Live and let learn http://liveandletlearn.net Living and learning for life Wed, 18 May 2011 13:00:49 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 This is an XML content feed. It is intended to be viewed in a newsreader or syndicated to another site, subject to copyright and fair use. Coding vs communicating learning goals http://liveandletlearn.net/coding-vs-communicating-learning-goals/ http://liveandletlearn.net/coding-vs-communicating-learning-goals/#comments Wed, 15 Dec 2010 20:55:53 +0000 Michael http://liveandletlearn.net/?p=367 Over the past weeks I’ve been spending my one or two hours a week refactoring the Learning Goals source-code, removing the shortcuts that I’d taken to get the initial prototype and replacing them with maintainable, well-tested code. But I’m always torn – should I be spending my time instead getting more involved in educational communities, communicating . . . → Read More: Coding vs communicating learning goals]]> Over the past weeks I’ve been spending my one or two hours a week refactoring the Learning Goals source-code, removing the shortcuts that I’d taken to get the initial prototype and replacing them with maintainable, well-tested code. But I’m always torn – should I be spending my time instead getting more involved in educational communities, communicating the ideas behind learning goals, drumming up support with Matt’s 5 steps? With the time I’ve got available, it’s hard for me to see a sustainable path forward.

But none-the-less, I need to somehow make it easier to demonstrate why learning goals will be a vital tool for flexible learning (with something more concrete than the 1 minute pitch video). So, my plan for the next 6 months (of 1-2hrs per week, so approx. 50hrs):

  1. Finish cleaning up the code (post-prototype-rush) to a point where it’s easy for others to contribute (easy dev environment, great test coverage). 10hrs.
  2. Create a simple project sandbox for learning goals on http://liveandletlearn.net/doit/ (5hrs)
  3. Build on the site with pages describing the project in 5 sentences, user-stories, surveys of similar projects/products, FAQ etc., so that anyone interested in the project can find all their questions answered, as well as trying out the sandbox. (15hrs)
  4. Give the UI a facelift (well, at least make it styled and mildly attractive, rather then functional-only) (10hrs)
  5. Start a process of releasing new features directly to the sandbox site (automating the process), actively seeking other people/colleges interested in using Learning Goals and continue dogfooding Learning Goals myself with the people whom I’m currently helping.

And as Matt says, shake and repeat.

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]]> http://liveandletlearn.net/coding-vs-communicating-learning-goals/feed/ 0 Learning, freedom and the web http://liveandletlearn.net/learning-freedom-and-the-web/ http://liveandletlearn.net/learning-freedom-and-the-web/#comments Thu, 25 Nov 2010 07:45:00 +0000 Michael http://liveandletlearn.net/?p=351 Three days of passionate conversations with people who are excited to be exploring new sustainable models of education and learning-by-doing, forging the latest technologies with old and new ideas. That’s the best I can do to summarize my experience of the Mozilla Drumbeat Learning, freedom and the web festival in one sentence. It was unreal.

The festival began with music, . . . → Read More: Learning, freedom and the web]]> Three days of passionate conversations with people who are excited to be exploring new sustainable models of education and learning-by-doing, forging the latest technologies with old and new ideas. That’s the best I can do to summarize my experience of the Mozilla Drumbeat Learning, freedom and the web festival in one sentence. It was unreal.

The festival began with music, food and a science-fair of various new projects. I had a t-shirt printed (a graphic from the “Changing educational paradigms” RSA animation) which was great for starting conversations around the Learning Goals project. I felt my voice going towards the end of the evening, but it was exciting for me to be able to chat with so many people about the project and learning in general.

The next day began with a couple of keynotes, one by Mitchell Baker which helped me frame the Mozilla Foundation’s motivation for the drumbeat project itself.  I then joined a small group workshop with Laurie (startl), Matt (Mozilla) and Karien (Shuttleworth foundation) and five other participants to discuss our projects and how we can best present them. We each wrote up a 2-min pitch for feedback and then presented them the following day getting more valuable feedback from other participants (in my case, leading to a total re-write and 1-minute Learning Goals intro video).

The rest of my conference time was spent mostly with the Peer-2-Peer University folk. It was exciting not only to learn about possible integration points for my own project, but also discussing the future of assessment and use of badges for assessment. P2PU got started just over 2 years ago with funding from the Shuttleworth foundation and it now has a very active community with lots of volunteers organizing a variety courses (with varying success). It shares some similarities with SchoolOfEverything, but is more ‘course’-centric fusing online tools in addition to linking people up to learn something together. I reckon bringing together organizational projects like this with open educational resource projects (like the Khan Academy) will change education and learning (like this video-game interface to the Khan academy).

I followed the ”Badges for assessment” track – exploring the idea that StackOverflow-style badges could be awarded for assessment instead of things like certificates for qualifications. There were lots of interesting discussions about issues (verification/authentication, who awards, what competencies underly a badge, etc.), and P2PU is going to work with Mozilla to flesh out the ideas using the P2PU School of Webcraft.

As always, the best conversations continued on after hours or into lunch breaks. Simply being in an environment where conversations with people who are just as excited about an open future of learning and education were possible was a dream in itself. I think nearly everyone came away from Drumbeat with lots of new ideas, new friends and collaborators, and a re-fuelled motivation to continue exploring better ways of learning in the future.

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]]> http://liveandletlearn.net/learning-freedom-and-the-web/feed/ 0 Evaluation of Drumbeat learning, freedom and the web http://liveandletlearn.net/evaluation-of-drumbeat-learning-freedom-and-the-web/ http://liveandletlearn.net/evaluation-of-drumbeat-learning-freedom-and-the-web/#comments Sat, 13 Nov 2010 11:36:55 +0000 Michael http://liveandletlearn.net/?p=355 As I had to run to catch a flight after the Learning, freedom and the web festival, I didn’t get a chance to hand in my evaluation form, so thought I’d post it here… (I will be posting later with my own summary of the festival too). I just hope I’m not too late to go . . . → Read More: Evaluation of Drumbeat learning, freedom and the web]]> As I had to run to catch a flight after the Learning, freedom and the web festival, I didn’t get a chance to hand in my evaluation form, so thought I’d post it here… (I will be posting later with my own summary of the festival too). I just hope I’m not too late to go in the draw to receive a flipcam…

General

1) If you could say one thing about this event, what would it be?

One sentence perhaps?

Three days of passionate conversations with people who are excited to be exploring new sustainable models of education and learning-by-doing, forging the latest technologies with old and new ideas.

2) Why did you decide to attend the festival?

I *love* meeting up with and exchanging ideas with others passionate about learning possibilities for the future. I also had my own project – Learning Goals – to show at the science fair. And my managers at the excellent company that I work for (Canonical) were nice enough to let me take conference leave!

3) Please rank you overall satisfaction with the festival: 5 – awesome.

4) What were the top three “Aha” or great learning moments for you at the event?

  1. Understanding that what I think I’m communicating about my project is not what people are understanding.
  2. It’s not just Australian web-dev education that has issues – it seems most countries follow the same system (trying to define competencies in stone that really need updating before they are even published).
  3. A session that I apparently missed – HOWTO prototype and iterate for fun and profit (was it part of drumbeat, or earlier meetups? either way, I was glad to learn from some of the stuff in this session after the event).

5) What three things would you change about how learning (content, skills, socialization, accreditation) works in 2020?

I’d frame this for the people who are helping people learn, something like:

  1. Source content from professionals, but actively develop great social learning *activities* on open wikis – see ‘Provide relevant and practical activities to learn by doing‘  and ‘Do we need teachers of web design?‘
  2. Model learning not teaching (something all learners can help each other with)
  3. Gradually hand over control of learning to learners

6) What activities or follow-up communications would you like to see happen after the festival?

I’m not sure that anything formal is required – perhaps just summarising/outlining and publishing all the activities and communications that are already taking place naturally? (So others can see all the other action that’s happening without trying to keep up with all #drumbeat tweets or one hundred blogs etc.)

Agenda

7) Was the agenda format ok? I’d say just right (although I’m used to this kind of format from Ubuntu Developer Summit meetings.) The main streams together with impromptu discussions and sessions was great. Starting with the funky science fair was excellent too!

8) Which session(s) offered you the most benefit? Why?

Hrm, personally I’d have to say the startl sessions with Laurie, Matt, Karien and the other participants with projects. I’m guessing this is because these were the sessions that I put the most into as well (ie. we had to prepare our project pitches), and also got *lots* of useful feedback from (which I summarised with the a comment at Pitching the learning goals project) and created a follow-up 1 minute intro video for the Learning Goals project.

I would have liked to have spent more time discussing/debating badges for assessment, as I’m excited about the possibilities together with other alternatives – such as enabling learners to collect their own evidence and decide themselves when they are ready to demonstrate their evidence (something we were pushing in our web programming course a few years ago). I got to 3 or 4 of the badges sessions and had some great discussions.

I also enjoyed the discussion session with Dale Dougherty and lots of other dinner conversations with different people.

10) Was the agenda what you expected, given the theme of the Festival? Why or why not?

Yes – I thought the mix of mostly workshop-type sessions but also relevant keynotes in the morning/evening was perfect. The topics for key-notes were great – a mix of exciting new tools for learning (how Arduino boards are being used for lots of fun learning) and reminders about the state of tech-education :)

I didn’t feel anything was missing.

Logistics

  • The venue was appropriate – strongly agree, Barcelona itself, as well as the Raval district – both were great.
  • The food and beverages met my needs – agree. When I got to the food, it was perfect snack food + drinks. But as conversations continued between sessions I hardly ever got there.
  • The pace of the event was comfortable – strongly agree. I was never bored, and the 1.5hr lunch breaks were great… any shorter and it would have felt quite rushed given that we were eating out in the city.
  • The format of the event was effective  - strongly agree. Science fair opening (with music/drinks) was an excellent opportunity to meet lots of people and find out peoples interests etc. Then the combination of short key-notes and the start/end of each day with lots of interactive workshops and informal conversations in between was great.

13) How might we improve the logistics for future Drumbeat festivals?

I think it would be great to capture at least the sound for each discussion. I spent a lot of time trying to document various sessions that I was at (using the excellent Etherpad pages for each room/slot), but it did mean that I wasn’t able to participate quite so much as I would have liked. (Edit: Another option would be for session leaders to make a point of ensuring there are at least 2-3 people documenting on the etherpad page).

Thanks to all the organizers (especially the incredible local organizers, who were up at 4am at least one morning just to ensure that everything happened), to Mozilla for the travel allowance, and my managers for letting me take leave :)

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]]> http://liveandletlearn.net/evaluation-of-drumbeat-learning-freedom-and-the-web/feed/ 0 Pitching the learning goals project http://liveandletlearn.net/pitching-the-learning-goals-project/ http://liveandletlearn.net/pitching-the-learning-goals-project/#comments Fri, 05 Nov 2010 02:10:45 +0000 Michael http://liveandletlearn.net/?p=335

I met up with a bunch of great people today to talk about creating a pitch for our projects. Based on the feedback from that discussion and another discussion at dinner, here’s my first attempt to pitch the Learning Goals project in 2 minutes…

I know I’m not good at this kind of thing, so please help . . . → Read More: Pitching the learning goals project]]>

I met up with a bunch of great people today to talk about creating a pitch for our projects. Based on the feedback from that discussion and another discussion at dinner, here’s my first attempt to pitch the Learning Goals project in 2 minutes…

I know I’m not good at this kind of thing, so please help (and be reckless with your criticism):

Learn what you want, when you want, with whom you want.

Learning goals is an online service that helps you engage lots of learners who have very different motivations, available time, background knowledge and life experience. Learning goals helps you model learning – not teaching – so that learners can gradually begin to set their own goals, plan the steps, link relevant activities from the web and request the support needed to reach their goals.

In most learning contexts today it’s simply unrealistic to expect a homogeneous group of people who can all “keep up” with the set pace of a course “delivery”. None of us want to turn eager learners away just because they have less time available or learn more slowly, nor do we want other people to be bored because they have more time or happen to pick things up more quickly. Learning Goals gives you the option to co-create personalised goals with agreed time-lines for individuals or small groups. Learning Goals makes it easy to track many individual goals with a dashboard of activity for the goals you are supporting as well as notifications for the goals you’ve agreed to review – freeing you up to concentrate on creating and sourcing those great social learning activities.

Learning Goals builds on ideas from other current projects and could also be useful to those projects. For example, learners are able to request support not only from you as a course facilitator, but also from peers in the course or friends in the relevant industry, building a peer-to-peer network of support. Learning Goals might even enable P2PU to support a wider variety of learner needs with self-paced-yet-social courses. Similarly, badges may be able to be used both for learning achievements (formal and informal) as well as for helping others learn.

I’m currently developing Learning Goals as an open-source project so that it can be used freely to help people learn in any context and am working to find other interested edu-developers with the aim of establishing a developer community over the next year. Because Learning Goals is just one small targeted tool in a learner’s PLE (ie. linking out to relevant learning activities and mashing up other communication services rather than suffering featuritis), I’ll be able to release early and often with incremental-but-useful functionality that can be evaluated immediately.

As I see Learning Goals addressing the issues which made personalised, self-paced, peer-to-peer learning unscalable for me in the past, I personally hope to move gradually back into a learning facilitator role. Starting with post-secondary community colleges and/or P2PU, I would love to continue to demonstrate the benefits for learners and facilitators alike, gradually moving downwards into schools and putting the control of learning back in the hands of learners.

Edit: switched ‘learner’ with ‘person’ where possible – thanks Ian.

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]]> http://liveandletlearn.net/pitching-the-learning-goals-project/feed/ 6 Presenting at drumbeat http://liveandletlearn.net/presenting-at-drumbeat/ http://liveandletlearn.net/presenting-at-drumbeat/#comments Thu, 04 Nov 2010 08:49:10 +0000 Michael http://liveandletlearn.net/?p=330 Had an unreal time at the Drumbeat Learning, Freedom and the web festival yesterday – meeting lots of other people who are passionate about open learning and education, and had a chance to to present Learning goals – supporting self-paced, peer-2-peer learning (spot me in the crowd).

Click for the original photo . . . → Read More: Presenting at drumbeat]]> Had an unreal time at the Drumbeat Learning, Freedom and the web festival yesterday – meeting lots of other people who are passionate about open learning and education, and had a chance to to present Learning goals – supporting self-paced, peer-2-peer learning (spot me in the crowd).

Click for the original photo by deimidis

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]]> http://liveandletlearn.net/presenting-at-drumbeat/feed/ 0 Learning Goals – supporting agile learning http://liveandletlearn.net/learning-goals-supporting-agile-learning/ http://liveandletlearn.net/learning-goals-supporting-agile-learning/#comments Fri, 01 Oct 2010 19:44:43 +0000 Michael http://liveandletlearn.net/?p=326 If you’ve ever been part of a learning group with me, or we’ve worked together in education, I’d be keen to get feedback from you about the Learning Goals project which I’m hoping to move forward over the next while.

The aim is to build a small, focused tool to support self-paced learning and peer review both . . . → Read More: Learning Goals – supporting agile learning]]> If you’ve ever been part of a learning group with me, or we’ve worked together in education, I’d be keen to get feedback from you about the Learning Goals project which I’m hoping to move forward over the next while.

The aim is to build a small, focused tool to support self-paced learning and peer review both within and outside of learning institutions. If you think it’s worthwhile, please click on the Vote button (you’ll need to create a drumbeat account).

Here’s a screencast of a very basic, unstyled prototype demoing one aspect of Learning Goals:

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]]> http://liveandletlearn.net/learning-goals-supporting-agile-learning/feed/ 0 World of Goo for learning http://liveandletlearn.net/world-of-goo-for-learning/ http://liveandletlearn.net/world-of-goo-for-learning/#comments Sat, 18 Sep 2010 10:53:25 +0000 Michael http://liveandletlearn.net/?p=321 I’ve finally got around to trying out World of Goo with my kids. I’d read lots about World of Goo (mostly because of the way it was developed and because it’s available for Linux), and it always sounded like an fun game that would help kids learn simple physics without even knowing it.

Watching my kids play . . . → Read More: World of Goo for learning]]> I’ve finally got around to trying out World of Goo with my kids. I’d read lots about World of Goo (mostly because of the way it was developed and because it’s available for Linux), and it always sounded like an fun game that would help kids learn simple physics without even knowing it.

Watching my kids play the demo this morning has only confirmed everything I read – what a great game!

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]]> http://liveandletlearn.net/world-of-goo-for-learning/feed/ 1 Alice comes to Android http://liveandletlearn.net/alice-comes-to-android/ http://liveandletlearn.net/alice-comes-to-android/#comments Mon, 13 Sep 2010 06:53:09 +0000 Michael http://liveandletlearn.net/?p=316 Anyone who’s used Alice for helping people learn computer programming might be interested to know that Alice 3 runs on Linux too, and Google have released AppInventor – which uses a very similar interface to allow non-developers experiment with creating apps for their phone.

A few years ago, while working in education I outlined a Wikiversity resource for . . . → Read More: Alice comes to Android]]> Anyone who’s used Alice for helping people learn computer programming might be interested to know that Alice 3 runs on Linux too, and Google have released AppInventor – which uses a very similar interface to allow non-developers experiment with creating apps for their phone.

A few years ago, while working in education I outlined a Wikiversity resource for learning to program with Alice.  Some students loved it, but some became quite frustrated for various reasons (one big one being losing all their work when their file was corrupted). I certainly found Alice incredibly useful for visualising object-oriented programming and getting learners using event-driven programming without even thinking about it. YMMV.

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]]> http://liveandletlearn.net/alice-comes-to-android/feed/ 0 Agile learning and agile education http://liveandletlearn.net/agile-learning-and-agile-education/ http://liveandletlearn.net/agile-learning-and-agile-education/#comments Sun, 12 Sep 2010 12:21:04 +0000 Michael http://liveandletlearn.net/?p=308 I am trying to find links and resources about applying Agile development methodologies to education and learning. Three years ago (almost to the day) I wrote agile learning – an alternative learning model, and am now really keen to get back into this line of thought in my spare time. If you have any links or . . . → Read More: Agile learning and agile education]]> I am trying to find links and resources about applying Agile development methodologies to education and learning. Three years ago (almost to the day) I wrote agile learning – an alternative learning model, and am now really keen to get back into this line of thought in my spare time. If you have any links or resources, please let me know! Or if you’re interested in why it’s an exciting area… read on.

Many – if not most – of the concepts of Agile/Lean software development transfer incredibly well to education and learning. The most obvious example being valuing “individuals and interactions over processes and tools” (nothing new – most people would agree), but also less obvious principles. For my work as a software engineer we’ve been using a Kanban board for the last year or so (a tool for visualising your work and identifying things that block throughput). Kanban principles actually originate at Toyota but have been applied to software engineering over the past few years (as well as other areas), and seem to have excellent application to personal learning and education too – such as helping to manage the amount of context-switching a school or uni student is asked to do.

But I’m finding it quite hard to find out what’s already out there on the topic of Lean/Agile learning and education – most searches result in companies that teach lean principles for software development, not applying those principles to education and learning generally. I was excited to find Susan’s Agile Education presentation recently, but after contacting Susan it seems she has had the same difficulty in finding resources.

So if you know of any blogs, articles or other resources (or are just keen to discuss and interact on the topic), don’t hesitate to let me know! I’m going to start planning a practical series on agile learning (as it will help me focus ideas for tools enabling agile learning in mainstream settings).

Edit: Nice, I just found Jim Benson’s personal Kanban series which has lots of info about applying Kanban to personal life.

Edit 2010-10-01: A google alert just led me to David Jenning’s Agile learning definition. It’s general ‘agile’ principles for learning and education but not deriving from agile methodology in software engineering as far as I can see.

Edit 2011-01-18: Thanks Hannu for the pointer to the University of Geneva’s EduTechWiki’s Agile Learning page.

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]]> http://liveandletlearn.net/agile-learning-and-agile-education/feed/ 8 I want to help people learn http://liveandletlearn.net/i-want-to-help-people-learn/ http://liveandletlearn.net/i-want-to-help-people-learn/#comments Mon, 23 Aug 2010 06:34:32 +0000 Michael http://liveandletlearn.net/?p=302 Back in 2007, I asked myself the following question:

How do you:

meet the individual learning needs of a diverse bunch of learners, and assess individuals in their mix of individual and group learning in a fair, valid, sustainable way, all-the-while demonstrating how individuals can themselves set, review and work towards their own learning goals – gradually handing over control of . . . → Read More: I want to help people learn]]> Back in 2007, I asked myself the following question:

How do you:

  • meet the individual learning needs of a diverse bunch of learners, and
  • assess individuals in their mix of individual and group learning in a fair, valid, sustainable way,
  • all-the-while demonstrating how individuals can themselves set, review and work towards their own learning goals – gradually handing over control of the learning.

Back then in our web programming class we used a combination of individual learning plans and Basecamp accounts, a variety of individual and group problem-based activities,  together with the wealth of resources created by industry professionals. While this generally worked well, there were two points of difficulty:

  1. the process of creating individual learning plans was very time consuming, quite complex for learners, very specific to the web programming course, and as a result, was not something individuals felt they could benefit from generally (for other learning goals outside of the course). This meant that setting learning plans remained a very facilitator-centric task.
  2. Evaluating progress or assessing all the evidence for a particular goal was difficult for learners and facilitators alike. For facilitators it was hard to make sure you got around to everybody, switching context constantly. For learners the main difficulty was mapping their own aims and goals onto the national competency standards.

I’ve never stopped thinking about these problems, and am currently playing with some mockups for a life-based learning tool which would aim to make it easy to set my own long-term goals, take small (reviewable) steps towards those goals, review and ask others to review my progress.

If you were involved in classes with me in the past or otherwise have any feedback, or are interested to help with the prototyping or coding, don’t hesitate to let me know!

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