2010 Horizon Report on emerging technologies' impact on education is out

The annual Horizon Report describes the continuing work of the New Media Consortium (NMC)’s Horizon Project in collaboration with Educause, a research-oriented effort that seeks to identify and describe emerging technologies likely to have considerable impact on teaching, learning, and creative expression within higher education.

You can download the report here. Or - and this is really cool - you can look at the version in which you can add your comments per paragraph here.

The nice thing about this report is that it focuses on emerging technologies, but that it also puts a time frame on it (time to adoption one, three, up to five years). There is a focus on mobile computing and simple-augmented reality as well (in different time zones). The report is 40 pages in length, and it gives an immediate and clear understanding of some of the technologies one can expect to become a reality in learning soon.

The report also looks at critical challenges (role of the academy and educational institutions, digital media literacy, new scholarly forms of authoring, publishing and researching).

What I liked reading a lot (as it was a concept I had not conscientiously linked to any practical learning possibilities, was the section on gesture-based computing (think Wii), so the machine-human interaction is becoming more embedded in learning as well. These gesture-based computing techniques have been used in medical science for very secure surgery, but I like the learning potential described in the report.

Throughout the report a myriad of examples are given (mostly Northern American), which makes it easier to grasp all the concepts and possibilities for your own implementation.

So, get the report, it is good public transport reading material.

George Siemens has had interesting thoughts on the 'making of' the report. He even suggested two great ideas that can be used by us all for brainstorming on global learning trends (copying from his weekly eLearnspace e-mail news):

"1. Pioneer educational informatics and visualization approaches to expand the report. Given the enormous amounts of data being produced through social media, Department of Education statistics, etc., making sense of data is critical. Targeting a few key data areas would extend the value of report. (for example, have a look at numerous social media monitoring services).
2. Enlarge the pool of participants to build a report. While I can see the logistical value of having an advisory board assist in the final production of the report, I would like to see a broader net cast at the start of trend identification. Why not open it up completely? Yes, it'll produce a mess of views, but that diversity is exactly what prevents calcification of views that occurs when similar groups of individuals are involved in brainstorming."

I agree with George in broadening the pool of participants in addition to looking across disciplines to get the bigger picture and to be of benefit to the larger group of educators, both in educational institutions and in companies.

How do we change our educational institutions in view of the educational shift?

At ITM where I work, the time has come to look in-depth to our institutional future. For me it implies strategically thinking about the educational future of the institute together with other colleagues in the 'educational unit'. For me the strongest points will be: networking and redefining pedagogy.

This was my 2 cents that I put in yesterday to feed the ongoing discussion.

Changing our Educational Institutions

View more presentations from ignatia.

Following these first debates (research unit, educational unit, management unit all by themselves in the first instance), there will be a grant conference in which all the units come to some kind of cross-pollination and collaboration. I am looking forward to that one as well.

lff10 Androids in Africa by Nick Short

Today I was following the presentation and live discussion on the topic of Android phones for Africa by Nick Short, Andrew Hagner and Niall Winters, taken place during the Learning Future Festival 2010, an online conference organized by the University of Leicester. Notes taken during the presentation and the following discussion: Mobile phone penetration in Africa.

New opportunities to old challenges

• One health and veterinary apps
• Android in Africa initiative
• Future possibilities
  
• Mobile penetration is increasing in Africa.

There is only one health, a lot of the human diseases are related to animal diseases and vica versa. Swine flue and blue tongue => new diseases will come increasingly quickly, so it is very important to be able to control and follow those new diseases.

New opportunities

• Open data kit and epicollect apps (open source, look here http://www.spatialepidemiology.net/epicollect/demo/ )
• Geo-spatial tools allow mapping: accurate location of diseases AND it can be added to data
• Central data aggregation in the ‘cloud’: raises issues about ownership, access, security…
• Off line facility and SD card storage: access to bandwidth is a challenge in Africa, so off line is very important, enabling transfer of data in a later date.
• Potential to play video and audio casts, put available via Wikipedia.
• Two way communication to build CoP: fundamental to the success of the project

Question: what is the relative cost of phones in comparison to African wages. Answer: phone prices are still very high, but the android phones are cheaper because it is open to change. So we provided phones with free charges to the users.

Question: network costs? Answer: we tried to find sponsors and we are exploring constraints and a lot of issues related to mobile projects. Coverage of the networks are still very variable, but generally good access is possible.

One health

• Integrated approach to disease control
• Responding to new climatic challenges
• Relies on integration of services: where the community, the health care workers, … all work together. Good community involvement is essential.
• Use of disease surveillance tools
• Building new communities

Appropriate and practical technologies

• Developed from a UK JISC funded project
• Builds on expertise from many centres
• Exploring use of mobile devices on front line (disease investigation and monitoring, eLearning and information source). The participants were not too eager on the elearning part of the project.
• Pilot project in Zanzibar: tried to see what the stakeholders really wanted in order to get a real useful project going.
• Full project starts in 2010

Looking at great blog: http://urt2009zanzibar.blogspot.com/

One Africa, One Health project: http://www.sacids.org/

future possibilities

• working with handset and network providers
• use of devices as educational tools
• developing context situated resources
• building new communities of practice
• improving quality and efficiency of feedback

A wiki that is downloadable and accessible fully online (great!): http://w01.rvcwiki.wf.ulcc.ac.uk/index.php/Main_Page

Another great link, wikipedia on iPhone: http://collison.ie/wikipedia-iphone/index-new

Cow uterus content: http://stream2.rvc.ac.uk/Anatomy/bovine/cow-uterus.asp

One of the key challenges: translating them all in local languages: http://translate.google.co.uk/?hl=en&tab=wT#en|sw|Nick

Question has the project the potential to be scaled up? Answer: mobile technology will have a very profound effect in low resource areas. But there is also a big commercial issue. We need to build on that momentum.

And a great movie with all three speakers:

Nick Short, Niall Winters & Andrew Hagner, RVC Vetaid from Africa Gathering on Vimeo.

#lff10 : Phil Candy: concentrating on organizational or institutional educational futures

Today I was following the presentation and live discussion on the topic of institutional educational futures by Phil Candy, taken place during the Learning Future Festival 2010, an online conference organized by the University of Leicester. Notes taken during the presentation and the following discussion:

It is vital for educational institutions to be aware of the direction education is taken and to prepare graduates for the future. So educational institutions must invest in teaching materials and resources (question here: what about ethical issues, what about human resources that might need to be retrained to become in sync with contemporary or future learning facilitators? I posted this question at the designated discussion forum, I will add the reply as soon as Phil or someone else has the time to reply) and – a very important one I think – universities have a duty to society to be engaged with discourses about the future (I also think universities must give a moral, critical, ethical framework for the graduates to take along in there future lives, see a post on critical pedagogy by Paulo Freire which is in the pipeline, I will link to it as soon as I post it (next week) ).

3 strategies for future university:

• Ensuring a future perspective
• Raising the level of staff awareness
• Challenging the vision of the university’s digital future, this last one is the focus of the rest of the presentation, based on a four part model which is interconnected.

Australian digital futures institute (will be launched formally in the next few months, but has been existing for 2 years):

• building bridges between teaching and research.
• Push the boundaries in the use of technologies in higher education.
• Create opportunities for collaboration
• Attract investment and funded research and development
• Share knowledge, skills and resources
• 
  
• Virtual incubator and business development hub
• Establish a commercial business incubator with and for local businesses and the chamber of commerce
• Provide an opportunity for graduates to create micro-businesses.
• Leverage the existence of corporate club, either as mentors, as supporters, or as users of the services provided.

Next generation learning initiative

• Network of teaching and immersive learning hubs based at usq and in communities, schools, tafe institutes, workplaces.
• Application developed for education infrastructure fund for support.
• Useful for research collaboration and community outreach
• Supplements individual or lone learners.

(question: how do you guarantee quality in the hub? What will be your edge over other universities hubs considering strong content can be built by any strong network? Answer of the hub question by Phil (paraphrasing): depending on what happens inside the hub. It could be that a distributed network of academics might be possible, but it needs to be looked at. Matter of high-end technology learners and how they will evolve.

In the event if one of these hubs is based in a hospital, reasonable to expect that the tutorials will be more on the job. If it is an unattended facility in a school after hours, or library, it will be the learners using the content and the material.

Ubiquitous learning possible by using different connections and overall accessibility over a wide range of devices.

Challenges of higher education:

• Ensure the next generation of leaders have an integrated, cross-disciplinary understanding, by building a futures perspective into their core work.
• Embrace the use of technologies to solve enduring pedagogical problems and create links to the graduates futures
• Stimulated and galvanize public debate about preferable futures by challenging current thinking

To build on the past, add value in the present and create sustainable, desirable and equitable futures.

Question posed during the live discussion: how can learners get accreditation on the open material that is learned by the learner, yet the learner cannot get accreditation for these materials. Answer of phil candy: there are a lot of discussion. E.g. MIT has reduced the open course material because of the cost and lack of income. It needs to be reviewed. Phil Candy will send some links to some of these discussions.

Blogger goal in 2010: more narrative coherence in between the topic strands

Wondering about the tulip image and how it links to this post? Look below.

As Christian Creutz put it so clearly: contemporary information is faster, more intense and direct. It is impossible to follow all that is created, even when limiting myself to a topic of any kind, there is so much knowledge out there in so many people. So, it looked to me that focusing will help my personal learning, as long as I link it to others who dive into similar topics. So for this year I will weave connections and topics together.

In the past year I also realized more then ever, that the narrative was missing and that I was missing this oldest human educational form in my blog. Narrations however might add to a deeper understanding, clarifying why I am learning, where my learning is going and it can also clarify it for possible followers. So for 2010 I have one stylistic ambition, to focus on just a couple of main topics that will be covered as I learn and act throughout 2010. And if possible to get some sort of narrative strand linking them all (or parts of them) together.

Future of education: institutions, interdisciplinary examples: art, activism, underground movement learning.
Pedagogies in contemporary learning: getting creative with existing and new stuff, trying to link it to a learning and theoretical framework with simple language and terms.
Ubiquitous learning: informal learning, formal learning, just-in-time learning, all the while keeping self-regulated learning in mind, or just immersing in learning no matter what context or location anyone is in.
Learning gadgets, tips and tricks: should pick this up.
mLearning: yes, it is still high on my list of fun topics.
Learning starts in the womb: getting my teeth into (very) early learning and possibly enhance chances of getting a good start for very, very young children. The informal learning, getting to grips with the world, stuff of with under two year old children.
And liven everything up a bit: humor (absolutely not sure if this will work).

These topics are linked to the eLearning predictions I have for 2010 and which might be added to the eLearn magazine's post on eLearning predictions (still on the editors table), so in that sense moving from predictions to goals. On the other hand, I wonder if I will be able to get some sort of narrative through all the posts?

Tulips? Typing in your major topics might reveal a new connection for networking
If you wonder what the image has to do with the blog post, I just put in all my main topics and googled for the first image. This gave me the tulips, which were linked to the blog of Jess Laccetti, who teaches in Edmonton, Canada on a couple of topics mentioned above. A good connection to add, me thinkest while adding Jess (hi) to my twitter connections.

My 8 learning predictions for 2010

In follow-up of the predictions I made in 2009, I take a go at predicting the learning evolutions for 2010 (oh, how I wish I had an oracle to advise me).

I also linked this post to the Big Question for January 2010 in a quest for plans or predictions, posted by Tony Karrer on the Learning Circuit blog.

Overall I feel that learning research in 2010 will favor pedagogy over technology as the prime focus, and ubiquitous learning will be the central goal. In a more elaborate sense, here are my 8 predictions for 2010:

Semantics: Learning will become the rave again. Web2.0, education2.0, mobile learning, eLearning, TELearning … we as learners will be focusing on Learning again for the simple reason that the learning is all around us, and done with every tool we have.

Ubiquitous learning: ubiquitous learning as a term becomes more common place, especially with net books and mobile devices still on the rise. Because ubiquitous learning is coming closer to our learning reality, and because it focuses more on the learning aspect and less on what type of technology is used, I think it will be one of the main educational foci in 2010.

Social media will become more streamlined, and all present: the last couple of year’s new social media applications sprung up. In 2010 I predict that it will become more streamlined, once people are used to certain software that serves a specific purpose; they tend to stay with it for a longer amount of time. Social media will become normal for any type of learning, because it favors networks and connections.

Pedagogy: for the last couple of years technology was at the center of innovative learning. In my opinion, now that these (social media) technologies have taken off, the focus will come back to the learner her/himself. Pedagogy will overtake technology as the main focus in new media learning research.

Cognitive factors: in 2008 and 2009 some new initiatives were taken to start using new technologies and resulting innovative pedagogies, e.g. Connectivism and Connective Knowledge course, Quest for learn. For 2010 I think the cognitive will be increasingly in the picture.

Low resource areas build more applications by themselves, and for themselves. Africa and other low resource areas are moving forward at a rapid pace. There is a growing number of African developers and activists that make a difference and enable citizens to participate in society, and engage in learning. This trend will increase, as more projects are developed or useful mash-ups are put together to get a message out to the world or boost their region and its people.

Augmented reality: as the applications for mobile devices grow, augmented reality is becoming a much more interesting area to explore. It allows all users to get a clearer view on topics that are of interest to them: is an engineering project on target? Which shops can I see from where I stand? What church is this? Just take a look at the Augmented Reality Team video’s.

Networking and connections gain even more ground: for any long term project that wants to take off, the strength will be in the network and the connections related to it. Building a strong and relevant personal network will be crucial for any work. But in order to be willing to build a network and exchange knowledge with all the connected people in it, trust will be crucial. Trust is a good characteristic for any type of living.

What are your predictions for 2010?

(Another great cartoon by Nick D Kim, nearingzero.net.)

You made me realize I cannot do it alone: my network is my strength, my beacon of light, my inspiration, so thanks to you all!

The big question for December 2009 was: “What did you learn about learning in 2009”. Well, just one very simple, yet essential thing: to open up and embrace sharing knowledge.
2009 was a very chaotic year for my blogging reflections. I just did not know where I was going and I had an existential blogging crisis. Reading all your blogs, I felt as though I just was not adding enough. All through 2009 I tried to stay on top of the new whirlwind of gadgets (new social media software, new mobile devices…), I dived into many papers and books on topics directly related to eLearning and mobile learning, but something was missing and I felt as though I was falling short.

However, there were two bright and clear actions that pushed my learning in 2009 and which brought me back to this earth and all its wonders.

The first actions that gave me a boost in 2009 were all your great ideas! During the presentations, the trainings and the workshops (online and face-to-face) I was able to give, I learned the most, although I was the one who was asked to take the lead. The participants and partners in these workshops, trainings and presentation settings were amazing. The participants always came up with great ideas, added relevant question marks, and paved the way to deeper understanding for us, the entire group. Thanks to you I now realize more than ever that trusting the team, and opening up to the network is what it is all about. It is about us, or quoting my favorite film by Miranda July, ‘Me You and Everyone We Know’: “We are all in this together.”

The other great beacon of inspiration, and a most humbling one, were all the health care workers I met in 2009 and with whom my colleagues and I tried to find solutions for their eLearning situations and challenges. Most of these health care workers work in dire conditions, in regions that only had a minimum of connectivity, sometimes war hurt regions, and despite these trying conditions they were happy with any exchange of knowledge that could take place. I learned a lot from all of them: keep it simple, share and connect. They also put my feet back on the ground: technology is an instrument connected to an economic class, it is the instrument of humans, and it is up to all of us to choose what we do with it. Those health care workers knew and know how important a network is. They know that the strength of any network can make the difference between life and death (district hospitals rely frequently on telemedicine to get answers to difficult cases). Technology enables those networks, but does not build or nourish them. So I respect every one of these health care workers immensely. They make a difference just by living, learning and connecting.

These networks gave a direction to a lot of my learning; they pushed my learning towards usefulness, and creativity. So in 2009 I learned that it is not the learning that I have gone through, but the learning we all could accomplish that makes the difference. This world is a wonderful place and human nature can be full of kindness and sharing. I am very glad I belong to this global network of people that want to learn, share and grow towards a better life for all. You all made me realize I cannot do it alone, but that it is okay, that together we can build on each other. My network is my strength, my beacon of light, my inspiration, so thanks to you all!

PhD thesis on tagging learning resources in a multilangual context

For years people are pushed to tag their learning resources, but I often wondered whether these tagged resources actually do get reused? Or whether tagging between peers that live in various parts of the world only works in theory, but does in fact not result in sharing resources in actual learning life. But here comes Riina with a clear answer to these questions.

Some great shared learning resources have been around for some years: the Open Educational Resources Commons, which was set-up by ISKME which was launched Februari 2007 and has strong partners e.g. UNESCO, OER commons works with tags a lot. Another renowned one is of course the MIT opencourseware, but then the latter does not use tags much.

There are also other smaller scale projects that share their learning resources. Together with other ITM-people I am working on an eLearning partnership that enables all to exchange learning modules, hence decreasing all our time in developing online courses, because we divide the workload and at the same time enabling us all to share our content/elearning knowledge across many different settings. This is way I was thrilled reading the phd in question that covers sharing learning resources across borders and more specifically how tags work in those situations.
At the same time, I sometimes wonder what happens with any Dutch work I write? How can people find Dutch papers, or articles in any other language, if they only have tags to go on (which are sometimes quite different depending on the language). Of course tagging in different languages for the same written document might be an answer, but Riina offers a far more interesting and workable solution, which relies on networks underlying the content based mainly on the three factors: user, item, tag.

Riina Vuorikari wrote her phd entitled "Tags and self-organisation: a metadata ecology for learning resources in a multilingual context", and in the introduction she describes the main ideas behind it:

"Social tags offer an interesting aspect to study learning resources, its metadata
and how users interact with them in a multilingual context. Tags, as opposed to conventional metadata description such as Learning Object Metadata (LOM), are free, non-hierarchical keywords that end-users associate with a digital artefact, e.g. a learning resource. Tags are formed by a triple of (user,item,tag).
Tags and the resulting networks, folksonomies, are commonly modelled as tripartite hypergraphs. This ternary relational structure gives rise to a number of novel relations to better understand, capture and model contextual information. The (user,item) relationship is a parameter of the interaction between a user and the learning resource. In the (user,tag) relation, on the other hand, tags are regarded as part of the user model that reflects user’s interests and intentions. The full relational structure emphasises the (item,tag) relation that allows tags to be part of describing the item that they are related to (e.g. a learning resource). Additionally, the (item,tag) relation can be extended to the metadata of the item (e.g. LOM), from which an additional relationship (tag,LOM) is inferred."

The thesis describes two exploratory studies and "introduces a trilogy of studies focusing on self-organisation, flexibility and robustness of a social tagging system using empirical, behavioural data captured from log-files and user’s attention metadata trails on a number of learning resource portals and platforms in a multilingual context."

This is a very interesting thesis (181 pages) on tagging and how to get the most out of it.

(photo information from thesis: Figure 8.1. A learning network: a social network graph of about 5000 eTwinning teachers connected through common projects. The nodes are teachers and the edges are common projects (Breuer, Klamma, Cao & Vuorikari, 2009).

Living a mobile life? How do you cope?

First I was a nomad, I did not have a house nor passport for two years, moving from one place to another. Then I was house hopping for another three years. Eventually I got myself a house, then I started to learn on top of my work... so all along I had to be mobile. Where the mobility was mostly physical in the first part of my adult life, it quickly became essential for my mental development in the second part of my adult life.

As ubiquitous learning is becoming more obvious, some of you have been writing on the fact that learning has always been mobile, like Michelle Pacansky-Brock linking it to university issues. With this post I would love to hear your mobile life and how you are coping?

For my work I sometimes need to visit partners in the South (India, Morocco, South-Africa...). While I am there, I learn from my colleagues over there, I learn how they tackle certain pedagogical problems and infrastructural challenges. So I guess, at that point I am learning while being mobile, something that explorers have always done. In fact starting from the 17th century mobile learning was all the rave if you were part of the upper class, you went on a Grand Tour to get extra education. And in Africa they had and have people - les griots - who took what they had seen and learned on their travels and routes, the history of the people passed on to them for generations, and delivered that knowledge to whomever wanted to listen to them. So mobile learning is not new, but learning through means of mobile devices is.

Just a couple of weeks ago I was on route and this is how I was learning while being on route or mobile. I am currently following a master in distance education at Athabasca University on top of my work as an eLearning coordinator and researcher at the Institute of Tropical Medicine. This brings along some challenges, because where ever I go for my job, I need to stay in touch with my learning material as well. On this journey I had: two smartphones (one symbian, one windows mobile and waiting to by an android one), one light weight laptop with me. The trip consisted of a bus ride, four trains (yes, cutting the carbon emission by not taking the plain) which totaled 8 hours of travelling and a cab drive to my hotel.

All in all, here are some mobile learning snapshots... pictures taken with mobile smartphones:

Waiting for the train, so learning on the platform

Shaky while writing the first draft of a paper on the train




Learning next to the queen while waiting on the next train



What is your mobile life like?

Mobile magazines and journals to get new ideas or publish your work

As your mobile experience and knowledge grows, you might want to publish your findings and experiences, at least I do.

Before listing the mobile magazines that might be interesting to send your manuscript to, consider the ISSN-option.
If you have a blog or website and you are already publishing or want to publish on a regular basis on scientific topics, you might want to ask an ISSN (= International Standard Serial Number). The ISSN is an eight-digit number which identifies periodical publications as such, including electronic serials. The ISSN is linked to a standardized form of the title of the identified serial, known as the "key title", which repeats the title of the publication, qualifying it with additional elements in order to distinguish it from other publications having identical titles. Contrary to other types of publications, the world of serial publications is particularly changeable and complex : the lifetime of a title may be extremely short; many publications may be part of a complex set of relationships, etc. These particularities themselves necessitated the introduction of the ISSN. ISSN are assigned to electronic publications as far as they are serials or other continuing resources. However commercial web sites, personal weblogs and web pages, web pages which contain only links to other URLs are not eligible for ISSN. But if you review certain topics on a regular basis, you might be eligeable for an ISSN (e.g. ICTology http://ictlogy.net/review/ ).
Here is the link for the ISSN overview and request form.

Here are some of the Mobile learning journals or magazines that might be of interest to you. I focused on specialized journals, but of course you can go very open as well and address eLearning journals that I referred to a couple of months ago.
This mobile journal list is not exhaustive, so if you know of any others please add your link.

International Journal of Mobile and Blended Learning (IJMBL) was launched in 2009. The editor-in-chief is Dr. David Parsons and he is completely enthusiastic in real in-depth scientific papers.

International Journal of Mobile Learning and Organisation (IJMLO)
ISSN (Online): 1746-7268 - ISSN (Print): 1746-725X

International Journal of Interactive Mobile Technologies (iJIM), this is an open access journal (yeah!)

Mobile Information Systems has been around for 6 years.

Have additional ones? Give me a sign if you know any other specifically mLearning journals or magazines.

Other more broad publications to consider:
http://www.educause.edu/

smartphone and PocketPC magazine:
http://www.smartphonemag.com/cms/bundle

(Another great cartoon by Nick D Kim, nearingzero.net.)