5.*: Google Wave and education

It is probably a little early to start speculating on the educational potential for Google Wave (after all, it's not actually released for general use yet!) But a blog post by Richard McManus called "Google Wave Uses: Education" provides an initial insight.

Like many Web 2.0 tools, it looks as though Google Wave might be best exploited by students rather than by the institutions they enrol in. I imagine some innovative educators joining in their students' backchannel discussions, and possibly even involving themselves in correcting class notes... but it seems that the potential strength of Wave for education lies not in a formal implementation, but rather through encouraging students to make use of it themselves should they want to. As such, Wave might become a valuable third place. If formal education attempts to harness it, to 'make it' into something educational, its value as a student-driven application may well drop. in E-Primer 5 I discuss this phenomenon as it relates to blogging and the use of wikis in formal education contexts.

5.*: More on the Net Gen

This from Net Gen Skeptic.

The finding that "Although young students are technologically increasingly well-equipped, they do not exhaust the potential of their devices or the potential of common Web 2.0 applications" is fast becoming representational of the Net Gen in the research cited in E-Primer 5. As is pointed out by Mark, though, the paper still calls for a fundamental shift in HE structure. If a shift is necessary, it is becoming increasingly difficult to muster any evidence for it based on any particular strengths inherent to the Net Gen. Overall it seems the Net Gen may well have the tools, but they're using them like toys.

[Image "Toys Misbehaving" uploaded March 24, 2005 by Cade]

5.*: Will Facebook kill blogging?

Interesting question... see this story in Stuff.co.nz before it is removed. I have noticed a significant drop in blogging traffic across the various ones I have subscribed to. A sign of the times? If so, no doubt more research attention and activity will go toward trying to exploit Facebook and MySpace for educational purposes (said with a hint of cynicism). However, as I mention in E-Primer 5, the issue of genre is an important one. It could be too late to redeem the likes of social networking for the purposes of educational discourse. Consider this quote from the Stuff article:

...the online network is like a virtual pub, where you and your chosen "circle" can share photos of your weekend shenanigans, look up old classmates or simply waste time on trivia quizzes that prove your pop culture mettle.

Sounds like promising stuff for academic learning! Now, where can I get me a research grant...

E-Primer draft now available

The draft of E-Primer 5, "eXtending possibilities", is now available from the IT Forum Website here.

The online event takes place week commencing July 6.

To join the discussion, simply subscribe to the forum. All it requires is a valid email address.

I'm looking forward to the discussion; the IT Forum is made up of very insightful practitioners, many with extensive publication histories (some may have been cited in the E-primer itself). The 'wisdom of this crowd' will be of great benefit to the final version of the E-Primer!

E-Primer 5 for IT Forum review and discussion

E-Primer 5, "eXtending possibilities", will be peer-reviewed during a one-week online discussion through the IT Forum. The IT Forum is a listserv with members from across the globe.

The online event takes place week commencing July 6.

To join the discussion, simply subscribe to the forum. All it requires is a valid email address.

The paper will be uploaded by the end of the week, and will be avaialble from here.

5.*: Balancing the faces of ePortfolios

Thanks to Hasmeeta for alerting me to this... Helen Barrett, an ePortfolio pioneer, has an online work in progress called "Balancing the two faces of ePortfolios". In this paper Helen models how apparently competing aims of ePortfolios for learning and reflection and ePortfolios for showcase or accountability can be complementary. Helen's three levels of ePortfolio use also helps put them into perspective.

As with most tools outside of traditional LMS or VLE systems, their use can take place at different levels ranging from the most basic (usually just using the most fundamental functions of the tool) right through to the deeply invovled (which requires a much more ambitious pedagogy). Helen's work continues to inform ePortfolio progress in education.

5.*: MUVE alternatives

Are Second Life's days numbered as the experimental base for formal education? The most recent SLENZ update suggests that they may - and provides a great list of alternative MUVEs that might provide a less proprietary future. Cobalt, an open source application, could be the way of the future...?

5.*: Educating the Net Generation

I'll leave it to Net Gen Skeptic to provide the overview... A previous (2008) publication from Kennedy et al, "First year students' experiences with technology: Are they really digital natives?" is included in the draft of E-Primer 5 (coming soon). The fuller 2009 handbook "Educating the Net Generation: A Handbook of Findings for Practice and Policy" is available online in PDF format.

1.3.*; 5.*: Solid stuff on the future

The "Beyond Current Horizons" research programme was established to "examine how social and technological change overthe coming 20 or so years may present new challenges or opportunities for education". The Futurelab project has just released some interesting new insights into what the future may hold.

Usually I am skeptical of such reports, but there is a depth to the analysis in the "Beyond Current Horizons" work that stands it apart. The quality of the Expert Advisory Group demonstrates the level of expertise the project has drawn on, adding significant depth to the analysis and findings. The six proposed scenarios have not been merely brainstormed; rather, they have been carefully fashioned from the results of clearly documented evidence (over 60 papers written by experts, also available from the site).

The six potential futures (and their implications for education) are:

World 1: Trust yourself

• Scenario 1: Informed choice - Learning is a bespoke, life-long journey that develops and builds upon your unique strengths. Educational providers work with you to tailor education to your needs.
• Scenario 2: Independent consumers - Learning is an individual responsibility, educational providers are suppliers responsible for ensuring quality of delivery.

World 2: Loyalty points

• Scenario 3: Discovery - Education helps you to understand and develop your capacity to make distinctive and useful contributions to a range of different communities, organisations and networks.
• Scenario 4: Diagnosis - Education is about organisations diagnosing learners' pre-existing strengths and determining where they will fit in future.

World 3: Only connect

• Scenario 5: Integrated experience - Learning is a process of participating in meaningful activities and developing competencies and knowledge to better contribute to the wider community.
• Scenario 6: Service and citizenship - Education is a process of learning about the skills, competencies and roles that individuals play in the 'real world'.

The beauty of these scenarios is that they are realistic, discrete, and are not driven by any sense of technological determinism. There is plenty to muse on here, and plenty to study; the various papers I have scanned (such as "Learning to learn", "Digital natives and ostrich tactics?", "Reworking the web, reworking the world: How web 2.0 is changing our society", "Argumentation and dialogic teaching: Alternative pedagogies for a changing world") that inform the scenarios are all worthy of deep study in themselves. This study provides a good, substantial reference point that acknowledges the complexity of the issues involved as well as the fact that the future can often be anticipated but not pre-determined.

A must for anyone considering the potential futures of education wanting to engage with a serious consideration of the issues!

5.*: Mobile learning in higher education

An eBook, "New technologies, new pedagogies: Mobile learning in higher education", is available online from the University of Wollongong. The introduction explains that

While mobile technologies such as mobile phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs) and digital music players (mp3 players) have permeated popular culture, they have not found widespread acceptance as pedagogical tools in higher education.

The eBook contains various exemplars associated with the use of PDAs and MP3 players in higher education, based on a project at the University. The project case studies aim to demonstrate how 'ubiquitous' mobile devices can be "legitimately" used in higher education. The project provides the following recommendations for using mobile devices in higher education:

1. Real world relevance: Use mobile learning in authentic contexts
2. Mobile contexts: Use mobile learning in contexts where learners are mobile
3. Explore: Provide time for exploration of mobile technologies
4. Blended: Blend mobile and non mobile technologies
5. Whenever: Use mobile learning spontaneously
6. Wherever: Use mobile learning in non traditional learning spaces
7. Whomsoever: Use mobile learning both individually and collaboratively
8. Affordances: Exploit the affordances of mobile technologies
9. Personalise: Employ the learners’ own mobile devices
10. Mediation: Use mobile learning to mediate knowledge construction.
11. Produse: Use mobile learning to produce and consume knowledge.

I'm not certain of the absolute value of the principles however in my view the report is a good summary of where m-learning is 'at'. I have difficulty in leaping from 'mobile devices are ubiquitous' through to PDAs being used as the basis for experimentation and case study; this highlights one of the difficulties with m-learning, that of diversity of device. A standard mobile phone is a far cry from a fully featured PDA, and it is the latter that tends to be the backbone for most m-learning case studies. So the ubiquity argument does not, in my view, provide a sound reason for using m-devices in higher education. Many of the educational benefits are also somewhat marginal, which, for me, reveals a tension between wanting to use the devices and needing to use them for educational purposes.

So, the report is a good contribution to m-learning... but the concept is still, in my view, mired by a need to honestly answer the question, so what? Evaluations of (yet more) case studies are not what is needed; objective, control-comparison research is what is most needed in the field of m-learning. There is plenty of enthusiasm and creativity already at play. Where is the research focussing on comparative learning outcomes, rather than student experiences? Until m-learning advocates are able to take a more objective, more self-critical, less exploratory and longer-term approach to m-learning, I trust that little real progress will be made for others to sit up and take notice of. For a start I suggest a change in methodology, away from the case studies and action research projects that dominate this field, more toward large-scale and cognitively comparable results.

Most of the cases I have reviewed for the next E-Primer have student samples of about ten, with provided PDA devices... hardly a representative or transferable set of studies. This is a real problem, one that will hinder the serious uptake of mobile devices in further education.

5.*: Challenging the assumptions of 'm'

I am embroiled in writing E-Primer 5, "eXtending possibilities"; at present I am focusing on particular on m-learning. A recently released eBook, "Mobile Learning: Transforming the delivery of education and training" is an ad-hoc and broad compilation of chapters from academics around the world (mostly UK). What prompts me to blog here is the paradigm the book adopts in its opening chapters.

Ally (2009, p.1) presents the utopian vision for m-learning:

Learners will not have to wait for a certain time to learn or go to a certain place to learn. With mobile learning, learners will be empowered since they can learn whenever and wherever they want. Also, learners do not need to learn what is prescribed for them.

Traxler, in the first chapter of the eBook (2009, p.10) continues in a similar vein:

Looking at mobile learning in a wider context, we have to recognize that mobile, personal, and wireless devices are now radically transforming societal notions of discourse and knowledge, and are responsible for new forms of art, employment, language, commerce, deprivation, and crime, as well as learning. With increased popular access to information and knowledge anywhere, anytime, the role of education, perhaps especially formal education, is challenged and the relationships between education, society, and technology are now more dynamic than ever.

Later (p.14) he adds:

Learning that used to be delivered “just-in-case,” can now be delivered “just-in-time, just enough, and just-for-me.” Finding information rather than possessing it or knowing it becomes the defining characteristic of learning generally and of mobile learning especially, and this may take learning back into the community.

(Emphasis added). I think I'm finally able to explain my concern with this sort of thinking. In response to Ally, formal education is not inherently disempowering and neither does it seek to treat a prescribed curriculum as all there is to know. Formal education is a means to a transformed mind; in the words of Montaigne, it seeks to 'make minds not fill them'. And, formal education is not about access to information and knowledge. So, in response to Traxler's first point above, m-learning represents an opportunity to formal education and not a challenge. Further, it is way too simplistic to differentiate learning based on it being 'just-in-case' or 'just-in-time'. This ignores completely the value and mechanisms of formal education. When has anyone ever 'needed' Plato? Seneca? Postman? Rorty? Or, perhaps better relating to e-learning folk, Shirky? Yet these thinkers and their perspectives continue to open minds, to broaden them, to challenge them. Using Laurillard's distinction of everyday and academic knowledge, everyday knowledge should be just-in-time; academic knowledge is just-to-challenge, just-to-open, just-to-blow us out of our own ways of thinking. To criticise formal education for adopting a 'just-in-case' approach to learning is simply nonsense. To further assert that finding information is "the defining characteristic of learning" is very alarming, because it is actually 'knowing it' that helps you to develop a mental filter and include the information in your personal mental framework. Brighouse (pp.23-24) puts it plainly:

the critical thinking skills involved in autonomy can neither be developed nor exercised without the ease of access to a considerable amount of information which is provided only by having learned and internalized it… the idea that [students] might develop the more complex skills of reasoning about information without having a good deal of it instantly available is silly.

So, a Google search is more powerful than an educated mind? What if (as Jeanneney suggests) the question were not, "What is the capital of Venezuela?" but rather "Does democratization favour equality?" Here, it is the ability to evaluate and not merely find knowledge that becomes 'definitional' of having truly learned.

My criticism of Ally's phrase is that it reveals a deficit perspective of formal education, and seems to confuse the advantages of informal learning with formal learning. For Traxler the issue is epistemological, and a likely confusion between what it means to train and what it means to educate (Rosenberg, to whom the contrast between 'just-in-case', 'just-in-time', 'just enough' and 'just for me' is attributed, is involved in e-learning for training purposes). Traxler does acknowledge that a good case can be made for the use of mobile devices in incumbent formal education however his use of the term 'impurist' to describe this is somewhat loaded.

Finally, Traxler (2009, p.10) describes m-learning as "essentially personal, contextual, and situated". The fundamental error here, I think, is that Traxler has mistaken potential attributes for m-learning as essential. There is an unfortunate idealism in place here, as if Traxler is correct any use of a mobile device in educational contexts that is directed, abstract and theoretical cannot be 'real' m-learning. Far from being a pedagogical option, then, m-learning rather becomes a revolutionary slogan.

To finish, I would like to offer a set of theses to to with higher education:

• Formal education seeks to open minds, rather than fill them; however opening cannot be separated from filling, nor vice-versa.
• Formal education does not stop or hinder informal learning.
• Formal education aims to orientate academic apprentices into an ongoing academic conversation; it does not claim to be the conversation itself.
• Formal education seeks to add value through: a) its structuring of knowledge, and b) its insistence that students participate in exercises that force reflection and integration of knowledge.
• Formal education is a deliberately tiered process, gradually immersing academic apprentices in a critical, co-dependent and questioning epistemology. The further the apprentice travels, the clearer the value of the tier becomes to them.
  

I welcome critique on the bulleted suggestions above. When I think about e-learning, I consider how these aims of formal education can be furthered. It wearies (and worries) me to see formal education, whether directly or indirectly, criticised on the basis that:

• it is focused on filling minds with irrelevant nonsense;
  
• it is concerned with memorising facts;
  
• it is locked into an outdated model of objectives and assessment;
  
• it considers itself a monopoly on learning;
  
• or that it is a waste of money and time and a barrier to more natural informal and networked learning.

By all means let's critique formal education, but let's do so fairly and from a perspective of appreciative inquiry.

5.*: Second Life in peer review

The latest British Journal of Educational Technology (40, 3) is a special issue focussing on the use of MUVE's (specifically Second Life) in higher education. This complements a special issue of ALT-J (17, 3) last year. It is great to see Second Life receiving attention and evaluation through journals; it is somewhat tedious looking for useful material among blogs and news sites, which either tend to being too subjective or else not detailed enough. Even with this attention however it is difficult to determine where MUVE-assisted education may end up. This quote from Salmon & Hawkridge's (2009, p.403) editorial puts it well:

It may be too early to be sure that 3-D MUVEs are more than a flash in the pan for higher education: after all, plenty of other technologies have been used for education for a few years only to disappear. We recognise that this special issue of BJET may be at the very beginning of the 3-D MUVEs’ potential development ... or maybe the middle or even towards the end.

So, who knows? Will the educational use of Second Life mirror the tertiary uptake of LMS or VLEs? Or will it mirror the experiences of businesses - many of which are now pulling out of Second Life? Only time, innovation, trial and error and the sharing of experiences will tell... my perspective is clear.

5.*: IPTS Review of Learning 2.0 practices

A series of reports from the Institute for Prospective Technological Studies (IPTS) examines learning 2.0 and its impact on education and training in Europe. This looks to be a thorough - and timely - study that summarises the learning 2.0 paradigm as follows:

1. Due to information overflow, there is a need to learn how to sift, select, organise and manage information according to its relevance.
2. Learning in the digital era is fundamentally collaborative in nature; social networks arise around common (learning) interests and aims and facilitate the learning process by providing social and cognitive guidance and support.
3. The learner plays a central role in the learning process – not as a passive recipient of information, but as an active author, co-creator, evaluator and critical commentator.
4. As a consequence, learning processes become increasingly personalised, tailored to the individual’s needs and interests.

This is not a critique of the value of the report, which I will get to... I just remain somewhat skeptical about this paradigm as a viable one for higher formal education. Information management is not the equivalent of conceptual learning; collaboration is not, in my view, as powerful as reflection as a means of learning; only a very poor traditional tertiary education experience can be described as encouraging 'passive' learning; and personalisation "tailored to the individual's needs and interests" is nice rhetoric, but lousy education. So: Should the tail of learning 2.0 wag the dog of formal education?

Perhaps a crude analogy. 'Car enthusiasts' like to drive fast, burn off rubber, and race on public streets. High performance cars enable them to do this. The appearance of the car is central to the experience. Rather than get from A to B, car enthusiasts enjoy the socialisation and thrills of a driving experience that suits their needs.

Hmmm.

Laurillard's difference between everyday and academic knowledge is a handy shorthand for my concern. I also have a few difficulties with the validity of the paradigm suggested for learning 2.0:

• Who decides what information is 'relevant'? Google? Issues here are addressed well by Jeanneney. Could it be that an expert's perspective on what is 'relevant' might be more enlightening than that of the crowd, for the purposes of education?
  
• Social networks and collaboration: Are these subject to homophily (as suggested by Shirky as being characteristic of Web 2.0?) Does this not make the potential horizon for collaboration smaller? Do social networks limit, rather than stimulate, the development of broader perspectives?
  
• Learner centredness: Are students in tertiary (higher) education really 'passive recipients'? Is this how they emerge from the system, as dependent passivists? Is reading or listening passive receipt?
  
• Is personalisation of learning a valid goal for education to aspire to? Do my 'needs and interests' limit me to what I already want? How, then, can I be exposed to the new?

So, again my question. Should 'learning 2.0' determine how formal education is offered? Is "learner-centred collaborative information management suited to my needs" the utopia of formal education? My own desire is for "subject-centred perspective shifting conceptual development that transforms my understanding of reality"... and this more often than not involves developing a respect for the subject, individualistic reflection, considering the work and feedback of experts (rather than peers), and being taken places I did not even know existed.

5.*: Just in time and connected: Relevant to formal education?

As a part of my E-Primer 5 research I am reviewing Laurillard's (2002) Rethinking university teaching. I read the first edition of the book, err, last Millenium as I was writing my e-Book Teaching for learning. From a learning theory perspective it has much in common with Ramsden's Learning to teach in higher education, a book that remains a milestone in my development as an education thinker and writer.

Anyways, I am drafting the first parts of a critique of formal vs informal, mediated vs unmediated education through social networking. No doubt this draft will change as the E-Primer takes final shape, but I thought to share it. I'd really appreciate any thoughts that occur to you as you read it, preferably in comments below.

During his junior year, my son started making videos with a digital video camera... he was not merely taking video with his camera and then editing sequence. He was mixing in audio from the Internet, CDs and DVDs, video clips collected from his friends, still images he had taken and downloaded from the net, and even staged video from online video games, where players followed direction and acted out scenes on a virtual stage from their homes across the globe. I did not teach him how to do this... his high school teachers... did not teach him how to do this. He taught himself, with the help of his social network of people, with whom he IMs, text messages, shares MySpace pages, plays in the metaverse of video games, and through venues I am sure I do not even understand yet. He knows how to use this new read/write web to learn what he needs to know, in order to do what he needs to do, now! It's how this generation learns. It's how they use information. (Warlick, 2007, pp. 12-13)

Warlick's account reveals that social networks can be exploited for the purposes of learning. However this does not discount the value of a formal education nor, necessarily, its mechanisms. The link between 'know and do', explicit in Warlick's example, is not always useful when discussing education; in fact, the link may even be irrelevant. The issue is not 'just in time' vs 'just in case' learning; rather the issue is between what is useful immediately and what is useful conceptually. Consider Plato's cave, Marx's critique of capitalism, studying the history of Western Europe, analysing the themes from One flew over the cuckoo's nest. Clearly not all worthwhile educational activities can fit into the model of 'what we need to do, now'. There are activities and ideas that do not directly influence our behaviour, but instead broaden our understanding of reality and which transform our thinking (Mezirow, 1990; 2000). Such transformation is exceptionally valuable. Implicit to an education is not just subject familiarity, but a new way of considering the world and one's place within it. One of the key rationales of formal higher education is exposing people to ideas and perspectives that result in them seeing the world differently, sharing ideas that they may never have opportunity to encounter through everyday experience. As a colleague at my own College recently remarked, you cannot think about (or be transformed by) ideas that have never occurred to you. Laurillard (2002) makes the following observations:

• There are differences between everyday knowledge and academic knowledge.

• Everyday knowledge is based on experience; academic knowledge is based on our experience of experience.

• Everyday knowledge tends to be highly situational however academic knowledge is more objective, transferable and generalisable.

• Everyday knowledge can be gained through everyday experience, whereas academic knowledge is necessarily mediated by experts with academic knowledge.

Further, higher education is concerned with far more than transferring information to students. Very seldom, if at all, will memorisation, regurgitation of facts and a search for 'the answer' earn an undergraduate degree. Instead, graduates have learned to appraise, compare, contrast, critique, evaluate, and come to their own informed conclusions with reference to others' ideas¹. In Laurillard's (2002, p.12) words, “learning is not just about acquiring high-level knowledge. The way students handle that knowledge is what really concerns academics”. The outcome of formal education is not necessarily in-head information, but rather new ways of being able to use information as a tool.

Instead of being enamored with the success of Warlick's son's success at movie-making, we should be careful to contextualise it such that we see the issue he raises as an epistemological one rather than a methodological one. In other words, Warlick's example is more relevant to a discussion on what we understand knowledge to be, than one to do with how we should educate in formal contexts. The purpose of education is not to inform, but rather to transform; not to fill minds, but rather to broaden them. Social networking can certainly be used in the pursuit of broadening minds however its usefulness in formal education contexts is determined by its potential contribution toward the pursuit of academic knowledge.

1In the same way, postgraduates are expected to become comfortable with reconciling complex and conflicting points of view, and to determine and defend their own position within these points of view.

5.*: Education 2.0: Time to sever the link?

Susan Greenfield warns that social networking is having an adverse affect on users (specifically, children) in a recent Stuff article. Just some uninformed hack taking a swing at something she does not really understand?

Judge for yourself. Her publications include Brain power: Working out the human mind, Tomorrow's people: How 21st-Century technology is changing the way we think and feel, and I.D: The quest for meaning in the 21st Century.

As we pursue the promise of social networking in education it is increasingly important that we do not let the tail of social networking wag the dog of structured education. That such tools lead to "shortened attention spans, a lack of empathy and more self-centred children who increasingly define themselves based on what others think of them" is in itself cause to:

1. Applaud those schools which ban such sites during school hours. 
2. Refocus the broader contextual issues surrounding social networking onto evidence-based critique, rather than application.
   
3. Fundamentally re-valuate calls for 'education 2.0'. 

I hope that Lady Greenfield's warning is taken seriously by all - most particularly those calling for education 2.0, who should really know better. In her comments regarding how such technologies affect 'real conversations', I am reminded by Naomi Baron's observation that online communications give significant control to their users. This change in control alters power relationships, and even what it means to relate to others.

For the record, I am committed to a socially constructivist appreciation of what it means to learn. I am also committed to the value that formal education can add to the process of learning. How far can we go before we actually undermine the very value of what strcutured, formal education has to offer?

5.*: Some pet hates

I am reading around web 2.0 and its potential for formal tertiary education, for the next E-Primer... and I have to get these false dichotomies off my chest. These often come up in Web 2.0 literature as providing legitimacy for its use.

• Just-in-time (good) vs just-in-case (bad) learning. This dichotomy is infuriating. So-called 'just-in-case' learning can, in fact, be providing a valuable and necessary context for further cognitive development, further context for enabling students to later participate in the broader conversation about the subjects they are studying. This dichotomy suggests a surface, utilitarian concept of knowledge that assumes education exists for immediate ends, not extended means. Education is the means to an end, and not the end in itself. It has more to do with enabling conversation than solving immediate problems. Once this important epistemological difference is understood, any distinction between 'just-in-time' and 'just-in-case' in the context of formal education becomes meaningless.
• Teacher-centred vs student-centred learning. Bah, humbug. I have blogged elsewhere on the importance of subject-centred learning a la Palmer, where the teacher embodies the subject and gives it its voice rather than becoming the central focus of authority. This removes us from the blinkered 'teacher-centred' approach and the equally idiotic notion of a 'student-centred' one in formal education.
• Teachers as sages on the stage vs guides on the side. I have blogged on this elsewhere. What sparked this fresh tirade is a quote from Mason & Rennie (2008, p.30):
  

"In effect, 'teachers' and 'tutors' will need to change their roles from being the sole repository of knowledge, to roles in which their experience is utilised to help facilitate and focus learners to contextualise knowledge within the wider framework of their experience".

This is a rather one-eyed perspective of what teachers and tutors attempt to achieve in formal education, and an unfair basis for advocating the application of web 2.0 applications in education - a classic 'straw-' err, 'person' argument. Any tertiary education course with a recommended bibliography and readings other than those authored by the teacher or tutor will bear this out. In the institution I work for, each course is worth 15 credits (150 learning hours) toward a qualification. Of those 15 credits, pre-determined readings and classes usually account for one-third of the allocated time (and these invariably consist of more than the teacher's or tutor's own writings or presentations), another third to self-directed learning, the final third to assessment tasks designed to encourage reflection and integration, drawing on wider sources. How, then, is the teacher or tutor "the sole repository of knowledge"? The teacher provides the frame for learning, yes - but surely this represents the value-add of formal education? Further, no teacher or tutor is naive enough (or brazen enough) to suggest that students would be dependent on him or her once the course has finished. Where, then, is the grounds for such a criticism?

There is plenty of value in Mason & Rennie's (2008) E-learning and social networking handbook. The authors are sympathetic to the use of web 2.0 in formal education, and provide some very useful guidelines for its use. I am just wary, sensitive, dubious about claims that educators must fundamentally change from being the narrow-minded knowledge tyrants they never, in fact, were. Yes, there are exceptions... but let's remember that they are, in fact, exceptional.

5.*: It's an anthropological thing

Michael Welsch (University of Kansas) created the "The Machine is Us/ing Us", at one stage the number one video on YouTube. In this presentation to the US Library of Congress ("An anthropological introduction to YouTube") introduces the clip and its success - and discusses various anthropological aspects of Web 2.0. Most clips in YouTube are viewed less than 100 times; every now and again, though, as Welsch explains, a phenomenon occurs!

It is wonderful seeing the creativity and connectedness that Web 2.0 facilitates. But the link between education and entertainment is a tenuous one. Of course, Welsch himself provides a classic example of how the two can be linked in "The Machine is Us/ing Us". Educationally there are some great possibilities in the format Welsch used... imagine bring Plato's metaphor of the cave to life, drawing from The Matrix, intermixed with moments in history where the metaphor is illustrated and how it might challenge us today (looking at third world hunger; the plight of the poor in our own back yards; perhaps weaving together various political examples of groupthink to show just how contemporary Plato's illustration is). The challenge to educators is, how can we bring foundational concepts and metaphors to life?

Let me try to tease out my own impression of how Web 2.0 can benefit education. Firstly, Web 2.0 is primarily a wonderful anthropological phenomenon. It connects people. Education however is more purposeful; it aims to connect people with those ideas, concepts, transformational points of view, and perspectives that have changed the course of history and which undergird society (and critique it). Connecting people with people, as Web 2.0 does, naturally leads to the connection of ideas. But the flow of ideas through well-prepared tertiary education aims to draw people out of the cave. It aims to provide a meta-view of ideas. Connection with others is only as educational as it facilitates this. Education is about more than providing information; it is about stimulating reflection, which in turn leads to personal transformation. Good education leads you out of the cave. Anthropologically Web 2.0 is fascinating; educationally, it has potential. Secondly, Michael Welsch's clips in YouTube are excellent and useful educationally because he is an expert. He has worked hard to develop an out-of-cave perspective. The opportunity of Web 2.0 for education rests less on the general availability of participative user-generated content and connectedness, and more with its potential for course design within formal frameworks. Web 2.0 does not signal the end of formal education; rather, it provides the latter with further potential.

I am assuming a liberal arts perspective of tertiary education in this point of view. I wonder if a vocational perspective of education would come to different conclusions?

In any consideration of Web 2.0 in education we need to consider both the connectivity and the content it results in. Social connection in Web 2.0 is a truly fantastic anthropological phenomenon. It's educational benefit relies on the sort of thing Michael Welsch has illustrated; deep, informed, creative and thought-provoking presentations that help lead people out of the cave.

5.*: The NetGen: Cause for CONSIDERABLE concern

I have blogged before here and especially in my previous (eBCNZer) blog (see especially "More on Net Gen nonsense") about the dangers of over-estimating the Net Generation when it comes to learning.

In my research for E-Primer 5, I found a recent (2009!) article by Malcolm Brown in EDUCAUSEreview, "The NetGens 2.0: Clouds on the Horizon". Of most concern to me are these findings from a Nielsen Norman Group study of teenagers using the Web for research:

“We measured a success rate of only 55 percent for the teenage users in this study, which is substantially lower than the 66 percent success rate we found for adult users.” The report added: “Teens’ poor performance is caused by three factors: insufficient reading skills, less sophisticated research strategies, and a dramatically lower patience level.”

Sounds like educational disaster to me. That adults achieved a higher success rate must surely indicate to even hard-nosed critics of the incumbent system that the Net Gen is in the sort of trouble that the Internet cannot fix (and has probably helped cause). Finally, at last, studies confirming that Prensky's claims about 'Digital Natives' as utopian learners are starting to be exposed as naked and horribly misleading. I have gone on before about the dangers of "Learning 2.0", have addressed the question "Are we getting dumber?" and the value of books as tools for engagement.

Interestingly Robert M. Hutchins, in his article "The Tradition of the West" (in an introductory volume to the Britannica Great Books series compiled in 1952), wrote as follows:

To put an end to the spirit of inquiry that has characterised the West it is not necessary to burn the [classic] books. All we have to do is to leave them unread for a few generations.

That process, it seems, has started. Yeats said that "Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire". In our urgency to avoid the bucket, have we under-sold the fire? It seems, from various studies, that the flames of knowledge Yeats intended are being confused by some Net Genners for sparks of information. My personal fear: A generation of learners who rely on access to information that is miles wide, but whose appreciation of understanding is one-inch deep; who are able to name all Pokemon, but unable to appreciate the insight of Socrates; who are able to chat confidently about the latest movie, but unable to participate in the Great Conversation... a generation of pragmatic learners, ever ignorant of their own dependence on Google and the limits of what it can provide. This, from "Are we getting dumber?":

A search [online] for a ‘fact’ will reveal the answer quickly; a search for a complex question or issue such as ‘whether democratization favours equality or not’ renders a search engine largely useless (citing Jeanneney 2007).

Is the Net Gen aware of these issues? Studies suggest that they are not... what concerns me in particular is that edubloggers do not seem to be upset by them, either.

5.*: The wisdom of the crowd: Too risky as the basis for truth?

Wikipedia has announced its intention to tighten its editing policy, after two major inaccuracies were released on its site relating to two US Senators, neither of whom actually died on the day of Obama's inauguration (contra early Wikipedia reports). A system of flagged revision is proposed - a system that will increase accuracy, but decrease timeliness. The issue: "critics say that the process is labour intensive and some changes can take days, if not weeks, to appear."

Here we get to the nub of the epistemological issue. Do we value accuracy more than immediacy? Does 'free' outweigh 'reliable'? It seems problematic, if not impossible, to achieve both. It must also be remembered that Wikipedia does, in fact, have a volunteer army of editors... one major difference between Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Britannica is that the latter pays its contributors (and so, naturally, must have a revenue stream with which to do so).

I am impressed with the statement by Jorge Cauz, president of Encyclopedia Britannica, who just a few days ago wrote:

"We believe that the creation and documentation of knowledge is a collaborative process but not a democratic one."

This is a subtle but valuable contrast. EB seeks to identify experts to be contributors, rather than an interested public. I continue to be amazed at how the "wisdom of the crowd" paradigm tries to cheapen the concept of expertise, as if those who have devoted years of study, reflection and practice to do with particular subjects are considered just another voice in the crowd. I'm not naive enough to suggest that experts have all of the answers, or that experts are infallible; self-criticism and an acknowledgement of one's own imperfect view are hallmarks of true expertise (at least in the humanities). Nor is it to suggest that people should not have opportunity to voice their own perspectives or understandings. Rather, a site claiming to be a storehouse of knowledge, and one whose readers are seeking objective, neutral and accurate information, must take care to ensure that objectivity, neutrality and accuracy are valued more than participation, openness, and immediacy - particularly when the latter threatens the former. Wikipedia has shown that the two sets of values can, in fact, be at odds.

Why is this post included in this blog? It raises questions of what it means to know, and what it means to prepare information (itself the fuel for knowledge). The Wikipedia model is one worth continual monitoring, as in some ways it measures the pulse of Web 2.0 and its promise for education.

Here is one way in which Wikipedia can be used effectively in education!

5.*: Second Life: "The potential to make an impact"

A YouTube video by Stacy Williams, research professor at Case Western Reserve University, outlines how Second Life is being used for educative purposes. Listen for this quote: "..trends indicate that this type of learning simulation has the potential to make an impact on transforming the future of education".

Nicely put. Just how realistic that potential is, and what its eventual scope might be, are yet to be determined. The video does show some ways in which Second Life has been used by the University (field trips, client assessment), which are reasonably predictable. Whether the potential to make an impact makes a truly meaningful contribution to teaching and learning is a very open question. A New Zealand project is exploring things in detail; I am interested to see whether the results reveal anything further about the potential for education.

I remain skeptical. I suspect that the impact Second Life will make will be to find its place amongst the various pedagogical options already available to educators. Anyone still believe in pure m-learning?

Ah well. At least there's money to be made!