a long time to adapt to a new technology and to learn how to use it productively, may explain many educators have yet adopted technology into their current teaching practices.

The adoption of technology to support the limitations of the human brain in this information age requires a major paradigm shift in educational practices, as the ability to “autonomously analyse problems, find relevant information, synthesize the results, and thus develop new knowledge” is what is far more required than that of rote, regurgitated learning.

An understanding of Chaos and Complexity theories can help enable this shift in education. By understanding that like the weather, learning is too complex and unpredictable to be restricted and guided by linear curriculum and training paths. And by facilitating rather than directing the power of learning, we educators will better understand that “the two learning systems and cultures, that of school and of the Web, are fundamentally different; one has a basis in control and structure, and the other is seemingly unstructured and chaotic” (Phelps) and a chaotic, complex approach better reflects how ‘real’ learning occurs.

Just like in the non-linear learning process of child rearing, where a divergent and complex learning cycle occurs through trial, reflection, research and more trialling, and where one course of action and direction is never sufficient, learning occurs when its needed and sourced from a range of different means, with the best lessons learnt are those through trying, investigation and reflection.

CCK08 - week 6 – Complexity, Chaos and Randomness

2008-10-19T01:42:00.000-07:00

Readings
Developing Online From Simplicity toward Complexity: Going with the Flow of Non-Linear Learning
Video Lecture: Complexity Science
Complexity and Information Overload in Society .pdf
Complexity, Chaos, and Emergence (George Siemens)

Other useful resources for this week:
n/a

Notes from readings:
Reflection halfway through the course – George Siemens
All learning begins with a connection – what are the attributes of those connections?

Developing Online From Simplicity toward Complexity: Going with the Flow of Non-Linear Learning – Renata Phelps
‘net generation’ - characterised as chaotic, constructivist, integrated and multi-faceted, and where ‘play’ is central

…two learning systems and cultures, that of school and of the Web, are fundamentally different; one has a basis in control and structure, and the other is seemingly unstructured and chaotic.

Complexity theory is concerned with open, non-linear systems and is essentially a formal attempt to question how coherent and purposive wholes emerge from the interactions of simple and sometimes non-purposive components (Lissack, 1999). At its most humble, it attempts to explain the ‘big consequences of little things’.

‘Curriculum becomes a process of development rather than a body of knowledge to be covered or learned, ends become beacons guiding this process, and the course itself transforms the indeterminate into the determinate’ (Doll, 1989a, p.250)

… many young people, provided with access to the Web, adopt learning approaches consistent with complexity theory. Their learning is ‘naturally’ non-linear.

… complexity’s recognition that it is impossible to break down learning and teaching into determinist and predictable simple elements of knowledge.

Integral to the process of fostering self-directed and life-long learning was an emphasis on self-directed goal setting, but also on acknowledging and embracing ‘emergent’ learning – ‘you don’t always know what you don’t know’!

… learning cannot and should not be goal-directed all the time. ‘Sometimes one should be satisfied with a global, general learning goal and let the learning environment guide the discoveries’ (p.292). …. not only guide but prompt such learning ‘discoveries’.

Non-linear learning was perceived to be more ‘authentic’ than linear learning and more consistent with life-long learning.

While rapid and easy progress through linear and defined content may be reassuring to the learner, little learning may actually be taking place.

… simplification of complex subject matter is a ‘conspiracy of convenience’…. providing realistic levels of complexity in the learning environment can actually make learning easier … Rather than simplifying the environment, the goal of educators should be to aid the learner to function in rich learning environments…. flexible, open, disruptive, uncertain and unpredictable and should accept tension, anxiety and problem creating as the norm.

four-module structure: Thinking, Using, Applying and Creating…. Find ‘windows’ Facts, Skills, Activities, Use in Schools and Reflection…. encapsulated an approach of ‘play’ and exploration.

… some students required or preferred foundational understandings (facts), or foundational skills, while others were comfortable with experiential learning and needed to be challenged to set and achieve ambitious learning goals, and to ‘test out’ their knowledge (activities).

They had more choice about what they learnt, but more importantly, how they learnt it. Students would be encouraged to jump from activities to facts or skills as required. Students were encouraged to identify their own goals; goals that were challenging for them personally. All students were required to demonstrate progress, no matter what their initial level of skill and knowledge. While frameworks were embedded in the materials to support them to set these goals, they were prompted to select content and activities which were most appropriate in achieving their goals and to document, through reflection, the resultant, personally significant learning.

… the Web is … a big tangled spider’s web of information. Bits of it lead to other bits and there is no ‘start’ and ‘finish’.

… think about how we learn in contexts other than schools and universities.

Parent analogy:
- no single course you can do on ‘how to become a good parent’
- They don’t know everything there is to know, but when issues or challenges arise they seek out information and advice, and adopt strategies that they feel are appropriate.
- they reflect on whether their strategies are working or not and will seek other information, or adopt other strategies if they don’t.
- consult a variety of resources
- experiment with different approaches

learning in ‘real life’ isn’t generally very ordered or structured. Learning is usually motivated by an activity which needs to be performed or a problem which has been encountered. Individuals seek and select information from all kinds of sources to meet their own personal needs and interests and there is always further learning which they can continue to pursue as their activities and practice develop and they reflect on their new goals.

… ‘cognitive playfulness’ (Martocchio, 1992; Webster, 1995) and exploratory learning … Gare (2000), for instance, describes play as the ‘archetypal chaotic and unpredictable behaviour from which new order emerges’.

Video Lecture: Complexity Science – Seth Bullock
A systems is a set of individual components that are linked by relationships of some kind to form a whole.

Complexity and Information Overload in Society .pdf – Francis Heylighen
… information overload is made worse by “data smog”, the proliferation of low quality information because of easy publication.
… the basic thrust of progress cannot be stopped, this means that we will have to evolve suprahuman systems to complement our limited capacities for processing information and understanding complex systems. These systems cannot be merely technological (the famed superintelligent computers or robots), but must encompass humans as essential components.

… law of Moore, according to which the speed of microprocessors doubles every 18 month, while their price halves.

Ephemeralization, the ongoing increase in efficiency or productivity of all processes involving matter, energy and information, is the most basic manifestation of technological and organizational advance.

… ephemeralization smoothens or lubricates the machinery of society. Movements of matter and information run more freely, with very little loss or resistance. But this applies to unwanted movements too. It has become much easier to distribute weapons, bombs, drugs or poisonous materials, or for criminals or terrorists to coordinate their activities across borders.

1987 "Black Wednesday" collapse of stock prices, which was due not so much to the state of the economy, but to the new phenomenon of computer trading. Specialised computer programs would monitor the prices of different stocks. If prices fell below a certain value, the computer was programmed to offer the shares for sale, before they would lose even more value. But the more shares were on sale, the lower their prices became, triggering yet more selling.

Ephemeralization not only lengthens causal sequences, it increases the number of effects that a cause produces in parallel. An event has generally more than one effect simultaneously. – multiply effect - … greater difficulty to predict, and therefore control, … The reduction of friction in causal networks, however, makes prediction ever more difficult .. chaotic

evolutionary dynamic underlying ephemeralization not only increases the complexity of interactions, but also the complexity of the overall system because it promotes the differentiation and integration of subsystems … any phenomenon, system or process in society becomes more difficult to analyze, model, predict and control.

To compensate for the loss of predictability, this means that they will have to gather more extensive information about all the different factors and interactions that may directly or indirectly affect their situation.

… ephemeralization has made the collection and processing of information much easier. However … fundamental bottleneck in predictability is: the human decision-maker

… information was a scarce resource … ephemeralization has made the retrieval, production and distribution of information infinitely easier … practically eliminating the cost of publication. This has reduced the natural selection processes which would otherwise have kept all but the most important information from being transmitted. … overabundance of low quality information has been called data smog by Shenk (1997). … “spam”

Causal effect of world trade centre on us getting our passports

… ephemeralization forces us to pay attention to ever more data.

The problem is that people have clear limits in the amount of information they can process. To use Simon’s (1972; Simon et al., 1992) well-known phrase, they have bounded rationality. … psychologist Miller (1957) has shown that people can only keep some seven items at once in their working memory. … Long-term memory is much more powerful and can store millions of concepts, although it is short-term memory that we use to think, decide, and solve problems in real-time.

… people will be confronted with more information than they effectively can process: this situation we may call information overload (Berghel, 1997; Kirsh, 2000).

psychologist David Lewis, who analysed these findings, proposed the term "Information Fatigue Syndrome" to describe the resulting symptoms. They include anxiety, poor decision-making, difficulties in memorizing and remembering, reduced attention span, reduced work satisfaction and strained relations with collaborators (Waddington, 1996; Shenk, 1997; Wurman, 1990).

If we consider individuals as goal-seeking, cybernetic systems (cf. Heylighen, 2002), then processing incoming information (perception) is only one half of the story. … Ephemeralization has boosted not only the availability of information but our capacity for action. We have ever more numerous and more powerful tools, support systems, services and products at our disposal. … We may call this the problem of opportunity overload.

Because of ephemeralization, the potential power of actions, whether to the good or to the bad, has tremendously increased.

Perez (1983), inertia: individuals and organizations need years, if not decades, to adapt to a new technology and to learn to use it productively … The more revolutionary the technology, the longer this learning or adaptation process will take…

Ephemeralization of information has allowed more people to be educated more easily and cheaply leading to the understanding for the need of ‘life long learning’ … education will no longer be finished after college, but become a permanent process, as employees need constant training to keep up-to-date with the developments in their field and in society at large.

More important even than the quantity of education is its quality. … This requires education where the focus is not on static rules or facts, but on methods to autonomously analyse problems, find relevant information, synthesize the results, and thus develop new knowledge.

… the human brain is an organ with a limited capacity for storing and processing information.

… g-factor (for “general” intelligence), that appears primarily biological (Jensen, 1998). The g-factor can perhaps best be understood as a measure of the efficiency of information processing in the brain. … there is also a strong influence from the environment beyond the effect of education. … explain this secular rise in intelligence (Neisser, 1998): richer nutrition, better health, more cognitive stimulation by a more information rich environment, more parental attention invested in a smaller number of children, etc.

Distinguishing and filtering out unreliable or irrelevant information is one part of what Shenk (1997) calls information hygiene. … People should not only learn how to recognize information parasites and other forms of low-content messages, they should themselves actively refrain from adding to this “data smog”. Ie “netiquette”

… attention economy… Where the cost for the sender is minimal, the cost for the receivers, while individually almost negligible, is collectively huge. … The cost has shifted basically from sender to receiver.

While our conscious processing in short-term memory is extremely limited, it is clear that the more diffuse, automatic, subsconscious processes relying on long-term memory (e.g. recognizing faces or producing speech) have a capacity that is still beyond the one of present-day computers. … artificial intelligence (AI) … not so much for independently intelligent programs, but for systems that support or “augment” human intelligence (IA, that is, Intelligence Amplification, rather than AI). … various relatively simple tasks on behalf of its user, such as keeping track of contacts and appointments, … Creating such an environment is the main drive behind the vision of the semantic web, (Berners-Lee et al., 2001)

1) individual human minds; 2) economical or social rules for the allocation of attention; 3) computer systems to support human decision-making.

collective intelligence (Lévy, 1997). … as ant nests, bee hives or termite colonies (Bonabeau et al., 1999), encompassing intelligent system is the global brain

collaborative filtering (Shardanand & Maes, 1995): a person who has already read a message may score how relevant or interesting the message is for him or her.

.. the web learns new links between documents in the same way that the brain learns to create associations between phenomena experienced within a short time interval.

.. human intelligence, computer intelligence, and coordination mechanisms

Complexity, Chaos, and Emergence (George Siemens)
Chaos theory - Strogatz defines it as unpredictability that occurs in systems that obey predictable laws, or, more succinctly, “deterministic unpredictability”. … Pure mathematics, advanced physics, and related sciences are its birthplace. … two critical elements: 1) the concept of sensitivity of initial conditions, and 2) recognizing that learning similarly consists of unpredictability that occurs within certain structures of form (deterministic unpredictability).

Complexity theory - a weather system is an example of complexity. Numerous interacting elements produce varying outcomes. Such as in learning

Emergence is an attribute exhibited by complex systems. … our learning is the emergent phenomena of our own interactions with others and how we have engaged with and connected different concepts.

Learning is simply too complex, too multifaceted, too replete with multiple off-ramps, to be confined or reduced to a mechanistic model.

Connectives and Collectives: Distinctions between networks and groups

2008-10-11T17:34:00.001-07:00

Siemens (2008) says ‘Networks are the underlying structure of any type of situation’ and speaks in terms of ‘connectives’ (networked individuals) and ‘collectives’ (groups of individuals), and that we can not argue a case of groups vs networks.

He says that the desired outputs or outcomes will determine whether it is best to facilitate connectives or collectives.

Looking at the history of learning networks, I see ‘artists’ of the renaissance era representing ‘connective’ learning groups – where creation and innovation were desired, and ‘guilds and unions’ of the industrial age representing the ‘collective’ learning groups – where the conformity of skills and massive production were required.

Siemens acknowledges that the challenge for educators is:

- to determine whether the complexity of the learning requires self organisation or needs to be managed;

- how we preserve the unique values of both networked individuals and groups of individuals; and

- within collectives, how we support and maintain the individual ‘self’ within the group environment.

Downes, (2006, 2006a, 2007) however, is able to distinguish between groups and networks.

He refers to groups as being closed, where there is a boundary separating members and non-members, and unity and co-ordination is required. Downes cites broadcast media and online service, such as television, radio, and books, podcasts, and technorati, which are controlled by a ‘leader’ and result in ‘power laws’, as examples of how ‘groups’ supports static content that is delivered to an individual. Other examples of online ‘groups’ include: intranets, portals, standards, LMS, and copyright laws.

He feels that groups create an unequal distribution of knowledge, and supports exclusivity and control, distinguishing the rich from the poor.

He sees, however, networks as being autonomous and open, with no walls or boundaries separating individuals, but rather creating ‘bridges’ based on the connections between the members. Technologies which support networks are more person to person and create more connective conversations, like telephones, personal emails and letters, personal home pages, blogs, social networks and personal learning systems such as e-portfolios, and systems like creative commons. Networks better represent the organic world/ecosystems, support diversity and self directed learning, and provide more of an equal say/power base, thereby preventing the rich from getting richer.

For me, there is a dilemma in Downes networks vs groups argument. I love that networks support more of a socialist system, whereby economic wealth is more evenly distributed, and individuals (autonomous agents) are encouraged to take responsibility for their own destinies. However, when you ask people in a workplace which feature do you value most in your colleagues their response is to “work well as a part of a team” (groups).

So how do we as educators:
- know when it is best to facilitate connective or collective learning? and
- how do we support networked individuals whilst encouraging a ‘team’ approach?

CCK08 - week 5 – Connectives and Collectives: Distinctions between networks and groups

2008-10-11T17:32:00.000-07:00

Readings
Groups Vs Networks: The Class Struggle Continues - Stephen Downes
That Group Feeling - Stephen Downes
Downes Interview: Groups and Networks (here's the image from the video)
Group and Network (presentation, George Siemens)

Optional
Collectives, Networks and Groups in Social Software for E-Learning - Terry Anderson and John Dron
7 Habits of Highly Connected People - Stephen Downes

Other useful resources for this week:
n/a

Notes from readings:
Groups Vs Networks: The Class Struggle Continues - Stephen Downes
groups require unity and networks require diversity. Groups require coherence, networks require autonomy and so on.

Networks offers that path that isn't the individual and isn't the group, doesn't force you to choose between the individual and the group.

a group is a collection of entities or members according to their nature or their feature or their properties or whatever, their essential nature, maybe, their accidental nature, maybe, whatever, but according to their nature. What defines a group is the quality the members possess in common and then the number of members in that group. Groups are about nature, they're about quality, they're about mass. They're about number.

A network, by contrast, is an association, I use that word very precisely, an association of entities or members where this association is facilitated or created by a set of connections between those entities. …. A connection is merely some conduit along which a signal can run. … What defines a network is the nature and the extent of this connectivity. The nature and the extent to which these individuals are connected together.

A group, in other words, is like a school, a school of thought or a school of fish or a class, a class of entity, a class of animals, a class in a genus and a species.

"Education and authentic learning," he writes, "like freedom, is wrapped up with the notion of responsibility and accountability. We need to learn in groups because that's where we form our identities." True or false? "Not in some vast, chaotic network where there's no responsibility, no authenticity." (Stanley Frielick, kirjoitti 27.9.2006 kello 12:35)

A network is like an ecosystem where there is no requirement that all the entities be the same, where the nature of the entity isn't specifically relevant, where the number of entities isn't specifically relevant.

Can we have order, responsibility, identity, all of that good stuff, inside an ecosystem?

Networks are almost defined by the opposite, defined by their diversity. A network thrives on diversity.

Internet technology that encourages diversity rather than conformity includes things like personal home pages or these days, blogs.

Groups require coordination. They require a leadership or a leader.

A group is defined by its values. …. Networks, by contrast, require autonomy.

Interaction in a network isn't about leaders and followers. It's about, as I say here, a mutual exchange of value.

And you think about the technology now that encourages autonomy rather than conformance. E-portfolios is being touted as this sort of technology.

Networks are open. Networks require that all entities in the network be able to both send and receive.

Copyright, trademarks, proprietary software, all of these things are barriers for the communication of thought and ideas.

Groups are distributive - money, information, power, everything flows from the center, an authority, and it's distributed through the members.

Networks are distributed. In a network, there is no locus of knowledge. There is no place that knowledge and money and all of that flow from.

But can groups be an entity within a network?

That Group Feeling - Stephen Downes
groups are based on passion while networks are based on reason. Groups meet our need to belong and to survive, while networks meet our need to connect and learn and to know.

When we look at learning, therefore, and when we ask which model should prevail, the group model or the network model, we are asking fundamentally what the role of our educational system should be. Should it be to foster an emotional attachment to a group, be it a nation, religion, or system of wealth distribution?

There is no shortage of people wanting schooling to fulfill not only a learning but also a socialization function. …. teaching becomes less a matter of cognitive function and more a matter of indoctrination.

when the fostering of allegiance to a group becomes a major, or primary, function of education, then the traditional agenda, thought of as learning, is left behind.

We can no longer afford dogmatic tribalism. …. But in matters affecting economics and finance, environment, government and nations, we can no longer afford group-based tribalism.

where we, as a society, would prefer reason to prevail over emotions, we should prefer to organize ourselves as networks rather than as groups.

I want groups to continue to exist. I want that feeling of unrestrainedly shouting “Hort! Hort! Hort!” in a suburban field, of forming a bond with a group of friends, of feeling the strength and support of my community and my family. But not at any cost. Not at the cost groups, unrestrained, can inflict on the outcast. Not at the cost that indoctrination, practiced as a theory of learning, can inflict on a society and on a planet. Not at the cost the tribe mentality, as exercised in the schoolyard, can inflict on an individual.

Do we create an indoctrinated learning environment in our schools to control and concur – adopted from our tribual/feudualistic backgrounds or to easily manage the large scale formalization of our education systems. Worker ants vs independent thinkers.

Would improved and flexible funding models and improved teacher training/professional development enable us to create networked learning models?

The Lesotho ‘cattle-boys’ who didn’t want to be coaxed into a formal classroom environment, which we make them more ‘civilised’.

Control (groups) vs Anarchy (networks)

Downes Interview: Groups and Networks (here's the image from the video)
Online learning focuses on ‘groups’

Groups – unity, co-ordination, closed/boundary between members & non-members, leader – television, radio, books – broadcast media – content static and delivered – intranet/portal – standards, LMS – copyright – podcasts, technorati – results in a power law – an unequal distribution of knowledge, wealth – distinguishing the rich and poor – exclusivity and control

Networks – diversity, autonomy, open and no walls, bridges rather than walls, based on the connections between the members – talking, telephone, not broadcast, more person to person – personal home page – self directed learning systems (e-portfolios) – creative commons – connective and creates conversations – social networks – organic world – prevents the rich from getting richer – more of an equal say/power

Group and Network (presentation, George Siemens)
Groups are a type of network – impossible to compare the two
Collectivity – doing things together – distributed nature of knowledge – trust required –
Working together as a group is completely different from networks and individuals
Need to consider ‘human nature’ - Individual identity important – the desire to have ‘recognition’ of our actions
Collective intelligence – recognition of ‘the self’
Concepts are partly held ‘externally’ through an ‘artefact’ ie a book/article using a ‘language’
Socially formed – language, symbols, customs, culture, technology – conceptually held –
“The intelligences … are distributed … across minds, persons, and the symbolic and physical environments” Roy Pea
Collectives/Groups – as we start to integrate our ideas/concepts with others – important protection of our selves which needs to be retained
The self is not created through socialization it is shaped and expressed through socialization (negotiation/conversations)
Connectives – mosaic self autonomy
Collectives – subsumption of self (melting pot) – needs a coercion to the norm –
Working with others is a vital skill, whilst retaining ‘self’ – autonomy of individuals
Innovation is deviation – when people see things in a similar way there is little ‘innovation’ – need to encourage deviation –
Freedom vs control – multiplicity of networks required – high innovation – free/open structure required – time pressures to create outputs – control required
“Intense connectivity can homogenize the pool … high cohesiveness can lead to the sharing of common rather than novel information” Uzzi, Spiro (2005)
Networks are the underlying structure in any type of a situation ie individuals (new ideas, novel concepts, weak ties) or groups (normalizing, strong ties)
Complexity – self organisation vs managed
Challenge for educators : preserve unique values of connectives (individuals) and collectives (groups)

Innovation = individuals
Conformity = groups

Working as a part of a team vs autonomous agents

Collectives, Networks and Groups in Social Software for E-Learning - Terry Anderson and John Dron
that there are actually three distinct entities that are involved in activities supported through the use of social software: the group, the network and the collective

We suggest that the level of granularity is specified by a cluster of variables including the number of users, formal leadership, degree of familiarity of users with each other, perceived responsibility to the ‘Many’ and the privacy afforded to the users.

Our classification begins with the often tightly formed and usually temporally bound entity known as the group or, in many corporate settings, as the team. From here we move to discussion of the network, a more fluid form of social entity in which members join, create and remove themselves through informal and semi-formal connections. Finally we discuss the collective, the highest form of social granularity in which members participate for individual benefit, but their activities are harvested to generate the ‘wisdom of crowds’.

Collectives are aggregations, sets formed of the actions of individuals who primarily see themselves as neither a part of a group nor connected through a network. … Notable collective behaviours include the formation of tag clouds, the ordering of results in Google, recommendations of collaborative filters or social navigation in various social systems based on prior use, evaluation or other stigmergic indicators. …. collective systems do not require a commitment to the Many.

Bradley Horowitz (2006) estimates that 1% of users are creators or instigators of interaction. A further 10% are synthesizers or commentators who respond to invitation and prompting by creators. The remaining 89% are consumers but who still value to the collective through their tracked consumption.

Table 1 - forms of communication in social software – page 4
Table 2 - uses of social software for learning – page 5
Figure 1 - social view of e-learning – page 6

7 Habits of Highly Connected People - Stephen Downes
1. Be reactive - if publishing your own stuff comes at the expense of reading and commenting on other people's stuff, that's not so great.

Posting, after all, isn't about airing your own views. It's about connecting, and the best way to connect is to clearly draw the link between their content and yours.

2. Go With The Flow - When connecting online, it is more important to find the places to which you can add value rather than pursue a particular goal or objective.

3. Connection Comes First - the idea of replacing your online connecting with busy-work is mistaken.

4. Share - The way to function in a connected world is to share without thinking about what you will get in return.

5. RTFM - "Read The Fine Manual" - it means, basically, is that people should make the effort to learn for themselves before seeking instruction from others.

6. Cooperate - To cooperate, it is necessary to know the protocols. Protocols exist in all facets of online communications, from the technologies that connect software (like TCP/IP and HTML) to the ways people talk with each other (like netiquette and emoticons).

7. Be Yourself - it's a recognition that your online life encompasses the many different facets of your life, and that it is important that these facets are all represented and work together.

History of Networked Learning

2008-10-09T17:54:00.000-07:00

“Networks are everywhere. All you need is an eye for them” - Barabási, 2002

Networked learning is not new – the areas of sociology, mathematics and physics all have long established research based on networks.

Networked learning has been occurring throughout time – for example: farmers have been sharing their knowledge with each other and with each new generation through social networks.

However, computer and telephonic technology and its physical infrastructure have brought to the forefront how networks facilitate learning.

2003 saw an explosion of social software sites such as Delicious, LinkedIN, MySpace, Second Life, Pbwiki, Podcasting became popular and Skype was released. The anonymous Iraq blogger Salam Pax started to report on the Iraq War, and Google started their ‘Adsense’ program to allow bloggers to monetize traffic on their site.

Even though in the years prior to 2003 the terms ‘social software’ and ‘folksonomy’ (2002) were coined, and popular sites and systems like RSS (2000), Wikipedia (2001) and Last.Fm, Technorati, Flickr (2002) were launched, the internet saw its beginnings derive from the fear of an attack by the Soviet Union on the US, (Paul Baran, 1964) and the need for a “communication (system) that could withstand a projected large-scale (possibly nuclear) attack”. Baran “proposed a distributed network which allowed sections of a distributed network to be destroyed while the message would still reach its destination.”

In 1988, two Swiss CERN employees, Tim Berners-Lee & Robert Cailliau, conceptualised the technology behind www, http, url, and html, which saw the developed of the web as we currently know it.

Throughout the development of the World Wide Web a number of influential internet innovators have progressively worked towards an internet which is ‘free’ and user driven. In more recent times, the influx of ‘free’ social networking websites has seen a massive increase in the use of the net for individuals to network with each other. However, these sites might not be as ‘free’ as their initially appear, with users not being able to delete their own accounts, who are ransomed by where there friends are online, who are hindered to export any of their own content and forego ownership of their own digital material and digital sovereignty.

“MySpace, which in 2006, makes it abundantly clear that "the company has 'a non-exclusive, fully-paid and royalty-free, worldwide license ... to use, copy, modify, adapt, translate, publicly perform, publicly display, store, reproduce,
transmit, and distribute' all content uploaded to their site.” A
History of the Social Web - Trebor Scholz

Will the conflict between having ‘free’ online networking space, which readily supports networked learning, but has its content owned by large and unscrupulous corporations, effect who actually owns and controls this learning?

The English language can not be owned – but can networked learning?

CCK08 - week 4 – History of Networked Learning

2008-10-09T17:52:00.000-07:00

Readings
A History of the Social Web (for some reason, Trebor Scholz took down the original link and now we rely on the link to the archive)
A Brief History of Networked Learning George Siemens

Optional
A Folk History of the Internet - this is very much a work in progress that I have been assembling over the years. If you are logged in on my website (downes.ca) you can edit the contents of this wiki. - Stephen
Other useful resources for this week:
History of Open Content – George Siemens

Notes from readings:
A History of the Social Web - Trebor Scholz

“On Distributed Communication Networks” – Paul Baran, 1964 – on fear of an attack by the Soviet Union, the need for a communication that could withstand a projected large-scale (possibly nuclear) attack proposed a distributed network which allowed sections of a distributed network to be destroyed while the message would still reach its destination.

Supported by “Packet Switching” – Leonard Kleinrock, 1960 - Baran describes ‘packet switching’: all the nodes in the network would be equal in status to all other nodes, each node with its own authority to originate, pass, and receive messages." If there is a traffic jam at one point in the network, it can be re-routed.

By 1975 most of what happened on ARPANET was email, which was really not in sync with ARPANET's explicit research focus but it demonstrated the desire of people, given the opportunity, to be social, to talk to each other.

1977 - Mailing Lists – MsgGroup; Groupware – MUD (multi-user dungeon which combine role-playing games with chat rooms – later to become MMORGs – massively multiplayer online role-playing ie World of Warcraft WOW)
1978 – Bulletin Board Systems; USENET newsgroups, a system that copies files between computers without central control
1979 – ‘emoticons’ used to improve the dry text medium of the email
1981 – first IBM PC with mouse
1988 – Tim Berners-Lee & Robert Cailliau – conceptualised WWW, HTTP, URL, HTML
1993 – Marc Andreessen created a browser accessible to the non-technical person – which was rewritten to become ‘Netscape’ – Peter Steiner cartoon “on the internet, nobody knows you’re a dog”
1995 - the cross-platform software language JAVA, a "building material" for software, was written at SunMicro Systems, named after coffee, Silicon Valley's favorite beverage
1999 - Napster (peer to peer music sharing software) was important as it established expectations-- information wants to be free.
2000 – RSS 1.0 released
2000/2001 – Wikipedia created
2002 – Friendster, Last.Fm, Technorati, Flickr launched, ‘folksonomy’ & ‘social software’ termed/coined
2003 – Delicious,
LinkedIN (based on ‘weak ties’ – as you’re more likely to get a job through weak ties instead of strong ones Mark Granovetter 1973 "Getting a Job"),
MySpace (the most culturally influential social networking platform in the history of the Internet to date with about two hundred million users. According to freelance writer Trent Lapinski "MySpace was actually created by executives whose backgrounds are anchored in spam and mass marketing... [and] essential to the creation of MySpace is current CEO Chris DeWolfe.” "DeWolfe learned that people will sign up for almost anything that they find useful, and they could care less about the fine print." Spam became a central "feature" of MySpace,which, in 2006, makes it abundantly clear that "the company has 'a non-exclusive, fully-paid and royalty-free, worldwide license ... to use, copy, modify, adapt, translate, publicly perform, publicly display, store, reproduce, transmit, and distribute' all content uploaded to their site.”),
Second Life launched.
Google starts ‘Adsense’ program allowing many individual bloggers to monetize traffic on their site.
Podcasting became popular.
Skype released.
Iraq War begins and anonymous Iraq blogger Salam Pax started to report
PeanutButterWiki (Pbwiki) started
2004 – ‘Weblog’ official used in Webster dictionary; Facebook starts at Harvard Uni; Orkut – Google’s social networking site founded; LimeWire released
2005 – ‘Web 2.0’ coined; Ning, YouTube; GoogleVideo, Blip.TV launched; Bebo becomes popular (launched in 1997)
2006-2007 – a plethora of social software sites are launched, including Twitter (2006) – 1 billion people are online (2007) – 2 million English Wikipedia articles – 200 million MySpace accounts – 30 million Facebook users, growing by 4 million each month

"The Precariat" in which they state that: “Precarious work refers to all possible shapes of unsure, not guaranteed, flexible exploitation: from illegalized, seasonal and temporary employment to homework, flex- and temp-work to subcontractors, freelancers or so called self employed persons.” In the years to come the ideas surrounding the term of the precariat were applied to new labor conditions created by a networked lifestyle.”

“Networks in computer science, ecology, molecular biology, and quantum physics, according to BarabÃ¡si have much in common and can inform us about online communities and social networks.”

Recent social websites (ie Facebook) do not allow users to ‘delete’ their accounts, and content cannot be easily exported.

The future of networked sociality is clearly linked to the anticipated two billions cellphone users of the near future.

A number of influential internet innovators work towards an internet which is free and user driven. However, in recent times, even though social websites are still ‘free’ that are not without the restrictions of not being able to delete accounts, ransomed by where people’s friends are, and the hindrance of being able to export content.

A Brief History of Networked Learning George Siemens
Networked learning is not new. Networked learning has been occurring throughout time – farmers sharing their knowledge – however, with the introduction of computer/telephonic technology and its physical networks to allow connectivity has brought to the forefront how networks facilitate learning
Barabási issued the statement: “Networks are everywhere. All you need is an eye for them” - Albert-László Barabási chronicles his awakening to the power of networks in the 2002 publication of Linked - (p. 7), indicating the increased awareness of networks as an underpinning structure in many disciplines.

Five significant stages can be noted in how networks are viewed within the educational space can be found in a review of literature:
(a) infrastructure development – the physical technical infrastructure ie computer software, hardware and connectivity;

(b) merging with fields which have an existing research base – sociology, mathematics and physics which have an established research base on networks, ;

(c) theoretical and transformative views of learning, knowledge, and cognition;
Salomon (1993) suggested the development of distributed cognition—cognition that occurs “in conjunction or partnership with others” (p. xiii), is due to three reasons:
(a) the growth of computers as tools to assist in intellectual activity,
(b) growing interest in Vygotsky’s theory of cognition as a product of a particular context or social setting, and
(c) dissatisfaction of the limitations of cognition when viewed as solely “in-the-head” (p. xiv).

Technology aids in the distribution of cognition as it enables us to “project ourselves outward digitally” (de Kerchove, 1997, p. 38), or, more boldly, “to treat the Web as the extension of the contents of one’s own mind” (p. 79).

(d) practicality and popularization of social network services; - The popularization of social software raised the profile of networks. Social networking, however, did not become main stream until the 2003 launch of MySpace. A potential secondary benefit may be the development of network thinking skills on the part of learners, as they discover ways of finding information and people, as well as solve problems through active involvement in a network.

(e) as a model for detailing the process of education and learning.
Within this stage, educators are beginning to explore how network models can assist not only collaborative learning in online and blended environments, but with pervasive mobile learning

This popularization, unfortunately, has led to the term network acquiring a degree of vagueness with multiple potential meanings.

The multiple potential meanings of the term network, as expressed by the five stages of network development, need to be recognized and reflected in order for educators to more precisely communicate concepts of connectivism and networked learning.

Connectivism, as a theory of learning, is developed against the backdrop of physical network infrastructure, development of the social learning theory, and distributed conceptions of cognition and knowing. ….. they served as an underpinning structure to the development of fields of science, literature, and technology.

A Folk History of the Internet – Stephen Downes

To show that what makes the net great is not the technologies and the CEOs but rather the stories, trends and fables that characterize the internet experience.

Properties of Networks

2008-10-07T02:23:00.000-07:00

Networks are made up of entities, connections and signals which can be represented mathematically using graphs and tables.

In social networks, entities are the people who make up the network, connections are the paths through which information is transferred and signals are the actual messages or bits of information being shared.

Broken down and represented in this way, a social network appears to be a very simplistic process, however, understanding the relationship between each of these components reveals the various levels of complexity which makes up a social network.

How a network is connected determines what and how information moves around the network. If the entities within a network are all closely related, the amount of new information will be limited, as each entity is sharing the information with each other. However, a network with external connections or ‘weak ties’, that are not closely related to one another will have a much bigger influx of new and fresh information.

The way information flows in a network also determines how well information is circulated. Information can travel one way or be reciprocal and can also be onward flowing. Each of these methods of transference determines the fluidity of information, as does the frequency and filtering of information and the level of influence an entity is seen to have within the network. We do not all have to be directly connected to access and share information – 2, 3, 4 degrees of separation can also allow access to the information of others without having to be directly connected.

Networks can prejudice how we think and the power/strength of a network is not always positive.

The effect of the recent Wall Street financial collapse on the international monetary market is the result of networks. If we consider banks to be the ‘entities’ in the network, who are all closely ‘connected’ and cash/money being the ‘signal’ or information, we can see that the poor home loan lending practices of some US banks have meant that home mortgages have not be repaid to return funds into monetary markets (one way flow). This ‘leak’ or drain of money (information) from US banks means less fluidity of funds between their international partners (all closely linked) – creating a domino effect on the reduction of cash reserves globally.

Having an understanding of the properties or components of your network can help you manage and influence the optimistic and disasteristic characteristics of the network. Knowing who makes up your network, their influence/power, how the information flows and is filtered will also allow you to better understand the what, when, who and how of new knowledge from a network.

CCK08 - week 3 – Properties of networks

2008-10-07T02:17:00.000-07:00

Readings:
Networks for Newbies .ppt
Stephen Downes: Learning Networks: Theory and Practice .ppt and audio
George Siemens Introduction to Networks

Other useful resources for this week:
CCK08: Valdis Krebs on Networks
Intentionalism and Meaning – Stephen Downes
Emergent Networks PDF – Valdis Krebs

Optional Reading

Introduction to social network methods - Chapter 7 - Connection and Distance – Robert A Hanneman (Dept of Sociology, Uni of California, Riverside and Mark Riddle (Dept of Sociology, Uni of Nthn Colorado)

Notes from readings:

CCK08: Valdis Krebs on Networks
“… what you know depends on who you know … “

“You have to have certain skills and intelligence, etc., but that’s not sufficient. You need to be able to connect, who to rely on, who to work with. And that’s not just who you know, but who knows you.

Often, your success in a company depends on your visibility in a network.

So, I think that learning is social and learning is iterative, so those with a better network have the potential to learn better and more.”

You are how you know

Networks for Newbies .ppt Barry Wellman
“A network is more than the sum of its ties” … “that form distinct analyzable patterns”
“To discover how “A”, who is in touch with “B” and “C”, is affected by the relation between “B” & “C”.
“Networks are a major source of social capital: mobilizable in themselves and from their contents”
“The networked society”
“We dream in graphs: We analyse in matrices”
“How does information flow through a village?”
“People link Groups: Groups link people”

PaulPam2 - Social networks... does anyone notice when people haven't placed a comment for a week or two weeks or even longer...... @PaulPam2 I think it would depend on the amount of people within the network and the contribution to the network by the person

Intentionalism and Meaning – Stephen Downes
“intentionalism - The thesis that all mental states are representational states. Specifically, raw feels and qualia, are said to have representational content.”
“Associationism - is at heart a theory of inference: Ideas, regarded rather as sensations or as mental images, were associated in the mind according to certain laws, mainly concerning contiguity and resemblance, and thereby led to further ideas, and to the functioning of mental life in general.
The position has resolved regarding the principles of association:
Aside from similarity and contiguity, other governing principles have been proposed to explain how ideas become associated with each other. These include temporal contiguity (ideas or sensations formed close together in time), repetition (ideas that occur together repeatedly), recency (associations formed recently are the easiest to remember), and vividness (the most vivid experiences form the strongest associative bonds).
I have advanced a position in my own work proposing four major principles of association:
resemblance - a.k.a. Hebbian associationism
contiguity or proximity - a.k.a. salience
feedback or back propagation
balance, or entropy aka Boltzmann mechanisms “
”Realism - is essentially the thesis that there is some (external or underlying) reality to which all of our perceptions (statements, whatever) refer (or represent, whatever).
Pat Parslow’s statement reflects a commonly held belief: “Without the consensual reality of negotiated meaning, the network has little or no basis for its foundation - whilst the negotiation of that reality cannot occur without the network. The two are part and parcel of the same overall system.”
“Learning –
Pat Parslow says, ” Yes, learning is about growing our network, both internally in our brains (and bodies) and externally in terms of the connections we make through associating with others, but these are both intimately tied to negotiating the meaning of concepts with the external (and possibly internal?) networks.”
“Connectivism is a non-intentional theory of learning and knowledge.
What this means is that, in connectivism, learning is not about content. It is not about entering a certain representational state with respect to the world.
It allows - indeed, encourages - the idea that people may have different, and individual, accounts of the external world.
Which means that what is negotiated is not some set of statements about the nature of that world - not representational states, not meanings - but mechanisms for communication, protocols for interaction (which may indeed be, and probably are, understood differently by each person engaged in communication).”

Stephen Downes: Learning Networks: Theory and Practice .ppt and audio
Networks: Basic Elements
- Entities: the things that are connected, sends and received signals
- Connections: links between entities – links, channel, my be physical or virtual
- Signals: message sent between entities – physical, meaning not inherent in signal, must be interpreted

Some Properties of Networks
- Density – how many other entities each entity is connected to
- Speed – how quickly a messages moves to an entity, can be measured in ‘hops’
- Flow – how much info an entity processes, includes messages sent, received plus transfers
- Plasticity – how frequently, connected created, abandoned

Network Design Principles
- specifies how networks differ from traditional learning
- the idea is that each principle confers an advantage over non-network systems
- can be used as a means of evaluating new technology

Centralised vs Decentralised networks
Distributed networks – reside in different physical locations, peer2peer/RSS, sharing not coping
Disintermediate – barrier between source & receiver ie editors/media, to manage flow of information, reduce volume of info, not the type of info
Disaggregated – units of content should be as small as possible – content not bundled, integration of new and old info, ie learning objects, smallest possible unit of instruction
Dis-integrate – entities of a network are not ‘components’ of one another ie avoid ‘required’ software, message coded in a ‘common’ language,
Democratize – entities in a network are autonomous – freedom to connect, send, receive info, diversity important, control is impossible
Dynamize – a network is a fluid, changing entity, it is through the process of change that new knowledge is discovered
Desegregate – do not need learning-specific tools/process and is a part of living/work/play – the network is everywhere

Elements of Network Semantics:
- Context; Relevance; Patterns; Memory, Stability, Weighting

Knowledge is shared understanding

Connectivism: Network Pedagogy
- Network ‘Pragmatics’, how to use networks to support learning, distributed knowledge, recognizes explicitly that what we ‘know’ is embedded in our network of connections to each other/resources/the world

Principles of Connectivism
- learning is a process of connecting entities
- nurturing and maintaining connections is needed to facilitate continual learning
- ability to see connections between fields, ideas and concepts is a core skill
- capacity to know more is more critical than what is currently known
- decision-making is itself a learning process

Stop trying to do online what you do in the classroom …. It’s a different world online

Introduction to social network methods - Chapter 7 - Connection and Distance – Robert A Hanneman (Dept of Sociology, Uni of California, Riverside and Mark Riddle (Dept of Sociology, Uni of Nthn Colorado)

“Highly connected individuals may be more influential, and may be more influenced by others.”

How a network is connected determines the breadth of the network – if the network is closely linked to each other – the network is ‘limited’ – disbursely connected networks means access to larger amounts of information

How influential you are in a network is determined by who you are actually connected to, ie other influential nodes within your network

“In a sense, actors with many ties (at the center of a network) and actors at the periphery of a network (few ties) have patterns of behavior that are more constrained and predictable. Actors with only some ties can vary more in their behavior, depending on to whom they are connected.”

Being connected to others is simply not enough – it’s what you do with the information you receive and whether you send information or more it on – by understanding networks we can have greater influence in the network, understand how to ‘work/build the network’ and who to connect with within the network – direct connection is not always required – but who your network is connected to – single or bi-directional connectivity paths

Networks can be mathematically depicted through charts and graphs – would be interesting to map your own network –

Walks, trails, paths – distances and directions between connections – one way, both ways, passed onwards/forward within the network

George Siemens Introduction to Networks
Networks are everywhere and all we need is an eye for them.
Those who are most easily influenced are those who contributed to the development of new trends.
Networks are an underlying structure that are exhibited in all aspects of our learning at any level that we might consider (social, conceptual, neural).
Are our educational systems designed to appropriately take advantage of network opportunities – curriculum too linear – education being a one way flow.
Connectivism - Assertion that knowledge is distributed and learning is the process of creating those networks – aided through the use of technology – learning networked – knowledge distributed

Notes from AUSTAFE 08 Conference – 3/10/08

2008-10-03T02:30:00.000-07:00

einventing the Present to Create the FutureLouise Palmer, Deputy Vice Chancellor (TAFE), Swinburne University

Successful organisations are those who get to the future first
You need to learn to ride the wave of change.

Gary Hamell – influential business thinker.

Resilience thinking model to respond to rapid change – we can not be too busy to be working with change.

The heart of resilience – embracing change.

Things change and to ignore or resist this change is to increase our vulnerability and forego emerging opportunities in so doing, we limit our options.

Building an organisation as nimble as change itself:
- making innovation a part of everyone’s job & person specs/performance reviews
- creating an ideas gateway – peer reviewed – then scoped
- creating an organisation where everyone gives their best
- Creating a highly engaging work environment
- Escaping the shackles

See different, be different – for the new world order

What stories are being told about your organisation by your staff – Are they positive? Negative?

Ken Robinson – if you want to innovate you need to be able to create – if you want to create you need to be able to dream – so we need to teach people to dream – do schools kill creativity in children?

Attitudes to Change – are similar to the attitudes to diversity – there are those who are saying “what we can do”: ‘I’m doing it’, ‘I’m ready’ – need ‘help’ to respond to change, ‘never thought of it’ – encourage to respond to change, ‘we’ve tried this before but..’ – sell the positive concept of change, ‘this isn’t something I want to do’ – because I said so – change is mandatory.

All of these groups need different communication strategies – the communication challenge – what strategies are there:
- rich narratives – every business has a story and often more than one – need to be used as a leadership tool – affect people at an emotional level – walk the talk – people tend to remember a story – choose language carefully – build stories with audience at the front of mind – keep the messages simple – 3-4 key messages – and stay on message - consider media training – create message which embraces resilience

Swinburne University/TAFE has a mission of ‘sustainability’ and adopts this mission into all of their practices

What is VET pedagogy?
- learner centred
- work focused
- attribute inclusive

Narrative is a core competence for management – it’s the ability to connect and stir empathy in people.

Web 2.0 – sharing power and sharing voice – there needs to be more use of web 2.0 in business – need to develop a digital engagement strategy – create a ‘thoughtocracy’ – creating online spaces where people can keep in touch with each others’ activity within the organisation – networked intelligence

AUSTAFE 08 Conference – 2/10/08

2008-10-02T00:16:00.000-07:00

A business approach to the Business of Social Inclusion
Dr Mark Bagshaw, Director, Innov8 Consulting Group

A Changing World
- gap between rich and poor can’t continue
- education is paramount
- business is not doing it part
- governments need to be stronger

If people with a disability were engaged in the workforce there would be an additional 161,000 people in the Australian workforce.

We haven’t built a society which supports the needs of disability groups.
606.000 people are receiving a pension at a cost of $12.5 bn just in pensions.

Attitudes to Diversity must change.

Skilling Australia: The Opportunities and Threats for TAFE
Philip Bullock, Chair, Skills Australia

Skills need to be holistic.

1 in 4 people unemployed today are ‘long term unemployed’
We have over 20% unemployment in youth
2006 Adult Literacy and Lifeskills survey – low literacy, numeracy and problem solving skills in Australia
Only 50% of apprentices are completing their apprenticeships

Productivity Places Program
630,000 additional training places over 5 years
284,000 for job seekers

Providing people with the opportunity to undertake training and education is paramount.

Striving for Excellence: Improving the Quality of VET Teaching, Learning and Assessment
Malcolm Goff, Chief Executive Officer, TVET Australia

Quality Outcomes for VET:
Competency Standards, Quality Policy Framework, VET Learning Resources, National VET Workforce

The importance of the National Training System being “more dynamic and flexible to meet the needs of industry and students if it is to delivery skills that the Australian economy needs now and into the future” – Skilling Australia for the Future, April 2008 – the productivity agenda

“Focus is on ensuring that the next generation of Training Packages provides greater flexibility and adaptability by being highly responsive to industry’s existing and future demand for new skills”

Quality Policy Framework: AQTF2007
“Focus is on ensuring that the quality management of the national training system delivers quality, client focused training and assessment. This includes monitoring and evaluating regulatory arrangements, accountabilities and decision making process at the strategic level”

VET Learning Resources:
“Focus is on providing access to: a national catalogue of quality teaching, learning and assessment resources; national and international licensing services” – www.tvetaustralia.com.au - will be one of the LORN repository owners shortly.

Another national repository is the Resource Generator.

National VET workforce development:
“Focus is on ensuring that the skills capacity of the VET workforce is increased and deepeneand that the demand for skills and skills training are matched”

The Social Inclusion Dimension: What is it? Why does it Matter?
Martin Stewart-Weeks, Director, Public Sector (Asia-Pacific), Cisco Systems

Cisco sends its products to market when they’re 70-80% ready – and lets the market work out what else needs doing to improve them.

Innovation isn’t what it used to – we need to innovate like we never have before.
New ethics of innovation is very challenging for industry.
We are currently in a shift from an institutional model (ego-centric) to a relational model.

TAFE is both a victim and an agent of this transition.

An Agenda:
Social Innovation
Challenges
Implications

Innovation is moving to a connected Ecosystem – ie from in house labs to the connected global marketplace

Because the really smart people you need are not working in your organisation, you need to connect and integrate them into your system.

The Governance Framework – Culture – most innovation doesn’t come from the centre – but from the ‘edge’ – frustrated, disgruntled customers are a great source of innovation.

Social innovation solutions are willing to try something different, provide an effective solution and leave behind new and sustainable capabilities, assets or opportunities for wider social change

Geoff Mulgam, Young Foundation – need to become more rigorous and systematic about how we develop and move social innovations in our organisations.

Bees – individuals, entrepreneurs – TAFE employees – Trees – TAFE as an organisation

Charles Leadbeater – We think – Six Lessons – Social Innovations – we are what we share – relationships are critical – framing counts – people enact change – public sector orchestration – new measures – political leadership

ASIX – Australian Social Innovation Exchange – raise the profile of social innovations as a key contributor to new thinking about sustainable solution to unmet social needs in Australia, to lift the speed of the social innovation cycle. Have a Twitter account: sixlive

A new ethic of public value – the power of distributed networking; mind set – changing from ego-centric to everything 2.0 – co-creation of content – openness – harnessing the network – peer production

The new wealth of nations is in the networks – value not just in $$ but in the connection between people. Yochai Benkler's book – The wealth of networks

People subscribe to people – the clue train manifesto

TAFE as a ‘victim’ – TAFE as an ‘agent’

Connected, open & distributed, network centric – the network knows more than we do – user participation and co-creation – people enact change – the importance of relationships – bees and trees

Are we backing people or organisations? – shared mental model – culture – governance – leadership – investment and resources – control and openness – knowledge management and collaboration

New truths:
First it is ridiculed
Secondly it is violently opposed
Thirdly it is accepted as being self-evident

TAFE as an Agent of Social Change
Conversation Café - Dr Mark Bagshaw & Martin Stewart-Weeks

Medical, emotional, social, environmental and vocational learning – we need to consider the different types of learning and how we can do this training in parallel.

Attitudal and prejudices prevent change.

An education is not social inclusion in its own right.

Social Diversity training/reform is so important for the improvements of engaging migrants and people with a disability into the workplace.

Contestability in VET: The Good, the Bad and the Elephant – Panel Discussion
Hugh Guthrie, NCVER; Phillip Bullock, Skills Australia; (Malcolm Goff, TVET Australia - absent); Louise Palmer, Swinburne University; Adrian Marron, TAFE SA

Phillip: Contestability is a ‘jurisdictional’ decision – an institute needs to understand where they are in the market – how can TAFE equally participate in a contestable training market when they are restricted by the decision making structure of a government body.

Louise: if you have a certificate at a certain level – you will not be able to undertake another different certificate at the same level at the ‘government subsidised’ rate – or if you hold a diploma or degree you will not be entitled to government subsidised pricing for a qualification which is less than that diploma/degree.

Adrian: the training market is ‘imperfect’ and will need some regulating to allow for these imperfections.

From the floor:

What impact will contestable funding have on social inclusion and innovation? We need a strong ACE and school sector involved in VET.

What is actually being contested? Need to accommodate Industry, the individual and the RTO – jurisdictions will be able to determine how they manage their additional ‘contestable’ funding/pricing to meet the needs of their State/Territory. Pricing will occur around the skills needs of their economy.

Rethinking Epistemology

2008-09-21T04:59:00.000-07:00

I started this week’s CCK08 course work thinking – ‘what the heck is ‘epistemology’ and discovered that it is ‘the study of knowledge’

So …

What new knowledge have I formed since learning about the study of knowledge?

How did I form this knowledge?

How does this new knowledge formation link to learning theory of Connectivism?

What knowledge have I formed since learning about the study of knowledge?

I’ve learnt a new word – ‘epistemology’ – and I can even spell it too.

I’ve learnt that just like carbon can ‘morph’ into coal, diamonds or graphite, dependent on how the environment has caused the carbon atoms to connect, knowledge is formed dependent on the way we connect with our environment and our networks.

Traditionally, information has been ‘controlled’ by those who had the power to present, print, or publicise it – forming a ‘gate-keeper’ approach to knowledge – whereby information was released into the environment by a selective and controlled means. However, the onslaught of information via the internet has allowed individuals to connect, create and collaborate in the development of knowledge in a completely different way. People are no longer restricted to the propaganda of their restrictive information sources. The internet has allowed the democrasisation of knowledge, widening our environments through online social networks, to an avalanche of information and new knowledge formation

How did I form this knowledge?

My new knowledge has been formed through ‘networks’ – neurological networks in my brain, and through environmental networks in the ecology of my surroundings.

New neurological networks have been formed, connected to previous understandings of ‘knowledge’ and ‘networks’ to form a new understanding of ‘knowledge’.

The exposure to information through George, Stephen and Dave’s resources – as well as my online learning network, like Twitter, when Mike Bogle - “#CCK08 Fantastic post by Sinikka on nodes and connections - http://is.gd/2OuM” last Friday – has also contributed to this new understanding.

How does this knowledge formation link to learning theory of Connectivism?

What I’ve realised by raising this question is that I don’t really yet understand the learning theory of Connectivism, as I’m finding it hard to find the connection between my new knowledge and the theory of Connectivism. Except to say that learning or knowledge is like the weather – it’s always changing and a little unpredictable due to its interconnection with its environment – and by understanding how the connections and networks of my environment allows me to formulate new knowledge by being exposed to a diverse range of networks – my learning/knowledge development this week has occurred because of the way I have ‘connected’ with my Connectivism learning environment, and if I had chosen a different way to interact with my learning networks, by reading different resources, entering into the online discussions, or reading the blogs written by other CCK08 participants about ‘Rethinking Epistemology’ then I would have changed the final output of my new knowledge.

CCK08 - week 2 – Rethinking epistemology – Connective knowledge

2008-09-21T04:56:00.001-07:00

Epistemology:

“The branch of philosophy dealing with the study of knowledge; theory of knowledge; A particular theory of knowledge” en.wiktionary.org/wiki/epistemology

Presentations and Papers

Types of Knowledge and Connective Knowledge - Stephen Downes

Video introduction to Week 2 (George Siemens)

Readings

Learning Networks and Connective Knowledge - Stephen Downes

Shifting Knowledge (from Knowing Knowledge) – George Siemens

Rhizomatic Knowledge (Dave Cormier) - free registration to Innovate is required to read the article.

Additional Readings

Rethinking Learning (.pdf)

An Introduction to Connective Knowledge - Stephen Downes

Other useful resources for This week:

Epistemology - Skids

CCK08 – random connections of today - Sinikka

Notes from readings:

Where does the learning occurs?? George Siemens

“…learning exists in the process of sensemaking”

Types of Knowledge and Connective Knowledge - Stephen Downes

“Qualitative knowledge is knowledge typically derived from the senses.” Ie “the qualities of the object”

“Quantitative knowledge is derived from the practices of counting and measuring.”

“These two types of knowledge combine the best of human capacities: our ability to perceive, to sense the world, and our ability to calculate, to think about the world. They form the foundation for language, the foundation for logic, and the foundation for all of the sciences we have had up to today.”

“Summary: Three types of knowledge
- of the senses (empirical)
- of quantity (rationalist)
- of connections (connective)”

“connectivism is the thesis that knowledge is distributed across a network of connections”

Carbon can make ‘coal, diamonds & graphite’ dependent on how the carbon atoms are ‘connected’

“It is knowledge about how such connections are created, and what impact, or effect, such a system of connections has.”

Knowledge can be different dependent on its connections – knowledge shared by the media is presented in a way in which the media organisation wants you to ‘connect’ with that information ie Fox News provides a type of knowledge which presents a ‘Rupert Murdoch’ view of the world

“*any* set of connected objects can contain information” but its how a person connects with those objects which will determine how they understand the objects

“Summary: Connective knowledge is both:
- knowledge OF networks in the world
- knowledge obtained BY networks”

“There are many types of networks, and therefore, many types of connective knowledge.”

One Network: - human brain – collection of neurons

Another Network – Society – collection of humans

Person – node in a network – connected to the nodes (people) = social network

Knowing/Understanding how networks work helps us create better networks

Does this mean that by changing the ‘networks’ you are changing the knowledge?

Video introduction to Week 2 (George Siemens)

What is a network – characteristics or attributes of a network?

Complexity science – Chaos and randomness

Power and control are critical concepts in the discussion of education/theory of learning

Tools (technology) at our disposal allow us to have a democracy to access information

Epistemology: – what is knowledge? – what is knowledge in a connected world? – in a networked world? What is the human mind and what role does it play in creating knowledge? Are we in a post-epistemology era?

We are in an era defined by knowledge – we ‘externalise’ our thoughts – can become the building blocks of knowledge – knowledge actually resides in the connections – shared manner of interacting with those concepts – information is the building blocks of knowledge – there are different views of knowledge – view of knowledge is so diverse

Learning Networks and Connective Knowledge - Stephen Downes

“the learning of knowledge - is distributive, that is, not located in any given place (and therefore not 'transferred' or 'transacted' per se) but rather consists of the network of connections formed from experience and interactions with a knowing community.”

'e-learning 2.0' – net generation – thinking and interacting in new ways – based on conversation and interaction, on sharing, creation and participation, - learning not as a separate activity – but embedded in meaningful activities

Learning is like the weather –never the same and a little unpredictable due to its interconnection with its environment

Shifting Knowledge (from Knowing Knowledge) – George Siemens

“Knowledge has broken free from its mooring, its shackles”

“Knowledge is the economy”

“Human existence is a quest to understand”

“We live as an integrated experience—we see, know, and function in connections. Life, like knowing, is not an isolated activity”

“we create structures to hold our knowledge: hierarchies, books, libraries, encyclopedias, the internet, search engines. We create spaces where we can dialogue about and enact knowledge: corporations, organizations, schools, universities, societies. And we create tools to disseminate knowledge: peer-review journals, discussion panels, conferences”

“The last decade has fundamentally re-written how we:” consume information and create knowledge

“Knowledge set free enables dynamic, adaptive, and personalized experiences.”

“Yochai Benkler …. Information, knowledge, and culture are central to human freedom and human development”

“We are in the in-between stage of” … an industrial era and a knowledge era

“We do not consume knowledge as a passive entity that remains unchanged as it moves through our world and our work. We dance and court the knowledge of others—in ways the original creators did not intend. We make it ours, and in so doing, diminish the prominence of the originator.”

“Our quadratic existence runs through spheres of interconnection. Cognitive, emotional, physical, and spiritual domains of knowledge interact in a myriad of ways. Life is not lived in a silo”

“Schools, universities, and corporations attempt to serve dissemination processes of knowledge-in-containers.”

At the End of Week Two – Stephen Downes

“People didn’t really like the coal analogy.”

“I personally think of connectivism as a theory of knowledge”

“ … any sensory input produces knowledge.”

Rhizomatic Knowledge (Dave Cormier)

“A rhizomatic plant has no center and no defined boundary; rather, it is made up of a number of semi-independent nodes, each of which is capable of growing and spreading on its own, bounded only by the limits of its habitat (Cormier 2008).”

“a rhizomatic model of learning … knowledge is negotiated, and the learning experience is a social as well as a personal knowledge creation process with mutable goals and constantly negotiated premises.”

“In the rhizomatic model of learning, curriculum is not driven by predefined inputs from experts; it is constructed and negotiated in real time by the contributions of those engaged in the learning process. This community acts as the curriculum, spontaneously shaping, constructing, and reconstructing itself and the subject of its learning in the same way that the rhizome responds to changing environmental conditions”

“the rhizomatic model dispenses with the need for external validation of knowledge, either by an expert or by a constructed curriculum”

What is 'Connectivism'?

2008-09-14T05:01:00.000-07:00

I think I understand Connectivism as a theory – but I’m not sure I truly understand how to apply Connectivism to a range of learning situation – I’m not sure Connectivism can be considered to be a ‘separate or independent’ learning theory but more of a means by which knowledge and information can be aggregated and shared.

I understand the power of the network and can think of many examples in my work place where I rely upon my networks to help me aggregate the avalanche of information we receive – I know that if I miss anything which is relevant to me, eventually someone in our organisation will tell me about this missing piece of knowledge.

I know that staying networked through Twitter, blogs, communities of practice, learning circles, and friends – has certainly widen my access to information and I often use the aggregate of all of these networked peoples’ knowledges and experiences to construct my own understanding and opinions. I can see how technology has widen my participation in creating and contributing my own new knowledge as it allows me to access a wider base of ideas and concepts. However, I have a ‘lust for learning’.

I’m not sure however if ‘connectivism’ as an independent learning theory can facilitate the development of new knowledge in others, but perhaps provide a means to support the ability to access new information.

Through my experience as an educator, I’ve found individuals often don’t know how to independently formulate their own learning/knowledge ie they often don’t know how to:

- formulate questions
- search and filter information
- assemble and convert information it into new knowledge
- use or understand the power of networked learning to build and share their new knowledge or have it validated

These processes require higher order thinking and understanding about how we learn and most people don’t conscientiously evaluate how they learn and heavily rely on trained / knowledgeable individuals to structure or ‘construct’ that learning.

My observations of humans is that they are often sheep or sponges as they follow and soak up what they are ‘fed’ – rarely questioning their environments and networks – staying within their ‘strong’ ties, too scared, skeptical or inexperienced to move into the realm of ‘weak’ networks for fear of the unknown, unable to conceptualise the power of widen networks – particularly online networks. Developing or constructing the right kinds of networks is also a developed and conscience skill.

Although I’m a little skeptical about ‘connectivism’ as a learning theory in its own right – I believe its principles provide an individual with a means of making sense of their interconnected but disconnected world, where multi-media and technology provides access, as well as the ability to create and change information, – and building the ‘right’ network to gather the right information ie being socially networked, is a valuable and desirable skill to filter the ever increasing avalanche of information in the knowledge era – as well as help create independent and creative thinkers.

It’s creating the right kinds of learning opportunities by which an individual will be able to foster and develop these skills and not stay in their ‘little boxes’ using ‘connectivism’ which is what I’m hoping this course will help me better understand.

CCK08 - week 1 - What is 'connectivism'?

2008-09-14T04:57:00.000-07:00

Connectivism and Connective Knowledge Online Course

George Siemens and Stephen Downes are facilitating this MOOC (massive open online course).

The Connectivism and Connective Knowledge Online website contains all of the information and links to participate in the course.

Pre-course preparation included an ‘Articulate’ presentation by George, introducing the structure of the course and some of the ‘expectations’.

Week 1 – What is ‘connectivism’?
Is it a learning theory? How does it differ from constructivism? Is it descriptive or prescriptive? Or is it fraud (comment #18)?

Readings for This Week

Little Boxes, Glocalization and Networked Individualism (.pdf)

What is the Unique Idea in Connectivism?

What connectivism is Learning Theory or Pastime of the Self-Amused? (.doc)

Bill Kerr - Critique of connectivism

Other useful resources for This Week

14 minute presentation: What is connectivism? By George
Does connectivism add something not covered by existing theories of learning?

How does Connectivism differ from other learning theories?
Viplav Baxi – ‘CCK08 – What is learning theory?

Notes from readings:
Downes, “Connectivism and its Critics; What Connectivism is not”, (10.09.09)
“learning it is not structured, controlled or processed”

Little Boxes, Glocalization and Networked Individualism:
“Glocalization” is a neologism meaning the combination of intense local and
extensive global interaction

Relationships are more selective. Networks now contain high proportions of people who enjoy one other. They contain low proportions of people who are forced to interact with each other because they are juxtaposed in the same neighborhood, kinship group, organization, or workplace.

Knowing how to network (on and offline) becomes a human capital resource.

networked individualism - People remain connected, but as individuals rather than being rooted in the home bases of work unit and household

no real reference to ‘online social networks’ like Facebook & mySpace

our means of connecting has changed – little boxes, glocalisation, networked individual

interconnected & disconnected world

avalanche of information – knowing how to filter information through out networks is so important – building the ‘right’ network for the right information ie socially networked is a valuable skill

What is the Unique Idea in Connectivism?
All ideas have a heritage. All concepts have roots.

As Barabasi states, networks are everywhere. We just need an eye for them.

What connectivism is
You need to grant the learner autonomy within the environment
'to teach is to model and demonstrate, to learn is to practice and reflect.'

Learning Theory or Pastime of the Self-Amused?
connectivism …. network-based learning

Bill Kerr - Critique of connectivism“Technology should be like oxygen--ubiquitous, transparent, and necessary”

: What is connectivism? 14 minute presentation by George
5 principles to confirm the foundation of any learning theory:
– need to externalize to make sense
- frameworks and structures for sense making
- need to socialise & negotiate around knowledge
- note & recognizing ‘patterns’
- desire to extend our humanity through technology

Connectivism - networked learning – knowledge is networked and distributed in nature – knowing is a particular state of connectedness – developing knowledge is complex and chaotic – to better understand learning we need to better understand why and how connections form – and use this to design classrooms/learning

Types of network learning
- neural-biological – learning is the formation of new neural connections,
- conceptual – depth of understanding – relationships between concepts & ideas – related to existing understanding of knowledge/information
- external -social – how we connect with others and information

Connections create meaning

Learning – ability to understand is related to how well and how consistently we are connected to certain ideas and concepts – how often we come across a concept and how they are connected – strong & weak ties – new information comes from ‘weak’ ties due to difference to the individual’s ideals – foundation of networks to develop new knowledge

Networks of learning – technology increases our participation in the create of knowledge – anyone and everyone can create knowledge – increased abundance of knowledge – more voices of opinion – any idea or concept can be aired – simulate experiences

Mind Over Matter – How Technology Matters

2008-08-31T04:50:00.000-07:00

Mind Over Matter – How Technology Matters
The Science of learning when technology matters
Presenter - Professor Martin Westwell
26 August 2008 - UNSW

How do we turn information into knowledge? It’s the interconnecting of the information which makes it knowledge

Coursework.info - GCSE Coursework, essays and projects for a small membership fee.

Impact of Information Technology = Question Rich/Answer Poor has moved to Question Poor/Answer Rich

Socialisation rather an information gathering is the primary use of the internet.

Online Society – more social, reinforce social links, extrovert, ‘happy’, versus: withdrawn, break social ties, isolated, depressed.

Technology – it’s not the technology that changes the way you think – it’s about you and what you do with it – access to extremes of behaviour – it’s what you do with the technology which makes the difference.

A particular technology can not change the way that we think – it’s what we do with the technology which will change a behaviour – if you are surrounded by violence then you are more likely to be violent – it’s a ‘survival’ technique – to protect yourself against the violence.

Sheese & Graziano 2005, Psychological Science – Changing young minds
Sheese, B. E., & Graziano, W. G. (2005). Deciding to defect: The effects of video game violence on cooperative and competitive behavior. Psychological Science. 16(5), 391-396

www.lse.ac.uk/collections/children-go-online/ - Interesting research about the whether the internet has an effect on children’s daily lives.

Developing Skills – Hybrid laparoscopy training system (video & real) Rosse et al 2007, Archives of Surgery – single biggest factor was their ‘video game skill’ – how well they played video games like ‘Super Monkey Ball 2. The virtual space of a video game is very similar to that of laparoscopy.

When video games have a high demand capacity for attention it develops attentional capacity. This can also cause children to be more ‘distractable’ as they pick up on the distractables.

Manipulating the environment: executive functions – is absolutely crucial in how we function – the measure of a 10 year old’s executive functions are a better indication of their earning capacity at 30 years old, then their numeracy score. The ability to be process focused rather then output/product focused is far more beneficial.

Executive Function Development – by changing the ‘environment’ you can change genetic defects ie ‘use it or lose it’ re an enriched environment to stimulate the brain can prolong genetic defects like Huntington’s Disease – multi-sensory environment – relevant – emotional content – interpersonal interaction: interdependent learning, parental engagement – exercise – nutrition/hydration – blue light (natural light esp in the morning and late-night TV) – enriched environments

“Executive FunctionA cluster of high-order capacities, which include selective attention, behavioural planning and response inhibition, the manipulation of information in problem-solving tasks, and the regulation of behaviour.”

Neuromyths – Visual/Auditory/Kinetic learning styles vs how the information is distributed around the brain;

What is education for? Light a candle vs fill a bucket – we can over-enrich an environment

FutureLab Report 2006 – Modern education is experiencing unprecedented levels of change and has been for some time.

Dealing with the complexity of change – specialized proficiency, multi-disciplinary teams, communication – we don’t want all educators to know everything

Limitation through categorization.

Entity vs Incremental intelligence – and how this effects people’s views of their own intelligence

Project Implicit: Educational resource and research site for investigations in implicit social cognition. Includes online tests for implicit preferences for racial groups …

How ‘Brainology’ can make your children ambigious - http://www.parentdish.com/2005/11/09/how-brainology-can-make-your-kids-ambitious/

Executive Functions – the way we control our thoughts / actions - decision making, planning, attention, working memory, inhibition, introspection, shifting – Automatic human processes vs controlled/consciences human processes – we are ‘wired’ in a way which allows us to control what we do and how we do it.

Educational domains – creativity, learning to learn, early years, gifted and talented, adolescent, digital tech attention …. And executive functions.

Tools of the Mind – The Vygotshkian Approach to Early Childhood Experiences – to help young children develop their executive functioning skills

Shift towards character/value education around the planet – breakdown of social values through a range of different circumstances means that we need to focus more explicitly on our Executive Functions.

Explicitly incorporating executive functions will provide a ‘double whammy’ – through the ‘primary’ and ‘secondary’ messages.

Mind over Matters – the Science of work when technology matters

Preparation for now – preparation for the future = capabilities and capacities – duality of purpose of education – preparing people for today, but also preparing people for the unpredictable future.

What do we value in our workforce? What skills do we currently have? Where are the opportunities for development?

Artisanal knowledge – ‘expertise’

Our decision making is affected by our environmental experiences – and sometimes we have no control over these decision and the environmental influences.

Virtual distances: physical distance, operational distance, affinity distance – Managing the Virtual Workforce.

The richness of digital media increases the effectiveness of social interaction in a virtual environment - the process by which two people are communicating achieves a shared sense of understanding, particularly in conversation.

Hewlett Packard are starting to develop a physical-virtual you to reduce the virtual distance between people

More assessment of the learning process is required in our educational systems, rather than just the output/product….

Our natural response to avoid ambiguity can inhibit innovation and leadership

Creativity = imagination which is meaningful, and when we do something about it/make it a reality = innovation

The important thing in science is not so much to obtain new facts as to discover new ways of thinking about them – William Henry Bragg 1862 -1942

Sir Ken Robinson: Do Schools kill creativity: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html

Dr Paul Howard Jones – Fostering Creative Thinking – http://escalate.ac.uk/4389

Literacy, identity, culture in a web 3.0 world?

2008-08-31T04:11:00.000-07:00

Presenter - Victoria Carrington
22/08/08 - UniSA
Email: Victoria.carrington@unisa.edu.au
Blog: Victoriacarrington@blogspot.com

We live in a ‘beta’ culture – everything is still in progress and its messy.

Crisis creates change.

Web 3.0 - Ubiquitous connectivity, semantics, ‘beta’ culture.

Mentoring and scaffolding – informal learning – collaborating.

Web 2.0 / 3.0 is allowing ‘online’ Community of Practice.

This is stuff people have always done – it’s just that they can share it now online.

Web 2.0 allows people to construct and rehearse their identity

Virtual Worlds – as a part of the Web 3.0 – it’s about being ‘together’.

Virtual Worlds for young people
10 and under - Neopets, BarbieGirls (branded), WebKinz, Club Penguin
20 and under – WeeWorld (mirror of actual world), Habbo, Gaia, Club Penguin, Whyville (educational)

Second Life (role play)

Virtual Worlds allow endless customization – consumption/consumer activity

DIY virtual worlds: Cyworld (South Korea) – like social networking sites – powerful pedagogic work

Participatory culture – play, performance, simulation, appropriation, multitasking, distributed cognition, collective intelligence, judgement, networking, negotiation (Jenkins et al 2006)

In order to function effectively you need to be able to engage in a range of ‘text’ – we are a text based culture – you need to be able to learn digital literacy skills in the actual digital world – education needs to engage with the digital environment to be effectively teaching these skills

Participatory predatory – model of literacy – participatory culture

Skills Recognition - Small Business Solutions

2008-08-31T04:04:00.000-07:00

Presenter - John Tucker
Qld State Manager, Small Business Solutions
13/08/08 – Pavilion on the Park
SA Workplace Assessors Network Relaunch Breakfast

What is the role and purpose or a modern VET practitioner?
How is it different to a traditional teacher?
Is your RTO business currently driven by a demand model or a supply model?

TAFEs are operating in a supply model – this is what we offer – but needs to move to a demand model – offer what’s needed in the training market – this will take a significant shift.

Do you need to speak English to complete a skills recognition process in a VET Business Qualification?

Is it possible to recognize competencies and coach, mentor or help a client at the same time? That is, to do two things at once?

A change in focus from RTOs:
- Courses for Sale to Job Solutions
- Fixed Product List to Tailored Solutions
- Supply Driven to Demand Driven

Small Business Solutions is a product mixing business mentoring to support small business owners with a seamless qualification outcome – present two products together to small business – offer them a way of improving their business – and at the same time provide a qualification – seamlessly.

Business Owners want:
- one on one mentoring – someone to come to them
- real tangible benefits to the business
- small business means small budget

Mentors:
Small Business Solutions mentors are real life small business experts with whom small business owners can identify with. Credibility of the business mentor is paramount. Mentors with English as a Second Language is beneficial to deal with businesses from different cultural backgrounds. Business mentors also have an ‘assessor’s’ hat whilst they are mentoring the business owners. The mentoring solution must also need to be able to offer skills gap training. This system recognizes that this skills gap training is not always formal training – offer a range of small business training options through other a ‘training events’ calendar of their website.

Challenges faced by Small Business Solutions:
- Commercially focused mentors need to be skilled in assessment
- Clients are not qualifications focused particularly at the start
- Finding the right funding model

Offering recognition processes for a Certificate IV in Small Business Management

Skilling Solutions offer training vouchers which can be used to partly pay for the process.

Features of this model
- Mentors are the assessors
- Educational quality is the responsibility of the educational facilitators in conjunction with the assessor
- Tailored to the individual’s need

This system offers a great way of interacting with industry.

The initial profiling of the small business owner helps determine whether they will be able to gain recognition – if not – directed into training.

This service is customer centric.

Skills First RPL Resources
Skills First RPL Assessor Kits

Education is key – but is it fair and equitable for all?

2008-07-20T05:56:00.000-07:00

Recently I’ve heard the phrase “Education is key” referred to some key people in education: Professor Roger Thomas, Director, Centre for Indigenous Research and Studies, and Konrad Glogowski, PhD candidate at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto, in his blog post Working towards Agency-Building Practice.

A series of conversations with a fellow parent and close friend regarding her concerns about some of the other parents at our children’s school trying to avoid the ‘welfare to work’ process, a system to ‘wean’ single parents of the welfare system, made me wonder:

‘Why doesn’t everyone want to improve themselves, participate in life long learning, and/or enter the workforce?’

As a person who values all of these and who is surrounded by friends and colleagues who feel likewise, I was perplexed to learn that these parents did not have these same values.

Why doesn’t everyone have the ‘aspiration’ to climb the ladder of ‘success’?

A conversation with an indigenous colleague at the Conference on Excellence in Teaching and Scholarship (CETS) helped me understand this difference in ‘valuing education’. He told me how as a child he would often visit an uncle, who owned and managed a large bed and breakfast business in a neighbouring country town. On one such visit, another, younger cousin accompanied them to ‘uncle’s’ holiday home and asked the question: “does a black fella own this big house?”

This young cousin could not conceive that an indigenous people would be able to achieve anything like this.

So these situations kept me thinking:

Why do some people climb the ladder to success, whilst others don’t?

Here are some of the different reasons why I think people are not using their ‘key’ to success:

- “I know ‘education is key’ but I’m not good enough to access at it”
- “I don’t know ‘education is key’ so I don’t try to access it”
- “I know ‘education is key’ but I don’t know how to access it”
- “I know ‘education is key’, but I just don’t want to know how to access it”

So, if ‘education is key’ why do we have these situations?

Is part of the problem related to the homogenization of our educational systems?

“….. public schools enrol approximately 90 percent of students with disabilities, Aboriginal students and those from isolated and remote settings, the average cost of this public education provision is higher than in private schools” Elites safe from ‘Education Revolution’, Pg 6 AEU Journal SA Vol 40, No 1, February 2008

The endogenous and exogenous privatisation our education system is creating “economies of student worth in which student are deemed to be desirable, or not, on the basis of whether they are perceived to be an asset or a liability in relation to the performance benchmarks to which institutions must aspire.

In such local economies of student worth those who are seen as having high levels of academic ‘ability’ and as being easy to manage and teach are highly valued and sought after by institutions. Conversely, those students who are perceived as being of lower academic ‘ability’, or have special needs, or are perceived as presenting behavioural challenges, or who are recent immigrants with additional language needs are avoided.

These processes, driven by the demands of the education market, mark a shift from all students being perceived as learners to a narrow conception of the student and learner defined in terms of external performance indicators.”

This research, by Dr Stephen Ball and Dr Deborah Youdell from London University, commissioned by Education International found “marketised education systems…. can lead to segregation and homogenization of populations” and support the “…. growing gaps between the most advantaged socio-economic groups and the least advantaged groups as well as between ethnic majorities and particular minority ethnic groups.” Hidden privatization in public education, Pg 19 AEU Journal SA Vol 40, No 3, May 2008

Education is key – but is it fair and equitable for all?
The perceptional ‘hierarchy’ of the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’, those that are ‘able’ and those which are ‘unable’, and those who are given all of the ‘opportunities’ and those that are left to ‘struggle’ are supporting the self fulfilling ‘prophecy’ that the ‘liabilities’ of our education system are not expected to succeed so why should they even aspire to.

Notes from the Conference on Excellence in Teaching and Scholarship - 04/07/08

2008-07-04T17:43:00.000-07:00

University of Adelaide – School of Education

Closing the gap in the Education Revolution

Professor Roger Thomas
Centre for Indigenous Research & Studies

What do we need to do in education to make a ‘shift and change’ in engaging the disengaged?

How do we support people who are not connected to an educational institution to reconnect with education and life long learning?

Issues related to Indigenous Education and technology in education have similar parallels and issues.

Cross Disciplinary Learning in New Learning Spaces

Stephen Inglis & Anne Harvey - FutureSACE
Harvey.anne3@saugov.sa.gov.au

Examples of Flexible Learning offered in the South Australian Certificate in Education (SACE)

Extension Studies – research study – design their own studies – extended learning initiatives – Self directed Community Learning:
Value preferred ways of learning, student initiated and self directed learning, fosters independent and collaborative learning, students able to investigate an area of personal interest or pursue a passion, deep learning or cross disciplinary, involves a teacher, a community mentor and the student.

Step up Community Learning
Accrediting / Recognising community learning of students as a part of their SACE

Cross-disciplinary studies to be offered Future SACE

The Investigational Practicals

Peter Geelen – Booleroo Centre District School
Peter.geelen@booleroods.sa.edu.au

Facilitated approach to maths and science lessons based around 14 ‘investigational practicals’ which are cheap and easy to set up and maintain.

The Successful Teacher – Educator and/or Entertainer

Tom Stone – Trinity College Senior
Tom.stone@trinity.sa.gov.au

Recognises the need to entertain as well as empathise with learners
Relating to the learner and relating the content to the learner is very important
Golden rules for effective teaching : Respect, relevance, feedback, entertainment, enthusiasm, engage
‘When a teacher sits down – a student lies down’
“Only the mediocre are always at their best”

Why do students remain engaged at Windsor Gardens Vocational College?

Laura Luongo – Windsor Gardens Vocational College
Laura.Longo@wgvc.sa.edu.au

Offering a refreshing approach to Secondary Education which is reflecting 21^st century approach to learning – offering ‘university’ and ‘vocational’ pathways

Switching on the lights around Employability Skills

2008-06-29T13:39:00.000-07:00

We held our first South Australian Employability Skills Community of Practice (SAESCoP) Forum last week and some very interesting things came to light. We discovered that as a Community of Practice our 'common knowledge' about Employability Skills was that:

- the common thinking around Employability Skills within this group, and within the Vocational Education and Training (VET) sector we suspect, was that we don't have a common understanding of the current thinking of how Employability Skills are to be delivered and assessed in new and revised training package:
- we have different levels of understanding of the term "Employability Skills" in VET, and have different conceptions of how Employability Skills should be implemented in VET
- some of our trainers will need to have their own Employability Skills further 'developed'
- we agree it is very important to support our clients to develop and assess their own Employability Skills, but developing Employability Skills is a long term, lifelong experience
- there is no 'accountability' in whether Employability Skills are being implemented effectively into VET ie Employability Skills are not audited, so will trainers bother changing what they are currently doing to incorporate them?
- to be truly effective, Employability Skills need to implemented at a systemic, Program Area/Work Team level, and ideally would be driven by the Quality Assurance Group (QAG) in the TAFEs - but they will require adequate time, money, resources and authority to support their trainers in this process
- Educational Managers should be working with their QAG reps, helping them roll out new and revised training models which explicitly incorporate Employability Skills, and not wait for this process to be managed up by the trainers
- the Industry Skills Boards should be taking a collaborative role in the embedding of Employability Skills and working in unison with trainers
- there needs to be a whole of organisation strategy to communicate the importance of Employability Skills to clients (and staff), and how the organisation plans to do this - (see Swinburne TAFE's approach)

In order to effectively and explicitly embed the development and assessment of Employability Skills of our clients VET REQUIRES key stakeholders within our organisations and in industry to provide the leadership and support for a whole of organisation approach to Employability Skills, as this can not by done via a trainer by trainer roll out approach.

Does your Training Organisation have the foresight, and even more importantly, the ability, to manage this change?

The vision of SAESCoP is to switch on a few lights along the Employability Skills pathway in VET.

Notes from the SA Training Forum Sector – 26/06/08

2008-06-26T05:49:00.001-07:00

Brian Cunningham, Chief Executive Officer, DFEEST
SA Skill Strategy for the Future

It’s about how change is managed

2006 Statistics for South Australia
Student numbers - University - 51,000 vs VET - 122,000 (of which TAFE SA - 78,000)
20% of VET AQF Levels are Diploma

Required – 2008-2018 an additional 133,000 workers for newly created jobs + 206,000 workers to replace retiring workers = 424,000 potential qualifications over next 10 years

Need a paradigm change in the way we delivery training

Our quality of training is excellent – world class – but break through improvements required to respond to demands of industry

Skills for the 21^st Century
- New Training & Skills Development Act (going through parliament as we ‘speak’)
Training and Skills Commission – 5 year SA Skills Workforce Development Plan – which will be updated annually
- Review of Industry Skills Board – ISB’s need to take a lead role in training
- SA Skills Strategy – TAFE SA needs to be more responsive – was created for training needs of the 1970’s. Will be operating in a more competitive market for public training funds.

At any one time in SA:
10,000 job vacancies with:
- 40,200 unemployed people
- 95,100 who want work
- 117,200 who want more work

Federal Government role to fund training - $1.9 billion over 4 years – For SA by 2012 – 17,500 place for new entrants, 29,300 places for upskilling & retraining, $70 million contestable training funding – from 25% to 50% contestable by 2012 – a market driven training model – SA Purchasing Plan = State Non-contestable funding + State & Federal Contestable funding from 2009.

By 2009
Blueprint for Contestability
TAFE SA Reforms

Dr Jane Figgis, Director AAAJ Consulting Group
Innovation in the VET Sector

Why is innovation so important?
“Swampy Lowlands” – the environment where educators need to work
- major influences/drivers of innovation in VET has been Reframing the Future and the Australian Flexible Learning Framework
- Advanced technical skills still required at Cert IV & Diploma, as well as the managerial skills
- the importance of learner controlled/centred environments
- project based learning works with disengaged learners
- RPL – generic questionnaire to draw out skills of learner before enrolling – and then designing the training around the skills gaps
- valuing informal learning in a mix with formal learning
- understanding the ‘cultural’ of a workplace
- tools of technology – the ‘e’ can not be separated from learning in e-learning – all encompassing
- reflective practice or ‘Stop and Think’ – content of learning is changing – concerns about quality of learning – RPL helping to improve individualizing learning – using e-learning tools – need to have recent workplace experience
- take the teacher out of the equation – teacher and student working together to achieve outcomes

Any learning environment has 3 components:

Tasks - tasks for the learner which are real, authentic and challenging,

Support - the support given to the learner through the building of the relationships between the teacher and the learners as well as the learner and fellow learners; - ‘coaching’ the learners; - Mixing the different qualification levels together to undertake learning ie Cert 3 students being mentored by Diploma students; - listening to learner feedback

Learning resources – situational/scenario based learning, role play, technology,

Where does assessment fit in here?

Reflective practice = people being strategic and looking at the big picture

Embedding innovation – local to skills, knowledge and attitude of what’s needed to provide a learning environment for their learners – don’t have a lateral spread of innovation in our educational/training environments.

Critical Reflection is paramount to being innovative – Brookefield

Don’t be afraid to do something new.

What will you be expected to be delivering in the next 4-5 years for your industry? And what will you need to do to achieve this?

If you ask the right questions – you’ll find the answers you are looking for.

“You can’t cross a chasm in two small jumps” & the “art of building bridges whilst were are crossing them”

DECS DFEEST “School to Work” Strategy
Tanya Rogers, Jillian Blight, Kim Clayton: DECS

Innovative Community Action Networks (ICANs) and Alternative Learning Option Programs (ALOP)

Career Development is driving the “School to Work” Strategy:
- self awareness
- learning and work exploration
- career building – employability skills

Australian Blueprint for Career Development

Australian Career Development Studies (ACDS)

Personal Learning Planning (PLP)

Problem based and Project based learning opportunities which include contextualized literacy and numeracy skills

Future SACE will commence in 2010, with the PLP unit commencing in 2009

Some thoughts:
- what are the expectations of young people in the workplace?
- workplace systems which are more 'people centred' are required to retain staff
- What role does small business play in career pathways?
- increased need to engage educators to participate in upskilling and reskilling processes
- why are proving your existing abilities so difficult? why don't we value the skills someone brings with them?

This is What We Want! Holistic Workplace Training & Assessment aligned to Business Needs & Values (Enterprise Training)
Rob Conwell, National Pharmacies

- Start mapping skills sets to workplace skills and needs
- individualised training programs
- Keeping good training records for employees helps with RPL processes
- Assess first – Train later = reduced training costs
- The term RPL is not a well received ‘concept’, the term ‘skills recognition’ is better received
- Achieving RPL in one qualification encourages people to undertake training in a higher level
- important to celebrate and recognize when individuals complete their certificate
- moving away from calling workplace training by a qualification title
- industry best practice – units mapped to skills sets; client needs & organizational skills; included employability skills and industry skills; RTO workplace trainers and assessors
- industry want to know how training will benefit their ‘bottomline’- workplace training really does improve the bottomline
- an automated induction and tracking systems has been successful – Manta-tas – Training Administration Software - Prodata Solutions – currently looking at how this system will align to AVETMISS – allows security settings which manages who can see different levels of information

Career Development – what, where, how for SA?
Careers SA – Framework to Facility (SA Works – linking people, skills and jobs)
Ian Buchanan, Drew Thomas: DFEEST

What are the competencies needed to manage your career? – Australian Blueprint for Career Development

What bother with Career Development – benefits – economic, social inclusion, individual

Do 'curriculums' need to GO to move forward?

2008-06-21T20:03:00.000-07:00

A timely tweet from Leo Gaggl led me to a very interesting blog post by Dave Cormier called "Rhizomatic Education: Community as Curriculum". This article relates really well to my previous post called 'Co-op Knowledge vs Collective Knowledge' - but it also highlights the question:

Do 'curriculums' need to GO to move forward?

Are prescriptive curriculum documents holding back educators ability to more forward into a 'social/community' approach to learning - whereby the 'instructor' provides:

"an introduction to an existing professional community in which students may participate—to offer not just a window, but an entry point into an existing learning community"

through the use of online educational network?

"Through involvement in multiple communities where new information is being assimilated and tested, educators can begin to apprehend the moving target that is knowledge in the modern learning environment."

Are we too regulated to develop rich educational environments?

Co-op Knowledge vs Collective Knowledge

2008-06-20T16:30:00.001-07:00

A lot of time and money is being poured into the Australian Flexible Learning Framework's (the Framework) Learning Object Respository Network (LORN).

Initially LORN was created based on a 'co-op' model where the States and Territories could share digital learning objects suitable for the Vocational Education and Training (VET) Sector.

But I wonder whether Learning Object Repositories are still appropriate in a world of :

- web 2.0 technologies and user created content,
- an increased need for 21st Century skills - including digital literacy skills, and
- a move away from teacher centred learning to facilitated learning

Compare a Learning Object Repository to WikiEducator which is "an evolving community intended for the collaborative:

planning of education projects linked with the development of free content;
development of free content on Wikieducator for e-learning;
work on building open education resources (OERs) on how to create OERs.
networking on funding proposals developed as free content."

Some may argue that that Learning Object Respositories increase efficiencies:

by reducing the replication of resource development, and
improved quality (read 'consistency') in training

But compare this to the complexities and expense of establishing and maintaining the Respository, which supports the 'knowledge is scarce' school of thinking around copyright and licensing.

Perhaps there is a need for these respositories in the short term, as a brick in the bridge which will help the vast majority of educators cross into the world of using technology in education and truly understand the power of collective intelligence?

Will LORN be 'obsolete' before it's fully functional?