The #MOOC of One, massive is not important ONE is

To be one is to be YOU concludes Stephen Downes in his latest slideshare of a presentation given at the 8th conference of International Technology, Education and Development or INTED2014 in Valencia, Spain. When stating that concluding idea, Stephen once again proves that all things beautiful are simple and that enlightenment is often a case of reversing an idea that lived for some time. In this 28 slide presentation Stephen examine the transition from the idea of the Massive in MOOC to the idea of the personal learning environment.

I like this idea, as the more I delve into research on self-directed and self-regulated learning in MOOCs, the more I feel it is about the individual and how they manage (or are willing to manage) their learning that makes MOOCs important.

The MOOC of One from Stephen Downes

The proceedings of prior INTED conferences can be viewed or searched for free online here.   

#mLearn2010 keynote of Agnes Kukulska Hulme on Conversations en route to Learning

Live from mlearn 2010 Wednesday 2010. Liveblogging Agnes Kukulska Hulme (so typo's might appear due to time restraints of live blogging)

Agnes in a beautiful checkered dress with autumn colors

two meanings that interests Agnes

1. increasingly conversations take place between learners on their way to learning => interested in moving
2. second the metaphorical one: the learners are gearing up to learn while they have the conversations, so this is an interesting mental state.

Conversations are a very strong form of human communication.
A broad topic, so only highlighting some issues on mobile communication and learning
She starts off with her own mobile journey, which is very close to narrative learning and I like it.
Big interest in Learner-led mobile language learning.

Human ingenuity enters: for instance post restante (a letter send to Paris, and once the person arrived in Paris they would pick up the letter. Nice, for it shows that even in adverse circumstances people create conversations). Another example is the wish tree: a wish is for themselves, but really it is communication and the end point of the communication is not defined.
All these ideas comes from the past and pervades the new technologies as well.

There is an intensity about these communicative, mediated conversations, linked to your own attitude towards travel and communication. A lot of important conversations take place when people move in between places: Wright, N. (2010) Twittering in teacher education: reflecting on practicum experiences, Open Learning, 25(3). The conversation builds the community, through the use of twitter on their phones. the study recalls how the teachers shared thoughts while driving home, to reflect on their experience.

Second case study is by Madoe, M (2010) Exploring the use of MXit - a cellphone social network to facilitate learning in distance education, Open learning 25(3).

But sometimes it does not work, these conversations on route.

There has been done a lot of work on conversations and learning (going back to Pask, 1976), Sharples (2003), Laurillard (2002, 2007).

The pervasive learning space still needs to be researched extensively. We have to understand the changing surroundings. there are shifting conditions, time constraints... this leads to different states of mind while traveling, moving, waiting, lying down (learners with disabilities).

Physical traveling has become more complex. so we should investigate how learning en route is affected by complexity of the route itself.

How do mobile and ubiquitous technologies affect our conversations?

• Conversations are becoming layered (people working together with the remote mediator, virtual additional layer). We should look at all these layers and the interactions between them.
• We also need to look at multilogues: often conversations start in one place, and then they continue in another. Often it is due to practical or social situations (switch to group preferred mediums). So we use multiple media. "... in a world marked by fluidity, provisionality and instability" Pachler, bachman and Cook (2010).
• Speech acts become artefacts: conversations become artefacts that travel across cyberspace and have lives of their own (the collection forms its own narrative, which in its part becomes a new artefact).
• More opportunities now to 'Converse with Sel'. This inner dialogue is often important in a learning dialogue.
• Any questions answered service (AQA): any question you post from your phone will be answered by unknown people that will deliver the answer anonymously. The answer is succinct, which triggers to want to know more. It would be good to explore being a learner. Nice also because you can use it anywhere.

The nature of conversations en route to learning should be researched, how?

• donate your sms texts to research ( http://www.sms4science.org/?q=en ), additional layer to your conversational layer. At the moment you have to send the message, but potentially you could have a conversation with the researchers, but interesting way forward for such research.
• research data from conversations with self: mappiness application which monitors your mood. Build by London school of economics (remark from me: I think, not sure, but something with economics). You share pictures, sms... and you obtain graphs with feedback. GREAT, but also into private area for LSE researchers.
• This highlights the limits of human language. Nolfi & Mirolli (2010) evolution of communication and language in Embodied Agents, pp 23-24. Really interesting remark on human communication as it is mostly done on external communication.
• Digital jewelery as conversational prop (Jayne Wallace http://www.digitaljewellery.com ). So as you move through space, film movie exerts are played which can trigger conversations with people around you (great also).
• Innovative ways of starting conversations

Human communication uses all senses

• artefacts
• sound
• touch, gesture and movement
• smell and taste
• thought and feeling
• bodily reactions,
• space
• time

our challenge is to look at all of them and get a deeper understanding.

Time and turn-taking in conversation is also an interesting research, how do we understand the laps of time in between conversations.
Multimodal turn-taking has been researched as well (like comments on pictures, for which you need to see the picture in order to understand it).

New media as a lingua franca
when speakers do not share each other's language, they use a lingua franca.
in contrast with the problems encountered by non-native speakers when interacting with native speakers (C.Meierkord, Linquistik online 5, 1/00, 2000. So maybe the new media will enable joint construction.

Rebecca West (: there is no such thing as conversation, they are only intersecting monologues (remark from me: interesting as this would underline learner-centered learning).

paper review: Mobile learning paper summary

Mobile learning, South-Africa, case study.... this is a perfect combination to build an interesting paper. The paper I summarize here is part of a mobile learning book edited by Mohamed Ally and I wrote about it in an earlier post here.
Lately I have been rummaging through a lot of papers. Some of them are interesting, but this one is truly inspiring, so I decided to put a summary of the article in my blog. Hopefully some of you will get motivated to go through it, I think it is worthwhile because the article clearly describes the steps that are taken to come to the case study it describes. It is referenced quite a lot, because this review was part of an assignment. If you are into mobile learning research, this is a good paper to read through.

In this article Jon Gregson and Dolf Jordaan (2009) focused on the challenges and opportunities of a two year mobile learning (m-learning) project started in October 2005. The project was based in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region. The project was embedded in the Wye Distance Learning Program (DLP) of the Imperial College in London, United Kingdom, and has been developed in close collaboration with the University of Pretoria (UP) in South-Africa. The target population consisted of postgraduate distance learning students from the SADC region registered in the DLP. The case study covered an investigation of the context and potential value added of m-learning, considering the pedagogic and practical models being used by the DLP. The project also looked at the educational needs of the students.

Gregson and Jordaan (2009) delved into the current status of eLearning in the SADC region within the DLP program design, and delivered a literary review of mobile projects in a Southern African context. The steps followed in the design and the implementation of the project, were also shared. The authors described the two phases that were covered. In the initial phase four students were identified and became involved in the planning of the project. The second, pilot phase involved a group of 20 students testing out course materials, activities and tutoring approaches that were designed for the mobile phone. The selection procedure and the reasons behind these student selection procedures were described in the article.

The authors highlighted the major considerations and challenges: communication, access and participation, tutoring support to students in diverse locations, the usability of learning resources for students who are mobile, and access to content and programme materials.

An overview of the SADC baseline survey was given: ICT access, rating for current eLearning support, quality of support and access, and Online Learning Environment (OLE) access. Insights into the context of the regions were obtained by interviewing the four students of the initial phase. Gregson and Jordaan (2009) examined mobile coverage maps, future telecommunication coverage plans, and student relationship with the student’s local infrastructure. The preliminary activities of the students were covered: sms with the project team, audio and video recordings, picture taking, and communicating with peers. The m-learning support for the two course modules that were trialed in the project was also covered. The authors specifically drew on the integration of constructivist, situated, collaborative, and informal learning theories and activities as the pedagogical model of the project.

After describing the project in clear detail, Gregson and Jordaan (2009) reflected on the technical design decisions that the project team made. They concluded with possible areas for further research.

I really liked the article as it clearly described the decisions they made along the way. It also made sense in the longterm, from a historical archive point of view.

For those interested in the complete reference:
Gregson, J. & Jordaan, D. (2009). Exploring the challenges and opportunities of m-learning within an international distance education programme. In M. Ally (Ed), Mobile learning: Transforming the delivery of education and training (pp. 215–246). Athabasca, BC: Athabasca University.

And I got it from the internet here.

#ela2009 workshop George Siemens: social networking technologies for teaching and learning transformation

One of the workshops in eLearning Africa 2009 was lead by George Siemens, a Canadian from the Manitoba University who was one of the organisers of the CKK08 massive course in 2008 in which I participated my two cents. He is always a source of innovative ideas.

The great thing about these slides is that it gives you a holistic approach of what learning embraces: experimenting, gossip, collaboration, debating, constructing ideas ...

It comprises a lot of names from the educational realm, so if you are interested in pedagogy, you want to look for new (or I like to see them as the historically old) ways of learning, just look up a couple of these persons and dive in.
A name I had to google was Seymour Papert, and it showed me again that learning is based on sharing knowledge through networks. I know I will never know all I am interested in, but I love exploring new information.

The slides of the workshop:

Day2 Elearning Africa

View more OpenOffice presentations from gsiemens.

Blogphilosophy rethinking educational methodologies: is constructivism indeed a solution for all regions?

The last couple of weeks I have been following a module of a Master in Distance Education at Athabasca University. This particular module focuses on the International issues that arise while developing distance education for different regions around the globe. It is moderated by Barbara Spronk, who seems to have traveled the world to such an extend that she does qualify as a global citizen indeed.

So I have been learning a lot lately, but consequently blogposted less. I had to come to terms with what I would post, when to find time and if anyone might be interested. Then I remembered some of you who have been motivating me to write on eLearning as soon as it interests me and this topic I find indeed interesting:
is the constructivist methodology - that is so fiercely promoted by distance education as it is seen as more student-centered - indeed a good methodology to use throughout the world?

I feel very in favor of the constructivist learning approach (Jean Piaget has written about it, picture in post) and I have been writing about it on some occasions. But due to the course I am following now, I am beginning to doubt if this methodology is indeed fit for all regions, I think not.

When developing DE for low income countries, I had the tendency of looking at social media possibilities as well (if the technology could be used) and to look for a more student-centered approach. But if you go into a region - as an advisor or a tutor - and you promote any kind of DE methodology, inevitably it becomes not that particular communities plan, but someone else’s plan or strategy. As such DE could be perceived as pervasive in some cultures.

It might not be without meaning that DE and the methodologies allocated with it as being ‘successful methodologies’ are linked to DE was build in a region (lets say Northern countries), by those people that have followed education in that region and as such DE (the first DE) has the mark of that region on it. If I were to make an invention for myself, I bet it would provide to the needs and thinking of my community, but my invention might not necessarily be exportable to other communities. A person is build in her/his community and from that framework creativity and ideas emerge. To me the same thing is true for educational methodologies.

Let's look at some Asian countries were teacher-centered learning is more commonly accepted than student-centered learning. What do you do in such region if you are asked to be a provider? Do you go in and push the 'constructivist is good for DE'-agenda, or do you let others come up with a methodology they feel is better for them, although that methodology might not be 'ideal' in your experience as a DE advisor/teacher?

So my opinion is changing from a constructivist promoter to a belief that if DE is formed, constructed and implemented by tutors or knowledge persons within a community, DE can be more indigenous and better fitting the needs and believes of that community.

Does anybody have thoughts on this or experiences?