SACE conference - Stephen Downes keynote
Posted by: Rob Wall in small pieces, EdTech bloggers, technology in educationI’m at SACE in Regina. Lots of great people are here - Alec and Dean from the posse are here, Heather is here. Lots of very thoughtful educators who should be bloggers are also here. The first time I attended one of Stephen’s presentations was when I started blogging, so maybe this will give some of them the impetus to get started. I sure hope so - there are a lot of great and thoughtful bloggers in the edtech blogosphere, but even more who aren’t yet.
The presentation is entitled “On Being Radical” (audio and slides available on Stephen’s website later; I’ll put in a link once its there). These are just my rough jot notes on the presentation - I’ll try to put in some kind of synthesis at some later time.
Two paths meet today. How did that happen - how did we come to be together here today. There is the factual account - someone sent me e-mail, etc. That is just the technical story, it doesn’t tell us how it came to be.
What is radical? Tommy Douglas, as an example, was a dangerous radical. And what once was radical has now become commonplace - how did this happen?
John Stuart Mill wrote on the subjection of women and advocated for their equality within society, a radical topic at the time. Now the idea is commonplace.
What is radical?
Consider at the WSIS conference in Tunisia - talking about global internet access in a place where blogging, taking pictures and open communication are radical ideas.
Technology changes everything. 24 hours ago Stephen was in an airplane flying over the mountains of Greenland.
I can with the click of a button, reach out and touch a life half way around the world. This is not theoretical - I know I can do this. How did this happen? And what’s next?
When new technology - the press, the gun, the computer - empowers a previously disenfranchised population , the results are radical. The new empowerment - the millenials, the Cluetrain Manifesto, learner center designed - these are all evidence of the new empowerment. (And the results, it seems self-evident, must therefore be radical)
We need to change learning from a service we provide to people to something they do themselves. That is a radical notion.
Empowering technology - the interactive web - blogs, CMS’s, wikis, podcasts, screencasts, video, IM, skype, wireless access, the mobile web. This is how it happens - where do we go next?
Radical ideas:
- Connectivism - knowledge resides in a diversity of opinions. The knowledge to build from scratch and safely pilot an airline exists in no one brain - our intelligence is collective.
- Open access - file-sharing, open source, open content. This is at odds with our current ideas about intellectual property.
- The open society - transparency, accountability, partnerships.
(Alec Couros is sitting beside me, and he just fired up his powerbook - perhaps the urge to blog this is too powerful to resist?)
Learning as a network phenomenon:
- web of user generated content
- social networks and communities - entails a genuinely portable and owned identity
- networks of interactions (aggregate, remix, repurpose, feed forward) - don’t just take what is there, but take what is there and then work with it to create something new. (Hmm - we could call this stigmergic!)
Three principles of effective e-learning:
- interaction - participation in a learning community
- usability - simplicity and consistency
- relevance - a.k.a. salience, that is , learning that is relevant to you, now
Collectively, these are quite radical ideas.
Interaction Guerrilla Tactics
- if interaction isn’t provided, create it, blog it …
- if your software doesn’t support interaction, add it (javascript, RSS)
- use back channels to route around blocking (Gmail, Flickr, IM, more)
(Alec thinks we should send Stephen a skype message for feedback right now - :^D )
Relevance - just in time learning instead of just in case learning
Properties of successful networks
- Diversity (many objectives)
- Interwoven (many activities)
- Open (many minds)
(boing! its all about the ants! Stephen elaborated on this in his presentation in Heerlan - more on this later, I hope)
The metaversity - the MacGyver model of eLearning; take a few different tools, and duct tape them all together (actually, I think MacGyver used chewing gum most of the time). Stephen’s diagram is described as “radical”
To be radical is to grsp empowerment and define a vision based on that empowerment for a better, freer society.
So, an answer at last to the questions “How did we get here?” and “How did these things come to be?”
It happened because we made it happen. Becuase we wanted to believe there was some good in the world.
Great ending - Stephen missed his calling, I think he should be a preacher. Hmm - I suppose he is in a way, and I’m definitely in the ‘Hallelujah’ corner.
UPDATE - Stephen has posted the audio and powerpoint for “On Being Radical“
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