Impacts of Cultural & Technical Change

Implications of cultural & technicalchanges on learning and teaching

Oct-2008 1by Kate Carruthers

Who Me?

• Marketer, technologist, educator and renaissance woman

www.katecarruthers.com

www.digbiz.com.au

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Hyperconnectivity

• Not 6 degrees of separation

• Perhaps only 1 degree

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Source: http://www.popsci.com.au/files/imagecache/article_image_large/files/articles/734px-Six_degrees_of_separation.jpg

Massive Interconnections

• SMS

• Facebook

• MySpace

• Twitter

• Mobile

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Consumption On-Demand

• No more waiting

• What I want

• When I want it

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http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/12/17/bittorrent-is-now-streaming-movies-with-ads-but-wheres-the-good-stuff/

Tribal Brains

• Wired to deal with smaller groups

• Wired for small chunks of information

• No epic poems for us today

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Tribal Creatures

• Tribe size

• Dunbar’s number = 150

• We mesh into subgroups based on common interests

• Increasingly loose ties

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Chunking & Small Groups

• Growth of knowledge

• Too much knowledge to keep in our heads

• No more epic poetry

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Source: http://www.familycourtchronicles.com/philosophy/spartan/spartan-brad-pitt.jpg

• Even minority groups can get together using this technology

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Technology

• “A fool with a tool is still a fool”

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Technology

• Technology can help us

• Wikis, blogs, etc

• Next semantic web and mobile

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Reuters reported this small wearable TV in 2007

Source: http://blogs.reuters.com/oddly-enough/2007/05/22/never-ever-dont-watch-tv-again/

Challenges

• Institutions = slow to change

• Individual = teachers embracing change

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Source: http://anarchonation.blogspot.com/2008/07/attackthesystemcom-american.html

Boundaries

• Time

• Place

• Content

• Authority

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Source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Hadrians_wall_Greenhead.jpg

Sensemaking

• Co-creation

• Facilitation

• Mutual respect

• Variable learning spaces

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Source: http://www.affordablehousinginstitute.org/blogs/us/surprised_baby_2.jpg

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Slides are available at www.slideshare.net/carruthk