Who owns my learning space? Me!
I should be the one in control of my learning, of the space where I document and experience that learning, and I should be free to roam as my interest takes me ensconced with my learning environment.
In this article on PLEs Scott Wilson touches on concerns I have encountered just this week. (Also quoted in tallblogs on JISC based Isthmus project). I have been pushing the use of Elgg in course work, seeking to expand it to a cohort community, then a course/cohort/alumnae community - in essence to become the learning space of the learner - and to extend the life of institutional learning and connections into a student's future above and beyond the course/institution/formal learning environment. In this pursuit I am being conflicted - by students and administration. Administration doesn't say no to Elgg, but they are already licenesed tight with Blackboard and are pushing the new virtues of Vista 4 - blogging, eportfolio (like putting incomplete doors and windows on a time based walled garden). Alas, the students, discouraged by the slowness of our initial Elgg install, encamped to Facebook, their social network of choice (ignoring the fact that facebook owns their content, may not be around in the future, and that security of personal data is a big unknown). What to do? I think students would be better served by the university, or some hands off entity, offering a learning space service for student/alumnae artefacts - to escape the confines of licensing and the insecurities and vagaries of commercial social networks (like facebook) - as Scot expounds:
“On a more basic level, the use of commercial third-party services has risks, such as a change in charging, or even services disappearing completely, and so there could be a role for universities in offering a free secure archiving service to that students would never lose access to things they have published. It is also increasingly on the agenda of universities to make access to basic administrative processes and information available through multiple channels and devices, such as using mobile phones, iPod, and RSS feeds.”
I've proposed in the past that if jurisdictions are serious about lifelong learning, then we need tools, in control of non-profit educational entities, that support such activity. For example Elgg, sponsored and maintained by such an entity is made available to a learner throughout their life, allowing them to dip in and out of informal, nonformal and formal learning experiences and to maintain connections to the communities they encounter and associate with diverse communities. Elgg's recent modifications - OpenID and Explode (allowing a user to link to friends in other social networked communities) bode well for this being a central space.
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Out with the old school
Graham Atwell has posted about a school system - Knowsley Council in Merseyside, England - that has abolished the use of the word school to describe secondary education. It will close all of its eleven existing secondary schools by 2009 and reopen as seven state-of-the-art, round-the-clock, learning centres with the aid of Microsoft (technology directing learning?).
The new centres will open from 7am until 10pm in both term-time and what used to be known as the school holidays. At weekends, they will open from 9am to 8pm.
No formal classes, no rigid timetable; the 21,000 students will work online at their own speeds on programmes that are tailor-made to match their interests - including subjects like haircare, beauty therapy, leisure and tourism, and engineering as well as the more traditional academic subjects.
They will be given their day's assignments in groups of 120 in the morning before dispersing to internet cafe-style zones in the learning centres to carry them out; will also be able to access their learning programmes from home.
Students may find themselves working beside adults - possibly even their parents - who can enlist for courses to update their skills.
Knowsley has acknowledged the need for private sector involvement in the running of schools - with Microsoft, RM (a supplier of information and communications technology to schools) and Jaguar (the local car plant) all backing the scheme.
Why are they doing this?
"Let's stop right now building new old schools," said Nick Page, who is in charge of transforming children's services in Knowsley. "We're building for the next 25 to 50 years and 25 years is a hell of a long period if we get it wrong."
Only 19 per cent of youngsters in Knowsley obtained five A* to C grade passes at GCSE in 1995 compared with 43 per cent in the rest of the country. The figure went up to up to 48 per cent last year but that is still 10 per centage points behind the national average.
"The lack of progress, catastrophically high levels of pupil absenteeism, stubbornly high levels of youth unemployment and the rapidly changing nature of the labour market drew a political response both locally and nationally," says a council document outlining the reasons for the changes.
What's the problem with this approach?
As usual it has to do with how it is done, who's involved/not involved and the blame game -
Mr. Read - a teacher and blogger with more in depth knowledge of this situation critiques:
at the heart of the ‘Knowsley Experiment’ is an over-reliance on computers and ICT.
Knowsley have been keen to jump into bed with Microsoft, the organisation that has made a fortune from education. The danger is that schools have become techno-junkies, reliant on the next fix from Microsoft. There are much cheaper alternatives like Open Source.
Poverty cannot be ignored as having an impact on student progress; some children have complex educational and social needs. You can’t always replicate a school with well-motivated children and supportive parents in another setting.
The ‘Knowsley Experiment’ is an example of how not to do it. First of all you start with the blame game. There’s that marvellous sentence, “Too many in secondary schooling expected little or nothing of local children and this had to be addressed.” Great you dedicate your life to teaching, struggling away with difficult classes, but you are the problem. Secondly, you give all the teachers P45s and make them re-apply for their own jobs. One of the council officials actually said that ‘insecurity and risk’ was an essential part of change. Lastly, when you do try to sell your programme to teachers organise ‘lectures’ where time for questions is limited and any dissenters are belittled as a Luddites or heretics.
Mr. Read goes on to make suggestions as to how it should be done:
Graham Atwell has posted about a school system - Knowsley Council in Merseyside, England - that has abolished the use of the word school to describe secondary education. It will close all of its eleven existing secondary schools by 2009 and reopen as seven state-of-the-art, round-the-clock, learning centres with the aid of Microsoft (technology directing learning?).
The new centres will open from 7am until 10pm in both term-time and what used to be known as the school holidays. At weekends, they will open from 9am to 8pm.
No formal classes, no rigid timetable; the 21,000 students will work online at their own speeds on programmes that are tailor-made to match their interests - including subjects like haircare, beauty therapy, leisure and tourism, and engineering as well as the more traditional academic subjects.
They will be given their day's assignments in groups of 120 in the morning before dispersing to internet cafe-style zones in the learning centres to carry them out; will also be able to access their learning programmes from home.
Students may find themselves working beside adults - possibly even their parents - who can enlist for courses to update their skills.
Knowsley has acknowledged the need for private sector involvement in the running of schools - with Microsoft, RM (a supplier of information and communications technology to schools) and Jaguar (the local car plant) all backing the scheme.
Why are they doing this?
"Let's stop right now building new old schools," said Nick Page, who is in charge of transforming children's services in Knowsley. "We're building for the next 25 to 50 years and 25 years is a hell of a long period if we get it wrong."
Only 19 per cent of youngsters in Knowsley obtained five A* to C grade passes at GCSE in 1995 compared with 43 per cent in the rest of the country. The figure went up to up to 48 per cent last year but that is still 10 per centage points behind the national average.
"The lack of progress, catastrophically high levels of pupil absenteeism, stubbornly high levels of youth unemployment and the rapidly changing nature of the labour market drew a political response both locally and nationally," says a council document outlining the reasons for the changes.
What's the problem with this approach?
As usual it has to do with how it is done, who's involved/not involved and the blame game -
Mr. Read - a teacher and blogger with more in depth knowledge of this situation critiques:
at the heart of the ‘Knowsley Experiment’ is an over-reliance on computers and ICT.
Knowsley have been keen to jump into bed with Microsoft, the organisation that has made a fortune from education. The danger is that schools have become techno-junkies, reliant on the next fix from Microsoft. There are much cheaper alternatives like Open Source.
Poverty cannot be ignored as having an impact on student progress; some children have complex educational and social needs. You can’t always replicate a school with well-motivated children and supportive parents in another setting.
The ‘Knowsley Experiment’ is an example of how not to do it. First of all you start with the blame game. There’s that marvellous sentence, “Too many in secondary schooling expected little or nothing of local children and this had to be addressed.” Great you dedicate your life to teaching, struggling away with difficult classes, but you are the problem. Secondly, you give all the teachers P45s and make them re-apply for their own jobs. One of the council officials actually said that ‘insecurity and risk’ was an essential part of change. Lastly, when you do try to sell your programme to teachers organise ‘lectures’ where time for questions is limited and any dissenters are belittled as a Luddites or heretics.
Mr. Read goes on to make suggestions as to how it should be done:
- Work with teachers and the community instead of imposing change by outside consultants with minimal knowledge of the local context
- Integrate social services in schools, so nurses, youth workers and social services can work with children· Improve children’s basic skills through early intervention programmes like Reading Recovery
- Invest in well-funded nursery education with qualified staff
- Train teachers with professional development courses that treat them as pedagogues rather than ignorant technicians
- Put in more funding streams like Excellence in Cities
While it is great to see a different approach to learning and a recognition that the industrial model doesn't cut it, is this approach doomed? Is this experiment doomed because it doesn't have teacher buy in and a larger social scope in its approach? Is it being directed and informed by ICT? Should private enterprise - like Microsoft -have such involvement? Is it just to teach for employment (Jaguar factory)? How will student progress be assessed? Will accredited schools accept graduates from this initiative?
Time will tell if this is seen as just another unfortunate blip in learning design or a harbinger of things to come.Monday, June 25, 2007
Going Mobile? Take out a mortgage
Want wireless broadband internet access without thew need for a hotspot? Insert an EVDO card into your laptop and you are your own hotspot. EVDO (Evolution data Only/Evolution data Optimized) - currently avail in most U.S. cities via Verizon and Sprint - hmm what would it cost in Canada?
Bell Canada’s rates for EVDO wireless data transfer? EVDO has a maximum advertised speed of 700kbs (downstream). Per ThomasPurves..."this is 700bits/8bits perByte, 1024kBytes/MB or 0.0854 MB/s. and there are 3600seconds in an hour. So bell “recommends” that you get the 100/month plan with EVDO. What you get for $100/month? Say you want to download a large file (gasp) or (god forbid) watch some streaming video or something. At maximum speed your 250MB monthly allowance would last you exactly less than 49 minutes*. And after that, at 3/MB, Bell will let you surf the Internet for the low low incremental price of only $923/hour (or $15/minute).
So what's the cost of mobile access?
Thomas Purves suggests that Canada is a 3rd world country when it comes to Mobile ICT, except you can clearly see from this chart that even *Rwanda* has orders of magnitude better Mobile Data service than Canada. Point taken.
Want wireless broadband internet access without thew need for a hotspot? Insert an EVDO card into your laptop and you are your own hotspot. EVDO (Evolution data Only/Evolution data Optimized) - currently avail in most U.S. cities via Verizon and Sprint - hmm what would it cost in Canada?
Bell Canada’s rates for EVDO wireless data transfer? EVDO has a maximum advertised speed of 700kbs (downstream). Per ThomasPurves..."this is 700bits/8bits perByte, 1024kBytes/MB or 0.0854 MB/s. and there are 3600seconds in an hour. So bell “recommends” that you get the 100/month plan with EVDO. What you get for $100/month? Say you want to download a large file (gasp) or (god forbid) watch some streaming video or something. At maximum speed your 250MB monthly allowance would last you exactly less than 49 minutes*. And after that, at 3/MB, Bell will let you surf the Internet for the low low incremental price of only $923/hour (or $15/minute).
So what's the cost of mobile access?
Thomas Purves suggests that Canada is a 3rd world country when it comes to Mobile ICT, except you can clearly see from this chart that even *Rwanda* has orders of magnitude better Mobile Data service than Canada. Point taken.
Friday, June 22, 2007
University of Alberta
University of Alberta
Originally uploaded by mastermaq
Always under construction - the University of Alberta, in Edmonton, continues to grow - as does our need to seek alternative means of designing and delivering learning. The University sees itself as primariliy a research institute, and to differentiate from the University of Athabasca just north of here - (Canada's "open univerisity" - don't get me started on the definition of that moniker!) - the U of A likes to see itself as a proponent of "blended" learning, not distance learning.
I suggest that we could also see ourselves as the "lifelong learning" institute, where research informs learning, and learning is activity based, flexible and open. And we build "learning and research communities" rather than cohorts, and establish learning connections that link into and out of public life, worklife and distant academia.
This is my reason to push the agenda on social software - a lonely calling at times.
Just completing my spotty attendance at the Canadian E-Learning Conference here in Edmonton. I gave a pre-conference workshop on Creating Virtual Communities and Connections using the Elgg environment. Aside from 30 minutes of network crash time the event went very well. I rather wished I had opened the floor up for more discussion, but my nerves and enthusiasm got in the way. Good grist for a reveiew of my presentation style. But I do believe the reception was positive, and may have actually generated some work for our unit from the Family Medical service here at the University. There is definite interest in creating and maintaining online communities - having a space like Elgg where those who are geographically dispersed can gather and connect.
Speaking of connecting this conference was also fertile for the face to face connections I made. I met Brian Lamb from BC, D'Arcy Norman from Calgary, and Peter Tittenberger from U of Manitoba. (Aside from Saskatchewan we had the Western provinces tippling at the same table) Thanks to Peter, who hired George Siemens as a Research Associate, we now have George steadily employed and able to get his message out to the worldwide audience. Peter and George have also brought us some excellent virtual conferences on ed tech.
Brian and D'Arcy entertained the conference with a compilation of video clips that generated guffaws, groans and laughter from the crowd. See D'Arcy's post on the presentation (and his visible appreciation of the WesteEd mall). Highlight of the movie entrails was the mash up of the nature documentary on spiders/crack spiders, the drift of Pooh into Apocalypse Now and the Sir Ken Robinson's TED talk that so pleasantly speared us for our continued dismissal and destruction of the innate desire in all children to be creative. His talk is particularly pertinent to us today because we have the tools through social software to bring creativity and connectiveness back to the forefront of learning. Maybe. At least Brian and D"Arcy brought some moments of creativity to the conference.
Speaking of connecting this conference was also fertile for the face to face connections I made. I met Brian Lamb from BC, D'Arcy Norman from Calgary, and Peter Tittenberger from U of Manitoba. (Aside from Saskatchewan we had the Western provinces tippling at the same table) Thanks to Peter, who hired George Siemens as a Research Associate, we now have George steadily employed and able to get his message out to the worldwide audience. Peter and George have also brought us some excellent virtual conferences on ed tech.
Brian and D'Arcy entertained the conference with a compilation of video clips that generated guffaws, groans and laughter from the crowd. See D'Arcy's post on the presentation (and his visible appreciation of the WesteEd mall). Highlight of the movie entrails was the mash up of the nature documentary on spiders/crack spiders, the drift of Pooh into Apocalypse Now and the Sir Ken Robinson's TED talk that so pleasantly speared us for our continued dismissal and destruction of the innate desire in all children to be creative. His talk is particularly pertinent to us today because we have the tools through social software to bring creativity and connectiveness back to the forefront of learning. Maybe. At least Brian and D"Arcy brought some moments of creativity to the conference.
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
One Week Job
One Week Job
Sean Aiken has taken his own path - a path with many stops - on his way not to finding a job, or a career, but something to do that he is passionate about.
His website oneweekjob.com states his mission - "My name is Sean Aiken, and like many others in my generation, I can't tell you what it is that I want to do with my life. Help me figure it out by offering me a 'One Week Job.' I am traveling week to week throughout the country working different jobs offered to me with all my wages donated to the Make Poverty History campaign."
Sean's journey is one that we should all be able to take - through formal and informal means, explore the world a bit at a time and revel in the moment as we experience it. Instead we stay with one position, or a similar series of, waiting for an upward move when so much movement is lateral or down. And we suffer, often faslling into depression or erupting in anger. I remember my father judging his worth by the job he held and how he broke when the company he was with for 24 years laid him off. None of us should see a job as an answer, a career as an affirmation of self, even a hobby or sport as a statement of our worth. We need to enjoy life, and hopefully find those things that make life enjoyable for us. I commend Sean in his serach and welcome the opportunity that the web affords him to document his experiences and take us along with him - close to real time, as it happens.
Sean Aiken has taken his own path - a path with many stops - on his way not to finding a job, or a career, but something to do that he is passionate about.
His website oneweekjob.com states his mission - "My name is Sean Aiken, and like many others in my generation, I can't tell you what it is that I want to do with my life. Help me figure it out by offering me a 'One Week Job.' I am traveling week to week throughout the country working different jobs offered to me with all my wages donated to the Make Poverty History campaign."
Sean's journey is one that we should all be able to take - through formal and informal means, explore the world a bit at a time and revel in the moment as we experience it. Instead we stay with one position, or a similar series of, waiting for an upward move when so much movement is lateral or down. And we suffer, often faslling into depression or erupting in anger. I remember my father judging his worth by the job he held and how he broke when the company he was with for 24 years laid him off. None of us should see a job as an answer, a career as an affirmation of self, even a hobby or sport as a statement of our worth. We need to enjoy life, and hopefully find those things that make life enjoyable for us. I commend Sean in his serach and welcome the opportunity that the web affords him to document his experiences and take us along with him - close to real time, as it happens.
U.S Military wants high school student data
Student rights continue to be eroded - now in support of military action - In 2001 the federal No Child Left Behind law passed - it requires school districts to hand over personal contact information for all juniors and seniors to military recruiters. The law also allows students to opt out.
Berkeley High remains the only high school in the nation that has failed to comply with the military's request for students' data, a Department of Defense spokesman said.
The Berkeley Unified School District board has a strict policy against releasing students' personal information. Instead of adopting an opt out policy, it used an "opt in" procedure in which students and parents could sign a form only if they wanted their information released to the military. A month ago, the school - under pressure from the government to release the data or lose funding - changed its policy that blocked the release of students' personal information. The new policy allows students and parents who do not wish to be contacted by military recruiters to opt out by signing a form.
But the school did not immediately release the data to the government. Instead, a group of parents have been on a campaign to ask each and every student whether they want to opt out.
Thus far, 90 percent of the students at Berkeley High have refused to have their names released to miliary recruiters. Berkeley High risked losing $10 million in federal funding, and possibly faced legal action, if it did not change its policy regarding military recruitment.
Time will only tell when Canada's actions in Afghanistan start to breed similar erosions of civil rights here in Canada.
Student rights continue to be eroded - now in support of military action - In 2001 the federal No Child Left Behind law passed - it requires school districts to hand over personal contact information for all juniors and seniors to military recruiters. The law also allows students to opt out.
Berkeley High remains the only high school in the nation that has failed to comply with the military's request for students' data, a Department of Defense spokesman said.
The Berkeley Unified School District board has a strict policy against releasing students' personal information. Instead of adopting an opt out policy, it used an "opt in" procedure in which students and parents could sign a form only if they wanted their information released to the military. A month ago, the school - under pressure from the government to release the data or lose funding - changed its policy that blocked the release of students' personal information. The new policy allows students and parents who do not wish to be contacted by military recruiters to opt out by signing a form.
But the school did not immediately release the data to the government. Instead, a group of parents have been on a campaign to ask each and every student whether they want to opt out.
Thus far, 90 percent of the students at Berkeley High have refused to have their names released to miliary recruiters. Berkeley High risked losing $10 million in federal funding, and possibly faced legal action, if it did not change its policy regarding military recruitment.
Time will only tell when Canada's actions in Afghanistan start to breed similar erosions of civil rights here in Canada.
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