James Boyle: Public Information Wants to Be Free: Corante > Copyfight >
Over on Corante, Donna Wentworth notes that we have the possibility of taking a stance on information that is, dare we say: pragmatic?
The conversation has been going on for sometime but the comments are based on the article by James Boyle at FT.com. It is worth reading the alternate viewpoint by Richard Epstein at the end of the article. He points out the fact that when governments fund the creation of information, it can be very hard to judge the true value of the information. The example cited by Boyle (weather data) is a positive step but I can imagine that there are many examples of information created by the government that languish in obscure databases that have no inherent public value.
As Donna notes:
Maximal intellectual property protection doesn't always equal maximal economic benefit. It certainly doesn't always equal maximal social benefit. The Development Agenda gives the world's most influential IP organization the opportunity to pull away from this radical stance, allowing us to create IP policy that does its job -- providing the protection where it is needed for optimal economic growth -- while retaining our human values.
I am glad to see someone looking at a more moderate approach to this issue. However, with pragmatism comes the inevitable difficulty of being able to make distinctions about inherent worth of information (a nightmare in legal terms). Still, in the complex and evolving infosphere, it is refreshing to hear stances that attempt to navigate the realities of ubiquitous information.
elearnspace. Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age
I read George Siemens' article with his proposed new theory of "Connectivism" with some interest when it was originally posted and found that it contained some interesting concepts but, unless we redefine the words learning and knowledge, I am not sure we can really call it a learning theory. Siemens defines learning as "actionable knowledge" but this is using learning as a noun. Learning is a verb! Learning is the acquisition of actionable knowledge, not the knowledge itself. Think of learning in this way and it presents several problems for connectivism as a learning theory.
It might be more appropriate to call this a theory of information management, or knowledge management (though Brown and Duguid (2002) would argue, "knowledge implies a 'knower'") rather than a learning theory.
Learning theories describe how learning occurs but not how learning is facilitated (i.e. instruction)(cf. Reigeluth, 1999).
These theories do not address learning that occurs outside of people (i.e. learning that is stored and manipulated by technology). They also fail to describe how learning happens within organizations.
Using the definition of learning as a process, I would argue that learning does not get “stored” in any type of technology. It is possible, in the near future, that we will achieve true AI, in which case learning can happen with technology. One could argue that some databases can “learn” right now by gathering and storing information. Some of the more sophisticated data mining applications can even look for patterns in the data but these machines are not "learning" because they do not ascribe meaning to the patterns. Ted Frick, my mentor at IU, wrote a great article called Artificial Tutoring: What Computers Can and Can’t Know and I highly recommend giving it a read. Similarly, I would argue that learning happens within individuals in an organization. Take out all of the individuals out of an organization and I do not believe much learning would occur.
I do not argue that people working within an organization do not share information and that technology facilitates the ability to store information but to say that these entities contain learning is not necessarily correct.
The paper raises some interesting questions related to the nature of what metacognitive skills we should be teaching (i.e. is our new goal to find ways to quickly process and discard information, rather than horde it in our own memory systems) and I would encourage further refinement of the operational definitions (e.g. is learning "actionable knowledge" or is it a, "...persisting change in human performance or performance"?
Barbara is grappling with the same questions that I think are creeping into the whole blogosphere in one form or another. What is the saturation point for blogging in the classroom? I extend this to ask, "What is the saturation point for blogging?"
As Seb notes at Northern Voices, "blogs are still at a very early stage." I do not think we quite know where this is taking us yet. I can imagine that we are heading toward a "blogging bubble" that will burst, the wheels fall off the bandwagon, and what will emerge is the legacy of meaningful change that seeps into our lives in a much less conscious way.
I am always wary of evangelists. When I hear technology "X" is the technology revolution that will lead to the downfall of "Y" my cynicism radar immediately picks up and I begin to look for signs of an impending bubble.
It is worth reading the post over on the ">Feld Thoughts blog titled The Me Too Zone:
The cliche "watching a car wreck in slow motion" comes to mind. It’s definitely fun in a sick sort of way. Welcome to the me too zone – I believe we just entered it for the RSS / blog world. There is a huge adoption (and innovation) curve ahead of everyone who is doing stuff with RSS / blogging – and there are plenty of good investments left to make and companies to create – but the noise and clutter is about to get really loud.
It is not that this rush to innovation and the issue of a bubble is bad, it is just the way innovations tend to spread. We have to keep trying to figure it out but, as a learning strategist, I have to make sure that we have more than a hammer in the toolbox or we might end up bashing all of our learners as nails.
Cognitive Dissonance » Critical Mass and the Long Tail
The notion of critical mass and the long tail seems somehow disconnected. The nature of the long tail is the sparse connection. How can there be critical mass in the long tail?
When I say critical mass, I am talking about the overall number of people who are reading and publishing blogs. That critical mass (i.e. the whole population rather than a geographically constrained subset) is what makes the long tail so important for retailers like Amazon and Ebay. In other words, the critical mass is the entire population in the curve, including those on the high-end (most popular blogs) and those trailing out near the end of the tail (with few readers, like me).
If you read the article on Wired, note that Amazon is approaching a point where the majority of its business comes from books (or other items) that are the very low sellers. This phenomenon only occurred when their catalog contained a sufficiently large number of these less popular items combined with the ability to reach a critical mass of consumers. Similarly, there will always be the more popular blogs in the spike at the high end of the ed tech spectrum but, it is when the population becomes sufficiently large with people writing with little or no audience on many, many topics that we will really see the value of blogging.
Take this conversation, for example. It may not be of interest to very many people but it has managed to connect at least three of us (and maybe a few lurkers). When there are many of these specialized discussions happening at the same time around ed tech issues, that's when blogs (or other technologies) have the greatest ability to enrich our field.
David, Thanks are to you for joining the conversation and for the kind words!
I believe that the critical mass of topical variety is the lack of critical mass that we must address.
Yes, that is my point exactly when I say it is a matter of critical mass. There are always lurkers in any information sharing effort. It is only when enough people are participating that the real since of community begins to form. See my post about classroom discussion boards for a few of my thoughts on this topic.
I believe, is that the conversation within the blogosphere thus far has been two dimensional - it has been more focused on the technological aspects of improving education and has not had much depth as far as broader theories of learning and instruction are concerned. This is not conducive to bringing in those who are not interested in the technology for technology's sake.
It is funny that you say this because I was just out perusing unexplored corners of the blogosphere and have really begun to discover that most bloggers do not care about the technology itself. There are a couple of reasons why I believe this is the case. I think that those of us in the ed tech sphere have gravitated toward the people we might have originally heard about or learned from as bloggers. And second, many of these people were the early adopters, which meant they were focused more on the technology itself. Because they have been around so long, their blogs consistently rise to the top of the rankings when searching blogs. I am not saying that they are not worthwhile reading because I love tech and non-tech stuff.
There is, however, great diversity in the long tail of blogging. While it takes a bit more digging to get to those bloggers, that is where some of the really important discussions (or monologues) are occurring.
That being said, many of the well-known names in our field are still sitting on the sidelines...
Future of FLOSS in education: Interview with Alan Levine - FLOSSE Posse
Great interview (I have only had time to listen to the beginning and read the extensive overview this morning). Good stuff - I recommend spending a few minutes on this one!
Mathemagenic: learning and KM insights - Monday, February 21, 2005
Is it appropriate to apply for a blind review and post to a blog? This gets to the discussion between Nate and me about the purpose of AECT (but could also apply to other professional orgs too).
Yesterday, Nate asked, as educational technologists, "when do we blog?" Now, he meant in terms of time to actually sit down and write. But the issue of "when" is also relevant in terms of questions related to publications and presentations. This is part of the discussion on the breakdown of the current journal-based system of research dissemination.
Some journals take 1-3 years to review and publish research and, in today's environment, 1-3 hours is a longtime to wait for information. So, to extend the "when" question, do we self-publish our research immediately and allow the vetting to occur in public? Being ever the pragmatist, I have to say that those of you on a tenure track have to be very careful here. It's not that the future of publishing is unclear (personal, immediate), it's that the real world of university process is still many years behind the curve and will be for the near term.
Making the decision to self-publish and forgo traditional outlets for publication might not be advisable for a new faculty member but, since we can see the future, are we being irresponsible by not releasing information as soon as possible? When is it ok to do both (submit and publish instantly)? These are sticky questions of the current period of transition that will be rendered irrelevant in the not-to-distant future but, when do we (people who research and disseminate that research) take that final step?
It is a systemic issue, meaning that it is not just one single piece that must change. Unfortunately, for many systems, change often happens only when forced from outside and, by then, it is often too late. That might be the case here. The real possibility is that researchers depending on traditional journals are rendered irrelevant as others outside of academia (or at least outside of the traditional tenure-track career) publish the ideas and information that are the currency of the trade in an instant.
It is similar to the issues facing journalism that has been written about ad nauseum in media blogs and elsewhere. It is a struggle that is not a question of "if" or "why" but of "when" and "how" (not the tech "how" - that is easy).
Sorry Nate, playing the devil’s advocate is becoming more difficult. 
A discussion has been developing today on the Indiana U. IST Student email list about the recent story that funding is being cut for U.S. Educational Technology.
The references that have been posted include:
http://www.elearningmag.com/ltimagazine/article/articleDetail.jsp?id=146326
http://www.kpdx.com/Global/story.asp?S=2913501
http://www.techsoup.org/news/news_article.cfm?newsid=1698
Alan asks some good questions about the quality and even the purpose of learning object repositories.
I think that there are a couple of issues. Now, as a matter of disclosure I have to say that I straddle multiple worlds (primary income from the corporate sector, secondary income as faculty member, spent significant income on tuition as an doctoral candidate). As I noted in an earlier post on a developmental taxonomy for learning objects, I am still playing around with an additional element that might turn my simple definitions into more of a matrix with a second dimension: formal vs. informal learning objects.
Formal learning objects are tagged, coded, and designed to meet a specific instructional objective. Informal learning objects are content that might not have originally had an instructional purpose but, due to the way the content is used in a course, it becomes a "learning object." (Let's not get into the semantics of that term here).
In terms of a repository, it seems as though the value is on the side of formal objects (e.g. a Flash simulation for using safety equipment, a template for a problem-based learning course, or a lesson on using blogs in the classroom) versus informal objects (e.g. a web page put up by human resources to give an overview of company policy, etc.).
I am still wrangling with this but, as a designer, I use formal repositories and informal links to informational sites when creating learning experiences. It is nice to have a repository I can access with all of the relevant instructional graphics for a particular topic at my fingertips. Not to mention that these are vetted from a copyright perspective so I know I am working with elements that will not put me in legal trouble. Is formal/informal a worthwhile distinction? From an epistemological perspective, probably not. From a pragmatic perspective, maybe...
Guide to Using Furl found via Weblogg-ed.
Excellent guide to using Furl along with a rationale for using this great tool. There are other tools out there but I am a big Furl fan! I will be pointing my teaching students to this resource.
Weblogg-ed - The Read/Write Web in the Classroom :
Will makes a great point about ethics and blogging. There does seem to be a general format for "appropriate behavior" that is evolving but is that a good or bad thing? As the technology matures, will it lose some of its current appeal to those who share ideas on the firnge?
Another alternative to what happens to the institutionalization is more along the lines of one of the bloggers quoted in the original article:
Mitch Ratcliffe, a veteran tech journalist and blogger. When I am blogging and I am both publisher and editor, I'm playing by different rules, and there is, across the blogosphere, an evolving set of mores that will never become hard and fast rules for all bloggers...But as Ratcliffe suggests, the blogger’s penchant for independence means that even these guidelines may be trumped by an even higher law: Don’t impose your rules on me.(My emphasis added)
Anytime we take something that has a subversive element and formalize it, those looking to challenge the status quo will either move on or intentionally break the "rules."
As Will notes, what will blogging become when it grows out of its current adolescence and into adulthood? Is there a chance that blogs, by their nature, might suffer from Peter Pan syndrome?
The Cognitive Science Millennium Project
Thanks to Dr. Molenda at IU IST for passing this along to our student email list. I thought I'd shoot it out to the blogosphere to see if anyone else finds it interesting!
Each reading listed has reasons for nomination and a place to add comments. Looks like my reading list just got a lot longer...
Poynter: Judges Ponder Whether Bloggers are Journalists
Catching up on some old blog stories...
Fascinating implications for the freedom of bloggers. Well worth a quick read.
Are bloggers protected by this freedom in the same way as journalists? This could have implications for other cases too.
The actual court opinion (PDF) is long but a search for the word 'blog' will take you to the relevant info.
Jay Cross gives a brief history of internet facts that are always an eye-opener in his recent CLO article - reposted on his blog (e.g. 10 years ago 38 million people used the net, today 1 billion; 1999 23 bloggers, today 4.5 million, etc.). I call these kinds of nuggets "grains-of-sand" facts from my days in the planetarium. We would always try to get the attention of our learners by putting the vastness of the universe into some mind-boggling terms that our earthly patrons could understand the (e.g. there are more stars in our galaxy than there are grains of sand on all the beaches in the world). Even if they oversimplify, gaining attention can be useful.
Jay opens with these facts but moves on to discuss some of the implications. One of which is:
Outboard brain. You don’t need to memorize something if you know where to find it. For the past 30 years, I’ve been collecting tidbits of knowledge, frameworks for thinking and useful algorithms, at first on paper and now in bits. Most of this is on the Net. It helps me avoid reinventing the wheel. Haven’t you started building your self-help portfolio? Never mind, soon we’ll have the Library of Congress on our PDAs.
This is one of the intriguing notions I have been pondering as I teach and think about learning strategy. What does this realty mean for educators and trainers? Should we start to deemphasize factual information and focus on frameworks and processing skills? The thought being that we allow these "augmentation" devices to replace much of the cognitive load we currently carry for retaining factual information and we teach and design to support increasingly higher-order thinking skills.
A look at How People Learn: Bridging Research and Practice yields three principles we need to consider. One is connecting to previous knowledge, another is a need for deep factual information, and a third is metacognitive skills (a vast oversimplification, you should read the book for the whole story). The need for deep factual knowledge means that we don't stop teaching basic information but what is different?
An overused example is the calculator. I can remember when my dad brought home one of the first handheld calculators. The little red LED numbers and small size of the device (I think it weighed about 3 pounds) was a modern marvel. Within just a few years teachers feared the devices would undermine teaching math and I can clearly remember all of the rules instituted to stop the possibility of cheating with calculators. But now, in 3rd or 4th grade, kids are augmenting basic math with the use of calculators. Some will lament that they are "losing" basic skills and I am sure they are. But does it matter if we can move this cognitive load to external sources?
The biggest change is that we must shift to emphasize the third principle: metacognitive skills. People must learn to learn, unlearn, and relearn as quickly as possible. They therefore must aware of how they learn best. This self-awareness is often what is lacking and, if Jay's notion of "outboard brains" is going to become increasingly important, then metacognitive skills will increasingly become the most critical component we should teach.
Nate says he is continuing to pick on me by commenting on my posts. I am just glad to have one person who has a passing interest in what I am rambling about on here! Let's jump back into the discussion, which spans a couple of posts:
Now, this only works if a significant number of us engaged in the field are actually reading and writing...
Yes! That is part of my point exactly. And when do we know we have reached that point? According to the latest Pew study, 7% of Americans blog. Is that critical mass? If we had 7% of AECT members blogging, would it be enough? If it is just the two of us, I am not sure we are there (I believe this one is a no-brainer).
From Nate's earlier post
And the "current peer-review/journal system for research dissemination" has already broken down. Society hasn’t caught up with that yet.
And, from his more recent post"
Blog engines COULD (and SHOULD) replace current juried research publication.
Is this similar to the paperless office?? I think we need to make sure we avoid what Collins and Porras call, "the tyranny of the or." Let's think in terms of and, rather than traditional publishing or blogging. Many possibilities exist, we should not throw out the baby with the bathwater. However, I agree that journals are going to have to evolve in order to remain relevant.
I caught snippets of two CNN shows discussing the blogosphere today.
I just watched a segment on CNN's In the Money where they were debating the power of blogs and how the mainstream media needed to take blogging into account when reporting the news. The discussion was interesting because Howard Kurtz from Reliable Sources described how big media now had to adapt to the nature of blogs and that this is a turning point for television news much like the change newspapers had to face when television news began to dominate.
The only comment I have about the exchange is to note that one of the In the Money co-hosts Susan Lisovicz seemed to ask whether or not there should be some form of regulation for bloggers and what they had to say because there have been cases where stories have started and spread on the blogosphere and then turned out not to be true. I applaud Kurtz' response because he noted that big media, despite all of its controls, had also had its share of high-profile blunders recently. The difference is that in the blogosphere, such mistakes are exposed within a couple of days or even hours but with major media outlets, retractions have sometimes taken weeks (e.g. the Dan Rather debacle this past fall).
The debate is one that has fired up again after the White House journalist Jeff Gannon had some unseemly photos posted on a blog and Eason Jordan resigned from CNN (Newsday.com Story). I am not going to get into the specifics on that case because this is not a political or journalism blog, but one of the remarks made on CNN's Reliable Sources in relation to blogging itself is of interest:
[some say that]...the blogosphere as a self- correcting perfect democracy where the participants supply accountability and oversight. The other side of that coin is to say that the mob is headless.
See http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0502/20/rs.01.html for the full transcript of this conversation.
If we begin to look at blogs as an alternate form of communication in the academic space, how do we reconcile this with the lack of oversight that comes from the publishing in academic journals? Is it enough to say that the blogosphere will cleanse itself (as in an OSOSS? I know this gets into epistemological and even ontological issues around the debate but I am concerned with more pragmatic concerns. Even in the two weeks I found people posting ideas that they think are truly breaking new ground in the field of instructional design and e-learning but they were really only spouting things that have been said for years. In some of these posts there was near-plagiarism (meaning that I believe the person was doing this intentionally) and in other cases it was clear that the lack of attribution were more related to ignorance.
In academia, are blogs a replacement for traditional publishing? An addendum? Do they merely fill the space between private communication (e.g. email) and public research dissemination? Is the critical mass in academia in place to self-regulate?
I generally look to history when people say, "X, Y, or, Z way of doing things is dead." To say that academic publishing as we know it is dead is as premature as saying computers will result in a paperless office. Maybe, one day, but the file cabinets in my cube would say that day is still far in the future. In the meantime, I expect that we will begin to see some interesting blends that continue to force us to confront the flow of information in new ways.
Just a minor tweak to the site. This is not the major template overhaul I keep promising myself I will get to very soon (as in, I have been saying this since I started this site). But an explanation is in order for site documentation purposes.
I am simplifying my feed options by only offering only the Feedburner feed under Site Syndication Options. I looked at adding the button from quicksub but the improvements made by the Feedburner folks to the XML feed page made that unnecessary. Even though not as many aggregators are listed, I still like the basic approach they have taken.
I also added the new Feedburner counter to see how few people are subscribed to my feed. Although it is a bit misleading because I am sure that many thousands were subscribed only to the blog feed and they would not show up in my Feedburner count .
I hope the teachers in my class this semeseter will take a look at this article on Blogging Teachers and think about our recent class discussion on blogging.
The support and the potential learning is huge!
Cognitive Dissonance » Some Definitions and a Rationale
Nate, I'll take a Sam Adams in Orlando!
First let me say that the fact that we are holding this conversation between two blogs shows that I agree more than disagree with Nate. I also think that we are really talking about different parts of the same problem.
I think my point is that sometimes when you are a relatively early adopter of new technology, it can seem like everyone else is lagging behind. As Ray Kurzweil posited, innovations have very long tails on the front end and then a confluence of things (usually, there is some key element or technology still missing) happen and we reach a tipping point (in other words, acceptance of innovation does not follow a linear path). However, looking back at history it seems that timelines were much shorter than they actually were.
Think back to when people were saying, "I do NOT have time to deal with email. There is nothing I need to know so quickly that a letter isn’t fast enough – and if there is, use the phone."
It took several decades for email to become an overnight sensation. Many changes had to happen before it reached a tipping point. Can you remember the horrible command line prompts for entering email addresses? Back before there were address books and one click could add a person to your contact list, email was very user-unfriendly. The learning curve just to get to the basics was very steep. It was only after email became much easier to use that it exploded into relative ubiquity. News aggregators (even the term sounds unfriendly) and blogs are still not as easy to use as they should be. Not that one or the other by itself is complex but, the combination is still somewhat confusing (I do what with that orange chicklet on the side of the page? Why does one chicklet say XML, another RDF, and another RSS?). For those of us who have multiple RSS feeds on our blogs and use Flickr, Feedburner, and a myriad of other gadgets, a simple blog and aggregator seems like an easy combination. But, I think we have become experts without realizing it (not that I would even begin to compare myself with the true "cutting edge" folks who are coding and creating apps faster than I can type). So, one issue is the relative immaturity of the technology.
I’m trying to convince them that the process of doing research involves more than reading what somebody wrote about the subject 3 years ago...the old-school notion that you don’t talk about your research until it’s done because somebody might steal it used to be valid. But that was in the old days when the conversations were private. We’re suggesting that the new modes of conversation are public, and as such, constitute a form of protection.
My second point (and one perhaps a little more germane to the pragmatism of the conversation) is that this is also cost-benefit issue. While it is increasingly important to look at rapidly emerging conversations for research (in all their forms), people do not get tenure, promotions, or raises for blogging (in fact, blogging in the corporate world can get you fired).
All this is to say that this is larger than the adoption of a particular technology. It is one of systemic change that requires deeper exploration beyond learning how to blog or use an aggregator. It is about the acceleration of knowledge-sharing and the resulting breakdown of the current peer-review/journal system for research dissemination. Of course, people are working on these problems. David Wiley has been pushing the envelope on all of these issues for sometime (e.g. Pitch - server problems at the time of this writing). But we are not there yet.
Change is happening, albeit slower than some would like and much faster than others care to admit. We are caught in the middle with some immature tools and a vision of what is possible. I love people (because I am one) who used to say (circa Windows 3.0), "Remember DOS? Now everyone thinks computers are easy with Windows but they don't know how the computer really works."
We'll be the ones who say, "I remember when our PIAs (personal information assistants) were called aggregators and you actually had to copy and paste those long URIs in by hand. And the chicklets, do you remember those?? These folks today don't know how good they have it now that they can publish their thoughts and instantly have people with related thoughts automatically added to their PIAs. It's almost like they really don't understand how any of this stuff works on the back end." And, more importantly, "If I don't get more published on my blog this year and more peer comments, I'll never make tenure or get promoted!"
That's when we'll know the technology has arrived. Of course, if everyone sits around waiting for that moment to occur, it never gets here and that's why I applaud Nate for pushing change by starting the conversation.
Terra Incognita: Digital Divide
UPDATE: Also see Nate's Cognitive Dissonance post for the beginning of this conversation.
Well, I am not going to dispute Nate here on the basic point but I have to ask some questions and make sure that we have some clarifications.
First, I know that Nate is talking about digital technologies here but I caution that "technology" itself is broad. I think it is ok to have people who are focused on instructional methods, process, or systemic change (also technologies). When you have a career focused on very important research in a particular area (within our field), does it make sense to take away from your passion and, arguably very important work to become more digitally literate? In some ways the answer is yes because part of what we do as researchers is communicate that research. There is no doubt that the ways in which we communicate are changing and, as professionals, we must stay abreast of the changes to make sure research improves practice. But to think that everyone in AECT, or even the majority, should be trying to keep up with every digital tool that is currently emerging is a mistake. This leads to my second point on the digital tools themselves:
The speed at which the "tools" are coming at us and evolving is increasing. Additionally, despite the great tools, we often throw tools out without understanding the problem or opportunity we are seeking to address.
I find myself, someone who loves to play with every new tech, increasingly frustrated with version-itis and the latest "cool tool" that we do not have time to figure out (in part because the lack of user-friendliness to many of these tools is horrific - especially many of the more advanced blogging and RSS tools). It seems that sometimes the people figuring out these tools and using them are people who have a great deal of free time on their hands or they have a passion for research in the area of hard technology (see point #1 on doing good research on other things important to our field).
For people who have to actually accomplish other research tasks, perhaps learning all the new tools is not where we should be focused. Perhaps, someone should be thinking about the implications for good design and instruction.
Finally, I have to ask, what tools are we talking about here? Is it the web (or is that now out of fashion?) perhaps blogging (but simple blogging is already passé for those on the leading edge). Wikis are still emerging but they have lost some of their luster. Maybe it's Podcasting (so far "fun" for the techies but few well-designed Podcasts have been produced - for this we do not need new theory, we should go back and read books and papers written in the 1950's on quality educational radio). Or, maybe we should forget blogging and go with vlogging or moblogging? You get my point.
As an organization, AECT has the same problems as many of the people that belong to it: it has limited funds and resources to constantly maintain the cutting edge. In terms of individuals in the organization, there are a number of people in AECT who are participating in the new digital landscape. And, while I agree with Nate that, as an organization we should stay abreast of hard technology trends, it is also important that we offer some calm to the increasingly insane storm of flavor-of-the-month technology to make sure that we are also focused on meeting the needs of learners through good methods, systemic change, and solid instructional design theory.
Most people will use technologies that meet their needs and not the other way around. This fact does not make it any less frustrating for those of us who are comfortable with new technology and who wish others would just get with it! (Hmmm...maybe time to refresh my memory on change management lit might be in order here?).
How’s that for some devil’s advocate fodder?
Wired News: Fast-Moving Tech at Demo
More RSS personalization tools. I furled a few sites mentioned on Wired yesterday that showcased companies from Demo but one today deserves further consideration: Pluck.
Index RSS feeds by time (in other words watch for a particular feed or word for a certain amount of time while it is relevant to you); aggregate other file types on your computer, websites, etc. into digests.
And current versions are free. I will add this to my stack of programs to try out.
CBS News | Coming Soon: Immortality? | February 13, 2005 16:00:16
Ray Kurzweil predicts technological innovations could create immortality in as few as 20 years. Such predictions have been around for a long time but Kurzweil has a pretty decent futurist track record.
Of course, Kurzweil is known for his observations on the fact that amount of available knowledge doubling every year and demonstrating the accelerating pace of discovery. These are some of my favorite "eye-openers" in getting teachers and corporate training folks to think out-of-the box about how we educate. I might have to pick up a copy of this new book to see if his insights on immortality are equally profound!
Given all the implications for society, I am not sure whether immortality is a utopian or dystopian vision but that is a post for a different blog...
Inside Higher Ed is intended to give the age-old Chronicle
a run for its money. I took a quick look at the beta version of Inside Higher Ed this morning and my first questions was: Where's the RSS??!!!
Hard to believe anyone would launch a site these days (especially a news site) without obvious RSS feeds.
Hopefully that is an oversight of the Beta version that will be fixed by the time 1.0 is ready.
Kim Cavanaugh's Brain Frieze: Teachers as Free Agents
Kim hits on a different version of an idea I have playfully tossed around with students in the graduate class I teach. However, I think there is more to the story than free agency. Let's face it, states and local education boards only have so much money. In this day and age, our school corporations are laying teachers off, not looking to spend more money.
The issue is one of systemic change and systemic change rarely happens from within the system.
But what about this scenario: Personal learning networks. This would be an extension of home schooling. I know there are some people who already work cooperatively to home school their children but, what if this were to become a little more formal. If I had between 7-10 kids at the same age from different families, parents could agree to take one day every other week to watch or teach. For subjects where the group did not have a parent with expertise, a teaching consultant could be hired. The best consultants could command the best salaries and would charge like attorneys - by the hour. Imagine charging $50-100/hour and having 8-10 clients you visit on a weekly basis! With 7-10 students, the cost could be split among the families, thus making it affordable.
The teaching consultant could extend their presence by making themselves available via message boards or chat.
In my class, I extend this and explain further how technology can (and is for a few people I know who are currently doing cooperative home schooling) play an important role in helping to personalize education.
The risk of market-based proposals like this is that we step onto a very slippery slope of shutting out students from lower SES situations. However, with teaching becoming the #1 in-demand profession by 2012, there is an increasing possibility of market-driven pricing for teacher services.
Creating Passionate Users: Spiral learning
It is great to see people in other fields beginning to come to terms with the things people in instructional design have been saying for years (see Keller’s ARCs Model and Gange’s Nine Events of Instruction)! I agree with Kathy’s restatement of Carroll’s (1992) belief in a minimalist approach to instruction. We often dump way to much on people thinking that the more they have the better. We often winnow down instruction by asking, "What is nice to know versus need to know?" But it is less often the case that we ask, "What is the least the learner needs to know?"
However, Kathy makes some of the same mistakes as others have made. That is making the assumption that any model can be used in all situations and that all learning occurs in the same way.
I have two points that correspond to the reference to models and the reference by analogy to learning.
One is that any design model has its limitations (even a spiral one). To make the assumption that a single model covers all design situations is what has led to harsh criticism of model-based approaches in general (for ISD models see a summary of this debate in Gordon and Zemke’s (2000) The Attack on ISD and Zemke and Rossett’s (2002) A Hard Look at ISD.
Different situations require different approaches to the design process. If you are in company with great creative freedom, then a completely open spiral approach might be appropriate. But, in a highly regulated environment, a more stepwise approach might be more appropriate. This does not mean that iterative activity is not occurring in both situations only that the type of guidance needed is different.
Another issue with models is how we view the purpose of the model itself. Is it supposed to be a step-by-step instruction guide for the designer? Is it intended to educate or communicate to managers, end users? Is it supposed to provide general guidelines on an approach? Or is it intended to assist project managers accurately determine resource needs? Is the model used to accurately describe how design occurs or prescribe real activities?
As a designer, I want to know the following about any process model (cf. Reigeluth, 1999 on instructional design theory).
1. What are the implicit values the model builder holds?
2. In what context is the model most appropriate?
3. How to particular methods vary based on specific situations in which the model is implemented?
Of course, answering these questions requires a degree of formative research and this is not usually done on a formal level for many models.
My second comment is on the learning process (which Kathy extends from her design model). Learning is an extremely complex phenomenon that people have been trying to understand for years. Analogous to the issues with design models, learning is facilitated (i.e. instruction) in different ways for different people. Complicating the matter even further, learning occurs for the same person in different ways at different times. This means that what is motivating for someone (or for different people) at one point might actually be annoying or hinder learning at another. I have seen folks from an HCI background (my doctoral minor) make this same mistake. The techniques for assessing a quality UI are not the same as the assessing whether learning or better performance is achieved after an instructional event. We want instruction to be engaging but, even if it is not, it does not mean that no learning occurs.
Again, interesting posts and I look forward to reading more from this blog.
References
Carroll, J. M. (1992). Minimalist documentation. In H. D. Stolovitch & E. J. Keeps (Eds.), Hanbook of Human Performance Technology (pp. 331-351). San Fransisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Gordon, J., & Zemke, R. (2000, April 2000). The Attack on ISD. Training, 42-53.
Reigeluth, C. M. (1999). What is instructional design theory and how is it changing? In C. M. Reigeluth (Ed.), Instructional-design theories and models volume II: A new paradigm of instructional theory.Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Zemke, R., & Rossett, A. (2002). A hard look at ISD. Training, 26-34.
I have to echo Brian's Furl Comments on the issues with CiteULike. I love the idea but several of the links I tried led me to academic journals that were locked behind subscription access. Of course, this points to the much bigger issue of open access to research and is something I discussed in my previous post on the NIH allowing free access to government-funded healthcare research.
It is not that the publishers of journals do not do good things with the money generated by subscriptions (ok, some publishers do good things with the money they generate). In addition to the administrative costs required to put together a quality publication, academic journal subscription fees often help to support non-profit organizations, provide continuing education, and even finance small research grants.
However, I believe the model is changing and organizations that depend on journal subscriptions as a primary source of revenue are going to have to rethink their business models. The benefit, as Brian points out, is more open access to knowledge that can help break down barriers between academia and the "real world."
For every benefit there is a cost. It might mean that professional organizations have to raise fees in other areas. This is a tough thing to do if members see the primary value of there membership as exclusive access to information.
In many ways, this leads to the discussions that are occurring within many professional organizations about how to maintain their structure (should they even be maintained?) or to redefine their purpose altogether. This is certainly a hot topic for members of AECT as noted by several entries on Cognitive Dissonance.
Seth's Blog: Why this "Internet thing" is just starting
I agree with Seth's posting and he cites some interesting reasons for his assertion. I think that #5 (wifi) might be the most important proposition. To compare to books: Books did not really take off with the printing press, they took off when book binding advanced many, many years later. Before cheap, light-weight binding, books were too heavy and expensive to lug around so they were chained to pulpits, libraries, etc. (see the analogy?)
Usually a single technology seems revolutionary but it is only when a confluence of technologies come together that the most massive changes occur. (and this takes much longer than early evangelists think it will).
The New York Times > Education > Tiny District Finds Bonanza of Pupils and Funds Online (free registration required)
This article describes the amazing boom in online K-12 schools. While the numbers struck me as interesting (one Colorado school had more than 1,000 students sign up in a short time and was getting $15 million in state funding), the article had a somewhat negative tone regarding online K-12 schools.
"Cyberschools are the 800-pound gorilla of the choice movement, although vouchers and charter schools get a lot more attention," said William Moloney..."
To me it seems the issue of choice is the real driver. It is not that online schools will "take over" or completely replace school as we know it but that choice for students and parents is increasing. Over time I am sure many models will emerge that include online, traditional, and mixed educational modes. Personalization, not distance or technology is what people want. It means that the typical school bureaucracy might actually have to become more responsive to the needs of the students and parents!
I will add that choice applies not just to students but to teachers too. I have seen more than one online school advertising for certified teachers to teach, even across state borders. Think of being able to compare salaries for online teaching from 10-20 states or for mixing online and classroom teaching.
I still predict that we will know that the choice movement (I am not sure "choice" is a movement but oh well) has really arrived when educational administrations start to try to push laws into place to inhibit the growth of alternative entities.
David Wiley has an excellent design taxonomy for learning objects that he created as part of his LODAS design theory (Word Doc). David is on my dissertation committee and I am working from a grounded perspective, rather than a theoretical one. As those of you who follow this blog know, I am working on a user-centered ISD process model for learning objects in a corporate environment. I am using formative methodology to create this model based on the practice of an instructional design team.
One of the issues that came up in this formative effort was the need to classify learning objects not based on their design (which David’s taxonomy addresses) but based on their reusability status. I thought I would reveal a brief overview of this taxonomy here so that others might be able to ponder it a bit. It is not yet complete and it focuses only on one dimension: the nature of reusability. There is another dimension that I am considering and that is one of formality.
To follow Wiley’s (Wiley, 2000) definition of a learning object, "any digital resource that can be used to support learning" (p. 23) means that anything on the internet can be used to support learning. At first I was a bit unsure of this definition because I had been looking at how learning objects were being described from a SCORM or LMS vendor perspective. These objects being chunks of content that are formally designated as learning objects based on LOM or some other proprietary code. However, as I am finding in my research with people doing the design work, informal learning objects are more in line with what Wiley was talking about. Even in a corporate environment where the public internet is more off-limits, intranets are chocked full of existing content that can be used as-is or with some modification that are not formally tagged as learning objects in the metadata sense of the term. But both are relevant to the instructional designer albeit in different ways.
So, with the caveat that I am still pondering the formal/informal dimension and how to represent it, here is the other dimension that seems to be more useful and straightforward:
Reusable: These are content components that are pulled directly into the course from other sources and an exact copy is used as-is in the new course. Content might also be created for the course with the specific intent that it be reused as-is in other courses.
Repurposeable: Content that is pulled into the course from other sources but modified to work in the course. Similar to reusable objects, there might be cases where objects can be created for your particular course project that can be easily repurposed for use in another course. An example of this might be a game interface for a self-check exercise built in Flash™ where the graphics, scoring engine, and interaction remain the same but new questions can easily be entered into the exercise when it is put in a different course.
Sharable: Content that lives outside of the course that you are building. In this case, there is one instance of the object in a repository (image, video, animation) and that object is shared in many different courses. A change to the object changes the content of all of the courses where the object is used.
Non-reusable: content that is specific to the course that is not intended to be re-used outside of that course. The majority of development time for courses might be on the non-reusable parts of the course. This might include context around other learning objects and any proprietary content.
Note that this quick rendition does not include all of the background research and thinking that has gone into this and I realize there are many other possible ways to view this issue (e.g. please see the extensive work on this topic by Wayne Hodgins and others). For all of that background, you’ll just have to wait for the whole dissertation. This is just a small part of what is emerging based on my inquiry into instructional designers and what they need to effectively use learning objects in a particular environment.
Reference
Wiley, D. A. (2000). Learning object design and sequencing theory. Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation, Brigham Young University.
PDF Online at: http://wiley.ed.usu.edu/docs/dissertation.pdf
I saw this article listed on elearningpost and had to make a comment. The link to the learning principles is appreciated but I have to take issue with the statement on elearningpost.com that: "These can also be viewed as design principles."
NO THAT IS NOT CORRECT! Learning theory does not equate directly to design theory. They are quite different entities, though one can and should inform the other.
I think the person who did the best job of clarifying this difference for me is Dr. Molenda in IST at Indiana University (his retirement this year will leave a void in the field).
He used analogy to the medical field that I have thought about quite a bit and tried to add to with my own examples. A doctor has a theory on how a disease progresses or is transmitted. This theory would inform the doctor about prognosis, likelihood of passing the disease to someone else, etc. This is analogous to learning theory.
The doctor also has theories about how to treat the disease. These treatments may or may not have a direct relationship to the disease theory but might be the most effective treatment in a given context. Treatment theories would be analogous to design theories.
For example, telling someone to take a couple of aspirin and a decongestant to treat a cold has very little direct relationship with how a cold virus infects a person or how it multiplies once inside the body. It is, however, an effective treatment for most people because it alleviates symptoms until the body rids itself of the virus. There are other possible remedies for a cold that might include anti-viral medications, antibiotics (for non-viral infections), zinc, echinacea tea, or even chicken soup. Any of these might be appropriate given the state of the illness.
Similarly, many instructional designs can be used to affect a particular learning objective. If you were to look at principle 2 in the article:
Principle Two: The brain is a social brain. "For the first year or two of life outside the womb, our brains are in the most pliable, impressionable, and receptive state they will ever be in" (Zen Physics, P.18). We begin to be shaped as our immensely receptive brain/minds interact with our early environment and interpersonal relationships. Vygotsky was partially responsible for bringing the social construction of knowledge to our awareness. It is through this dynamic interaction with others that therapy works, for instance. It is now clear that throughout our lives, our brain/minds change in response to their engagement with others - so much so that individuals must always be seen to be integral parts of larger social systems. Indeed, part of our identity depends on establishing community and finding ways to belong. Learning, therefore, is profoundly influenced by the nature of the social relationships within which people find themselves.
It tells us nothing about how to develop instruction to facilitate social interaction or even what we mean by social interaction. More importantly, it does not tell us the conditions and situations under which various type of social interaction would be most useful (c.f. Reigeluth, 1999). In a given situation, it might be possible that reading a book can get to the same learning objective more efficiently than a group exercise (unlike many people, I would argue that reading is a social interaction between the author and the reader).
A good instructional design theory would help us make decisions about appropriate methods in particular situations while a good learning theory helps us understand the processes that occur within the person. I recommend taking a look at the principles but had to put two-cents in on the pointer
Reference
Reigeluth, C. M. (1999). What is instructional design theory and how is it changing? In C. M. Reigeluth (Ed.), Instructional-design theories and models volume II: A new paradigm of instructional theory. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Wired News: Photographer Seeks Resolution
From Wired today. The Gigapxl Project showcases one man's photo journey with an amazing homemade 4 gigapixel camera. The site has samples of the photos with cropped zooms to show just how much detail a 4 gigapixel camera can capture (a four-football-field-wide sized image can be resolved down to a single blade of grass).
A couple of my favorites include:
People Watching
San Diego Night
Balboa Park Reflecting Pool
And I was wondering if I should upgrade to 4 megapixels! I think I'll wait for an upgrade!
Couros Blog - Frequent Rants from an Ed. Tech'er: The Evolution of Personal Audio
Alec points to the article "Bring the Noise: The Evolution of Portable Audio" as an interesting summary of the history of audio devices. I agree with his summary of the article but, as usual, it sparked a different train of thought for me.
On a recent trip to Chicago I marveled at the fact that nearly everyone on the streets of the city seemed to have the telltale signs of some form of audio device: earbuds or headphones. In a big city, the ability to enjoy music and eliminate the noise of traffic and other people is certainly a benefit that probably provides a certain measure of stress relief.
A recent stroll through the much smaller streets of my current hometown: Bloomington, IN yielded a similar picture. In a hip college town, groovin' with the latest technology is to be expected, right? The aspect to this that began to disturb me, however, was when I was in a local music store browsing some used CDs (yes, old-fashioned CDs) and a young man was clearly jamming to some tunes and lost in his own audio cocoon. He picked out a CD and went to the counter, still slightly gyrating his head to his music, paid for his purchase and left the store without once turning down his music or speaking to the clerk.
I have since seen this occurring more and more as if the audio cocoon is a way of excusing a lack of interaction with other people. Music has the ability to unify us with other like-minded individuals, especially with all of the digital sharing options that are now available but I have to wonder about what we lose when we tune out the rest of the world? Do we lose a sense of what it means to be in the city or interact with a clerk at the store? Is there something wrong with this?
I am not bemoaning the move to new technology or these young whipper-snappers and their new-fangled gadgets (being quite the gadget addict myself), it is more of an observation and open question on how we interface with the world given the opportunities to filter our experiences through these new digital lenses.
Since I commute an hour and ten minutes each way to work, I have time on my hands to listen to a little public radio.
There are two stories that caught my ear on public radio this week one from NPR and the other on Marketplace (American Public Media). They both show how healthcare is now beginning to feel the wave of change that long ago washed over other organizations (to varying degrees). One is that the NIH will now have to provide a FREE repository of government-funded healthcare studies on their website.
It is shocking to me that such a repository does not already exist and that it took 10 YEARS of lobbying to make it happen. Who is resisting? The publishers of scientific journals, of course. If you get a chance, listen to the story. The arguments of the publishing lobby seem a bit weak to me (i.e. we pay for editorial boards, vetting, and indexing). Maybe they need to consider a new model for these things?? I know change is hard but...
The other story about empowering healthcare consumers is from a different perspective. The story is titled Your Genes in a Box and it describes how you can now go online and order a genetic test on yourself. The company, called DNAdirect, has you fill out a bio (including potential health risk factors) sends some swabs to you in the mail, you send them back and a few days later you log in to a personalized website to see whether you have genetic predispositions for the risk factors in your family history.
I am not sure how sophisticated this is yet but the big change is that your personal doctor is not involved. You can get this diagnostic information yourself and begin to make decisions about your own healthcare. While sites like WebMD have given some power to consumers, this begins to really shift the control to the individual about his or her own health. Now, whether the vast majority of couch potatoes will take advantage is a different story
Wired News: Games Join Space Race
I read this article with great interest because I not only have a pressing need to understand the value of games for my current corporate training role but also have a great love of space exploration from the eight years I spent working in a planetarium (and the online planetarium community I still run).
I have to admit I am a bit skeptical when it comes to saying games are a "revolution" in education (I am not sure there are any real "revolutions" in education but that is for a future post). There are two issues that nag me when thinking of games, one is that they take a very long time to produce and are very expensive, which does not help with the overwhelmingly fast flow of information and rapid changes to knowledge. The other is that they are very designer-centric and go against the notion of personalization (what if I hate playing games and just want the information?). I know that many of the MMOGs have social systems that are formed by the people who play the games but I am not sure gaming is a one-size-fits-all instructional solution.
That rant aside, the scenario presented in SpaceStationSim offers (at least to me) a new possibility. Games as a knowledge creation tool rather than a knowledge dissemination tool. This combination of simulation-based acquisition (SBA) and gaming could be an extremely powerful way not only to have people immersed in a world but also to harness the thinking power of 100’s or 1000’s of people to jointly solve very difficult problems (could this be a connection between RSS technologies and gaming?). If you create rules that are indicative of the real environment (i.e. space) and then allow people to "play" the game within those parameters, there is great potential for creativity. If you create a bad space station, for example, game over. But gamers will keep trying to figure out the rules until they have a workable solution. They just might come up with things that people playing by "the rules" (i.e. scientists, engineers) have not thought of because gamers approach problem solving differently (try it out and fail quickly and repeatedly rather than trying to sit and theorize the perfect solution ahead of time).
Of course, using this approach to simulations in much more fluid, soft-skills environments will require AI more complex than is affordable right now but there are endless possibilities for this sort of activity. If you could design an aircraft (or spacecraft) this way, could you re-organize a business this way? The key is in capturing user input as a problem-solving tool and having the system learn this and apply it to everyone else playing the game. This is a far cry from how we currently see games in training, which is to have people learn some pre-determined set of skills (even if the sim is extremely complex and interactive). Any data gathered in current training/learning sims is generally to help the learner understand what they did wrong rather than to provide real input into solving a larger problem. In a complex environment, so much is unknown it seems as though knowledge gathering might be a more fruitful avenue to explore than designing specific outcome-based sims.
From Brian Lamb:
"Today also was distinguished by an aggressive wave of Trackback spam attacks (including ones on this weblog). Quoting Stephen Downes: "this is the end of Technorati, Blogdex (which is already featuring some of these sites in its top ten) and the rest."
I too was hit by trackback spam on a massive level yesterday. It seemed to come in two waves. One about 2:00am to 3:00am EST and one about 8:30am to 9:30am. I have my site set to notify me when comments or trackbacks are posted and I had about 54 notifications when I opened my email.
This is unfortunate and one of my weekend projects will be to install the Blacklist plugin. Upgrading to MT 3.15 has stopped comment spam from making it to the blog but now the fight shifts to a different front.
Don’t mistake what I am about to write as support for spammers but part of me thinks that this is part of the "wild west" of the digital domain. Some of what makes the new era of information publishing so appealing is that it is open and untamed. For those who feel that this gives a voice to many heretofore unheard people, there is an air of subversiveness to the whole business of open information. It breaks down the walls the power once held by media moguls to share and produce information.
The same is true for spammers. It is a part of the whole package. Kind of like having freedom but not wanting responsibility or claiming to be tolerant but not tolerating the intolerant. Most spammers are people who had no voice in the capitalist order and the ability to latch on to the openness of information, tagging, etc. has given voice to them as they make their way in the world too.
But now, it’s off to do everything I can do to maintain my information-producing power (as little of it as there is) and squelch the power of others to infringe on my new-found digital voice with their various inducements for poker and sexual enhancements through whatever means I can find.
