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Tag: eLearning

The passionate affinity that’s PELeCON #pelc13

Tying into the topic of personal learning networks (PLNs), my previous post highlighted the fact that I was about to attend PELeCON, or rather the 8th Plymouth e-Learning Conference, where I was looking forward to meeting up with people whom I consider to be a significant part of my PLN. I attended the conference last year, where I’d experienced its friendly, energetic buzz so, in spite of a 9hr journey, there was never any question of me not returning again this year. And, I have to say that I wasn’t disappointed; not only did I meet familiar faces en route, Doug Belshaw and Steve Bunce, but I received a warm welcome from Catherine Cronin and Mary Loftus, part of the the Irish contingent who had sensibly travelled the evening before, and all of whom were congenial in making further introductions to what turned out to be another terrific conference. Equally, it seems that others who attended the conference share similar sentiments too.

The reason for such enthusiastic bonhomie, it seems to me, is that PELeCON is not just a conference. By combining networked and online presence with an annual physical event, PELeCON is more akin to what James Paul Gee would call a “passionate affinity space” than a common-or-garden conference.

A passionate affinity space, and the learning that goes on in it, requires some people associated with the space to have a deep passion for the common shared endeavour. It does not require everyone to have such a deep passion, but it does require them to recognize the value of that passion and respect it, in some sense.

Quite right. I’d like to think that not only have I developed a valuable personal learning network, but through PELeCON, I’ve found a great “passionate affinity space” in which to learn as well. The satisfied smiles on the journey back to Ireland would suggest that I’m not the only one who thinks this way.

Being Social PELeCON 13 Back: Steve Warburton, Doug Belshaw, Zak Mensah, Mark Smithers Front: Mary Loftus, Helen Crump, Catherine Cronin, Pamela O'Brien
Being Social PELeCON 13
Back: Steve Warburton, Doug Belshaw, Zak Mensah, Mark Smithers
Front: Mary Loftus, Helen Crump, Catherine Cronin, Pamela O’Brien

Ok, but what did I learn?

After, attending a delightful first session in which Steve Bunce engagingly got everyone finger knitting in order to demonstrate possible approaches to involve children in computer programming, I made my way to listen Mike John’s presentation, “Talking with lecturers: What happened to Web 2.0?”. I was especially keen to hear of his observations in relation to the uptake of Web 2.0 amongst university lecturers as this chimes with my own interests and recent research. The thrust of the presentation was in terms of the gap that exists between the hype surrounding Web 2.0 and the actual take-up of such networked and participatory practices amongst lecturers. Citing examples of activity levels in everyday applications, he pointed out that Web 2.0 gets few ticks from lecturers in their professional practice, and concluded that within higher education, Web 2.0 “is a minority sport; it’s not a mainstream activity”. All very interesting observations, but as Donald Clark noted, the presentation relied largely on the presenter’s observations and not on actual data.

In her excellent presentation entitled “Enacting Digital Identity”, Catherine Cronin called attention to the fact that “different contexts have different legitimacy practices” and highlighted the dis-joint between academic learning practices and networked learning practices (see slide 44).

The theme of digital identity, or online presence, or personal online branding even, re-occurred on the final day of the conference in Joyce Seitzinger’s practical keynote, in which she referred to the term “cloud academics” and talked about her emerging role, akin to a “personal digital coach”, with its focus on instilling networked practice for personal learning, teaching and research amongst lecturers.

Then, giving the final keynote of the conference, Donald H Taylor, with his insight from industry, painted the big picture. Flagging the enormity of impending disruption and change soon to be wrought upon higher education as venture capital seeks optimum return, he plotted pace of change axes to locate those either too tardy, or just plain unwilling, to change and to mark them as being somewhere on the road to “comfortable extinction”. A memorable phrase indeed, and one that made me think back to the lecturers that Mike John observes on the other side of the gap, to the different identities that must be enacted within academic and networked practice and to the “cloud academics” that Joyce Seitzinger’s presentation brought forth.

All of the PELeCON keynotes captured something of this air of change, but more importantly, they all went some way to laying out ways in which education might effectively meet these future challenges, be it Grainne Conole’s advocacy of learning design, Doug Belshaw’s belief in open badges as a “trojan horse”, Steve Bunce’s knitting hypotheses or Karin George‘s hands-on leadership.

Finally though, the air of change came to PELeCON itself when Steve Wheeler announced in the closing session that the “passionate affinity space” that has become PELeCON will no longer be found in Plymouth, as the conference is looking for a handier location and is to henceforth become the Professional Enhanced Learning Conference. All of which can only be a good thing, if it allows more people to access the event and to share the passion. And I’m sure that wherever PELeCON lands, it will still be a unique friendly event with excellent keynotes speakers and ever topical presentations. 🙂

References:

Gee, J. P. and Hayes, E. R. (2011). Language and Learning in the Digital Age. Taylor & Francis. Kindle Edition.

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eLearning and Digital Cultures: my vicarious learning highlights #edcmooc

In order to balance things up from my last EDCMOOC post, I had intended to write something relating to post humanism, but I’m still coming to terms with the concept and with the fundamental changes that its related values of transhumanism will wreak, not just upon society and the planet, but upon the minds and bodies of human beings themselves. So, seeing as I’ve been running a week behind and the course comes to a close tomorrow, I’ve decided to forgo any attempt at putting my thoughts down about “redfining the human” and the implications for education of such a paradigm shift, instead, I’m going to take a look back over what, for me, have been the highlights.

I have to say that although I’ve engaged with pretty much all of the course material, what’s really left the greatest impression on me, apart from Bleecker’s article about blogjets, is some of the content that other learners on the MOOC have produced, and the things that I’ve learned from them. This point only really struck me when Ary Aranguiz @trendingteacher graciously replied to a tweet saying “it’s been wonderful learning with you!” Immediately I thought, you know what, she’s right; I”ve really learnt a lot from other people on the course. Although I haven’t always kept up, or indeed had any timely comments to make within our quadblogging group, I’ve actually learnt lots just by watching the learning of others.

Vicarious learning (Bandura, 1962) is also known as observational learning, social learning, or modelling and is a type of learning that occurs as a function of observing, retaining and replicating behaviour observed in others, so here are my vicarious learning highlights from what’s been a very thought provoking and satisfying MOOC:

 “All the world’s a MOOC, and all the men and women merely teachers and learners.” – blog post by Ary Aranguiz that prompted me to go off and investigate the topic of rhizomatic learning.

WOW! They’ve glassed us! – blog post by Angela Towndrow whose brilliant use of images really brought home to me the power that a visual story can have.

Voyages of the Starship #EDCMOOC – a “cheeky” animation by Willa Ryerson, documenting the week 1 hangout, that shows just how easy some tools are to learn, and what’s more, how important it is to have a sense of fun.

Fake Identity @HamishAMacleod – a spoof Twitter account for one of the course tutors, Hamish Macleod, created by Andy Mitchell. I thought the production of this as a digital artefact to represent learning from the course was at the same time both genius and risky. It certainly makes the point about identity and online security in the digital age. Click on the hyperlink “Fake Identity” in the tweet below to get the full effect of the spoof.

https://twitter.com/HamishAMacleod/status/306483968855908352

“Digital Life” – an augmented music video parody – catchy lyrics “Digital Life has Changed Who We Are” to the Buggle’s tune of “Video Killed the Radio Star” by Amy Burvall, which memorably gets the message across how life has now very much changed to become digital.

The Ecology of Yearning in a MOOC – a video by Ary Aranguiz, whose message “we all yearn for meaning, growth and connection” hit the spot for me as it seems to say a lot about why so many people showed up and played their part in what’s been a very special learning experience.

And finally, my thanks have to go to the EDCMOOC team

Dr Jen Ross     Dr Christine Sinclair     Dr Hamish Macleod     Dr Sian Bayne     Jeremy Knox

who did a great job in providing such a dynamic and thought provoking MASSIVE OPEN ONLINE COURSE. And like they say in their introduction, you can find out more about their work with the MSc in Digital Education here.

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eLearning and Digital Cultures: untangling human values from the dispensations of technology #edcmooc

This blog post forms my response to the #EDCMOOC topic that asks “what does it mean to be human within a digital culture, and what does this mean for education?”; well the first part anyway as the question is considered from two perspectives, humanist and post humanist, and I have yet to fully digest the resources presented that give the post humanist perspective. As such, I’ll briefly consider the term “humanism” and then review the article by Lowell Monke (2004) The Human Touch, which is offered as a response to the apparent threat that technology poses to essential ways in which we learn and exist as “human”, before considering the views of Jaron Lanier on the subject.

It's human nature - sharing.
Sharing – it’s human nature.

Humanism gives reference to the existence of “human nature”. Often aligned with secularism, it’s concerned with beliefs and ideas pertaining to the meaning and purpose of life and emphasizes the value and agency of human beings. Undoubtedly, much of our educational philosophies and approaches today are underpinned by humanist thinking.

In his article, Monke observes that, despite persistent claims, educational transformation fashioned by a variety of technologies has, thus far, largely failed to materialise. He believes the reason for this can be attributed to an “uncritical faith” in technology that fails to acknowledge the interaction between dispensations inherent in technology and human values.

Although technology can provide information and simulations of experience, Monke just sees it as the decontextualized consumption and manipulation of abstract symbols on a two-dimensional screen, which, in his view, is no real substitute for the first hand, concrete experience a person must have with nature, everyday objects, people and with their community so that they’re able to make meaning out of experience. Similarly, the Quantum Physicist, Amit Goswami, in a video that I watched recently, also testifies that “people are interested in processing meaning and values” (26.00 min).

Monke claims that the values embedded in computer simulated experiences are distinct from the values inherent in real, concrete experiences. Here, he cites the example of a computer game called “Oregan Trail” that teaches children about the exploration of the American frontier, and whose implicit message, according to Monke, is one of resourcefulness; resourcefulness that’s based on the rational and calculated decisions of the Pioneers regarding the appropriation of goods and commodities, rather than any resourcefulness derived from the Pioneers’ determination, courage, ingenuity and faith in the face of adversity. As a consequence, “the resilient souls of the pioneers are absent” from the computer game because such technological simulations are unable to do truck with these deep human qualities.

The description of the “Oregan Trail” computer game put me in mind of the “dinosaur” sequence that we saw in the video in Week 2 by Corning Glass; the experience with nature is mediated and augmented by technology, and accordingly demonstrates “the ambiguity of technology” with its ability to promote certain qualities and relegate others. It also put me in mind of Angela Towndrow’s blogpost, which beautifully makes the same point.

Monke goes on to relate how straightforward it is, in his experience, to teach computer skills to students who have little or no prior experience of computers, but instead have rich life experiences gained through traditional play on which they might build their computer skills.

“Ironically, it was the students who had curtailed their time climbing the trees, rolling the dough, and conversing with friends and adults in order to become computer “wizards” who typically had the most trouble finding creative things to do with the computer”.

Kids climbing trees
Climbing trees – hands on learning of deep human qualities.

“Certainly, many of these highly skilled young people (almost exclusively young men) find opportunities to work on computer and software design at prestigious universities and corporations”.

In his New York Times article, virtual reality pioneer turned digi-tech critic, Jaron Lanier, seems to echo similar sentiments when he asks, “how do we use the technologies of computation, statistics and networking to shed light — without killing the magic? […because] it goes to the heart of what we are after as humans”. The magic Lanier alludes to are aspects quintessential to human nature and being human. Lanier recognises that many technological design decisions today are being made by the individuals that Monke describes above, geeks of Silicon Valley, and ultimately that their decisions can either lock in or lock out elements that speak to human values.

Take music as a case in point, which incidentally is something Sharon Flynn picked up on in her reflective post, and the digitizing programme known as MIDI (short for Musical Instrument Digital Interface). Here, Lanier explains that MIDI

 “was conceived from a keyboard player’s point of view…digital patterns that represented keyboard events like ‘key-down’ and ‘key-up.’ That meant it could not describe the curvy, transient expressions a singer or a saxophone note could produce. It could only describe the tile mosaic world of the keyboardist, not the watercolor world of the violin” (p.7).

Jaron Lanier
Jaron Lanier – music making, the human way.

Software development, it transpires, is particularly prone to the phenomena known as “lock-in”, and often an extremely rigid form of “lock-in” at that. “Lock-in” happens when software is designed to work along with other, already established, software programs and when design decisions in the original program become increasingly difficult to modify due to the fact that more and more software programs have become dependent upon the original.

Software attempts to express many ideas, from the nature of a musical note to the nature of personhood itself. However, digital designs not only have the tendency to promote or relegate certain qualities, but they’re inherently predisposed almost to lock certain qualities in and to lock certain qualities out.

I wonder, what qualities are we locking in and what qualities are we locking out, in our new digital culture, and where does the balance lie between the human and the technological? In order to better understand the technological dimension, I’m going to have to give serious consideration to the “post human”concept.

Image sources:

#17 - Sharing!

Climbing trees

TEDxSF 2010 Edge of What we Know - Jaron Lanier ©Suzie Katz #2582

References:

Monke, L. (2004) The Human Touch. Available at: http://educationnext.org/thehumantouch/

Lanier, Jaron (2010) You Are Not A Gadget: A Manifesto. Penguin UK. Kindle Edition.

Lanier, Jaron  (2010) Does the Digital Classroom Enfeeble the Mind? Available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/19/magazine/19fob-essay-t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=3&

Rosenbaum, R. (2013)  What Turned Jaron Lanier Against the Web? Available at: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/What-Turned-Jaron-Lanier-Against-the-Web-183832741.html

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