A great set of speakers, all talking on the subject of owning learning (some limitless)
Alec Couros
Promise of open and connected learning is the subject. Promise
of personalised learning is one of the elements that have changed in the last
few years. The ownership.
Help with bowdril youtube is example of the strength of weak
ties. Everyone has access to networks today. The longtail of learning helps to
connect with people for niche learning.
Post napster idea of MIT giving 2002 all their materials
away via the internet. Youtube is the ultimate MOOC as so many people have
learned their own passion.
Audrey Clemens is another kid that he learned and shared
through the web.
#learningproject (part for students): how can we learn from
the web, and document the learning through web options. (eg Bob Ross tutorials
to learn painting).
So if we can google it, why teach it. This is a bit of
techno utopianism that we need to be critical off. Tech utopia , Langdon Winner
on mythinformation. (from searching for the limits book).
Neil Postman on 5 things we need to know about technological
change. It is not an attitude, but a ecological…
Emerging challenges for open learning:
information literacies; filter bubbles and fake news (Eli
Pariser, youtube beware of filter bubbles).
Blue feed,, Red feed: looking at the tail of two different
tail news. Very good article.
Most students don’t know when news is fake (wallstreet
journal).
Trevelyan (1942) what is worth reading and easy prey to
sensations.
Attention literacy: Mcluhan, heavy media multitaskers
impacting learning and attention.
Problems of identity: resume is replaced by online portfolio
(eg). One option is universities providing you with your own domain name for
you to fill with relevant information.
We live in a world where one single tweet can change our
lives for bad or for good.
Cybercrime: romance scams: fake network accounts
(catfishing) to get money.
Greater societal problems: when we ask students to come to
the web, this is not a perfect world and it is getting more hostile. Geography
of hate website.
We need to really think about what we teach students on
getting online tools.
Diana Laurillard
Who owns the responsibility of for learning. (using the conversational framework, see picture)
The outline of her argument is: what it means by learning,
and what it takes to teach in the digital world, who owns the responsibility fr
learning, how to plan the shift to effective blended learning, the education
context for teachers and leaders. So her point is more formal, where alex
couros’s focus was more on the informal, passionate learning.
What does it take us to learn formally? The point of the
conversational framework was to distill the learning and put it into a fairly
simple framework.
(see picture), and the idea should be to widen the learning
conversations to embed all of these types of learning and interactions.
Question: teaching presence ? when a teacher is taken out of
the framework. This is where education comes in, as it can cater specific
learning that would take you much more time to get there. So the teacher
provides something that you cannot reach quickly yourself.
The teaching workload is increased in terms of … (see
picture).
Using learning technologies is our best bet to be able to do
this. So, to Diana these are exciting times to be in education.
Challenges: MOOCs are free education for highly educated
professionals most of the time. So we need to use the technology to
scaffold/cascade those who do need education and cut off.
One option is to use MOOCs for teachers, as they are
following MOOCs anyway, but aiming the course at training teachers for their profession.
Who owns the responsibility of learning? The new digital
demands we make on teacher time will effect the time and tasks they need to do.
Learners were collaborating, working online in both class
and at home, online.
Balance of responsibility looking at teacher and learners?
With technology we can enhance the advocacy of both. Teachers should be able to
think through how they can support learners with tech for independent learning.
Shift planning towards blended learning. Modelling learning benefits versus teaching
costs: see
The drivers are strong but not aligned with digital. And we
invest in the enablers, which are weak if you do not have the drivers for
innovation. Unlock the power of the teachers to support more blended learning,
more personalised learning. Teaching is a design science, lets trust the
teachers to do this.
Martin Eyjolfsson
He wondered about why Icelandians seem to be more creative?
Because Icelandians are happy… but why?
Only a few of us young people know what they want to do
later on in life… this calls for creative solutions to bring passion to their
life. A massive participation from an early age into society. So becoming a
jack of many trades from an early age onward to feel society, to keep an open
mind and be a free spirit. Bjork has a project biophilia (http://biophiliaeducational.org/ ),
which learns kids about creativity.
Mark Surman from
Mozilla
Web literacy empowers people and keeps the internet healthy.
The stakes are getting higher on what internet means for education and for
humanity.
What does it mean to have a healthy internet? Mozilla has a
motto: guard the open nature of the internet. And this was said when it was
launched in 2003 but it still rings true.
The internet is made by multiple people and in a way by us
all. The internet is an ecosystem built by us, but we need to keep it healthy.
But many things have happened.
The internet of things is increasingly becoming reality. Every aspect of us will become
connected. This also means it becomes an increased risk, as AI is embedded in
these systems and filtering bubbles as well. Some of the risks of this
ecosystem is IoT botnets are growing and they are up for hire. Where devices
are much less secured. We have an increasing cybersecurity risk that risks of
taking whole companies down. The stakes are very high.
What is the social structure as we live in an increasingly
connected society? There is a digital divide (eg demographic digital divide is
real and pervasive). The digital power and opportunities influence divides.
Those divides are global.
Structures of economy are part of the healthy internet, eg major
app producers are in the North, where growing smartphone use in South, so new/old
colonial.
(look up latest worldbank report as it was actually critical
and of interest).
Imperial ambitions from US and China corporations using the
internet. Mozilla makes products with values and ethics embedded in them, but
increasingly Mozilla found that the need to be part of a larger trend to keep
internet health. We as Mozilla are choosing to become more political.
Teaching this to help people realize what the digital world
is, is one of the best activist actions to take and be part of. This is an
important activist role.
Are we teaching the right things? Web literacy is an
important citizen skill, yet we do not take it seriously enough in schools. This
is reading and writing and participating in the digital world. Critical reading
skills as well as participation skills, and creativity is critical as a skill.
We need to be successful to be a productive force.
www.theglassroomnyc.org
as a way to interactively make people more web literate.
Why Europe’s new copyright proposals are bad news for the
internet (see fortune article), the outcome of this debate will have a massive
effect on citizenship in Europe. It might be giving an free road to censor
personal internet content on a massive scale. It will have an effect on free
digital speech.
Look at www.changecopyright.org
which is just getting going, and Mozilla wants teachers and young people to be
involved in.
