Living, Learning, Communicating in an Immediate World

Learning Technologies Centrewww.umanitoba.ca/learning_technologies

Living, Learning, Communicating in an

Immediate World

ADETA, October 2007George Siemens


For the most part, educational futurism is a mixture of trendiness, bad psychology, and technological impressionability

Carl Bereiter


Mixed messages

1. Networks and tools2. Access and impact3. Granovetter meets Gibson4. Students and employees5. Their World6. Our need7. Our response?


1. Networks & Tools

Learning

• Neural network

• Conceptual network

• Physical network– People– Content


What do networks do?

Understanding yields understanding

Nodes increase opportunities for more connections (history, multi-faceted understanding of disciplines)


...the tools we use, when learning, shape and very largely determine what and how we can learn

Kieran Egan


Immediately?

• Access: OER,

• Find:

• Connect:

• Communicate: Mobile


Immediately?• Locate:

• Collaborate: wikis

• Create:

• Share: Presently


Immediately?

• Plan:

• Publish: blogs

• Interact: two-way dialogue &

• Tie it together:


We shape our tools and then our tools shape us

McLuhan


What have tools done?

Opened accessDistributed controlRaised noiseImmediacy

Symmetry of effect everything gets impacted (information)


Rhetoric of the

electrical sublime

long-standing, naive, and utopian expectations

Carey & Quirk


2. Access and Impact


Education’s future will be shaped in

developing countries

China: HE enrolment doubled, 2000 – 2003 16 million. Exceeds US

India: by 2010, 40% of all

HE education will be distance

Carnegie Foundation (2006)


Access• 70+% level in many countries (Net)

• Mobile/PDA (21%) web access – doubled in 2003-2005-2007

• 88% have mobile

• Steep decline after age 55

Oxford Internet Institute


IT Ownership73% own laptops

91% have high speed

86% mobile phone

Net Generation age group is more highly engaged than older students in technologies that enable socializing

ECAR Study (2007)


We live in a society in which the “channels for distribution of change” are carried with us as part of daily life.

Sharples, Taylor, Vavoula


Mobile computing, portable devices, and ubiquitous broadband mean that we have access to people, information, and data wherever we may be

Horizon Report (2007)


What is the impact of immediate?

Control shiftWeakened filter

Can you spare $4 billion?

Real is fake


3. Granovetter meets Gibson


Weak ties

Empirical evidence that the stronger the tie connecting two individuals, the more similar they are, in various ways

Mark Granovetter (1973)


Weak ties

weak ties of communication

weak ties of information

(content is not understanding)


Gibson’s Affordances

• Action potential• Preconditions for activity• Agent, object, interaction• Affordance is a property of this

interaction


Nature of ties is an affordance of the medium

object, actor, activity

– Parent/child (twitter, IM)– Friends– Colleague– Some one you’ve never met f2f


A new medium does not add something; it changes everything.

Neil Postman


4. Students and employees


This isn't the MTV generation we're talking about this is the everything, all-the-time generation

Tim Blackmore


Millennials


Coddled, narcissistic praise junkies

US Navy


Engagement


Participative web: user-created contentOECD


Capturing

Capturing what used to be transitory– Mobile phones– Justin.TV

Their lives are being captured and shared


Their view of IT in courses

• 60% - improved my learning• 40% - more engaged when IT is used• 73% - more prompt feedback• 58% - helps me better communicate

with classmates• 59% - better control of course

activitiesECAR Study (2007)


5. Their World


What type of world will our

students inherit?

• Complex• Information

saturated• Conflict-riddled• Self-destructing

• Hopeful• Democratic• Innovation• Equality


Need for advanced learning

2 of every 3 new/replacement jobs require PSE

Canadian Council of Learning (2006)


6. Our Need


Understanding requires time, depth, sustained attention

Takes 10 years to become a master

Howard Gardner


Complex tasks requiregreater engagement and focus

than weak attention ties permit

Digital literacy

Information literacy

21st century skills

Harvard curriculum

Play, performance, networking, distributed cognition

(Jenkins)


Depth...

Slow LearningGeetha Narayanan

Deep smarts

Deep understanding

Disciplines of Understanding

Reflection

ReviewConnections

Socialization

Explication

Slow, deep, immersive

Multi-faceted


7. Our response?


How have these

changes impacted

education?


Stages

Adopt tools and methodsAdapt practicesAdjust policies


Exist in the spaces they exist, understand their culture


What shall we change?

• Libraries• Classrooms• Policies• Schools• Accreditation• Experts• Curriculum

Change toward understanding.

NOT

Educator peer-pressure


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