I think the learning analytic research should move from the current practice of doing quantitative data analyses to include in it qualitative analyses. The quantified self should be expanded to be qualified self.

In learning analytics research we should consider use of mixed methods that are combining quantitative and qualitative data analyses.

Today the learning analytic research builds strongly on the quantified self idea. The idea of quantified self is simple and powerful. With help of technology we can collect data on our daily life, such as our physical activity (mobility, walking, running etc.), surrounding environment (weather, air quality etc.), our performance (work, study etc.) and social relations (emails, phone calls etc.). The reason to gather and analyze data is to increase awareness on ones own life and ultimately, I assume, to have a chance to change things in it.

The idea of quantified self raises some questions. Like, how much data on their behavior and analyses people really need to get to the right conclusion? For instance, people who have never tracked or record their jogging can still tell pretty accurate information on it (for instance: I run 0, 1 or 2 times / week / 3-5 kilometers). Whatever they run a lot, little or not at all they must be aware about the fact. People also can tell relatively good description of their diet. Most of us do not have a clue about the amount of calories we eat, but most of us know whatever our diet is healthy or not. Because of knowing all this (without any numbers) people may also pay attention on their diet and may have an attempt to run more (or less). On the other hand many people rarely enjoy running and often enjoy unhealthy food. In some aspect jogging and eating healthy food are decreasing the quality of their life.

A different thing is when someone is training, for instance, to run a marathon. In it exact data and a plan helping to reach the objective is for sure useful. Most of us, however, are not interested in about this kind of training. Doing some training is still important.

The idea behind the learning analytics is that collection and analysis of data about learners and their context will provide opportunities to optimize learning and the learning environment (compare to training to run a marathon). In practical implementation of the learning analytics, learners and teachers are provided visualizations on their interactions and progress in some study course. The visualizations can be things like performance in assignments and tests compared to other students or social network analyses.

At some level this probably makes sense, but I think often in study work one can reach good conclusion simply by observing, self-reflecting and using common sense. I think most students know, from various small hints, how they are doing in a class. It is a bit like knowing that I do not run enough or knowing that I should eat healthier food — just by knowing it without any accurate data. In this case people are doing qualitative analyses that is not based on the limited accurate data from the course but from various sources of fuzzy information.

Getting back to the issue of running and diet, however, we must remember that without tens of years of scientific research on the topics — health, physical exercise and diet — people wouldn’t be able to come up with the “right” conclusions of these things importance in their own well-being. I assume this is the case with learning and learning research, too. We should study how people learn, because that will help individuals to monitor, reflect and self-regulate their own behavior. Even if numbers and visualizations on individuals’ behavior may help students to be aware of some things related to their learning, I think we should get beyond it — to the quality of learning.

For many years in social science there has been two methodological camps — you may call them paradigms —fighting on their relevance. These are quantitative research and qualitative research. Recently there has been some advance of bringing them together. The mixed methods have become popular. Often quantitative research can provide interesting research questions for qualitative research and other way around. To get a good picture on some complex social phenomena (e.g. learning) one must use both.

The mixed method (also called multimethodology) approach could be used in learning analytics research, too. What then would be qualitative learning analytics? Could this approach lead to qualified self?

With some latest prototypes we have somehow touch the topic. We call the new learning tools reflection tools. Here is a video of the three latest prototypes.

Media Tools for Reflection in Learning (iTEC) from Media Lab Helsinki on Vimeo.

The idea with the tools is not to collect quantitative data (there is some, like how many reflections one have made), but to provide a space for student to do reflection in natural language. With the tools students are asked to think and ponder questions, like: what I have learned? What I have done? What I am planning to do next? Have I faced any problems to implement my plans?

The reflection tools are also calm technology. They are designed not to be distributive in a learning situations taking place in social interaction. They are not central, they are peripheral, but can be brought to the center when needed.

What I would like to see in future in the learning analytic research is a move to the direction of machine learning and natural language analyzes. I am imaging that one day we could automatically or semi-automatically analyze content people create as part of their learning activities (or everyday life) and based on that provide them hints on directions they could explore more. The picture build out of the qualitative data (the content produced) could be something that could be called “Qualified Self”.

As a final (meta) note I want to explain how this idea of qualified self and qualitative learning analytics idea came to life. Why? Because it is a nice story and demonstrates how research happens.

A couple of weeks ago I met with Erik Duval when he was giving a keynote in a conference in Finland. Erik is doing right now a lot of research on learning analytics. His talk and discussions we had were very inspiring. At some point we also discussed about quantitative and qualitative analyses – actually in the context of research evaluation.

Next week I was in Copenhagen and was lucky to have dinner with Timo Honkela – a colleague who happens to be visiting fellow in Copenhagen right now. Timo’s area of research is computational cognitive systems — “adaptive, autonomous and socio-culturally grounded cognitive systems that are able to learn and use language“. Some years ago with Timo we did some theoretical research around the idea of using self-organizing maps (SOM) in learning. During the dinner I explained to Timo the idea of qualified self. He liked it and brought in it the idea of machine learning. I hope in a near future we will do some writing on it.

In Copenhagen I also met Jonas Löwgren, one of the leading figures in interaction design. He made some more interesting comments on the idea of qualified self.

Thank you all!

(1) learners are humans;

(2) what is important for humans.

For instance, in research related to e-learning and learning objects and later to massive open online courses and learning analytics there is very little consideration of these topics.

Why thinking, motivation, emotions or behavior — all deeply human things — are not in the interest of the edu.tech. researchers?

Some days ago Sanna Järvelä’s lecture made me think. In learning science these “human factors” are considered to be the key issues in learning. Research has shown that good learners are able to observe, evaluate and regulate themselves. They are able to reflect their thinking and motivation and regulate their emotions and behavior. They are strategic. When aiming to learn they work with study materials (search, read, listen, watch); analyze the materials; plan their next steps; explore; do stuff; validate things; observe and regulate their own behavior etc.

Fine. So how do you learn these skills? The good news is that we can develop the skills for our entire life. To learn the skills we must practice them.

Couple of weeks ago a Finnish freelance journalist Johanna Korhonen wrote a column to the leading newspaper, Helsingin Sanomat, with the title “The morons of civilization” (Sivistyksen tunarit). The title may sound strange, as the word “sivistys” does not translate well to English. The idea of the text, however, is that with a growing focus on utility of actions we may same time loose something extremely useful.

Today in Finland you may hear relatively smart people claiming that social debates are just waste of time or music and other forms of art are useless (except if they are export products). Everything is seen primary in relation to economics and economic growth. This is the case in education, too. Education system’s only task is to serve economic growth. Barbarism? Yes.

Instead of barbarism we assume that we have a democracy. Here is the problem. Democracy requires education — educated citizens who are knowledgeable, critical and active. Democracy needs people who care.

According to Johanna Korhonen to have people who care the most important objective of education should be to prepare citizens who have critical thinking skills, imagination, compassion and are able to carry responsibility. This means that the most important school subjects are not mathematics, science or even programming. The important subjects are humanities and arts. In these you learn imagination, critical thinking and compassion.

I do not like dichotomies. I think studying math and science (and programming) are important. We may study them reflectively and critically, too. What it will ask for is probably a bit of humanities and artistic touch in the study of them. We may study math, science and engineering with critical, ethical and æsthetic mindset.

The next big thing in edu. tech. research will be (or should be) how to enhance truly reflect and regulative learning with technology. In this kind of research and development the human is in the centre.

We have designed some new (media) tools for self organized learning environment (SOLE) and for progressive inquiry.

Media Tools for Reflection in Learning (iTEC) from Media Lab Helsinki.

The self organized learning environment (SOLE) is a model to adapt school space to facilitate inquiry based learning. The idea is simple and powerful: “A teacher encourages their class to work as a community to answer questions using computers with internet access“.

In practice the SOLE class should work according to five simple rules: (1) students will form groups of about 4, (2) students may choose their own groups, (3) students may change groups at any time, (4) students may go and look what other groups are doing and may bring this information back to their own group, (5) students should prepare to present for the class their answers to the question(s). The SOLE is developed by Sugata Mitra and his colleagues.

I see in it some similarities with the progressive Inquiry and Future Learning Environment research we have been working with for many years.

The progressive inquiry is a pedagogical model where teachers are facilitating knowledge building that characterizes scientific research community and expert-like working with knowledge. To facilitate this we designed and developed the Fle3 – software. Later there has been other tools for the same purpose, such as the experimental Knowledge Practices Environment KPE.

The SOLE principles could be used in progressive inquiry learning with Fle3. There are, however, some differences, too. When in SOLE the inquiry questions are expected to be asked by the teachers in progressive inquiry it is seen that allowing and guiding students to set their own questions of inquiry is very important. Students are also expected to elaborate their questions, to find better questions during the study work. If the aim is to educated experts this makes a lot of sense. Scientists and experts are good at asking questions.

The SOLE sessions is designed to be a single lessons (about 60 minutes). There is a time for a teachers to post an inquiry question (5 min), time for students to study the questions with Internet (40 min) and time for reviewing the finding of the groups (10-15 min). In the implementation of progressive inquiry the study project is expected to last the whole semester or even two. This way there is time to explore number of questions, to do on top of the Internet search some experiments, interviews or other forms of data-collection to really study the topic from different perspective.

The progressive inquiry and especially the Fle3 (or other knowledge building tools) have not been widely took in use in schools. Not even in our home base in Finland. The schools culture, as well as institutional and organizational constrains have made it very difficult for teachers to take it in use in their own teaching. Some of the principles, however, are widely known and many teachers adapt some parts of it in their teaching.

I think the SOLE could be an interesting first step to the right direction. Like with the progressive inquiry there are also tools that are expected to help teachers and students to get into it. Mitra and his colleagues have proposed that a school should prepare classrooms with minimal set-up or to have a specific SOLE classroom with required equipment. The minimum set-up is defined to be:

• Laptops for one per 4 students. Large screens are preferable as they enable the group to work together on a single screen.
• A classical black or whiteboard to write the inquiry question so that it is always visible for the whole class.
• Paper and pens for students to take notes.
• Props to make each student groups’ “managers”visible for other (a badge, hat, etc.)
• A space to present the results of each group for the entire class.

In a SOLE classroom there should be an advanced set up and architecture. These include, for instance:

• A location that is highly visible for the whole school community, such as the lobby used by the students, teachers and parents.
• Having a classroom with glass walls so that the entire school community can see what the students are doing in the SOLE classroom.
• Having furniture that enables groups of four to interact with a computer and to have table space for note taking with papers and pens.
• Having in each group working space a fast laptop or desktop computer with fast broadband internet connection, large screen and speakers.
• Having free/ibre open source software such as Open Office and GIMP (drawing, graphics) for students to work with.

When thinking this now, this sounds like our design research studio at the Media Lab Helsinki. It’s not an office, neither a laboratory. We do not work that much in groups in front of a single computer as it is proposed in SOLE, but once in a whole we share things on a big screen. We have, at some point, also experiment with pair programming (agile) where there are two people in front of a single computer.

We try to practice expert-like research work. This also requires more ownership on the space. We want to have our own books, articles, papers etc. on our own desks. When work requires months or even years of analysis, design, re-design and reflection you need your own space for it.

This makes me wonder. Would it be possible to provide students their own “research desk”they may have for the whole year? Could the SOLE classroom be something where one do not just visit when it is the SOLE lesson but something where there are also individual research desks in addition to the group work desks. This way the space could serve also more long-lasting progressive inquiry.

I think the tools presented in the video above could be useful in, both in the SOLE classroom activities and in a progressive inquiry. We will try. Then we will know.

Two weeks ago at the Aalto University, we were having a symposium focusing on accessibility of media. In there I gave a talk about Wikipedia / Wikimedia.

If we think the Wikimedia services from the accessibility point of view, there are some issues that make it pretty unique. Often one must go all the way to the Mission and Vision of the Wikimedia to understand them.

Accessibility can be seen narrowly as technical quality of a product. A television program that provides sub-titles and a signer of a sign language is more accessible than a TV program that does not have these add-ons. Similar way a web page where one can resize the font of read the text with a screen reader is more accessible than a web page that has, for instance, text in images. Doing technically accessible media products is not trivial. It is hard. Still, it is a topic you may study and pay attention to. If you do, you probably will get it right.

Accessibility can be approached also broadly, by not focusing only to the media or application as such, but to the service and infrastructure underlying it. For instance, if people do not have access to Internet at all, it doesn’t really matter if the web pages are accessible or not. If compared to architecture one may have technically accessible public library building, with wheelchair ramps etc. but if citizens moving with wheelchairs can never reach the library, the public service itself is not accessible.

In the Wikimedia / Wikipedia there is an attempt to be technically, but also broadly accessible. Wikimedia / Wikipedia naturally may not provide Internet connection for all, even if they would like to, but they may do design decisions that will increase broad accessibility. For instance, strict commitment to free content, free standards and free software is this kind of decision. With out the commitment, the long-term accessibility aims, stated in the last words of the Wikimedia’s Mission statement, could never happen:

“The Foundation will make and keep useful information from its projects available on the Internet free of charge, in perpetuity.”

To be free of charge and in perpetuity the content, standards and software must be free.

How this then effects on the Wikipedia today?

Various ways. I have examples of all the three.

Free content: Wikipedia does not have high-quality or “official” photos of all the heads of states of all the countries, because all the governments do not provide photos under free content license. For instance, in the Wikipedia, the photo of the long time president of Finland, President Kekkonen, is a stamp from the year 1986.

This is sad and people working in different State Archives could take a note and consider providing photos under free content license.

The positive effects of the commitment to free content, however, are significant. For instance, there is a device using Wikipedia content and you may order custom books out of Wikipedia content.

One of my favorite projects “taking advatage” of the free content is the Webcionary, a multi-lingual web dictionary with easy to use web and mobile interface. A bit surprisingly all the content comes from the Wiktionary -project, the Wikimedia’s free dictionary project. All these examples are also greatly improving accessibility, as people are free to design new ways to distribute and access the Wikimedia content.

Free standards: In Wikipedia audio and video content is still limited as the free formats are not mature enough to be de facto formats. This is a bit of a chicken or an egg dilemma. Developing free formats is slow because there aren’t many users for them. If there would be easy to use free formats, more users would take them in use.

In the development of free formats and web standards Wikmedia / Wikipedia actually plays an important role. With its volume, it partly pushes other players to the right direction. Because of this I would like to see the Wikimedia / Wikipedia to work more with the World Wide Web Consortium, practically defining web standards.

Free software: Many people do not know that Wikimedia / Wikipedia is one of the largest users and developers of free software in the world. All the Wikimedia web services run on the Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP. Also the wiki-platform in use and developed by the community, the MediaWiki, is a free software.

Wikimedia / Wikipedia’s decision to be multilingual is another attempt to increase accessibility. Most people in the world do not speak English. Also most people in the world are more or less multilingual. They are fluent in their native language but can more or less operate with one, two or three other languages. When using the content of the Wikimedia / Wikipedia they simultaneously use several language versions, to get a rich picture of the topic.

Finally there is one more news from the Wikimedia / Wikipedia, related to accessibility. The mobile phone operator Orange and the Wikimedia Foundation will provide for more than 70 million people in African and the Middle East, free of charge mobile access to Wikipedia. The Orange-Wikimedia deal is non-exclusive and other operators are invited to join it.

In those parts of the world where the only affordable access to Internet for majority of people is (and will be) with mobile phone this is great news. It also demonstrates that we can provide accessible services and infrastructure if we really want to.

I have been lately thinking a lot the idea of motivated crowds and how the idea could be used in teaching and learning. Firstly, what is a motivated crowd?

In an interview published in the Wikipedia Signpost Umberto Eco makes a difference between wisdom of crowds and wisdom of motivated crowds:

“I don’t quite agree with this. I am a disciple of Peirce, who argues that scientific truths are, ultimately, approved by the community. The slow work of the community, through revisions and errors, as he put it in the nineteenth century, carries out “the torch of truth”. The problem is the definition of truth.

If I were forced to replace “truth” with “crowd”, I would not agree. If you make a statistical analysis of the 6 billion inhabitants of the globe, the majority believes that the Sun revolves around the Earth, there’s nothing you can do. The crowd would be prepared to endorse the wrong answer.”

Some research suggests (see a summary e.g. in the Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowicki) that crowds are good at choosing from a selection of predefined answers but bad in defining problems or to invent solutions. Later in the interview Eco describes the idea of motivated crowds are follows:

“We must therefore find another criterion, which I think is the motivated crowds. People who work on Wikipedia … are not the indiscriminate crowd [but] are the part of the crowd who feels motivated to work with Wikipedia. Here it is: I’d replace the theory of the “wisdom of the crowd” with the theory of the “wisdom of the motivated crowds.” The general crowd says we should not pay taxes; the motivated crowd says that it’s fair to pay them. In fact, it’s not the ditch diggers or illiterates who contribute to Wikipedia, but people who already belong to a cultural crowd for the very fact they’re using a computer.”

This leads us to the second issue: what constitutes motivation?

Steven Reiss has proposed a theory with basic desires that explain human behaviour. In the article Multifaceted Nature of Intrinsic Motivation: The Theory of 16 Basic Desires Reiss (2004) describe the motives behind the desires. These are:

• Desire to influence (including leadership; related to mastery),
• Desire for knowledge,
• Desire to be autonomous,
• Desire for social standing (including desire for attention),
• Desire for peer companionship (desire to play),
• Desire to get even (including desire to compete, to win),
• Desire to obey a traditional moral code,
• Desire to improve society (including altruism, justice),
• Desire to exercise muscles,
• Desire for sex (including courting),
• Desire to raise own children,
• Desire to organize (including desire for ritual),
• Desire to eat,
• Desire for approval,
• Desire to avoid anxiety, fear,
• Desire to collect, value of frugality

A motivated crowd is a crowd that provide possibilities to full fill these desires in a balanced way.

Nevertheless, when we approach the wisdom of crowds from the motivational point of view, the term crowd starts to loose its original dictionary meaning: “a large number of people gathered together, typically in a disorganized or unruly way” ( Apple OSX Dictionary). The motivated crowds are people gathered together, but as they are driven by motives (to fulfil their desires) they start to organize themselves.

I have been sceptical about the idea of massive open online course (MOOC). I have a theory: many courses (not only the MOOCs) are not motivating because they do not pay enough attention to the participant’s desires.

In a good course students should have the opportunity to practice leadership, gain knowledge, and be autonomous. Students should be provided ways to get social attention and opportunities to play and compete with each other. But this is not enough. Students should have the opportunity to make connections to deep philosophical issues, too: to obey moral codes, improve society and have connections to past and upcoming generations. Students should feel safe and secure and opportunities to take part in rituals, organize themselves, eat and express themselves as sexual beings. Finally, according to Reiss, we also have a desire to exercise muscles. Maybe the idea of school children gymnastics and the Bauhaus’ practice to began lessons with exercises is not that bad idea (I have tried the morning exercises, stretching, yoga, etc. in my lessons).

Aakash Tablet

The Akash table, designed in India, is expected to be delivered for schools and other education institutions with a price tag of $35 per unit (this is the Indian government’s subsidised price). The Akash is naturally challenging the One Lap Top Per Child project’s XO-laptop and number of other netbooks provided for schools.

I have been critical about the design and development process and some aspects of the pedagogical approaches in the OLPC. After reading the first reviews of the Aakash I am not convinced about their pedagogical design, either. For someone outside, it looks that the Aakash is designed as “generic tablet”, not as a pedagogical tool. In this area, I think, the OLPC’s XO is at least trying to make a real difference.

I am afraid that the Aakash design team did not have anyone thinking about the pedagogy. The main aim has been to deliver a cheap tablet. Maybe that is what is needed, but from research (or innovation) point of view, I do not find it very interesting. Aakash is just a cheap tablet.

Actually, I think that in the Aakash there are probably many usability issues, too. The Aakash comes with a resistive touchscreen. I know that this is a matter of price, but the difference in the user experience between the resistive and capacitive touchscreen (used e.g. in iPad) is a real issue. People want to use thing with their fingertips. I believe that there are biological reason for it: the fingertips contains densest area of nerve endings.

We love to touch things. Pressing and touching feel very different. With a touch we can navigate, move things around, draw with our fingers (most natural way), and write relatively comfortably (with a virtual keyboard). This is the right starting point for a school device. When this is in place, we should think and design another “layer” that could work more like a paper and pen. For instance a cover of a touchscreen could be a “digital paper” on what one could draw and write with a stick, with any stick. The “smart cover” could be even smarter.

The online review also tells tat the Aakash actually does pretty good job with playing video. That is of course nice, but this can be analysed also from the point of view of pedagogical affordance. Is the idea that one could watch educational video programs with the device? Probably. Again OK, but not necessary a priority.

Design is difficult. Designing pedagogical affordances is really difficult. Will we ever get it right?

Here is my advise for schools and parents considering buying new devices for school children:

If you are short of money. Wait. We may get it right (affordable pedagogical tool), soon (in 3-4 years). At this point there is no hurry. You can still carry out quality education with papers, pens, books and maybe some PCs in the corner of the classroom. Invest to teachers, drawing paper, colours and pens, library with books etc.

If you have some money: At first, iInvest to teachers, drawing paper, colours and pens, library with books etc. With ICT budget invest mostly to netbooks with some easy-to-use Linux distribution, eg. EduBuntu. Buy maintenance of the Linux netbooks from a local service provider. If there isn’t any ask your high school students to start one – they can do it. In addition to this, you may also buy couple of iMacs as workstations for more advanced creative work (graphic, audio, video etc). These are pretty maintenance free. Your service provider should be able to take care of them too (they are Unix anyway).

If you have a lot of money: At first, iInvest to teachers, drawing paper, colours and pens, library with books etc. With your ICT budget just get it all: iPad 2s, netbooks with easy-to-use Linux distribution and iMacs for more advanced creative work (graphic, audio, video etc). Buy maintenance from your a local service provider. Again, your students should be able to run it.

I agree with most of the points made in the story: teachers are essential and standardized testing is doing more harm than good. These are also interlinked issues. We need highly educated teachers, appreciation of the profession, empower teachers, have decision making in classroom and school level etc. When these are in place we may focus on education, instead of training children to tests.

I think, however, that these stories are missing one important thing: smart, continuos development of the system. I consider this to be relatively well in place in the primary and secondary education in Finland. It’s not great but it’s not bad either. Most likely, it is better than in most systems. The in-build development of the system, I think, is behind good educational results in primary and secondary education. At least in Finland.

I also have a working theory. Because of lacking for a long time the spirit of smart and continuos development in higher education in Finland we are actually not doing very well in it. For a couple of years now things has changes in it too and I strongly believe that we are getting better. It just requires smart continues development.

So what is smart continuos development? It is a bit like agile software development.

Agile Manifesto states the values, as follows:

• Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
• Working software over comprehensive documentation
• Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
• Responding to change over following a plan

These principles, with minor modification. should be used in educational system development, too (and I am claiming we do it a bit in Finland) + it should be continuos. Here is my (agile( values for educational system development:

• Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
• Working class room / school / school district over comprehensive documentation
• Stakeholder (administration, schools, teachers, researchers, parents etc.) collaboration over contract negotiation
• Responding to change over following a plan

Finally. There’s always room to be better.

We probably will discuss about this topics, too in a panel discussion taking place tomorrow, on Thursday October 13, 2011 in the Mobility Shifts – An International Future of Learning Summit in New York.

For a couple of months now we have been designing and developing a tool called TeamUp.

It is still in an alpha stage. However, we decided to do a public “soft launch” because it is a working prototype that can be already tested in schools and other contexts where people are aiming to work together in several teams, so that the work takes place in a sequential sessions.

That was the “high level” explanation. The short description:

With TeamUp you may form teams based on skills and interests and record teams’ progress.

Ward Cunningham, the developer of the first wiki platform described a wiki as “the simplest online database that could possibly work“. I think that in a way, TeamUp is the simplest collaborative software that could possible work.

Then the most important thing, the links:

Public test site
In here you may create new classroom, add people, play with it or take it in use (please, read the warning below).
Warning: TeamUp is an experimental prototype and we may remove the service from the public internet without any advance warning. We also do not provide any guarantee on your data (e.g. the teams’ recording): all it may disappear at any point.

Public test classroom
This is a classroom with some people pre-added in it. This is a fast way to get an idea how TeamUp works. As it is a “public” service it can me a bit messy, as anonymous people are fooling around in there.

Download the software / source code
if you want to study TeamUp technology, you may want to have a look of the source code. Most content is licensed under some OSI approved license. If you want to write some code, let us know.

I must document this, too. We were having the circles before the Google+ was released.

TeamUp is designed in an European iTEC project. It is an early result of probably one of the most profound design process ever carried out in the field of educational technology (let me know, if I am wrong).

Behind the design of TeamUp there are: creation and analyses of 19 scenarios of the future of learning, created with various stakeholder and experts working in the field of education and 11 Participatory Design workshops with teachers in 10 European countries, naturally carried out in the local languages in authentic environment. On top of this we also have organized three Focus Group sessions with teachers to confirm some of our interpretations and design decisions.

With this size of investment to design one could expect more than a web widget for creating teams and recording audio clips. I agree.

There are other results from the process, too. We have recognized 28 design challenges (16 design opportunities), 13 learning activities and 6 learning stories that echo scenarios of future classroom. We also have two other tools in a stage of early prototype. More information is available in a the Report on Design Prototypes and Design Challenged for Education.

To see functional tool prototypes you still must wait.

PS. You may also contribute to the open source software development. If interested in, please, contact.

A week ago I gave a “demonstration lecture” as part of a nomination and selection process in my university. The assignment was to prepare a “teaching / learning event” for MA students on a topic “new technologies, more advantage communities ?”.

I prepared the lecture as an introduction to the theme. In a real course the lecture could have been something done in a beginning of the course. The aim would be to familiarize student with some basic concepts, ideas and interpretation that could then guide student to do more inquiry on the topics. Here are the slides:

In mid July, I gave a workshop and a keynote at the National conference of the Australasian Association of Distance Education Schools in Tasmania, Australia. The slides of my talk are here:

I think people working in the field of ICT and education in the 21 century should get familiar with Marshall Mc Luhan‘s ideas. Interestingly enough you can do it today by watching Mc Luhan talking on video about his (literature) scholarly works. A video with an interview from the year 1960, made by the Canadian Broadcasting Company, is one of my favorites.

In the lecture I said that when Mc Luhan wrote about the tribal man in the era of electronic media, I am worried that with the digital media we may see some tribal wars, too. When then week later, I got the news about the attack in Oslo, I couldn’t help to think that this is an example of tribal war in the era of digital media. Someone should do a proper study of the killers social media behavior and its effects on him.

In the presentation I also summarized three main research topics I see as the most crucial and important in the field of ICT or New Media in education. These are (1) Creative spaces, (2) Social software and (3) Free and open content. Related to these topics I have some videos, too.

The first one is an example of “future classroom” or “creative space” where the ICT is just an add-on. By watching couple of minutes of it you’ll notice (5 minutes is definitely enough!) that the teacher is teaching the way they are use to do, and the role of the students is to listen and talk only when teacher is asking them something. The laptops are there, but they are not practically used for anything else than to deliver material.

With the video I try to demonstrate how important is to think first pedagogy and only then consider what ICT tools could help in the implementation of it. Bringing laptops and interactive whiteboards to the classroom without re-considering the whole idea of teaching and learning is useless.

In universities, at least in Europe, there is a lot of discussion on “learning centers”. In most of the cases they are build on top or beside existing university libraries. The interest on the “learning centers” comes from the fact that more and more of learning materials, especially academic journals and articles (and soon study books, too) are already available online. Faculty and students see the benefits of using digital content – it is always available. Same time there is a worry that meeting other students, sharing ideas and working together will decrease. When we know that learning is a social process and that often innovations happen when people from different disciplines get together, isolation caused by digital content can be a real issue. A contra-argument is that the social part will take place in social media, but it is also true that meeting face-to-face increases collaboration and trust between people.

The École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne’s (one of the top Universities in Europe) learning center concept is interesting. The forms of the building are based on the human movements in space. The open public space invites students to hang-out, to do their study work and same time meet other people. The public space with “hills” can be used for gatherings and events of different size. Many small meeting rooms gives more privacy for groups working together and wireless connectivity provides access to learning materials.

Related to the creative space I also presented the idea of large multi-user displays. One example of this is the multitouch microscope. Researchers at the Institute for Molecular Medicine Finland (FIMM) and Multitouch Ltd have created a gesture controlled microscope that is combination of web-based virtual microscopy and large multitouch display.

The new creative spaces should include social software in them. The software will run “in” the multitouch displays and in people’s own devices, such as pads and mobile phones. Critical in the this track of development is that the software will be web-based (in practice HTML5). This way we may use the devices students already have with them; a laptop, pad or mobile phone with a web browser. It is also important that the students own devices will seamlessly work together. This is what our design research is about in the European iTEC project.

I finished my talk to a new video explaining the LeMill – Web community for finding, authoring and sharing open educational resources, developed in my research group. In addition to have media/internet/web-rich creative spaces with large displays and social software we also need free and open content. To increase the amount of open content such projects as the Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects are very important. In addition to these we also need projects that are precisely targeting to create learning materials for different levels of education and in different languages. In this — at least in the primary and secondary levels — I consider LeMill to be one of the most important projects in the world.

I had absolutely great time in Australia. People were very friendly and I like the humor in there. Professionally, I particularly enjoyed the pre-conference workshop giving me a nice overview of the ICT use in Australian schools, colleges and universities. It was not a surprise for me that in distance education Australians are in their own level (with Canadians) but there were also interesting experiments and research related to ICT implementation and policies in “normal” schools and other educational institutions (1t:1 computing, social media, etc.).

There are probably many blog posts related to the conference. As traveling, I haven’t found time to read them all, but I found this post, which I really like. There are also references to Educational system in Finland: How to win the “best schools” competition – don’t play the game!.

Another nice surprise in the conference was that just before my talk the Hon Peter Garrett MP gave his talk about the Australian Government’s $2.4 billion investment on ICT in education to create Digital Education Revolution. His talk is worth of reading. With the Minister I also got a a chance to chat a bit about his musical and political career in the last 20 years. I actually saw his band playing in Finland in 1990. I was 21. It was a good summer, indeed.