There is a link to online learning here.  People often complain that a major downside to learning online is the sense of isolation that it can bring.  In badly managed courses, no-one knows anything about their fellow participants.  There is no connection between them.  Over the last 3 or 4 years I’ve started to see ClustrMaps and Frappr maps (now Platial) pop up in courses and frequently on blog sidebars.  For geographically dispersed courses this can be an icebreaker or a starting point in getting people to talk about themselves.  Even in small courses, with a localised cohort, maps can be used to prompt discussion on other topics.

Rodd Lucier has created a Google Map for the CCK08 course.  I like Google maps for several reasons.  For a start they haven’t dropped the final vowel in their name but importantly you can embed or link to so much information including profiles and pictures.  I’m embedding a link to the CCK08 map here so I can find it quickly when I want!

View Larger Map

• ban all phones
• shame repeat offenders
• ignore the behaviour and move on

Nearly as an aside, it mentions that that lecturers have been known to encourage the use of mobile technology in class but that this is pretty unusual.  While I wouldn’t disagree that it is not the norm, the article doesn’t really examine whether the status quo is the correct position to take.  Instead of ignoring the pervasiveness of modern technology, (”Hey, there’s an elephant in the corner of the room but I will ignore it, I will ignore it”) the article would have served better by exploring the ways in which mobile technology could have been used to encourage and enable learning.

Bill Ashraf when at Bradford University used mobile phones for feedback during lectures.  Students can text questions during the lecture and every  so often he will stop, see what’s there and address them.  The students aren’t embarrassed by asking publicly in a big lecture and Bill gets feedback on what the students are having difficulty understanding.  Bär et al look at various uses for mobiles including adapting them as student response systems.  The constructive educator could find many ways to adopt the use of mobile phones without resorting to public humiliation.

We live in a world that has technology coming out of our ears.  We shouldn’t forget our old technologies but neither should we ignore the elephant. It might just sit on us one day!

The conference theme is Engaging Communities and the opening address was eloquently given by Dr Pita Sharples gave that a New Zealand context with reference to the trials and tribulations that dogged the development of Maori specific educational opportunities.

The first keynote was presented jointly by Barbara Holland and Judith Rameley and dealt with what Community Engagement meant and strategies for developing this within tertiary education. We must be wary of false gods and realise that true engagement is for life, not little projects that follow academic lifecycles. Developing buds that then wither when funding disappears or key personnel move have a very negative impact on communities and their perceptions of academia.

Partnerships should be sustained and bring mutual benefits. Neither partner should be dominant and communities should be afforded respect. Learning with consequence is a key benefit for students and makes their learning active and authentic.

What I found most interesting was how much this addressed the organisational change agenda. Getting rid of the ghosts in the corner that don’t really exist - the ‘They’ of ‘They won’t let us do this’ and other such statements. Taking lessons from the history of previous experiences; picking the right targets; choosing meaningful goals; and developing a cycle of innovation that makes change the norm. Ignore the nay-sayers (Roger’s laggards) - they are not worth the effort.

I think that if we don’t embrace change then we stagnate (rather than remaining static). What strategies do you use when enabling change in your organisation?

Some folks who complained were told that this was a teaching and learning conference and not an elearning conference so what was the beef? Remember that people working in eLearning will continually be told that ‘eLearning is just part of Learning and Teaching”!

The fact that we are nearly a tenth of the way through the 21^st century seemed to cause no concern that a major conference in this country was not engaging with the landscape of learning and the range of tools that some of its attendees and presenters use in their everyday lives. The major theme of the conference is Engaging Communities and many of us felt that the eLearning community was being disengaged …

Tweets are just an example. There was live blogging, fact checking, research, etc, etc that folks wanted to do but couldn’t. And the thing that is ironic is that much of the live stuff was intended to share and engage with colleagues who couldn’t attend the conference. Several presenters giving papers with an eLearning or mlearning theme also complained that they had no internet access.

Are my expectations too high? Should I accept statements that “New Zealand is 5 years behind the rest of the world and that’s the way it is”? I hope not but I’m interested to know if you agree or disagree.

HERDSA’s wiki

They started a garden to grow veg and teach the children elements of sustainability. The project grew as they decided that the kids could learn to cook too, using the veg that they had grown.

Now it was a project on a roll. How do you make sure that the plants are cared for in all conditions? Set up a weather station and start making your own forecasts. What can you do with the surplus of food? Sell them to the local community. How can the community find out? Set up a publicity machine that includes a local radio station for the school. The kids are doing all this and now they want to set up a 200 seat café so they can feed themselves at lunchtime!

What a range of learning opportunities developed through making a vegetable patch. And it’s all pretty authentic learning. I’m sure that there are some other great examples out there too. Feel free to tell us about them in the comments.

See D’Arcy Norman; Lesley Madsen Brookes; Stephen Downes; Brian Lamb; Doug Noon

A conjunction coined by Jim Groom, however, as both commentators and protagonists seem to be agreeing, creating a name and a definition runs counter intuitive to the underlying Dogme of Edupunk. (and see also this article referencing Dogme and punk dogme in the context of English Language Teaching)

I was a teenager when punk exploded on the British music and social scene. A repeated comment at the time from anybody with a mohican or a piercing that the media could get a soundbite from, was that they were individuals and not part of a group. There is an inherent difficulty in talking about an idea or concept that bears no name - or that can’t utter its name for fear that this will cause its downfall - a la the ‘Scottish Play‘ quandry or liar paradox

Nevertheless, some have dared to name it and while I don’t think that it is about to turn into an Ouroboros and eat itself, I do wonder what the tipping point would be for educators to adopt this philosophy wholesale.

I ask that question because it is undoubtedly education that should be the beneficiary of the conjunction. I’m sure that it is for those who have nailed their colours to the mast and for many others too. However, raging against the machine requires a machine, which in this case is the business of education, particularly when promulgated through educational technology.

What I’m not sure of is whether education needs to (or can currently) change through a revolutionary act or if it has to be through a steady chipping away at long held beliefs. If it requires revolution then how is a critical mass achieved? Is Edupunk building that critical mass or is it but a skirmish on a long road of attrition against the establishment? Who knows? What I do know is that the beliefs, realisations, understandings happenings, events of the ideals of edupunk can be important in the same way that Dada and surrealism were important, that Ike Turner and Elvis Presley were important, that Thomas Paine and Abie Hoffman were important and that Hutton and Darwin were important. These are not trivial names to be raising - that is because education is such an important thing for life, for freedom, for happiness that it can’t be taken lightly.

Yesterday, we had a quick demo of Mahara by Mark Nichols as part of a wider day of information exchange. Mahara has been built as an eportfolio tool and appears to have taken some influence from Elgg. It contains a blog tool which has the ability to be kept private, shared selectively or made public. Individual posts could also be gathered as part of a presentation or viewpoint on one’s portfolio.

Recent discussions in the office have been around micro-blogging or the phenomena that is Twitter. Today, reflections on the Mahara demo stimulated some discussion around the role of (’normal’) blogging and the differences between that and journaling and discussion fora. One argument was that the format may be different, but the process was the same and that essentially the end result for learning could all be achieved through a discussion board. The counter argument was that the process was different in each case as it was defined by the format. Similar divides appear to have been running through the Moodle.org blogging forum for nigh on two years now! Matt Croslin published an interesting diagram on the intersections of these 3 tools and Joseph Fall made some salient points about ownership and the cycle of reflection.

My own feeling is that the differences are quite nuanced and factors such as context, ownership and emotion and their interplay are all important For instance, people can be quite happy to blog away without ever knowing if people are reading their posts. How many people stuck at contributing to an empty discussion board? From the act of blogging I gain insight and reflective opportunities; from empty discussion boards I get frustration and a feeling of loss, of negativity toward the arena and to the others who aren’t there to ask me questions or answer mine and to stimulate my thoughts to new insights.

Serendipitously (I just love serendipity!) when I got home, a twitter connection led me to Tony Karrer’s blog which I knew from a while back but had somehow lost track of. He was posing the question as to whether, in certain situations, blogging should be made mandatory. A good blog post and title - make it provocative and lots of people will comment, which they then proceeded to do. Through all the comments, no one stated a whole-hearted agreement and most were quite negative about the idea. Tony suggested the case of an employee attending a conference or beginning some new learning activity. He also noted that in formal education, students can be required to blog as part of the assessment process.

I don’t think that all his commenters were strictly correct in being so negative to the idea since I think that this is an instance of context having a place. Tony is quite capable of supporting his own argument but I noticed that the reason that many gave as being against mandated blogging was that it removed the informal and personal learning that they engender. I’ve already noted that personal learning effect above. However, I think that these arguments are really couched in the realm of ownership and the emotion that goes with that.

In a circular way it brings me back to Mahara and the eportfolio concept. This is because eportfolios have similar issues of ownership of learning; of the value of reflection for assessment; and of the context in which the content will be used. I remembered discussing some of these concepts 3 years ago in what was then elgg.net. So where is this post going if not round in circles (I spend too much time reflecting and not enough getting my typing skills up to speed!) Well I think that underneath the surface I am watching the tension between, on one side, institutional desires to authenticate learning through assessment processes and on the other side, the notions of the learner being at the centre of their learning and owning the process. The questions I am still asking are:

How do we nudge institutions into changing assessment practice to evaluate learning without removing that process from the learner?

How do we enable academics to become effective educators in this context?

How do we ensure that learners take advantage of this?

Answers welcome!