StigmergicWeb

Alec Couros and I are in the midst of putting together a course for the University of Regina. Officially, the course number and name is EC&I 831: Computers in the Classroom: Appropriate Curriculum and Instruction Related to Computer Technology but Alec and I are referring to it as Open, Connected and Social Pedagogy. We’ll be offering it in the second semester, from January to April 2008.

The official outline is rather vague, but we will be focusing on the principles of learning being “open, connected and social” (full credit to Alan, D’Arcy and Brian for coming up with that pithy little phrase) and focusing specifically on open and social tools/software for the classroom, how they can be used and how pedagogy changes the way we perceive and guide learning and knowledge. Social learning and connectivism are two key pedagogical concepts that guide the course. The will be offered completely online. We’re planning to use a synchronous tool for once a week get-togethers, about 1.5 hours/week where we can discuss course goals, content and create collaborative opportunities.

That’s the elevator pitch. What we really want to do is get some educators and edtech folks together for some great conversations and opportunities to collaborate. There are two ways we’re looking for people to participate. Obviously we are looking for students since we need some enrollment for the course to run. If we get a high demand for the course, that will help to make sure we run it again next year. If you are interested in that way of participating, details are for registration are available at the Distance Learning Division of the U of R.

The other way you can participate is involved in the discussions and collaborations. If you’ve got some ideas about using social software/web apps/web 2.0 (ugghh), we would welcome your contributions in some way. We’re looking at a number of ways to get people involved in some way - maybe wikis, maybe doing some RSS mashup of blog feed, maybe podcasting. In the end, it will probably be a mix of all these things and more.

This is a new implementation of an existing course, so we’re still not exactly sure where it will end up. If you want to get involved to see where it goes, leave a comment or send me an e-mail (robwall at gmail dot com).

There is some irony in my being involved with this course but that’s another blog post that will have to wait.

{begin sarcasm}Oh how I do love the lockdown on my ability to customize my account with our new Windows computer system at my school. I’m so happy that the IT folks are preventing me and my students from doing useful things that might interfere with their ability to manage the system. We wouldn’t want students’ learning to interfere with their system, would we?{end sarcasm}

I am feeling loathing towards our school division system administrators right now, and very bad words are prominent in my inner monologue. The reason - Google Notebook. Google Notebook itself is not the cause of my loathing, merely a symptom. I think that Google Notebook is a terrific research tool. I would love to be able to introduce it as a resource for the students and other staff here at the school. My favourite feature of GN is the extension that allows highlighted section of text on a web page to be clipped and added to a notebook along with the address of the web page it came from. The notebooks can be shared or published so that teachers are able to follow along the process of a student’s research. This is a great tool from Google, and one that too few people (especially students and teachers) know about.

But I can’t install the extension on IE on our system. I don’t have the rights to add an extension to my browser. I’m not surprised about this, considering the control issues of the current IT regime. So, being a resourceful and geeky kind of guy, I thought I thwart the IT guys by running the portable version of Firefox, which runs off a USB drive. I could then install the notebook extension.

Alas, this does not work. I have other apps on my USB drive - Skype, PuTTY and Opera (which I am currently running) and others which all run just tickety-boo. Firefox seems to be singled out and prevented from funning running (Oops - apparently I was too upset to type correctly). I can’t install the GN extension on IE, and I can’t run Firefox. These are the only two browsers that support the plugin. I can still use GN, but without the extension it is only flying on one wing.

As an isolated event, this is an inconvenience to me. But it’s not just an isolated event. It also prevents teachers and students from using a wonerfully useful research tool to its fullest. It is symptomatic of an unfortunate fact in many school divisions that education is secondary to the demands of the IT department. If that’s not a case of the tail wagging the dog, I don’t know what is. When that happens, something is seriously wrong with the system.

Working on two online course projects has given me the impetus to take a look back at some of the things I learned and some of the work that I did while working on my M.Ed. I think I have learned a few things about online learning and instructional design. One of the constant themes - almost a fundamental principle - that I found in my classes and readings was a simple and obvious one. Online learning is different from classroom based learning. If you have experience developing online course this may elicit a “Well - d’uh”, but if you are a novice at online course design you would do well to keep this in mind.

The most eloquent articulation of this concept came from David Wiley in an article he wrote in TechTrends entitled The Polo Parable. Go ahead and have a read. If you haven’t read it before, it’s well worth it. I’ll wait here until you get back.

Good story, that one. I think David gets right to the kernel of the concept in the epilogue:

The moral of the story is that the concatenation of English words “move my class online” is perhaps the most preposterous sequence of syllables ever to escape the mouth. And yet we all unconsciously fall prey to the subtle wiles of the siren’s song – “just do what you always did… those tried and true techniques you have battle tested in the classroom will serve you well online … trust what you know… do what you have always done… that’s the responsible thing to do.” Imagining that classroom teaching techniques can be successful transplanted into an online environment is even more ridiculous than assuming that the water polo play book will, unaltered, lead to a winning polo season on horseback.

I’ve been re-reading a paper I wrote in which I developed some of these ideas. I’ve been pleasantly surprised to find that the paper, written way back in 2004, still seems relevant. I guess that although three years in internet time equates with about a decade of real world time, basic concepts about teaching and learning persist. If you nodded your head while reading the Polo Parable, that proves the point.

At the time Rick suggested that I revise the paper a bit and get it published. I think he meant the dead tree kind of publishing where a few other people get to judge the quality of your work then decide if it’s worth the rest of the world seeing. Bah, I say. I have the interweb to disseminate my work to the rest of the world. It’s a longish read - about 23ish pages of dead tree, not including the references, but here it is: Before you snorkel that horse ….

Yes, this entire post was written just to pimp my paper. I feel cheap, but it’s out there now. I think it was the best work I did during my M.Ed. so I wanted to share it with you. I’m hoping to revise it and bring it up to date, so if you have any comments leave them here.

I’ve been mostly neglecting this blog for a while. Sorry about that, but it has been a season of endings, beginnings and renewals.

First - some endings. I suppose the biggest ending has been the conclusion of my M.Ed. I don’t have the official piece of paper in front of me conferring that esteemed title upon me, but I think I can safely say that I have finished the degree (before it finished me). My project - an educator’s guide to using digital audio - started off as an interactive web site, spent a short time as a CD-ROM, then finally ended up as a video on DVD. I was happy with a lot of the process of creation, and I learned a lot about using audio to support learning. As for the final product, I’m extremely unhappy. I’m sure that a big part of that is the hard drive pooched during the editing of the videos. I’m also unhappy because I don’t think I created the right product for my topic.

As I was doing the final re-editing of the video, it occurred to me that I was mostly doing talking heady stuff. I had originally intended to have a lot of instructional, semi-geeky screencasts on things like using GarageBand, but when I thought about who this was designed for - teachers who are interested in some quick info so they can use audio as part of their instruction or as a method for student learning - I realized that the how to approach was all wrong. Teachers do need some this is how you do it instruction, but even more important they need and want an idea of how this tool works pedagogically. So, I re-shot and re-edited with that focus in mind. What didn’t occur to me is that changing the focus of the project should have changed the nature of the final project. The final project could have worked much better as straight audio in the form of a CD or as a podcast or both. Considering the nature of my project, I found this epiphany to be rife with irony. It would be nice to re-visit this as a podcast one day. I found some exemplary educational podcasts that I intended to be used in the final project but ended up on the cutting room floor. If you were one of the people I talked to, I apologize for cutting you from the project. I think it would be very interesting to talk to some edu-podcasters as part of an educational audio podcast series. I’ll put this on the someday/maybe list.

More endings - my final class for the M.Ed. I was intending to take a class in the fall/winter of the coming year, but realized that more than anything I just wanted to be done, a sentiment shared by my wife. There was one class in spring session that caught my attention - EDCMM 478: Still Photography in Education. My interest was partially based on my desire to get the degree done but also based on my long-dormant interest in photography. The biggest reason for being interested in this class was that it would be the last class taught by Barry Brown, one of my mentors and advisors in the EDCMM M.Ed. program. It turned out to be a perfect choice. Photography is one of Barry’s great passions in life, and he got me going on taking pictures again. The class was a lot of work - lots of time in the darkroom for the b/w photography section, and two nights a week of driving to and from Saskatoon - but I feel like I’m a better photographer as a result, and I’m enjoying taking photos more than ever. Thanks, Barry, and I hope the retirement thing works out for you.

A minor ending - I finished Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Wow - when the engine room flooded with radiation and Harry had to go in there to restore warp drive. Oh … wait a second, that was The Wrath of Khan. My bad ;^)

Short review - good book, not the best in the series but it does provide an ending to the series that feels satisfactory to me. A number of unresolved questions get answered in the book, and it does give a proper sense of finality to the overall story arc.

Now some beginnings. At work I’m going to be involved in the design of an online course for my school division’s impending online schooling initiative. I haven’t been involved in the design of a complete online course before so this will give me a chance to work more deeply in the world of online learning. This work is especially interesting and daunting since it is the beginning of a new initiative for the school division.

I’ve also started working on a project with Alec Couros. The project is Alec’s - I’m just along for the ride - so I’m not sure it is up to me to give away any details. I think, if I may be allowed a teaser, that the project has to do with tools that are open, connected and social. This ought to be a blast, and I’m really looking forward to working with Alec.

More beginnings start on Monday (yikes - where did the summer go?) when I head back for another year of teaching, learning and other coolness at NBCHS where I’ll be teaching some fun classes and also working with teachers and students using digital tools for learning. I’ve got a few ideas about what I’d like to do this year, but I’m going to work with teachers on the idea of digital storytelling. I’d also like to hold some digital photography workshops for teachers and students during the year. I’ll give Barry the credit for inspiring me to take on that project.

Finally, the renewals. Most important has been renewal of time spent with the family. My wife has been extremely patient while I was working (and playing) my way through the M.Ed., so I’m planning on spending a lot more time with her along with The Boy and The Girl. The boy’s entire life and over half of the girl’s life have gone by while I’ve been working towards the M.Ed. degree. A greater presence in their lives is long overdue.

I should also be doing a little more blogging, and some more podcasting with the posse. I’ve got a show that was recorded in March that is still in production. I’m hoping next year the production process is a bit faster!

OK - that’s the state of my life as the summer draws to a close and a new school year looms in front of me full of new adventures in learning. If you are in the same situation, I wish you good luck and lots of fun in the coming year. Stay tuned for the details of my continuing learning journey and the meagre thoughts and reflections that pass through my brain.

I’ve been reading a few blog posts from the Building Learning Communities conference, mostly from Dean, but Will’s post Why is it so Hard for Educators to Focus on Their Own Learning? hit on a topic that I’ve been trying to gain some perspective on for a while. We have a lot of terrific free read-write webbish tools around us - the entire google suite of apps (possibly evil but I still love ‘em), mind mapping tools, blogging tools, wiki tools and so on. I’ve struggled, and sometimes it feels like a real uphill battle, trying to show teachers how useful these can be as tools for their students. Will has a slightly different perspective, and maybe its the way that I should be looking at this:

Weblogg-ed » Why is it so Hard for Educators to Focus on Their Own Learning? And even as I sit in this session with Tim Tyson at Building Learning Communities, one principal says “I want to learn more about these tools so I can help my teachers use them in the classroom.” I want to jump up and say “No! You are missing a step! You want to learn more about these tools for yourself so you can help your teachers learn from them too.” So what’s that all about? Is it just habit? Is it just such a focus on curriculum delivery that “learning” is all about how to do that job better? Is changing the way we do our own business just too darn hard? Or is this such a huge shift, this idea that we can actually learn through the use of technology that most people just don’t think they have to go there, that they can just keep using it as a way to communicate without the surrounding connective tissue where the real learning takes place?

As a teacher, I think I do tend to think about my students’ learning to the exclusion of thinking about my own learning. I have at times been more concerned with pumping out the curriculum - leading the students through their learning journey more than becoming an equal participant in a group learning journey. I think the communication and connection is the key - connecting with other learners who are playing around (isn’t that how all real learning takes place when you think about it?) with some of these tools. But if I’m using these tools to communicate and collaborate, would it be possible for me to avoid the learning that takes place concurrently? I’m not sure about that one. I think that if we are communicating and connecting with others who have some common interests, we can’t help but learn as we share pieces of information. Regardless, thinking of these tools as something for teachers to learn with, not (just) teach with or teach about, is a valuable perspective and one that I’ll keep in mind next school year when I’m working with other teachers.

I’m letting myself take a distraction break from marking and entering numbers into the grading program (Good old numbers … what would school be like without them?). In OLDaily Stephen has posted about his presentation “What you really need to learn“. Great stuff. I’m looking forward to the audio.

Here’s a tasty little morsel from the presentation that started some neurons to flicker:

Rather than memorizing form (the old way) multimedia teaches to look for signs in the environment (the new way)

Literacy, if I may paraphrase, is not about memorization of facts. I think we all take that as a given. Literacy is also not about finding facts, a notion that I find interesting although it is at odds with what I usually conceive of as information literacy. Literacy, of any type, is about pattern recognition, about seeing how art is like physics is like literature is like dance is like architecture is like …

Literacy is not about knowing where the dots are. Literacy is not about finding dots about which you may not know. Literacy is about connecting the dots and seeing the big picture that emerges.

Well - enough intellectual stimulation. Time to get back to judging students on how well they know where the ecology dots are.

I am sitting in a mind-numbing meeting. I was planning on Twittering to make my way through the morning. Sadly, Twitter seems to be ignoring me. What to do, what to do …

I understand why students spend their time in classing texting each other instead of listening.

Hey, there is a “Write Tweet” tab in WordPress. I’ll give that a try. Check at http://www.twitter.com/robwall to see if it works! If that fails, I’m off to Second Life for the rest of the morning.

UPDATE - twitter likes me again. Happy dance.

I’ve just read this post from Andy Carvin about Seymour Papert - Andy Carvin’s Waste of Bandwidth: Prayers for Seymour Papert. Seymour Papert was hit by a motorcycle and “gravely injured” while in Hanoi for a conference. According to a report at boston.com, the accident on Tuesday left Papert, 78, in a coma. An e-mail from Hanoi says On tuesday afternoon, Seymour Papert got run over. He hit his head, and has had to undergo emergency neurosurgery.

I don’t think that educational technology would exist in its present form without his influence. We need to keep his ideas about the importance of play in learning ever present in our minds as corporations try to claim control over learning (by patenting e-learning, perhaps?).

I’ve shared this link with my students, but neglected to put it here for everyone else to see. Stephen Downes has put together a guide to writing essays. II recall many teachers and instructors in high school and university explaining in many different ways how to write an essay - this simple, common sense guide tops them all. Not only do I think that its a wonderfully brief and straight-forward guide, but I’ve had some of my students tell me how useful this is to them.

Stephen Downes - How to Write Articles and Essays Quickly and Expertly

Graham Atwell has published a screencast of his presentation Personal Learning Environments - Live at Edinburgh.

There’s just so much I like about his presentation, but two main ideas stand out in my mind:

• A personalized learning environment is not an application. It is a suite of services which could be, I suppose, web based or locally run on a PC. Most important, Graham points out that the suite of services is made up of small tools, loosely connected. This is a theme I’ve written about before. I love hearing other people talk about it - it means I’m less likely to be raving or demented, at least about this particular topic.
• Learning, especially informal learning is not something that can be commoditized, monetized or discussed in the context of free markets. Learning, and education, is a public good - the more people in a society that are learners, the better off that society will be.

I keep meaning to write more on this last topic, but my life seems to drag me away from writing and blogging as much as I’d like to. Ah well, someday I’ll get back to being a more dedicated blogger. I estimate that day will come in 2011 when my son starts Kindergarten. Until then, we’ll have to make due with what I can fit into my schedule.