Let's Not Just Do Things The Way We're Used To Because That's All We Know...

There is a group of us who gather regularly in Second Life (come join us in Bam) to talk about a lot of things, but most things of an educational nature. lately we have been talking a lot about learning communities, tools for reaching learners, and what's important to us as adult educators as we and our learners move forward.

In one of these recent conversations one of my colleagues made the following statement:

"let's not just do things the way we're used to because that's all we know"

As educators we are a the cusp of a whole new paradigm of learning - the classrooms that have been around since the time of Victorian England (Dickens and Nietzsche would not feel out of place in our classrooms - can tat be said of just about any other part of our modern society?) and before are becoming the least popular way for our learners to learn - they are looking for convenience, mobility, and flexibility. For many learning is just another product or commodity to be purchased and consumed where and when they want to, not where a brick institution or an old lecturer tells them too.

We have to meet our learners where they are - so keeping this quote in mind we have to know what it is they are using to get their information, when they want to learn, and how they want to learn - knowing these things is critical for the future of post-secondary education.

Will the classroom ever go away completely - probably not, but the regularly scheduled class in a brick classroom may - replaced by mobile learning that can happen anywhere and the PLE that meets the learners needs. We will need to be better at engaging our learners and giving them a larger voice in what exactly their learning looks like. There will have to be options - where you learn, how you learn, when you learn.

So keep in mind my friend's quote - "let's not just do things the way we're used to because that's all we know" - let's do things because they are best for learning and best for our learners. Hold on, it's going to be a bumpy ride...

Personal Living Networks... AHA!!!

One of the best education blogs out there is Will Richardson's Weblogg-ed. It's one of my regular stops in the blogosphere and should be one of yours too.

In a recent post he talks about "Personal Living Networks", and I had an AHA! moment. He quotes Chris Lott:

“In the emerging model, students learn to navigate, assess, construct and participate in a living network that comprises the heart of their learning network and they take that with them when their time as part of any particular institution’s offerings come to a change…’Going to school’ is an activity that has a life and dies; learning is a continuing process. Enrollments and degree programs terminate; personal living networks accompany learners through life– the ultimate educational institution– serving as companion, confidante, and oracle alike.” Chris Lott

Chris Lott is another must read for educators, and he in fact uses the term "personal living environment", feeling that limiting it personal learning environment is too narrow a focus.

Anyone who has read my blog know that I personally believe that PLEs (Personal Learning Environments) are the future of education - they will get us out of our neat rows of desks in classrooms, away from one-way lectures, and allow us to deliver education when, where, how, and why, learners want it. They will place more responsibility on learners to become engaged in their learning, to collaborate with each other and their facilitators, to use mobile devices to get learning when and where they are at and to participate in an open educational environment. In other words what I have coined as ECMO - Engagement, Collaboration, Mobility, and Openness.

What Will Richardson and Chris Lott are saying makes so much sense - it is more than just personal learning - it has to be personal living, that education is a life-long process that they have to manage along with the rest of their life.

I love what Chris Lott says:

"“Going to school” is an activity that has a life and dies; learning is a continuing process. Enrollments and degree programs terminate; personal living networks accompany learners through life– the ultimate educational institution– serving as companion, confidante, and oracle alike."

This is what we as educators have to instill in our learners - if we do nothing else, we must do this...


(Photo - "Collaborative Technology Labs"- by MSU Libraries)

It's So Simple!...

Just finished reading John Maeda's "The Laws of Simplicity". It should be required reading for all educators, in fact for all learners. A very small book (deliberately limited to 100 pages), it lays out 10 laws and three keys to simplicity (one of which is that simplicity cannot exist without complexity - how else would you be able to recognize simplicity?).

For me the key point of the book is Law 10 - The One - Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious and adding the meaningful - to me, as an educator, this describes learning in a nutshell. It also supports my position that the future of learning is in the hands of learners and their development of personalized learning environments - the PLEs that I keep going on about.

The Laws of Simplicity are very much an evolving concept and there is a lot of great material at the lawsofsimplicty.com Web site. of particular interest to me are all of the resources John Maeda has added to the site along with his posts on some of the most fascinating designs out there today.

John Maeda has recently been named the next president of the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). Here is probably the most unique presidential acceptance I have ever seen - but it so fits. I can only imagine what great hings are going to happen at RISD with John Maeda's leadership and vision.

I can't encourage you enough to read this book. Now if only I can bring some simplicity to my own life...

CIT 2007 - General Session - Dr. Chris Dede

Dr. Chris Dede of Harvard University presented on the changes to learning, thinking, and how we as educators have to adapt to the new learning environments.

Learners need to be empowered - collaborate to accomplish and learn. thinking is now distributed across space, time, and media.

Ubiquitous computing (wireless, mobile devices), along with smart objects and intelligent contexts have enabled augmented realities. Dr. Dede described the HARP (Handheld Augmented Reality Project) - a PDA with GPS that allowed a more engaged, immersive learning environment. the end state for this project would be the use of cell phones and modern wireless devices (again in my opinion the iPhone is the learning device/PLE of the future).

Learning now occurs in communities - these communities can even be distributed learning communities over great distances - what these communities have in common is mediated, situated immersion. There is a need to adopt a new pedagogy - we must teach the way learners learn. Augmented reality can be place independent or place dependent (Mystery@MIT is an example of a place dependent augmented reality).

Neomillennial learning styles:

• Collective learning
• Fluency in multiple media types (they are just tools)new forms of rhetoric

This has implications for professional development. Learners want to be part of it:

• Co-design
• Co-instruct
• Situated learning

Communities of unlearning are developing and this will be a critical professional development issue as we try to figure out how to meet learners where they are. For neomillennials media shapes their message, it shapes their participation, and infrastructures shape their civilization - implications for the future beyond McLuhan.

An interesting and relevant presentation - it describes the new learning landscape that we have to deal with as educators. Again the themes of engagement, mobility, flexibility, and going to where the learners are rang loud and clear...

The Future Of Media...

Wednesday night I attended the ITANS (Information Technology Industry Alliance Of Nova Scotia) annual dinner. The guest speaker was Ken Rutkowski, media personality, strategist and consultant. The theme of his talk was on the future of media. A couple of cool things came out - one - it's gonna be a busy future, and two - I'm mostly there now!

Ken started his talk by describing old media (TV, newspapers etc.) and new media (Web, RSS, blogs, YouTube etc.) and their products - old media's product is content, while new media's product is the audience - the customer is the advertiser (makes sense - hits is one of the measures of success for an online presence). This distinction may be a little simplistic, but it allows for an identification f new media.

Mobile devices, in particular cell phones (smart devices) is where it is at for the future of media. By 2010 there will 2 billion Nokia cell phones alone in circulation - cell phone penetration is growing and in some nations is well over 90%. I've talked about this in past posts and it's interesting to here an industry expert say the same thing. In my mind it's mobile devices that are the future of education, allowing learners to learn where, when, what, and how they want to.

Ken went on to talk about RSS and push technology, how RSS is pushing information - the customer is the product. I'm a big fan of RSS - push technology is the only way these days to make sense of the sea of information that we are swimming in. Content is everywhere - podcasts, YouTube etc.

Ken then did something very cool- the rest of his presentation consisted of him using Skype to contact "some of his friends", industry experts and personalities who shared their thoughts with us on the future of media. His friends included:

• Ralph Simon - creator of the ring tone
• Johnathan Wendel - professional gamer (Fatality)
• James Sun - CEO of Zoodango - a social networking site that facilitates both online and F2F social networking
• Scott Page - former member of Pink Floyd and Supertramp, now involved in Web-based technology allowing bands to communicate with their fans

The common thread from each of these incredible people is that it's content and mobility, along with penetration that is going to be the future of social media. Businesses and individuals need to get out there and be active parts of this always on environment - be part of community.

Thanks to ITANS and the organizers for a great evening and a wonderful dinner. I know that the students that we brought along had an amazing time - they saw a glimpse into the future - where they will be working and living, and that is too cool...

LMSs and PLEs - Friends Or Foes?

Most educators who have ever done any form of online, distance, or alternative delivery education are familiar with learning management systems (LMS). There are the well established commercial products such as WebCT and Blackboard and the more recent open source projects like Moodle and Sakai (the terms CMS, content management system and LCMS, learning content management system are also used, but I'm going to stick with LMS for the purposes of this post).

LMSs get used for all sorts of things - storing content, providing structure, learning outcomes, a common learning space for learners and faculty, scheduling, testing, learner progress, record keeping and more. LMSs have a place in education for delivering a common look and feel to learners, normally distance learners, and as a common location for all learners regardless of the delivery methodology to interact and learn together. LMSs are centrally administered and the course materials in them are traditionally created by faculty.

Then there is the personal learning environment or PLE. In a PLE learners take control of and manage their own learning including:

• setting their own learning outcomes
• managing their learning; managing both content and process
• communicating with others in the process of learning

This can be done using a combination of tools and technologies - presentations, lectures, discussions, podcasts, blogs, wikis, video, audio, and any other tool, technique or resources that helps a learner meet their learning styles and golas. The key here is that a PLE is developed, created, and managed by the learner and faculty provide a supportive, facilitative role. With new technologies, Web 2.0, and devices like Apple's iPhone (coming to Canada one of these days), learners now have absolute control over their learning environments and when, where, why, and how they learn.

So at face value it appears that LMSs and PLEs are at opposite ends of the learning spectrum - LMSs are organized and managed centrally by the creators and deliverers of learning and they are content-centric. PLEs are learner-centred and learner-organized, no two looking the same as they are developed and customized by their creators and users (the learner).

I believe that PLEs are the learning tool of the future - they are learning-centred, customized and transportable - with the right tools and technologies learning can take place anywhere inside or outside of traditional learning spaces. But many learning institutions, mine included, have invested a lot of time, effort, and money into LMSs that to date have been successful in delivering effective learning environments. Is there a middle ground where learners can take advantage of PLEs and institutions can still get use from their LMSs?

I think that there may be. If a learning institution adopts the PLE approach with its learners, it doesn't have to abandon any of its existing learning methods or tools, including any LMSs in use. In fact I believe that there is a role for a LMS to play in supporting and enhancing PLEs. Existing LMSs would provide excellent repositories for learning objects, data, tools and technologies that learners could access as part of their PLE creation and development, particularly as they are beginning the PLE development process and need extra support and facilitations. Institutions could use their LMSs in place to support the creativity of learner-created PLEs. As learners become more comfortable with the responsibility of creating and managing their PLE, they could then branch out beyond the LMS to find those tools and resources that work for their learning, and deposit the resources that they discover for other learners to use in the creation of their PLEs .

This way institutions and learners can transition away from LMSs and towards the use of PLEs without abandoning the investment made in LMSs. PLEs will require institutional support that the framework of existing LMSs can provide.

So LMSs and PLEs - friend or foe? Hmmm...

I Wouldn't Want To Be A Network TV Executive...

I'm not sure I would want to be a network TV executive right now. There are just too many other choices for people these days to entertain and amuse themselves with, not to mention all of the new and diverse learning opportunities being presented to them - and network TV isn't even near the top of the list. Cable TV, video games, the Web, computers, MP3 players, on-demand video, the list goes on and network TV isn't even on it.

And the news isn't getting any better for the TV executives either. According to an article from Macworld, more and more people in the US are watching online video than ever before - 181 minutes a month and an average of 68 clips - that represents time away from TV (and lower ratings and less advertising revenue, and...). It also represents some very important trends for educators. If people are watching more and more on-demand video, then that seems to be an educational learning tool that we need to use more of. Focus on developing useful video-based resources that learners can get access to whenever they want - the continuing development of the PLE.

There are still issues of access - not everyone has high-speed Internet access which is necessary for the "live" viewing of online video, but even that mountain is slowly becoming a mole hill. I see all sorts of opportunities now to create and distribute learning objects and materials through video - if the learners are watching, let's give them something to look at... Hmmm...


(Photo - "Forgotten television" by autowitch)

The Earth Moved - And It Was An iPod That Moved It...

Apple released its latest versions of the iPod this week and the one that has me all excited is the iPod Touch. Not only because it's basically an iPhone without the phone and for us in Canada will be the only way to get our iPhone "fix" for some time to come, but because I believe that the iPod Touch (and the iPhone when it finally arrives here) has the potential to revolutionize e-learning as we know it.

Why will they revolutionize e-learning? Well simply put, they will allow learners to connect from wherever they are and to create and use customized learning environments or PLEs. The iPod Touch has wi-fi capability which will allow learners to access the Internet and the learning resources there, not to mention any learning institution that makes itself available online (which these days is every learning institution). It will also very quickly have recording capability as well (the third-party accessory makers are probably working on that as we speak), so even the iPod Touch will truly become a two-way learning device, and just wait until the iPhone gets here...

With the iPod Touch and iPhone you now have devices that learners can use to get learning materials wherever they are in whatever form works for them - text, video, audio, or a combination of all three. Learners will be able to create a learning environment that is available 24/7 and suits their own personal approach to learning. Learning institutions will be able to reach learners not yet readily available - but will have to be creative in order to do it.

Can you just imagine the powerful learning that could occur if you gave learners a pre-loaded iPod Touch with all of their course materials on it instead of a pile of text books? Cheaper and much more in tune with the digital natives that we have now as learners and will have even more in the future (the true digital natives are coming - they are in K-12 now...).

There are several colleges and universities that have made course materials available through iTunes and its iTunes U page at the iTunes Store - lectures, presentations and course materials are available for download in podcast, vidcast and other formats - one more way for learners to create their own learning environments. Much of the material still requires registration, but much of it is free too (thanks MIT!).

So what does all this mean for us as adult educators? Well, for one thing, we must now seriously consider including these kinds of devices (the iPod Touch and iPhone are only the first of many...) and the learning resources that they can use whenever we begin to develop or modify curriculum and learning resources. We need to think about how to best use these tools to reach learners, what effect they will have on how we deliver learning, and how learners will use them to manage and customize their own learning experiences. I can quite honestly see myself delivering a course using these or similar devices in the not too distant future.

The Earth moved this week, and it was an iPod that moved it. Hmmm...

(Picture - "iPod touch" by peter.ca)

The 7th Mass Media: Mobile

There has been a lot written about the creation and use of Personal Learning Environments (PLEs). I believe that they are the future of adult education, providing flexible, customized and personalized learning environments, allowing learners to learn what where, when, and how they want to learn.

I have also been reading a lot and hearing a lot about the use of mobile devices as deliverers of PLEs. Here is a great post that talks about mass media and that mobile devices have become the 7th mass media. It is the blog of the book "Communities Dominate Brands - Business and Marketing Challenges for the21st century".

The following quote from the post caught my eye - "the mobile is the 7th Mass Media is as profound as Gutenberg inventing moveable type". People are using more mobile devices than computers or any other device to connect with each other and to access information (Pew Internet Report - PDF), and if you combine this use of mobile devices with the creation of PLES, couldn't you have the "perfect storm" of learning? I certainly think so. All I know is that I have to spend more time getting to understand how I can create and deliver learning opportunities, resources, and environments to learners using mobile devices.

Will the iPhone and the other next generation devices be the next great thing in learning? Hmmm...

Photo "1000 Mobiles" by Gaetan Lee

More on PLEs - A Great Set of Resources

One of the issues coming out of the creation of PLEs will be the ownership of the materials and content of the PLEs. This will be particularly true of workplace and work-related PLEs - the norm these days is anything created on a company computer or network belongs to the company, but that doesn't really fit with the idea of of a personal learning environment.

The blog eLearning Technology by Tony Karrer has a great post " More Discussion on Personal Work Learning Environments", a collection of links and resources on the subject of the issues of control and resulting ownership of work product as more and more people create personal work learning environments. If you are currently blogging "inside or outside the firewall", you should take a look at the resources in this post.

So should a corporation, if it wants to be able to keep content created by an employee after that employee leaves, especially blog content, provide the Web 2.0 tools to employees rather than having tools adopted that are outside the firewall and personally owned where the company will lose the content if the employee leaves?

So - Web 2.0 inside the firewall - is that in fact still social networking, and if it is, who controls the work product? Hmmm...

Facebook as PLE - Part Two - The Plot Thickens...

I recently posted my thoughts about Facebook being an ideal environment for the creation of PLEs (Personal Learning Environments). I firmly believe that PLEs are the future of learning-centred adult education. PLEs ARE all about the learners - what they want to learn, how they want to learn it, how they want to share what they learn, when they want to learn, and what tools they will use in order for THEIR learning to occur.

Yesterday my friend Carolyn (Randommind) introduced me to Mosoto. Mosoto is a Web 2.0, Flash-based application that allows users to "share, chat, and discover". More importantly it fully integrates into Facebook. You can add Mosoto to you Facebook profile as one of the many Facebook Applications now available that have revolutionized Facebook.

Here is the description of Mosoto from its Web site:

"Mosoto is a new way to share and connect with your Facebook friends. With Mosoto you can easily share files, chat with friends and discover people and media in your social network. Because Mosoto is built on top of Facebook your friends and social network are already here. Mosoto is streaming social media."

Mosoto adds simple, easy to use synchronous chat, file sharing, and more to Facebook. It allows users to create private "rooms" or chats, an amazingly powerful learning tool. Combined with many of the Facebook applications mentioned in my earlier post, Mosoto provides a rich customizable learning environment - in short a PLE.

PLEs are an amazing opportunity to engage learners that many institutions may be missing due to geography, learning style, time, or dissatisfaction with "traditional" learning approaches and environments. PLEs are not just an alternate delivery or distance learning tool either. I fully believe that they will work well in classrooms, online, and in learning environments not yet thought of and that Facebook is the tool that will let this happen.

I am now convinced that I will allow and encourage my learners this coming fall to create their own PLEs and I will suggest to them that Facebook is a great place to start that PLE development. Facebook's combination of social networking, customizable environment, and ever-increasing list of easy to use applications makes it the ideal PLE development platform.

Over the next while I am going to build my own PLE using Facebook and I will share it with you once it is done. Of course being a PLE it will never actually be done, but rather will be in a state of constant renewal and evolution, so I will be looking for your feedback and comments ...

Facebook as PLE - I Have Seen The Future!

There has been a lot written lately about Facebook, both pro and con. Several institutions have actually banned their employees from using Facebook on organization machines. Many school boards have restricted its use.

But there are a lot of positive things about Facebook. I've been using it as a mean of creating alumni groups of former and current learners as a way of staying in touch and developing industry networks. We have posted employment opportunities to Facebook groups created for our programmes (as have learners) and we have had learners get employment offers through jobs found on Facebook. That is a great thing. I am actively exploring the creation and use of Facebook groups for my courses as a way of assisting learners to get to know each other better and to provide a social networking opportunity that hopefully will result in greater engagement and a more positive learning experience.

The real excitement for me though is the recent announcement that Face book is allowing third-party companies access to its API for the creation of Facebook applications. The launch of the Facebook Platform will add an incredible amount of functionality and customizability to Facebook. Some of the early adopters of this platform include apps for file sharing, voice, video, and links to other Web 2.0 applications like Twitter and RSS feeds.

So what does this mean? Well for me it means that Facebook is well on its way to becoming the ideal tool for the creation of Personal Learning Environments or PLEs. The ability for users of Facebook to customize their environment so that they can receive and share information with others will create and even more powerful social phenomenon than Facebook currently is. With available chat, RSS, file and picture sharing, the potential exists for learning to occur in a whole new learning-centred way. I see Facebook and the learners who use it becoming the content generators and consumers of future learning environments. The currently available applications already have the [potential for creating rich learning experiences - I can hardly wait to see what applications get added to Facebook over the coming months - Facebook as learning manager or portal - what does it mean for out current established base of Learning Management Systems (LMSs)?

I definitely know that I will be exploring the available third-party applications in Facebook to determine how they might be used for the development of learning environments for my courses. To start with I have added the following applications to my Facebook page (I am sure that there will be more ...):

• Picnik - photo editing and sharing
  
• WalkieTalkie - voice chat
  
• RSSbook - RSS aggregator
  
• Twitter - integrate smy Twitter account in Facebook
  
• Files - upload and share files
  
• Docs - Facebook docs is the Great Library of Schoolwork where anyone can contribute

The addition of third-party applications to Facebook may just be the "killer" Web 2.0 app that everyone has been waiting for...

Randommind - A Must Read - The Sequel

I have already told you that Randommind is a must read blog (my friend Carolyn is amazing - so insightful and always on topic), but there are two recent posts on the blog that really are must reads.

The first one is PLE ON A Cellphone?. What an incredible idea and what an AHA! moment for me. Talk about breaking down the walls of education. I am a big believer that PLEs are going to have a major impact on my learners and myself in the next few years. What an amazing concept - create a learning environment that works for you, the learner. To take it the next step and make it mobile - too cool. Just think of the learning opportunities... Check out the post.

The second post is Facebook Banned By Ontario Government. The Ontario government has banned provincial employees from using Facebook, which I find just mind-boggling. I'm currently using Facebook as a way to stay in touch with past, current, and even some future learners (not to mention colleagues, friends, and even some complete strangers) - it's a very powerful tool for getting information out. I've had learners get work from jobs and opportunities posted by other learners - too cool! I am seriously looking at Facebook as a learning tool (a future post).

If one of the jobs of a provincial government is to stay in touch with the residents of the province what better way to do it than Facebook. Like Randommind says in her post, even the Premier of Nova Scotia has a Facebook site. The reaction of the Ontario government to Facebook reminds me of the way a lot of organizations reacted years ago to the use of the Internet during working hours placing restrictions on its use. Well those restrictions are mainly gone now, and I suspect the same will happen with Facebook - it is just too valuable and useful a communication tool.

Thanks for the always great stuff Carolyn. I can't wait for your next post...