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Final module to complete the MAODE

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Monday, 8 Oct 2012, 05:22

Successfully registered and signed up for H810: accessibility - starting September with a January finish. This will complete my first, extraordinary OU Journey after three years.

Intellectually challenging, rigorous, comprehensive, expansive and life transforming. It took a while but I am now working for a world leader creating e-learning resources for companies - manager training for the most part.

It won't end here. I have my eye on a History MA. I've discussed this with student services. Starting September 2013 in two parts this will take me into the Centenerary of that horror, the 'war to end war' (HGWells) 1914-1918 that I blog about at www.machineguncorps.com

History would have been my first degree decades ago had I not got cold feet and switched to Geography. And an MA in Fine Art (which had been on the cards in 2010 when I elected for the MAODE.

I guess that's the next decad taken care of!

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My Personal Learning Environment: what is yours?

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Monday, 18 June 2012, 01:11

photo.JPG

Fig 1. MY PLE

First Half 2012 (earlier PLEs in the blog here)

The blogs, Picasa, increasingly eBooks from Kindle on a Kindle and the iPad. Tweeted. This locates like-minds but also provides my notes in my Twitter feed. Google as ubiquitous as QWERTY. Facebook for social/family; Linkedin for work related groups, interests and contacts (e-learning, corporate communcations)

My OU Blog in the student environment and its mirror my external blog in wordpress IS a blog, learning journal, e-portfolio, forum and deposit. It can be a link to 'like-minds' too (and job opportunities)

I want an article I cut and paste the reference in Google.

If I can't have it I repeat this in the OU Library resource fist by title, then by author. I find I can, almost without exception, read whatever takes my interest. Brilliance for the curious and ever-hungry mind.

Increasinly I photo and screen grab everything, manipulate in Picasa then load online where I can file, further manipulate and share. A better e-portfolio and an e-portfolio as it is image based. My e-learning folder tops 350+ images.

When busy on an OU Module the 'OU Learning Environment expands to fill 1/3rd of the screen: the learning journey, resources, activities and student forums are my world for 6-9 months'.

In truth I need to video my activity and then do a time in motion audit. Tricky as I don't have a laptop or desktop anymore. All is done (most) on the move on an iPad or iPhone. I 'borrow' my son's desktop when he's at school or early mornings on my wife's laptop. Which explains why EVERYTHING is online, I could go to the library or an Internet cafe and work just as well.

'A university in my pocket'?

Michael%2520Young%2520IMAGE.JPG

Or 'a university in the clouds', literally as envisaged in the 1960s by Michael Young et al and featured on BBC Radio 4's 'The New Elizabethans' (in association with the Open University of course)

  • A pivotal role in the creation of the welfare state
  • Groundbreaking work as a social scientist in the East End
  • His creation of the Open University

P.S. Which reminds me: the Open University was devised for those with a fraction of the opportunities I have had so I need to treat it with huge respect.

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Fig 2. My PLE July 2011

A year on my choice of blogs has greatly reduced. I still access Diaryland as it has 1,700+ entries to draw upon from 1999 to 2006. StumbleUpon I still use and need to add to the current PLE. I don't go near Xing. I haven't indicated the digital tools, the hardware I use to access this (these) online resources.

But what's more important, the phone or the conversation?

Yes, I dip into Wikipedia but frequently I scroll down for alternative equally valid answers from the long established sources that have finally got themselves online. TED lectures I've missed out too. I must watch several a month.

I haven't add family and friends because where they are part of my world, increasingly online through Facebook, they are not directly part of my PLE.

However, it would be foolish to ignore the vital role family and the context of family, community and school play in learning.

FURTHER LINKS IN THIS BLOG ON PLEs

Virtual Learning Environments vs. Personal Learning Environments

Virtual Learning Environments or Personal Learning Environments

Google+

Technology Mediated Learning Spaces

The reality check. Must PLEs be technology enables to qualify as PLE?

The Challenge Facing Course Design 1997 vs. 2012

What’s wrong with educational social networking?

My Personal Learning Environment (2011)

Sometimes only paper will do

Digital Housekeeping. Recording everything.

H800 EMA Images / Visualisation

H800 EMA Course Specifics

What’s wrong with Educational Social Networking? (EDU)

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My postgraduate learning environment

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Sunday, 17 June 2012, 14:28

iDesk%2520Sketch.jpg

Whenever I stumbleupon I new tool I like to give it a shot and the first thing that comes to mind is my 'learning environment' or some such. All I initially wanted was a simple Venn Diagram creating tool (I tested several of those). This, iDesk, does some much, exploits the multi-touch surface of an iPad and is great fun and versatile.

'Subjects' and 'Art History' have vanished under 'writing'.

A shifting thing where clients call the shots when freelance work takes precedence.

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OUSA This weekend

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I'm delighted to be attending the OUSA Conference next weekend in Milton Keynes; if you're around let's meet up for a coffee in The Hub.
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Where is a blog is a blog, an e-portfolio, a wiki and forum? Right here!

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Sunday, 4 May 2014, 09:58

The Open University provide an OU Student Blog platform, which you are required to use for some modules to build up reflective practice, they also provide a portfolio called MyStuff in which to dump stuff.

As portfolios either system can be used to aggregate content that can be shared, offered with restricted access or kept private.

I have been on the Masters in Open & Distance Education for two years, we have to give blogs, potfolios, wikis and other tools a go.

My conclusion, shared amongst fellow students, is that the 'modern' blog platform, such as Wordpress offers all of this, as in a wonderfully simple, bulletin board kind of way the OU's own blog offering.

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An OU Student without a module is like a ship without a rudder

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For the last 26 months my OU studying has had me pointed in a direction (even if it wasn't always clear which port I was headed for I was at least at sea and in motion).

I've been blown along by the regular requirements of activities and assessments (I need the regular drip drip of weekly activities far more than an assignment every sixth week or an exam after five months).

Time to get the paddles out (if I can find them).

Or I come ashore?

The next module I'm interested in doesn't start 'til February 2013!

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Social Learn

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Wednesday, 21 Mar 2012, 06:12

A new age dawns?

Social Learn

Social Learn YouTube

Our Open Class from Pearson?

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A fellow OU fan? Let the world know with a vote on Facebook

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Tuesday, 6 Mar 2012, 08:32

I wouldn't usually do this kind of thing, but you can do the OU a favour, prove a point to the world and be in line to win an iPad 3. Just go along to the OU Facebook page and 'like', for further Brownie Points add a comment.

Combined this sets us against other univwrsities. somehow we were beaten to the top slot in 2011.

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=295349760517763&set=a.295346917184714.93370.139403029445771&type=1

I started in 2001, then took a break.

Back for the last two years with an MA a module away and more to follow for certain: MRes? MBA? Another MA in History of Art or Creative WritinG.

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78 things to think about when it comes to e-learning

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Saturday, 3 Nov 2012, 06:33

Or should that be 64 things and 14 academics ? (a number that could be doubled from our reading lists with ease).

ELearning%252520MindMap%252520SNIP.JPG

What about the others?

What have I missed out?

Some tools:

  • VLE
  • Forums
  • Google Alerts
  • Bubbl.us

Do please add some of your own to see if I can get it up to the cliched 101.

 

 

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Four ways to be a 'Digital Scholar'

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Sunday, 16 Oct 2011, 05:05

If Boyer's four main scholarly functions were research, application, integration and teaching, then I would propose that those of the digital scholar are engagement, experimentation, reflection and sharing'.

Weller (2011 in Chapter 4, 20% of the way through, Kindle Location 1005. Is there a page number related to a print version? Amazon say not in a polite, informative and lengthy e-mail. What therefore is the answer to this referencing conundrum?)

Does Weller's suggestion make anyone who keeps a student blog and shares it openly like this a scholar?

Making us all digital scholars?

(I love the term as a hundred years ago in Census Returns it was used to describe anyone attending an academic institution, whether school or university).

Goals of the Scholarly Activity

  • Provide students with an opportunity to employ their unique skills and talents to pursue a project of their choosing under the mentorship of an expert in the field.
  • Provide mentorship and guidance for students interested in careers that integrate research, teaching, and clinical service (academic medicine).
  • Foster development of analytical thinking skills, rational decision making, and attention to the scientific method.
  • Enhance communication skills.
  • Enhance self-directed learning.

 

Reference

Boyer, E.L. 1990. Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate. The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Princeton, NJ.

Weller, M., (2011) The Digital Scholar

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What next regarding e-learning?

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Monday, 8 Oct 2012, 04:54

This has me thinking and going through http://www3.open.ac.uk/study/postgraduate/qualification/F10.htm

With the MA in mind I have done:

H807 Innovations in e-learning

H808 The e-learning professional

And will complete next month:

H800 Technology Enhanced Learning

For the 180 credits required for the MA there is no choice (unless I am misreading it) but to do the only two remaining 30 credit modules:

H810 Accessible Online Learning

H809 Practice-based  Research in Educational Technology

Or have I got that wrong?

With this in mind it's H810 in September then H809 in February 2012.

To confuse issues there are professional reasons to start the MBA programme from October. Decision time then as I won't be doing two courses concurrently. Something I tried by doing over a three year period the UKCC ASA Senior Club Coach (swimming) qualification ... 

Freedom is LACK of choice.

I look forward to H810. Search H810 in the OU Student Blogs for an idea of what it is about; we did a rich, engaging and valuable period on accessibility in H807.

I'd do H807 again as I feel it was wasted on me. It took me six months to get into the postgraduate groove and my IT skills despite being online for a decade were woefully inadequate. The disappointment is that the reading and activities cannot possibly be contemporary so that you feel as if it is 2005 at best, 2003 at worst. I expected technological fireworks; at least I understand why that is not realistic. Perhaps the model whereby a module that aims to be innovative is designed and reinvented continually?

H800 is the 60 pointer but I have found it LESS onerous that previous 30 Pointer modules, not only is it spread thinner, but the pace is adjusted, the roll-over and degree of repetition embeds the learning outcomes and a TMA as prep for the ECA is inspired.

What next is asked by many MA qualified postgraduates I am finding. We hanker after more but short of a PhD what can be offered? Indeed, I think there is a gap in Tertiarty, or should it be called 'quartertiary' education?

If offered a further choice of modules beyond the MA I'd do them ... Towards at MA+ or MA* ?? Though in truth for how the thinking is applied, as a form of CPD.

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Which is where I trip myself up.

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Monday, 15 Aug 2011, 14:29

Every time I read about the course materials others have received I become more jealous. Studying Masters in Open and Distance Education everything is online. We get nothing .... and everything. Actually, in 2001 I made at start on this and I too got a box of goodies: hard back and softback books, CDs too. I felt I had arrived, that my money had be well spent.

Which is where I trip myself up.

Learning entirely online I am staggered, overwhelmed by the quantity and quality of course materials and the links to materials now readily available online. In the early days I bought myself a few books and printed stuff out.

I now have the skills and confidence to have it all 'up there' in a cloud, readily available, my stuff and the OU's whenever and whenever I want it.

Whilst in the past I printed off out of habit, I now stick it into a blog (Private) or into dropbox. This means I know I can get to it wherever I may be. This has been from a laptop until recently, though now it goes to an iPad. I am gobsmacked the way I can read documents as PDF files and hold these in my iPad library.

One change I'd make: a smartphone is too small and an iPad is too big for the kind of mobility I am after. On the other hand, I also want an iPad the size of a Clipboard, with another, literally, a touchscreen desktop. Basically iPad versions A5, A3, A2 and A1.

And lighter.

With a longer battery.

And with the screen of a Kindle (glare is a killer).

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The inaugural lecture of Agnes Kukulska-Hulme (Part 4)

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Wednesday, 31 Aug 2011, 15:21
In 2001 AKH undertook the first interviews on the Masters.

I was in this cohort, working full-time, on H802 but not using a PDA. I lacked the wherewithal to get content a palm M105. I had a Psion in my pocket and side by side on my desk were a MAC and a PC.

More on the academic stuff from Way-out & Kukulska-Hulme ( 2001-3)

This Palm using MAer had created their 'university in their pocket'.

Coming from the agency side working across platforms in TV and the Web I had been asked to provide ideas to a UK company that had the UK licence to create content for handheld devices; I should have been speaking to AKH.  

http://blogs.ft.com/mba-blog/2011/06/22/distance-learning-or-nearness-learning/#axzz1WbbnlExG LINKS http://www3.open.ac.uk/media/fullstory.aspx?id=21782
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The inaugural lecture of Agnes Kukulska-Hulme (part 2)

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Saturday, 27 Aug 2011, 10:08
Prof. Agnes Kukulska-Hulme joined the OU's Institute of Educational Technology in 1996
Her research interests were Digital assets and eBooks, mobile devices, hand held devices and smart technologies for personal learning.
It intrigues me that her first interest was languages, and French, which she studied at Warsaw. She then went on to computing, which is another language, indeed I wonder if programming has achieved what Esperanto dreamed of.
These first personal choices on what to study runs with us for our loves does it not.
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H800 activity 4 virtual worlds cross dressing and role-play

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Sunday, 24 Feb 2013, 07:36

I have an avatar.

In World of Warcraft.

My son took me through the set- up, vital for any software, have an informed and experienced teacher.

I wasn't allowed to make one quick choice, I had to look at the options. He had views as well as information concerning all the characters. My wife joins in and we plum for a female as the way she poses and sticks out hefty butt when she shuffles about made us laugh. I think I am a night elf. Unable to give her a real name (all taken) I got for Val d'Isere ... Which gets transmuted into Valdesire. This is a lady with attitude; I guess I see myself as a Lara Croft type smile

Aided by my son he insists we skip the intros.

Intermittently he reaches over and gives me a belt, boots and a sword. And were off. I know I am painfully slow for him but after while I can position myself in front of a hovering, dragon slug thing which seems about as easy to kill as standing on a snail. I gain pouts, collect stuff and go up a few levels.

I assume my son is off to the bathroom when he goes of, actually he has signed on a second computer and with delight says the person I am standing next to, my twin but wearing clothes is him and his (her) name is 'Notvaldesire'.

'Let's have a dual,' he says and knowing what he is like I get my sword out and put in a strike only to have some god-like voice/ figure berate us.

On returning from the shops I ask if anything had happened as my wife had taken over 'Our Val.'

We had to sell all you clothes, he said, to buy a spell that didn't work.'

Having no clothes has me think of the only campus Second Life I'm aware of at Sussex University where I understand that repeated calls go out for everyone in Second Life to take their clothes off sad

Thinking about role play as I wondered through Lewes I saw groups of language students in the same blue-tops and football fans gathering before going off to a match.

This is the town where a substantial part of the town dress up for November 5th, indeed I am in Commercial Square and dress up as a Confederate Soldier each year. We joined as newcomers to the town 11 years ago; as a social network it is extraordinarily effective.

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My Personal Learning Environment

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Monday, 18 June 2012, 00:29

When something works I'll go back and use it repeatedly. I find the way in which I seek out, exploit, share and develop ideas to do with E-Learning and Social Media is fluid. I run with new tools as I find them, the three latest: stumbleupon, Allmyfavourites and Zite, which do the same kind of thing, helping to reduce the overwhelming amount of information being generated and sent my way to stuff that may be of value and interest me.

I've aslo may a tentative start in Social Networking Site Xing, using Google Translation to help with my rudimentary German.

 

JFV%252520PLE%25252028%252520JULY%2525202011.JPG

 

Created using iPad APP 'MindCreator'.

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H800 Metaphors and Meaning Making

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Tuesday, 8 Nov 2011, 22:45

The right metaphor is used in context.

 

DSC00677.JPG
From Learning Technologies 2011

By understanding your audience you come to understand what metaphors will have resonance.

By working in the communications industry, by reading a good deal, looking at even more, you develop a sense of what is cliche.

Whilst cliches work, indeed repetition of expressions that work make sense, in many contexts the cliche fails to make an impression, for example, thinking of a multinational like players in an orchestra.

Derelict%252520Pool%2525203_1.jpg

I like, from a design point of view, the idea of 'Swim Lanes' because as a swim coach I understand the relationship between the coach/coaching team and the athlete.

The sense of personal development makes sense, as do the motivations and effort. The trick for me is to translate this into programmes of study.

This image has more power to my mind than a pool with water in it, the lane ropes out and Bill Furniss blowing a whistle at Rebeccar Adlington.

We will get bored of the sports cliche these next 12 months.

  • If learning design is like swim lanes, then what has happened here?
  • No one signed up for the course and the organisation went bust?
  • Lack of support?
  • Course materials out of date?
  • Systems failure with the VLE that leaves the experience somewhat less like swimming up and down a pool?

 

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Engestroms%252520Triangle%252520Fig%2525203%252520%252520GRAB.JPG

All we are doing here is trying to get others inside our head, or better still, to create something extra corporeal, like the 'Object 3' in Engestrom's learning systems.

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H800 wk21-22 Activity 3 2011 Horizon Report

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Friday, 4 Nov 2011, 04:52

An hour and a half has been allocated to this; I have given it the best part of six.

I may have nodded off (ill with a heavy cold) but I reckon my mind just goes into cruise mode continuing whatever I was doing, mostly skating my fingers around an iPad dipping into pools of mind-mashing stuff.

The Masters in Open and Distance Education (MAODE) is to blame. At last we have a way to engage with the latest thinking even though the module was designed and written some years ago. We are asked to read and make notes in the 2011 Horizon Report from the New Medium Consortium. I've printed it off, but can see there would be no need just as soon as an A3 or Fulscap clipboard sized tablet is released.

I start by making notes in 'notes' on the ipad. In moments I feel a compulsion to Tweet some of this, and between url shortening and TweetDeck, then Linkedin and Facebook I fins I am sprinkling the electronic dust of enlightenment each way I csn think.

Horizon 2011 (My Notes July 2011)

The world of work is increasingly collaborate driven by increasingly the global and cooperative nature of business. Horizon 2011

The challenges of privacy and control affect adoption and deployment. Horizon 2011.

Digital media literacy continues its rise in importnce. Horizon 2011

The challenge is exacerbated by the fact that digital technologies morph and change so quickly at a rate that generally outpaces curriculum development. Horizon 2011

Reconciling new forms of scholarly activity with old standards continues to be difficult. Horizon 2011

New models of learning are presenting unprecedented competition to traditional models of the university. Horizon 2011

Keeping pace with the rapid proliferation of information, software tools, and devices is challenging for students and teachers alike. Horizon 2011

Given the plethora and wealth of user generated content ... There is a greater need than ever for effective tools and filters for finding, interpreting, organizing, and retrieving the data that is important to us. Horizon 2011

Three horizon lines are offered:

Near-term

E-books + note-taking, sharing, immersive engagement, changing our notion of what it means to read. (engagement)

Mobiles + everyone has one, access to affordable and reliable networks.+ increasdingly the first choice for Internet access.

Second Term

Augmented reality (spotify, 4squared) an easy extension of expectations and practices. Horizon 2011

Game-based learning +to foster collaboration, problem-solving, and procedural thinking.

Far Term

Gesture based computing

Learning analytics

Our research indicates that all six of these technologies, taken together, will have a significant impact on learning-focused organizations within the next five years. Horizon 2011

My view is that they have been cautious over the pace and readiness for adoption; I find I am wedded to mobility, the dexterity, manipulable and versatility of an iPad.

I churn though e-books in preference to TV as if the book was a new invention.

I read in multiple ways and sizes and speeds, skim reading, or takes notes, or just reading my notes and highlights. On long drives I wear a headset and let the book read itself to me. I find I take in something different, as if I've seen the bricks that construct the sentences and paragraphs, but now I'm getting the cement as a form of sense making.

As invited to do I click on www.Navigator.nmc.org and have been there ever since. I found my way here at visual complexity and have ventured into a dozen sites, ultimately downloading the App iWriter convinced by its sales blurb:

“iA Writer for Mac is a digital writing tool that makes sure that all your thoughts go into the text instead of the program. One of our goals was to create a writing app without settings. When opening Writer, all you can do is write. The only option you have is full screen and FocusMode. To increase the pleasure of writing is exactly what we intended when creating Writer. A better tool doesn’t make a better craftsman, but a good tool makes working a pleasure.”

and the quality of everything else I saw that the Information Architects (iA) team are doing.

Regarding the second adoption horizon I feel we are there.

I had it explained to me at UCL on Tuesday and could immediately relate to it and indeed have stepped into that mode already a few times. While 'game-based learning' is very much my son's world. I only permit the amount if time he is engage, because he is engaged, with a headset, in a team, constructing and deconstructing the worlds he is active in.

Which draws that horizon that is meant to be three or more years away far, far closer.

There is more reading yet to do. I cannot be. Told to read seven pages and then ignore the next 26. That's like going to a recommended restaurant, having a lyrical starter then sitting around while everyone else indulges themselves on the main course.

Talking of restaurants, the other product I want from iA is there Web Trend Map.

It uses the idea of restaurants to give weight to various web forces that are the given visual weighting and a spatial setting that overlays the Tokyo underground map.

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Social Media Strategy in Higher Education

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Saturday, 16 July 2011, 11:57

Is it sensible to be writing on Friday what I did on Tuesday?

I've face this dilemma a thousand times after 35 years of keeping a diary.

Better late than never if the events are of value (they are) and worth sharing (they are) and of educational value to My M.A (they're that too).

I took notes all the way through a day long workshop on Social Media in Higher Education with Tracy Payle of Pickle Jar.

I even held the iPad aloft to take screen grabs of her presentation, as well as grabs of any exeercises I worked on with my colleague from Imperial.

The 'Heads Up' for me were the exercises we did anda the results we collectively produced. We must see those who could become engaged in social media as a plethora of types with different inate skills and interests.

Then play to their strengths.

Not rocket science, but a reminder.

We might hsve more than a library of content to put out, but better only to offer what we understand, believe or know thst our audience want.

Then to see the long-term engagement with people as they think about, become inspired by, then sign up for a qualification ... And their journey onwards as a student and alumni.

(all being was initially written off an ipad. Without fingers like chopsticks editing and correctng is impossible. I know present this as a draft to fix later. I can't use html or any of the dropnox tools either. I undersetood that the OU were 'tablet agnostic'. At the moment, at least in the VLE, they are not fully iPad).

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Social Media Analytics from the I.E.T.

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Saturday, 26 Dec 2020, 09:27

Settling down to some H800 reading at the end of an extraowrdinary week.

Monday 'attended, livestream conference from the Institue of Educational Technology.

Tweated through-out and got one question in either to Martin Weller or Andrew Laws.

Screen grabs and bllog notes all the way through.

Yet to digest but gripped by Weller's growing view that page views, links and friends for a stream of online writing may be gathered in time as evidence of scholarqship.

Also informed by Tony Hirst and the meaning behind Goodhart's Law in relation to analytics that cease to be a measure as we become skilled at warping/twisting the means by which the stats are generated.

Informed too by the notion of Open Learn content, understandably, as having a commercial as well as a public remit, to inform, but also translate into people signing up for courses.

If there was a Coast course I'd do it. All I've ever had is a fancy booklet.

That was Monday.

This is turnng into one of those weblog things. Now why am I not into all that reverse chronology posting thing? Its having something to say and the desire to say it.

Four entries one day, none for a while.

That's fine too.

P.S. Now that all this stuff is public facing and broadcast should there not be a dress code.

I find myself watching an event taking place in 2011 and being reminded of an OU Physics Lecture of the 1970s. (I often watched this stuff as a boy in the middle of the night. Hippy, beard, denim jacket, flaired-trousers and sandals.)

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Masters in Open and Distance Education: Module H800: WK21 My Personal Learning Environment

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Wednesday, 13 July 2011, 21:42

My%252520PLE.JPG

From this consider Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) vs. Personal Learning Environments (PLEs) and I come away, as I often do, seeking a compromise, the best of both - a basic, easy to use, and reliable VLE with students who may come with nothing, or a good deal, but was I have done will over the course of a couple of favourite tools and ways of doing things.

The two are like dripping coloured ink into a fish tank. My fingers aggitate between the two.

Until Google takes over all of it, there are too.

In my case I've gone from an old Mac Book and printing stuff off to having everything online, using blogs like e-portfolios and switching between an iPad and a laptop.

(78,099 page views)

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Why the world wide web 2.0 changes learning forever.

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Tuesday, 22 Dec 2020, 20:51

A pedagogy of abundance explains a good deal and changes everything

 

Dion%252520Hinchcliffe%252520Attributes%252520of%252520Modern%252520Social%252520Business%252520Communications%252520and%252520Collaboration%252520CHART%252520%252520%2525282011%252529.JPG

From Dion Hinchcliffe

A pedagogy of abundance

This forms a chapter in Martin Well's new book.

If you are studying the Masters in Open and Distance Education MAODE (any module) with The OU you need to read this.

Weller takes us through a series of clearly expressed, persuasive steps, a brief history about the more recent shifts in education and how Web 2.0 changes everything.

I conclude that the nature of learning is reverting to its natural, un-institutionalised and a pre-formal classroom based model, whereby you learn on the fly vicariously, turning to groups and individuals of your own choosing, exploiting the abundance of the web to inform and connect, an apprentice of anything, perhaps even at times with a tutor or fellow students, in an experience that is more akin to that of a governess to child, or tutor to older student or expert and scholar.

Boyer (1990) established what scholars do

1) Discovery

2) Integration

3) Application

4) Teaching

It intrigues me that this set of activities or practices is precisely what one does in social media:

1) Seeking out through research those 'spheres of influence' where the discussions are generating something fresh and pertinent, that is informed, even scholarly and that you proactively integrate this 'sphere of influence' which might be an individual (blog, podcast, video) or a social media platform group, into your own online 'realm of thinking' through bookmarks, joining a group (and engaging in its vortex).

2) Engaging tentatively in some forums.

3) From observation on the periphery (Seely-Brown) to growing levels of participation you gain the confidence to apply what you understand to the degree that you too in turn not only express your thoughts in blogs, forums and discussion groups, but

4) find yourself teaching others, itself a learning experience. Weller implies that to understand what could happen in education we ought to consider the shift in the way in which we purchase digital artifacts compared to the physical object, that just as the abundance of music, movies and books in digital form has altered our behaviours regarding shops and shopping, so the ready availability of digitised learning materials is inevitably altering the way students view and purchase education.

We are moving from a model based on the economics of scarcity to an economics of abundance.

Here, though Weller doesn't offer it, a brief consideration of how centres of learning formed in the distant past is of value. How students gathered around a scholar, then as the technology made possible, books containing information and scholarly thought were gathered into collections.

The student and educators had to be physically present and thus our university towns were formed.

The formation of and subsequent success of establishments such as the Open University (begun 42 years ago) shows that separation of student and campus was possible where the technology and logistics meant that through books, TV, radio, tapes, and subsequently DVDs and the Internet the learning experience could be divorced from the campus. This dependence on the physical artifact is now dissolving too, the expense is no longer represented in the book, indeed the idea of a collection of many chapters in one place is challenged as the Internet allows far greater tailoring of content to the learning object.

Is this not a return to a more natural way of doing things?

Should we be turning for input here from to the social anthropologist and educational psychologist here?

Have we ever learnt in units of engagement that endure through the entire contents of a book in one sitting?

I wonder if the cook book as a model for e-learning is an apt one?

Chris Anderson (2008)

The future modus operandi might be to give away '90% of a product to earn 1 %'. The logic of accepting the way in which digital stuff is created, marketed and sold implies that the 'long tail of higher education' (let's keep kids at school for now), will give much more control to the student purchasing their education; that niche and tailored learning will be desired.

Of far greater worry, unless you and your institution are readily able to embrace change as an early adopter, is that modules themselves, like a set of wikipaedia pages offered in a myriad of personalised sequences, can be assembled like a set of smart Lego bricks by the learner themselves making substantial parts of an institution's functions redundant. Indeed, being able to slot in up-to-date content, easily achieved beyond the confines of a module, is indicative of a weakening in the relationship between institution and student.

There is less dependence on specific course materials when most references can be sourced with ease.

Even the social aspect of the campus based education is challenged

Think of it as a form of tourism, education as an opportunity to socialise, be entertained and to entertain, then this can be done online. (Don't we all go to university as undergraduates for the 'crack'?)

The gap between the physical and the virtual experience has closed

Can learning be purchased, consumed and certified like an eBook from Amazon?

Should the Milton Keynes Campus of the Open University be taking greater head of the vast distribution warehouses of Amazon on the other side of the M1?

Do you need the expert if their insights can be purchased through various forms of asynchronous communication? (a book) Or their synchronous insights and expertise supported by the hour through a webinar or Skype-enabled tutorial? If the sphere of influence is reduced to that of professor and scholar, as that between a piano teacher and pianist do we need the institution at all?

And in a world where all qualifications are not the same even if they have the same name, is the only outcome that matters for the individual, their job and how they consequently perform (or if it is an MBA how their business performs)?

If the same learning outcomes are offered, using largely the same set of materials in a sequence that is logical and engaging and will in any case be far more challenged or enabled by the context in which the student is learning, then surely the deciding factor is price and the only way to decide on which price to pay has to be a combination of the depths of your pockets and the perceived and actual desirability of the brand.

If Harvard Business School, for example, as the Mercedes of business schools, can now offer, like the car manufacturer, a range of products to suit different pockets, all with the same brand values and distributed with ease over the Internet, then how do others compete?

Or what if its star product, once limited by the physical limitations of a campus and the manageability of a cohort can be purchased by thousands?

Perhaps in a growing market, with significant demand, space remains for many players and new players. However, as any Internet search shows, if you are learning online the deciding point, exactly as a purchase of a packet of Cornflakes, comes as you reach up to the shelf and select product B rather than product A.

Might it be, that having been the only product for several decades, the Open University's 'product A' is competing with a rich alphabet of alternatives, many written and supported without doubt if you look at the lists of academics and personal by people who were originally taught by or taught at The OU.

If the model is to give away the digital object and make money on the physical then Oxbridge, Ivy League and other campus based institutions could potentially increase their intake 12 fold by running all courses online, with physical presence limited to three one week long residential sessions.

The College turns into a B&B with the residents changing every week, rather like the turn around days you have at a resort.

At no stage is contact with fellow students, tutors or the college itself ever diminished, as everyone is readily contactable thanks to a smartphone and a laptop. Likewise distance learning Institutions such as The OU to compete with these upstarts should offer a campus based experience by creating permanent bases strategically all over the world.

  • Freemium
  • The Long Tail

If we think of education as music, then we have two forms, the folk form inexpensively delivered in homes and community spaces and the elite form of the expert or most popular performer in access-restricted palaces and assembly halls. Whilst historically we have seen the music industry of the last century as the democratisation music, in hindsight, with the Internet, even this looks like a restrictive practice, holding purchasers back by the schedule of production, distribution and sales. Books are going the same way as CDs; as both are formats for learning materials, is it not simply the case that with lectures, tutorials and assessment online, that there is an expectation from all quarters that we can have it all, anywhere, any time? And that this can be achieved by any institution. It isn't difficult to digitise content, you simply don't go to print. Brand, like purchasing Cornflakes, the price and what you can afford is the only differentiator.

Web%2525202.0%252520Dion%252520Himchcliffe.JPG

An activist model.

While access to expertise remains rare, we have access to journals, videos, blogs, podcasts, slidecasts, also discussion forums, comments, and blogs. Weller (2011)

And these experts, certainly in distance learning institutions, are often bound only, like the students, by lengthy threads to remote locations. Their reputation, the weight of their knowledge a product of those parts of their thinking that has been published for public consumption. It then comes down to the quality of learning experience through tutors, online and other support. We should think of each online module as a virtual game, with all those ins and outs and possibilities thoroughly tested for the experience; exactly, in fact, as occurs in the Institute of Educational Technology at The OU.

Siemens (2005) considers the shift to greater control by the learner rather than the institution.

Constructivism, social constructivism and now connectivism are the learning paradigms. If education at close quarters in the Oxbrdige tutorial, involves dialogue, reflection and critical analysis, these are the same qualities that can be achieved online at less cost and at greater convenience.

The essence of learning

Conole (2008) Web 2.0 the collective and the network.

As in the physical world with its cliques and networks, from old school-tie to Free Masons, so online, despite our desire to exploit the ability to connect, there are controls and limits. You cannot wade in and exchange with much authority, the hero expert author of the books or papers yiu have come to admire. Seely-Brown and others are right to consider how all of us, unwittingly or deliberately, first engage as an apprentice of some sort. We must begin on the periphery. If dropped into the heart of things too soon our ignorance will mean we have no purchase at the centre and centrifugal forces will cast us aside.

As one commentator is right to point out, the Internet is the real world. A movie, or novel is fiction, but online with increasing ease, we behave in just the same way with someone a thousand miles away as someone sitting opposite us.

Web 2.0 = niche communities, social purposes, collective political action, amateur journalism, social commentary.

Just as we can have the successful, recognised and respected amateur journalist and amateur sports coach, so surely can we have the amateur academic, if only in the sense that none of these people are paid. We can all surely think of professional journalists, coaches and academics who are amateurish in their words, actions and thoughts. Just as there are successful 'citizen journalists' even the 'amateur novelist' who self-publish are there not likely to be 'amateur scholars' even tutors, anyone with that vocational desire to share their thinking in order to develop the knowledge of others?

Have we not reached a stage with the plethora of quality content online and the multitude of groups that you could join, that you could learn a great deal to a high academic standard or level of performance, entirely for free both in cost terms and the constructs of an educational institution. You may not have the piece of paper at the end of it or the letters after your name, or indeed the title before your name, but when did any qualification qualify you to do something with it?

H800%252520Wk1%252520John%252520Seely%252520Brown%252520Grab%2525202.JPG

Seely-Brown and Adler (2008) talk of this shift to participation and demand-pull.

They talk of education being:

  • Free
  • Abundant
  • Varied
  • Easy
  • Socially based Connections light

Shirky (2008) Organisations

User generated content

In a world of abundance the emphasis is less on the creation of new learning materials than on the selection, aggregation and interpretation of existing materials. We don't need more, we need systems that let us draw in the freshest and most significant content on the fly. Dare I also suggest that just as music is easily copied and shared for free, that course content, and the learning design can just as easily be lifted and reconstituted? Weller 2011 i.e. New learning content becomes the remit of students who through the abundance of stuff and connectivity generate new content. The trick is to isolate those places where people of a like-minds gather. You cannot join more than a handful of groups and take part and so contribute or gain anything. The tasks therefore becomes to find or form such groups.

Barrows and Tamblyn (1980) problem based learning. Is identified as the old way of learning.

That you present a problem then teach a way to solve it.

Wenger (1998) the social role of learning and apprenticeship as 'legitimate peripheral learning'

Bacon and Dillon (2006) Communities of practice.

Siemens and connectivism.

The real issue is user-based content. Eric Schmidt, CEO Google. More content is generated and put online in any two days in 2011 than was created, published or broadcast between the development of the first means of mass distribution, the printing press and the coming of the Internet. We do in our millions, with extraordinary ease, in 48 hours what had taken some 600 years to do.

REFERENCE

Weller, M. (2011) in Spanish Journal of Pedagogy, 249 pp223-236

 

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H800 80 Week 19: Mobile devices, mobile learners & Web 2.0

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Friday, 5 Oct 2012, 06:28

From materials and commentary prepared by John Pettit (2008)

Of courses it is learning if it is on a mobile phone or any other device. Do we mean informal or formal learning? Vicarious learning or didactic? Stumbling across knowledge, or reading formerly to pass an exam? Does it matter? These devices blur the distinction between a means of educating that may eventually look dated and specific to an era.

Do we need campus based universities?

Kids can have their kicks in Ibiza then study online while holding down their first job.

Give the campus over to the retired and unemployed.

Do we need schools?

And if so, instead of being at the centre of a child's education, perhaps they become as tangential as a visit to the leisure centre of supermarket because you are better linkedin to the educators and the content when you're away from the place and all its distractions.

When do you ever not learn even if you don’t know it?

It depends entirely on what the device is being used for. Apps have shown how versatile we are at throwing activities and qualities at these devices. People want this stuff.

Is a laptop mobile? What about the old Apple Classic? I used to take it out into the garden on an extension cable and view it inside a cardboard box while sunbathing. Was that mobile? I can read in the bath on a Kindle and click through RSS feeds on the iPad while the Kettle boils. Might it simply feel as if all these people are following me around?

There are degress of mobility. Working in TV we carried around with us monitors to watch content back during a shoot. The thing was no more portable than a hod stacked with bricks.

When I read formal and informal learning I wonder if this equates to whether the learning is hard or easy. I have acquired knowledge in a formal setting and had a laugh, equally in an informal context without the self-motivation and will I have found informal learning very hard to do.

It is sometimes claimed that handheld digital devices allow students to learn at anytime, anywhere. A more nuanced position argues that the devices have the potential for ‘any time anywhere’ learning but that many other factors come into play.

For example, some devices may be easy to handle but have small screens that don’t allow easy reading.

Far from being hard to read the small screen is better suited to the narrow field of close vision that we have. So what if it is like looking through a letter box. If you want to concentrate why look at more?

A device can become too small. Too portable. As a video producer I have seen kit shrink so much that a device the size of a child’s shoe will generate a HD image and for $75 a day you could hire a camera that delivers 35mm quality. Making a film though with a device so small creates instability, you need some weight on your shoulder if you want to keep the image steady.

The portability and size of screen is less relevant than the affordances of the device, the fact that an iPad doesn’t support Flash, or Android is having problems with Google Apps, that is, if you are using learning materials that require specific functionality that isn’t working.

As for screen size, people may watch a blockbuster movie on a giant screen at the Odeon Leicester Square or on a Smartphone or palm-sized gaming device that is no bigger than a spectacle case; here what matters as with any movie, is the quality of the narrative, not the size of the screen.

Where a device’s portability comes into its own, as the person who recently made a phone call from the top of Everest, is the portability. Another extreme might be a cave diver with a device the plots the route for a cave system, or a glaciologists relaying pictures of a feature in a Greenland ice-sheet to colleagues thousands of miles away that informs the research.

‘Patterns of usage differ widely, and the fit between people’s lives and the devices they use can be very close.’ (Pettit and Kukulska-Hulme, 2007, p.28)

Is an apt way to express a new term being used in the Open University Business School to describe applied or practice-based learning that gets away from the ‘distance’ tag, that is to call it ‘nearness’ learning. (Fleck, 2011). I also like the idea of ‘intense but provisional,’ people’s attitudes are brand specific, with the Mac vs. PC split of computing now a split between Windows, Mac and Android (and others).

People chose brands to simplify the choices that have to be made between a plethora of devices, between Sony, Nokia, Goole and Windows, as well as between network suppliers, be that O2, Vodafone or others.

There is another way of looking at it though, if you come to see that all these devices offer the same sets of services and tools, from QWERTY keyboards, to a camera, from messaging to phone calls, to the hundreds of thousands of Apps, and in the case of the latest Windows phone … Windows software from Outlook to Docs, PPT to Excel.

Is size such an issue?

People have managed needlepoint for centuries and once painted miniatures. There is an appeal for the tiny sometimes, just as there is for the massive. In this respect the device becomes a reflection of the person’s personality, as well as the depth of their pockets, the availability of others services, from a signal to 3G (or not), even to the power to charge batteries.

Personal choice, celebration of variety, offering a smorgasbord rather than the continental breakfast.

‘That well-known random-access device consisting of ink on bound sheets of paper may still have plenty of life in it yet!’ (Pettit and Kukulska-Hulme, 2007, p.28) expressed in 2007 is how in 2011 writers in the e-magazine Reconstruction 6.4 describe the ‘long-tail’ of the blog, that definitions have become meaningless, suggesting that the varieties of ways to do or have what we have continued to call a ‘blog’ is as varied as the ways we have over many centuries come to use paper.

Drawing on a paper written in 2007 on research presumably undertaken a couple of years previously, it strikes me that ‘the world has moved on’, to say the least – though not enough. This exercise is looking at the extraordinary capabilities and uses for a device that in 2011 can offer somewhat more than was possible four years ago. This doesn’t mean to say we have the things.

From my own perspective I came into the MAODE (this time round) with an eight year old iBook that had trouble with some software, things as simple as PDFs and the latest versions of Flash as I was unable to upgrade the operating system. Working from a smallish screen I found myself printing off too. For the second module I had access to a better laptop and plugged it into a good-sized screen that allowed me to see a page of A4 at a time or to swivel the screen and have two windows open side by side. During the course of my third module (this one) I found myself without a particular device, but with access to a desktop, a laptop, even an iPad (and have used a Kindle to read some 16 books). Here I found myself putting everything online, into a blog and e-portfolio so I could access whatever I wanted wherever I was (or whichever device was available), as well as having the cataloguing, aggregating, sharing affordances that this has given. Any device, however mobile, and whatever size, can tap into this content.

The problem now, isn’t simply, for me at least, is the overwhelming volume of content I have put online, which despite adopting various approaches to keep track of it, has split into a number of blogs (OU, Blogger, WordPress, and Tumblr), a number of cloud galleries/warehouses in the sky (Flick, Dropbox, Kodak and Picasa Galleries, My Stuff, Pebblepad).

It is apt that I blog under the name ‘my mind bursts’, because it has, and is.

Like having a thought, or recalling some event or fact seemingly on a whim, I find I stumble across these ‘mind bursts’ quite by accident, forgetting the number of blogs, for example, that I for a period started only to abandon so that ‘serendipity’ has a role to play through the myriad of links I’ve also made. None of this has helped by finding myself with three Facebook accounts and unsure how to delete the ‘right’ one.

The attitude can only be to ride this like the web surfer of a decade ago – to run with it, rather than try and control it. You meet friends coming off a training a Liverpool Station, you do not need to know who else is on the concourse, the timetables for every train that day, week or year. To cope with the overwhelming quantity of stuff tools to filter out what matters to you at that moment is coming to matter most.

Currently I find myself repeatedly drawn to the activities of Hugo Dixon, a former Economist and FT journalist, who set up a business he called ‘Breaking Views’ to counter what he already by then perceived as a deluge of online information and the old print-based expression ‘Breaking News’; we would come to need as some pundits predicted fifteen years ago, ‘information managers’ or ‘information management systems’.

I wish I could reference the expression properly but ‘Freedom is lack of choice’ is one of my favourites; sometimes filters and parameters have their place. I enjoy using a Kindle as much for its limitations; it is something I can take to bed knowing that it’ll send me to sleep, while an iPad keeps me up all night.

REFERENCES

Fleck, J (2011) Association of MBAs Conference Video 2011

Pettit, John and Kukulska-Hulme, Agnes (2007). Going with the grain: mobile devices in practice. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 23(1), pp. 17–33.

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H800 WK17 Computer Lab to iPad for e-learning

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Wednesday, 17 Oct 2012, 04:30

Simply to offer a different insight while acknowledging the above, I was, in 1983, introduced to the wonders of the University Computer Lab.

'Back then' this wasn't an elective, but rather signing up to some additional, extra-curricular training.

It did not appeal one bit; I could imagine to some degree where it was going and its necessity in one of my options (remote sensing from space), but to achieve anything (I am neither computer literate or mechanically minded), it struck me, as was the case, that your required a certain mindset (that of an engineer or mathematician). Because it was in little demand, not networked, bespoke to a project and housed in one place it was akin to joining the stamp club and about as exciting. It was however 'on request,' rather than compulsory and could with ease be ignored.

I wonder if a more laissez-faire approach would work?

More of an internal market in an organisation where choices are offered to individuals so that the decission making could be more bottom up than top down? i.e. you have a budget, you pick the kit you'd like, the software you need rather than being prescribed a piece of kit and software and obliged to learn it.

I imagine the moment I can afford to buy a Mac I'll do so.

The simplest analogy would be is that I feel I've been told I have to use a Rotring pen and a ruler, but I'd prefer to use a soft HB6 pencil and a pad of cartridge paper. The end result, the task or peice of communication I have to deliver will be the same, I just get there 'my way,' rather than 'your way'.

My university experience from the 1980s, to that as student and now insider thirty years on at the OU is different, however, invited to meet a group of Associate Lecturers yesterday to have my mind picked regarding web-conferencing, Elluminate and synchronous learning in general, I was struct not by how things have changed, but how what matters hasn't changed at all - there are educators who are fascinate by and passionate about what they do.

There is a desire to do the best by their students and to get their heads around what tools could be used to improve or enhance this experience. Even speaking with my 85 year old father-in-law, a former prof who still 'teaches' I am struck by this vocational zeal, which is shared whether by email and Skype, by snailmail or a tutorial, collaboration on a book, or giving a talk (still) at a summer school.

The lesson I have learnt therefore is never to let the technology get in the way of this experience, that between educator and student, the knowledgeable and the less knowledgeable, playing on this inhate human desire to share our experience and knowledge whatever that might be.

Increasingly, when discussing the merits of kit or software, I return to this theme, that people have not changed and that the natural relationships that form between people in markets, in villages, in communities, is what we crave and repeatedly recreate online in a multitude of ways.

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Social Media Matters for communications and education

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Monday, 29 Aug 2011, 08:21
I have drifted over to my mind bursts - just Google it and take your pick. I have in effect for the last three months been doing a second module in parallel while also starting a new job. One naturally feeds into the other. Applied learning works. There is no formal course of action; though there is naturally a significant amoint of activity; I like to scramble up any new learning curve, especially this one because it fascinates me. I've always been a natural networker, not working the crowd, but genuinely enjoying the company of people, listening to their ideas, woes, beliefs, their enthusiams too. If something is being said about Social Media I am reading about it online, joining groups on it (join me in Linkedin), and getting books on it- everyone an e-book with each one treated as if it belongs to a compulsory reading list. Ask about these, or spin through this blog; in most cases I start the entry with a picture of the book. I've reviewed them too which amuses me becuase by Googling my name several of this reviews are top ranked. (69133)
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