In mid-January I spent a wonderful day at American University learning about (and presenting on) the changing educational landscape, technology, and the practices and activities of learners. The slides from my presentation are below:

Social Networked Learning

In eras of dramatic change – such as militarization in ancient Rome and the French Revolution/Industrial Revolution – existing mindsets and institutions are, in Schumpeter’s words, creatively destroyed. The newspaper, recording, and TV industries have experienced this recently as digital information comes into its own and sheds legacy structures (such as the “album” or the “newspaper”). Politicians have certainly felt the inability to control narratives and restrict information flow in 2011.

An interesting case symbolizes the balance between control and the attributes of digital information: whether or not to publish the results of engineered bird flu. The short version: “Inside a Dutch medical facility is a potentially devastating weapon that could kill millions: A genetically modified version of the H5N1 bird flu, engineered to be easily transmitted among ferrets. And the researchers who figured out how to do it would like to share their work with the world.”

The challenge in this instance goes beyond ethics. Can scientists reasonably expect to keep digital information secure, especially when it is part of a scientific community and requires peer review? Wikileaks has made it difficult for the US Military to keep secrets. Digital information, held in social networks, can’t be regulated and controlled.

IRRODL continues to solidify its reputation as the leading journal in the educational technology field that balances thoughtful research with very timely and relevant journal themes, as indicated by the latest special issue – Emergent Learning, Connections, Design for Learning. IRRODL seems to capture the zeitgeist of online learning more rapidly than others. Congrats to Terry Anderson (editor) and Rod Sims & Elena Kays (editors of this special issue) for an outstanding publication.

Not sure if a disclaimer is necessary, as I’m sure readers will make up their own minds and I wasn’t involved with this IRRODL issue. However, just in case, several of the articles reference open online courses that I’ve helped to organize.

Have a look at this video (a few static images kick off the video, but the fun stuff begins shortly after):

Murmuration from Sophie Windsor Clive on Vimeo.

I’m always looking for metaphors, models, and analogies that can tease out learning and knowledge, and the social connective actions that give rise to both. This week, for example, in #change11, Dave Cormier is discussing rhizomes as a metaphor or way to think about learning. Similarly, starling murmurations provide a brilliant example of how systems, comprised of individual agents, can synchronize to produce fascinating activity.

EDUCAUSE publishes short papers on 7 things you should know about… that provide an overview of emerging topics and trends. Their most recent publication is on 7 things your should know about MOOCs (.pdf). From the paper: “But perhaps the most significant contribution is the MOOC’s potential to alter the relationship between learner and instructor and between academe and the wider community by potentially providing a very large and diverse forum and meeting place for ideas. Those enrolling in a MOOC are likely to discover learning at its most open on a platform that invites the world not only to see and hear but also to participate and collaborate.” Great stuff!!

I would have liked to see the inclusion of more open courses (those offered by Alec Couros, Ray Schroeder, David Wiley, mobiMOOC, Wendy Drexler, Chis Sessums, etc) as well as the growing amount of “mooc support resources” such as Dave Cormier’s What is a MOOC video (with almost 20k views).

I don’t know how my writing comes across to others. When I was a teenager, I had a few general issues with the world (I know, likely the first teenager in history with this affliction) and very specific issues with authority. This attitude produced a number of difficult situations for me. At one point, as I was engaged in paying the consequences of a particular act in the form of a solid tongue lashing from a judge, I remember this odd feeling of “I’m not like that…I’m a pretty good person”. But, in reality, people can’t evaluate us by our thoughts. Our actions, words, and artifacts determine how others interpret us.

With most of my writing on this blog and with open online courses, I’m not trying to tell others what I know. Generally, I’m trying to make my process of coming to know as transparent as possible. When we learn transparently, we teach others.

This preamble is a lead up to something that I’m hoping doesn’t come across the wrong way (i.e. self-promotional and such). I was in Madrid yesterday where I received a very generous award: the Fundación Telefónica/OEI Award for an individual who demonstrated “educational innovation through the use of ICT, thus substantially contributing to improving the quality of education” at the 6th annual International EducaRed conference. A huge, very humble, thank you to the conference organizers, the foundation, and to my hosts. I had hoped to spend more time in Madrid, but unfortunately, my daughter is ill and I had to cut the trip short.

While my time was short (20 hours from landing to take off), I did have an opportunity to meet numerous educators from Spain, Peru, Argentina, Brazil, and Columbia. A few years ago, I was chatting with Stephen Downes about the high level of interest from educators in Latin American countries in connectivism, social networked learning, and ICT use in education. I’m not sure why this is the case. Nonetheless, I had a great time meeting teachers and leaders, the fine folks at EducaRED, and representatives from Fundación Telefónica. Thanks. I’m honoured. And humbled.

Data, big data, analytics, and visualization are significant trends in education. We need to pay attention. There is much to be alarmed about with analytics, including the mechanization of teaching, learning, and assessment. Additionally, the data and analytics that are easy to collect and conduct risk becoming a simple veneer over the complexities of learning and cognition. Or, as Gardner Campbell states: “Current NGLC/NCLB paradigms create great risk of analytics-generated edu-hell.”

Analytics also hold promise for providing increased quality of learning for individuals. We experience benefits of analytics in many areas of our lives, including music, books, and social network friend recommendations. My interest in learning analytics, however, doesn’t blind me to potential risks. We should be concerned and alert as analytics discussions turn to education. Learners are not widgets to be optimized and shifted around in assembly lines. By the same account, analytics can yield value in improving learner success in the current education system, and, more critically, providing perspectives on how we should improve the system itself. The slides below are from a presentation I delivered at EDUCAUSE 2011:

Analytics: EDUCAUSE View more presentations from gsiemens

Across the full spectrum of education – primary, secondary, and higher – we are witnessing a race to develop platforms for content, learning, teaching, and evaluation. As liberating as the web is, tremendous centralization of control is occurring in numerous spaces: Google in search/advertising/Android, Amazon in books/cloud computing, Facebook in social networks, etc. I use a smaller range of tools today than I did five years ago. And the reason is simple: companies are in a landrush to create platforms that will tie together previously disconnected activities and tools. Numerous companies are eager to platform the educational sector, with Pearson being the lead runner to date. More on that in a bit.

This post/rant on life at Amazon and Google, from the perspective of an employee (programmer?) with experiences in both systems, is worth a read. It is not, however, an exercise in logic. The rant is a bit confusing as it starts off criticizing Amazon as doing everything wrong and Google as doing everything right. Then the author shifts to a discussion of how Amazon got platform and accessibility right (which he acknowledges as being the most important elements). So that kind of doesn’t add up. But a critical concept is expressed about mid-way through the post:

Google+ is a knee-jerk reaction, a study in short-term thinking, predicated on the incorrect notion that Facebook is successful because they built a great product. But that’s not why they are successful. Facebook is successful because they built an entire constellation of products by allowing other people to do the work. So Facebook is different for everyone. Some people spend all their time on Mafia Wars. Some spend all their time on Farmville. There are hundreds or maybe thousands of different high-quality time sinks available, so there’s something there for everyone.

In education, we don’t yet have that platform that enables/allows “other people to do the work”. Learning management systems, authoring tools, and personal learning environments don’t quite get the “it’s the platform, stupid” aspect of the internet. Most of the tools we have available today in education allow us to create content within a system. What a platform enables is very different; it enables the extension of a system. Amazon is brilliant at this – they’ve essentially vanquished main components in the book space. They’re basically a monopoly, one that will only increase with the Amazon Fire. For an author, all roads lead to Amazon. Facebook has mastered this in the social network space as well. Facebook is now well past being a social network. Billboards and magazine/newspaper ads for companies list “facebook.com/whatever” instead of an actual open web URL. I guess that’s why Facebook is now bigger than the web was in 2004.

When I was at the Strata conference in February, I was surprised at who wasn’t there in any substantial way – Yahoo, Google, Microsoft (they did present on Azure, but their presence was minimal). Who ruled? Amazon. AWS. Every single session. Because Amazon gets the platform concept – as they did with book selling: entrepreneurs need a platform. They have ideas, but they don’t have huge dollars for technical infrastructure. So, AWS. Plug and play. An entrepreneur doesn’t want to think about the platform. For entrepreneurs in need of big, scalable computing, all roads lead to Amazon.

Similarly, educators don’t want to think about the platform. They want something easy to use – simple, effective, and extensible – so they can get on with teaching and research.

Knewton gets this with their platform, hence their massive $33 million funding round. (note Pearson as a partner).

Pearson and Google appear to be making in-roads in this space with Open Class:

Today Pearson, the publishing and learning technology group, has joined the software giant Google to launch OpenClass, a free LMS that combines standard course-management tools with advanced social networking and community-building, and an open architecture that allows instructors to import whatever material they want, from e-books to YouTube videos.

I posted on this last year after Blackboard acquired Elluminate and Wimba:

To be effective in the long term, large LMS companies will need to pull more and more of the education experience under their umbrella. Why? Well, technology is getting complex. Very complex. Which means that decisions makers are motivated (partly out of fear of appearing ill-informed, partly out of not wanting to take risks) to adopt approaches that integrate fairly seamlessly across the education spectrum. Why buy an LMS when you can buy the educational process?

I would not be surprised, if in the next several years, educational institutions – especially those who are cash strapped – end up using a content/delivery platform the same way we use Facebook today “Visit us at Pearson.com”. Blackboard’s acquisition binge was about building an integrated infrastructure to offer one-point value for universities (and now, schools with the Edline affiliation). Pearson has been aggressively moving in this direction for over a decade. Startups like Knewton want to be your testing/adaptive content platform (either they get big fast or they will be acquired by Pearson or similar platform-aspirational company). Sure, we’ll still have edupunks and other deviant educators playing at the corners or outer edges of these platforms and systems. Whoever has the platform sets the rules and controls the game. Diversity will be pushed to the margins and Ellul’s fears will be realized in education as they have been realized in much of society.

Since 2002, The Knowledge Tree has been sharing the latest research and innovation in global e-learning practice with Australian vocational education and training (VET) practitioners. Produced by the Australian Flexible Learning Framework (Framework), The Knowledge Tree features peer-reviewed articles, ‘think-pieces’, case-studies and interviews. If you’re new to The Knowledge Tree or haven’t visited this resource in a [...]

Inclusion Trust aims to foster social inclusion and empower marginalised members of society. The Knowledge Tree spoke to Jean Johnson and Jonny Dyer about the organisation’s origins and its innovative learning strategies.

Jean Johnson is the CEO of Inclusion Trust. She has worked in education for 25 years and for the last 10 years has led the Notschool.net research project. Jean has presented at conferences, published reports and papers, and has developed online projects in the UK and internationally. Jonny Dyer is the Company Secretary of Inclusion Trust and worked with Jean Johnson to form the organisation in 2005. Jonny has also worked on the Notschool.net research project for the past 10 years.

You can find out more about Inclusion Trust at http://www.inclusiontrust.org Listen to the interview with Jean Johnson and Jonny Dyer You can also check out Jean Johnson and Jonny Dyer’s interview in Edition 21 of The Knowledge Tree.