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Does Education Need to Change?

21 November 2008 by Clark 5 Comments

George Siemens asks in his blog:

1. Does education need to change?
2. Why or why not?
3. If it should change, what should it become? How should education (k-12, higher, or corporate) look like in the future?

I can’t resist not answering. 1. ABSOLUTELY! Let me count the ways…

K12 Education is broken in so many ways. We’re not engaging our students in why this is important, we’re not giving them problems to solve that resemble the ones that they’ll face outside, we’re focusing on the wrong skills, we don’t value teachers, we’ve crumbling infrastructure, we’ve beggared the budgets, the list goes on.

We need new curricula and new pedagogy at least. We should be focusing on 21st century skills (not knowledge): systems thinking, design, problem-solving, research, learning to learn, multimedia literacy, teamwork and leadership, ethics, etc; my wisdom curriculum. We need pedagogies that engage, spiral the learning around meaningful tasks, that develop multiple skills.

We need this at K12, at higher education, and in the workplace. We need technology skills infused into the curriculum as tools, not as ends in themselves. We need teachers capable of managing these learning experiences, parents engaged in the process and outcomes, and administrations educational and political that ‘get’ this. We need learners who can successfully segue into taking control of their learning and destiny.

Yes, a tall order. But if we don’t, we basically are hobbling our best chances for a better world. Look, the only way to have functioning societies is to have an educated populace, because you just can’t trust governments to do well in lieu of scrutiny. So, let’s get it started!

Significance

20 November 2008 by Clark 1 Comment

Sorry for the dearth of postings, but what with last week’s DevLearn conference and this week’s (free, online) Corporate Learning Trends (CLT) conference, and background kitchen remodel, client work, etc, I’ve been wiped out by the end of every day. Today was no different, but…

Tonite I went from my son’s soccer end-of-season party to our first of the year YGuides meeting. At the soccer part, the coach made the usual nice speech about how the team individually developed during the season, and learned to work together. The assistant coach made a clever poem that mentioned all the boys by name, and included some of the funny and important moments during the season. Rushing off, we managed to hit the important stuff of the YGuides meeting, with the circle, reciting our values, and creating a shared understanding (no, not some cult thing, this ain’t Scientology).

And I was reminded of something that came up in the CLT ‘reflection session’. The CLT is timed for Europe and America, holding sessions in the morning Pacific Time, midday East Coast Time, and evening European time. Which is, basically, the middle of the night for the Western Pacific. They rightly complained about access (they can view captures of the sessions, but not participate), and I decided to host an afternoon Pacific time discussion. It’s been small but good. Nancy White, who I hadn’t known but became a fan of based upon her presentations at the CLT conference and chat session participation (awesome multi-tasking), graciously came in to tonite’s session and really had great stuff.

Nancy was opining about her work with small teams, and I was asking about the larger picture. My ongoing question has been about transitioning from wrapping social networking around formal learning to being members of communities of practice. In the CLT, Dave Wilkins of Mzinga talked about the ‘Amazon’ model of tools around a learning resource (as a formal learning model) and the community model of tools embedded in a community. Naturally, I wanted to find the segue between the two. Nancy made a great point about having a comfortable space for novices to express themselves, and an opportunity crystalized for me. What if we used the same tools, but created a safe space for novices? Of course, the question then is, how do we scaffold the transition, and the notion of ceremony and ritual came to me.

I looked at myth and ritual a while ago (I look at lots of stuff), searching for how we might make changes beyond knowledge to beliefs & behaviors. What I found is that ritual is linked to mythologies about how the world works (in the sense of creation stories, not false beliefs), and signifies action in accordance with the associated values. In more simple terms, holding transition celebrations are important acts in supporting changes.

What I think we miss in much of corporate behavior is the signification of transitions. It may appear to be ‘hazy cosmic jive’ or too Californian, but I believe it’s meaningful. So, I could see that the completion of a course augmented with social networking activity could include an introduction to the larger practitioner community. The instructor becomes a shaman, training the initiate and then welcoming them to the anointed.

The funny thing is that just such symbology is what we do with our kids in the right circumstances (and we’ve lost it in so much; what I remember of high school graduation wasn’t ritual as much as farce; it’s hard to have a meaningful event with 900 participants), and is what we forget to do in our workplace activities, real or virtual. So, here’s a proposal: we do formal segues from training to practitioner Communities of Practice, welcoming the new members.

There’s so much that’s been developed across cultures about how to become a member of a community; are we taking sufficient advantage of what’s been learned? What’s the digital equivalent of rites of passage, story-telling, vision quests, etc? Am I going too far? I can feel the skepticism, but somehow it feels like . (And, yes, I’m a native Californian :).

Coping personally, organizationally, and societally

18 November 2008 by Clark Leave a Comment

Having just come back from DevLearn (which rocked; my hearty thanks to all participants and organizers), and now engaged in the Corporate Learning Trends conference (free, online), I’m seeing some repeated themes, and interests. It’s a busy time, since we‘re deeply engaged in the latter, but some messages are coming through so powerfully that I’ve got to reflect on them.

In this time of economic uncertainty or outright fear, one of the resonant themes is ‘how to cope’. Marcia Conner, one of our forward thinkers, is going to be talking about the topic of coping tomorrow at 10 AM PT, and I’m looking forward to it!I believe that’s important at the societal level as well. We need to invest in our capabilities when things are down so we’re poised to capitalize on the upswing. Jay invited me to share his breakfast byte at DevLearn on the topic.

We brainstormed with the attendees, and came up with some interesting points. At the personal level was to be nimble, strategic, and develop yourself. Tony Karrer talked today about investing in knowing how to use the tools effectively, building upon all the tools that Robin Good and Jane Hart had described yesterday (simply amazing tools).

The organization level of that is to develop infrastructure and capability. Dave Pollard today talked about moving from Knowledge Management 1.0 to 2.0, empowering people to self-help. What can you do to foster creativity and innovation on a shoestring when you can’t cope with full-fledged initiatives? Can you get a small social networking tool initiative going that can help people help each other?

A couple of recurrent themes were selling this to management, and managing the proliferation of tools. For the former, I reckon it’s about helping more than just novices, but providing self-help. It depends, of course, on what your needs are and consequently what you choose to implement, but the outcomes can clearly be linked to organizational goals and problems, like reducing time-to-information, increasing productive collaboration, and sharing. For the problem of tracking the tools, I think the key are the needed affordances. I’ve been focused on finding the affordances of the tools, but it’s another thing to think about the affordances an organization needs and map tools into them. Briefly, it’s about collaborative representations (prose, graphics), pointers to relevant topics, etc. More work to be done here, I reckon.

These topics are being discussed at the Corporate Learning Trends social site this week (and ongoing, hopefully) and you can join in.

Note that I think these are relevant societally as well. We developed some serious infrastructure through the WPA, and the Interstates, and it’s crumbling. At some point you need to build it back up (rebuild differently?) to meet the needs. That may increasingly be things like networks (and healthcare) as well as things like bridges. I think this is key to thinking about how to invest for the tough times; focus internally until times get good again and be poised to rebound. It’s like your body rebuilding while you’re asleep so you can restart the new day. Of course, you need to have hoarded the resources. May be a way short-term shareholder returns damage long-term survivability?

Here’s hoping the economic situation is short and mercifully gentle, and that you all survive and prosper!

DevLearn 08 Keynote: Tim O’Reilly

12 November 2008 by Clark 8 Comments

Tim O’Reilly, Web 2.0 guru, talked to us about what web 2.0 is and led us to his implications for what we do. He started off talking about tracking the ‘alpha geek’. These are the folks who manage to thrive and innovate despite us, rather than because of us. He’s essentially built O’Reilly on watching what these folks do, analyzing the underlying patterns, and figuring out what’s key.

He talked about the stories that Web 2.0 is about open source, or social, were surface takes, and by looking at leading companies, e.g. Google, there was something else going on. It’s not just user-generated content, but mining user-generated data for value, and then adding value on top of it. “Data is the intel inside.”

This led him to key competencies going forward being machine learning, statistics, and design. It isn’t about well-structured data, but about finding the nuggets in messy data. And it is about design as an “architecture of participation” that gets users to act in the ways you’d like.

His take home message was six points that boil down to watching your alpha geeks, and use them to help guide what you should be doing, to help others achieve their potential. An inspiring message in a very geek-cred way :).

I concept-mapped it:

Cyberlearning (ahem)

8 October 2008 by Clark 4 Comments

A high-powered panel assembled by the NSF has reported on The Cyberlearning Opportunity and Challenge. With people like Christine Borgman (Chair), Ken Koedinger, Marcia Linn, and Roy Pea (to name just the ones I’ve met), you’d expect some pretty clear thinking. (So where did they get the term ‘cyberlearning’? Yuck!)

Defining cyberlearning as “the use of networked computing and communications technologies to support learning”, they’re obviously onto the right stuff. I couldn’t agree more about the potential for these technologies to transform learning. As I’ve mentioned before, the technology is no longer the barrier, it’s now our imagination and conviction. And now that we can do anything we want, when we go back and look at most formal learning, we realize it’s based on an outdated model.

Without having read the full report, let alone reporting on it here, I did have some thoughts on their top-level recommendations, that I thought I’d recite:

1. Help build a vibrant cyberlearning field by promoting cross-disciplinary communites of cyberlearning researchers and practitioners

Regardless of label, working at this in an interdisciplinary way is absolutely the way to go. The conceptual foundations for the categories/silos are crumbling, so too should the barriers. I realize this is the NSF, but I hope that they’d also reach out to the Dept of Ed, corporations, NFPs, etc. Maybe even independent consultants? :)

2. Instill a “platform perspective” – shared interoperable designs of hardware, software, and services – into NSF’s cyberlearning activities

This is insightful. Using their resources to facilitate, whether through grants or even requirements for projects, interoperability and (the other meaning of) web 2.0 ‘software as a service’ approach could pay off in a big way. Society has a vested interest in an open playing field.

3. Emphasize the transformative power of information and communications technology for learning, from K to grey

I love the phrase “K to grey”; far better than ‘cradle to grave’, ‘womb to tomb’, or anything else I’ve heard. And I like the emphasis on going beyond formal and institutional learning. Make those skills part of the infrastructure! I presume they mean those terms inclusively, that is it could start before K, (in some small ways only, not bashing kids onto computers, but allowing digital tech to be part of the environment), and continue after you’re grey (or I’m in big trouble!).

And it’s more. They talk about interaction with visualizations and data, etc, but I want to also talk about bridging formal and informal, moving to an apprenticeship model with greater ways for people to interact around topics, and create communities. They emphasize teachers, but I want to suggest that, increasingly, we’re all teachers, as well as learners.

4. Adopt programs and policies to promote open educational resources

This, to me, is really a revisitation of the ‘platform’ proposal as well. Open API’s, open source, and open education. We all stand to benefit, I reckon. They’re talking about materials generated with NSF funds, but even materials used as part of NSF projects should err on the side of open materials.

5. Take responsibility for sustaining NSF-sponsored cyberlearning innovations

This last one seems like a ‘given’, but it’s really about saying that the output of NSF projects should have maintenance and extension beyond the project finish. I like this; for NSF SBIR grants (I reviewed them a couple of times) you’re supposed to have a business plan; even pure research grants could have ‘put into action’ components in the proposal.

There are lots more specific recommendations, good ones, in the report. It’s a bit biased towards formal education, but still is visionary. This is a useful time to push initiatives like this, and I hope the report leads to the interdisciplinary efforts called for.

While I realize we’ve more pressing immediate concerns that might govern our near-term ‘man on the moon’ project, I still think a full K12 curriculum online would be a really cool project. The only limits are now ‘between our ears’ as my friend Carl used to say. If we can do anything, what will we do?

Formal learning & social networking

1 October 2008 by Clark Leave a Comment

After hearing Mark Oehlert and Brent Schlenker do such a great job on eLearning 2.0 at the Guild’s Summer Seminar, I got my own chance to talk about it to a corporate group, but with a twist. Much of elearning 2.0 is about informal learning, but the organization was moving to using social networking tools to scaffold their move from face-to-face to more online learning. So I was asked to talk about social networking and formal learning.

I started from the informal picture, however, both to introduce the 2.0 tools (their environment in particular had blogs, feeds, wikis, discussion boards, portals, and profiles), and to talk about some case studies of successes. I led to the point that the informal participation has big upside potential, but you can’t spring it on them when they move beyond novice stage, and that wrapping it around the formal learning is a vehicle to help them become comfortable with the tools. That is, the first reason to use social networking around formal learning is to make it part of the repertoire of the community.

I then segued to my second point, which is that social networking tools are better formal learning. To help make learning ‘stick’, to achieve our goals of retention and transfer, I have previously suggested that there are several activities that accomplish the memory elaboration, specifically connecting it to personal experience, to exercise and extend the conceptualization, and to apply the concepts to specific tasks. Each of these can be accomplished well through social networking tools.

For example, blogs are really personal (or group) journals, and it’s easy to have a learning task to reflect a couple of times a week (for example) on what the current course means to you personally. It can be to explain things observed in the past, how it applies to current situations, or how it will better prepare people for the future. It’s about re-activating and re-processing the information (Thiagi‘s exercises, for instance, are great at getting people to re-process information), but here adding in that connection with pre-existing personal context. Of course, reading other learner’s blog posts, and commenting, can extend the value of the individual post.

Discussion boards are a great way to support extending conceptualizations. Learners can be asked to post a response to a thought question (or even to have to create one), and comment constructively on someone else’s post. Well-written questions can ask learners to rethink the information in ways that the lecture and examples didn’t cover. The point is to reprocess and elaborate the information. Critically reflecting on another’s elaboration requires integrating their thinking with your own, for a real challenge in coming to grips with how they’ve interpreted it (and opportunity to refine one’s own understanding).

While simulations may be the ultimate learning application environment, another valuable tool are group assignments. Having the learners respond to a challenge where, in teams, they create some written output collaboratively on a wiki is a great chance for them to have to express their understandings. In doing so, by applying the concept to a context, they need to a shared understanding of the concept, which fosters greater comprehension.

Profiles, as well, can help individuals flesh out information about their fellow learners, and make more meaningful connections (as well as potentially track down useful mentors). While not as rich as face to face interpersonal interaction, adding personal details helps extend their persona in ways that bring technology-mediated interaction closer to that personal exchange.

These few examples suggest how social networking not only facilitates informal learning, but can and should play a role in formal learning, for the sake of both formal and informal learning. I’m finding it increasingly difficult to think about when formal learning shouldn’t include a social aspect (except the situation of ‘critical mass’ in totally asynchronous learning).

I’m still not convinced there’s an LMS that integrates social networking tools in a way that makes a smooth segue from formal to informal, though I know Mzinga’s making a stab at it. You want to move to loose coupling, yet you want seamless integration. Not sure what the reconciliation is of these. Your thoughts?

eLearning 3.0

22 September 2008 by Clark 4 Comments

In preparing a presentation for an organization on the learning value of Web 2.0, I realized that the development I’m looking forward to is web 3.0 and the learning possibilities. Don’t get me wrong, I’m very enthusiastic over the 2.0 learning opportunities, as I’ve gotten to know them. It’s just that the work I was doing years ago now has the technology infrastructure to be brought to life in a viable and ubiquitous way. What it means is personalized learning wrapped around your life, instead of leaving your day-to-day life to attend an ‘event’ or self-directed searching.

The key here starts with the next generation of the web, the semantic Web. What this is about, to me, is the use of tags and meta-data to start adding meaning to the information out there. To date, we’ve separated form from content, but the machine can’t operate on the data independently. If we had semantics, meaning, through tags and meta-data, the system can start trolling for content. And, of course, we can start auto-tagging based upon content and generation as well as making it part of our habits (e.g. as I try to remember to categorize my blog posts). The point is, with this information, we can start connecting things. This isn’t just about search, but about pro-active and opportunistic information delivery, and moving to the distributed learning model I’ve talked about before.

A second opportunity is Web 3.0’s service-oriented architectures (SOA), or rather web-oriented architectures (WOA). This is where capabilities are separated out into separate network-delivered services with API’s that anyone can tap if they have the proper codes (and authority). What this does is let you build applications in a light-weight way, cobbling together the capabilities you need into the services you want.

What does this mean for learning? It means that you can tag learning content and make it available. Then you can have a system that looks at your learning goals, and your current activity (through a variety of context-sensitive mechanisms), and pull in a small tidbit opportunistically, or connect you with just the right person afterward. The point is to move from macro courses to micro-learns, where you might be prepped right before an important task, supported in the middle of it, and provided reflection afterwards. So your performance situations become learning situations.

To do this effectively means linking the meaning of your current activity with the status of your learning goals, and putting together an effective delivery mechanism depending on your technology infrastructure, preferences, etc. The goal is to make a system that’s like having a personal mentor, but much more affordably.

Now, don’t get me wrong. While this is doable, it’s quite far off, and won’t be easy. It depends on several developments, such some reasonable work on standardizing on terminology (or a successful implementation of folksonomies) for both content and tasks (and/or a very good mapping process). It’ll also require some business model that makes it viable for participation on all parties. Finally, it’ll require some tuning to make a user experience that’s effective without being intrusive. Still, I think it’s a great future, and would love to have a well-implemented version coaching me! How about you?

Money and trust

10 September 2008 by Clark 5 Comments

I found out another site was aggregating my, and other’s, blogs, indicating that they had the best folks in knowledge management. Flattered as I was, I asked that my blog be taken off their roles. Let me explain why.

First, I hadn’t been asked. I think it’s only fair to ask for the right to copy someone else’s work (I recall the time Jay and I found a white paper we’d jointly written being given away as an article in a university consortium’s newsletter!). Let the author know why you’re doing it, and what the proposal is for them (publicity, cash, what have you). Many would be happy to be included in a list, but I want to opt-in, not opt-out. I wouldn’t even have found out if WordPress (my blog software) didn’t track references to the blog as comments.

I note that the indication of who the posts are from is hard to find. There’s a link to the original, to be fair, but otherwise there’s no list of who’s included in this list. Where’s the blogroll? Who is aggregated there?

Another concern is that there’s no indication of *who* is behind this. From an authenticity and trust factor, I like to know who’s behind a site. I get mighty uncomfortable when I find site for organizations and there’s no human name to be found. Why are they hiding it? One of the criteria in being web-literate is knowing not only the authorial voice (who you’re listening to), but also editorial voice, that is, who’s doing the selecting, who “approved this message”.

However, worst of all was the advertising all around the page. Google ads to the left and right, Amazon ads in the body! So, if people go to that site, this (unknown) person’s making money. And I don’t mind people making money, but they better add value. That’s why I recently went through the trouble of getting a Creative Commons license for my site. I want attribution, and I don’t want anyone making money off of my work (at least, if I’m not :). I don’t have a thing against ads on blogs or sites, if they’re making a contribution, e.g. an aggregation, adding value by being selective, communicating who it is and why they should be trusted.

So I opted out. I’m willing to be wrong, but frankly this didn’t strike me as a fair relationship. And a lesson in work literacy. So, am I too uptight? Or was this a reasonable decision? (And fair warning to my fellow bloggers.)

Informal budget ratio <> 80/20?

29 August 2008 by Clark 1 Comment

Donald Clark raises an issue on his blog about confounding informal with Web 2.0, and the point I found interesting is his query about the 80/20 in/formal learning metrics. He queries the statistics, and the issue of supporting informal. I took it (and no blame to him if I misconstrue) to be an issue of should we match our budgets to that ration. I commented:

Interesting point, and right in many respects. The point of the 80/20 (or 75/25) is to help people realize that they’re not supporting the 80, rather than to totally match the investment. The formal learning probably takes more resources, over time, as there’s more development required. However, how much have we invested in the informal? Typically, bugger all. My take, at least, is that there needs to be some up-front investment in the informal, but then it (should) become self-perpetuating (with the usual maintenance/upgrade/review costs).

The way I see it, as you broaden your responsibility from just training to support performance, eCommunity, mobile, etc (eCommunity being the social component of web 2.0, and a major component of informal), you need to systematically support informal. Most of the time, it’s providing resources and an infrastructure for informal learning to flourish (the culture is the hardest part). It’s not as resource-intensive as the process of getting learners from novice to practitioner (except the initial investment in infrastructure and boot-stratpping).

So, to me, it’s about considering informal, making a systematic plan for supporting, it, and launching it, while continuing to develop the necessary formal support for learning. The latter will change as we develop capable learners (assuming you’re putting meta-learning in, and you should be), but there will be a role for each, but that doesn’t mean that the support requirements are a one-to-one match. At least, that’s how I see it. What say you?

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