The Education Bazaar

This is a great little paper on some of the changes organizations who need deal with training or education are facing due to the explosion of connectivism in society. George Siemens presented this “white paper” recently at the Google Developers Conference.
This ties in with some struggles I’ve been having with how schools seem increasingly driven to “protect” students from connectivism. I hear other school district technology directors talking about stronger filtering, going to RADIUS authentication, locking the networks down tighter, preventing access to virtually every interpersonal communication tool available: chat; blogs; social networking sites; VOIP; and of course all peer-to-peer sharing.

IT folks take filtering and control quite seriously, and generally don’t know how to take my approach that focuses on filtering limited to essential things (pornography mostly), and increased reliance of self-monitoring. Education about responsible use is critical, and should be teacher led. I view these as essential life skills, and see most of the accompanying issues as a routine behavior stuff – no different than students scrawling crude or rude grafitti on the bulletin board in the hall, or bringing a girlie magazine to school. We have expectations about these things, and rules to deal with them. End of story.

We can’t isolate and artificially protect children the majority of the day when they are no longer behind our filters. I personally choose to focus on the skills that students need in that real world environment, not the “techno-no-zone” of schooling…the “bubble” is artificial.

Where I’d like to see connectivism go is in the direction of personalized learning environments, or perhaps what Siemens calls “learning ecologies”. However, I’d like to take that idea in the K-12 realm to be a PLE that would follow the student through school, and then beyond. I think we can take existing technologies that build social relationships and harness these for learning AND instruction….

This is a great little paper on some of the changes organizations who need deal with training or education are facing due to the explosion of connectivism in society. George Siemens presented this “white paper” recently at the Google Developers Conference.

• George Siemens – Connectivism White Paper (Download PDF)

Why It’s Linked Here

This ties in with some struggles I’ve been having with how schools seem increasingly driven to “protect” students from connectivism. I hear other school district technology directors talking about stronger filtering, going to RADIUS authentication, locking the networks down tighter, preventing access to virtually every interpersonal communication tool available: chat; blogs; social networking sites; VOIP; and of course all peer-to-peer sharing.

IT folks take filtering and control quite seriously, and generally don’t know how to take my approach that focuses on filtering limited to essential things (pornography mostly), and increased reliance of self-monitoring. Education about responsible use is critical, and should be teacher led. I view these as essential life skills, and see most of the accompanying issues as a routine behavior stuff – no different than students scrawling crude or rude grafitti on the bulletin board in the hall, or bringing a girlie magazine to school. We have expectations about these things, and rules to deal with them. End of story.

We can’t isolate and artificially protect children the majority of the day when they are no longer behind our filters. I personally choose to focus on the skills that students need in that real world environment, not the “techno-no-zone” of schooling…the “bubble” is artificial.

The district I work for is currently revising its Technology standards for students – today, in fact! – and we have talked about trying to update these so that the goals prepare students for essential Web 2.0 technologies as categories, not specific applications.

Siemens’ paper does a good job in talking about how corporate organizational structures are being forced to respond to new realities about learning. I think this directly connects to how all organizations, not just in the corporate world, need to rethink their esentially held beliefs about education and training.

This paper talks about the ‘decreasing half-life of knowledge”, and how learning systems are failing to adapt structures and ideas about “space” that can keep up with rapidly changing, dynamic bodies of knowledge. Connections between small nodes of knowledge is seen as essential in this view.

Contrary to emerging research on the nature of learning (neurology (Restak, Ratey), systems thinking (Senge), chaos theory (Gleick), and network theory (Barabási), corporate learning is generally structured and hierarchical. Most technology tools perpetuate the ineffective attributes of classroom-based learning, assuming that structure translates into achievement of learning outcomes. The educational models that have served previous generations must be replaced for greater relevance to today’s needs. Society has become decentralized and distributed; our learning models need a similar adjustment.

Siemens goes on to describe “learning ecologies” in much the way we have been talking about a personalized learning environment in our district.

A learning ecology provides for integration of numerous approaches and models of learning. In an ecology, intended learning is aligned with best approach (for example, social learning with a community, or knowledge development with an LMS) and the best medium. The unique needs of each learning experience drive the selection of the learning approach and method. When organizations understand how learning occurs, they can foster connections, and make existing connections explicit. The intended task of learning must be matched with the right approach and the right.

In preparation for a more connected approach, BSSD has been using both an LMS (Moodle) to house instructional units, and official district documents, and a wiki-based site for collaborative curriculum development. Our most recent efforts have been aimed at training all district administrators, and many teachers on wiki use for collaborative work.

Now we are retooling our technology standards in the curriculum to meet Web 2.0 realities.

One of central office program staff researched other leading sets of standards used in other school districts with decent technology reputations, and at standards promoted by national organizations (ISTE, etc.)…none of these really reflected current technologies such as RSS feeds, social networking, FOAF, feed aggregation, wiki use, blogs at all , let alone in an instructional tool capacity. Most were set up like pre-vocational tracks, and focused on isolated (non-connected) use of specific desktop applications.

In fact, the vast majority of the standards looked at had not been updated in years. The technologies AND the context of technology use in the lives of students have both changed substantially since most curriculum standards addressing technology were written.

Rant Alert!

School is increasingly the only place our students go where technologies that connect individuals are squashed and controlled. School has become the place where students are limited by technology, not where they go to learn about it.

Teachers in most districts are far, far behind the curve and rarely have even the vaguest notion about the technologies, the websites and the use patterns of their students.

I still hear teachers in other districts talk about how students “aren’t ready for the Internet” until a certain age, or until they take Keyboarding I, Keyboarding II, Keyboarding III and so on….because the teachers themselves are not “ready” to adopt the very tools the students are already using.

During an in-service workshop I ran on “small technologies” in one school district, I had both teachers and principals tell me that their students were definitely not using anything like MySpace or Bebo, because they were banned by “eRate”…by which they CIPA. Social networking and chat technologies are not mentioned. Districts are required to have a plan for monitoring use, not to block them. Human supervision, anyone?

I then brought some students from their schools into the room. These 10 – 14 year olds listed at least 10 social networking sites that “all the kids are using” in the school, despite filters, to develop their own channels of communication. In some schools, it’s almost like the students have their own “unofficial” newsletters and buzz going.

The irony? Many of these kids are still being taught “keyboarding” in lab settings like it’s the Holy Grail of the “Internet ready” world. Some can probably type 8o words a minute when they are using MSN and other chat programs that the school blocks, or tries to.

Enough rant…back to organizational uses of connectivism

Challenges of Connectivism

Here is what George sees as the biggest challenges of Connectivism:

• Knowing what’s important (filtering information …or relying on trusted filters)
• Balancing work, life, and valuing the learning and knowledge of each domain
• Learners need to seek out and re-purpose learning and knowledge and apply to new spaces. This is a function of the new skills needed.
• Learners cannot be expected to function in new spaces and structures without developing required skills
• Organizations need to see and value the power and effectiveness of informal learning
• Learning needs to be created in line with the needs of the learner, i.e. contextualized, task-focused, and at the point of need

And, he echoes a central question I’ve been asking about our school district’s Open Systems, “quality-focused” model of change:

How to achieve intentional aims through decentralized means?

When I read it I am struck with how education is at least a decade behind business is some
regards in having this discussion. Some teachers still struggle with how to manage email,
and we are talking now about social networking and collaborative curriculum development?

How is this possible?

I am wondering how some of the things we are starting to do now in the Bering Strait School District are going to be forced upon other districts down the road.

• wiki use for collaborative curriculum and policy writing
• student use of wiki to help construct meaning and develop shared resources
• various collaborative tools for instructional revisions
• podcasting and vodcastin for staff development and student instruction
• RSS feeds and taggin to keep track of changes to all sorts of things – documents, schedules & so on – and learner needs and interests

Schools will be adopting – a few conference cycles down the road – very expensive, proprietary, vendor-controlled prepackaged systems that do this in “safe” ways.

And, that’s only if the dopey DOPA legislation – or something similar – makes it through, we are going to continue to artificially isolate our students even more from the reality of connectivism.

Connectivism Squared

Where I’d like to see connectivism go is in the direction of personalized learning environments, or perhaps what Siemens calls “learning ecologies”. However, I’d like to take that idea in the K-12 realm to be a PLE that would follow the student through school, and then beyond. I think we can take existing technologies that build social relationships and harness these for learning AND instruction.

If we could harness the triangular relationship between , we would end up with a greatly enhanced set of connected relationships. Some models expand this bring in FOAF and other data, which is fine, but the central relationship needs to be a triangular and dynamic one focused on:

1. Learner centered interface for managing learning wants and/or needs
2. Resources – online & meat space – for meeting thoses goals
3. Tracking what the learner has accomplished toward these goals

There are like minded folks working on this type of PLE approach through Elgg, ePortfolio systems, and the like. I’ll save those for another post, but they would be ideal for any school district that had a true learner-focused, or standards-based approach.

I’ve gone on long enough here, but connectivism is clearly something that we need to tap into, not ignore in both the K-12 and K-20 worlds. I recommend George Siemen’s paper as good background on this topic. I expect connectivism to be a common theme on this blog.

Johncn

This entry was posted on Monday, June 5th, 2006 at 5:20 am and is filed under Future VLE / PLE / LMS, Open Systems Thinking, Web 2.0 Challenges. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.