This is a follow up on my last post about flipping the model in ICT4E. I was thinking about Shafika Isaacs' asessment about how many teachers are needed in Africa--close to 2 million? I know its not just Africa. It is ironic that we are desperate for jobs--yet cannot find enough teachers.  We've learned so much about how people learn in the last few years.  This is in sharp contrast to how we still teach.  The graphic prepared by the National Training Laboratory, reinforces the paradigm shift into a user generated educational environment.

 

-- as Jackie Gerstein puts it, User Generated Education. Its no accident I am using her term 'flipped' as her work on the flipped classroom is a must read and points us in a fantastic direction. Then if it is true that we learn the most when we teach, we should allow our students to teach.  The idea of reciprocal apprenticeships offers us a powerful tool to address both the lack of teachers and the lack of jobs. Face it, the classroom model is verticle. Why not flip it? or turn it on its side-- make it lateral. Provide stipends to students who 'get' learning and who naturally love to share it. We tend to think that only a trained and professional teacher can somehow impart knowledge.  I long ago humbled myself to the deep knowledge my students had of technology, and I have been learning--about all kinds of things, not just technology--  from them ever since.  I ask my Freshmen as soon as they understand something to work with those students who haven't quite got it yet.  I have seen the trasnformation before my eyes as their understanding, not yet fully articulated, has to make sense as they communicate and share.

So why not apply this to an ICT4E environment? If our goal is to inspire poeple to become teachers to fill the gap, allow the students to become teachers as soon as they are ready. Coupled with a micro payment strategy you are raising the economic stability of these students, raising their status, and allowing students to self identify themselves as teachers.  In a few years you will have many interested teachers. 

 

 

I participated in a brief online session with Shafika Isaacs, Founding Executive Director, Schoolnet Africa, part of the HP Catalyst Series hosted by the New Media Consortium entitled "Developing STEM Learning Through Technology in Africa."

Listening to the challenges, espcially with providing access to women and girls, it occurred to me that micro finance might offer a soloution.  The gender gap in ownership of mobiles is quite stark, so much of the gains and advantages of this technology isn't getting to the BoP. Why couldn't we apply the lessons learned from Nathan Eagle's work in crowd sourcing language translation and health in a similar way for education? pay the students to learn.  It's not to suggest they need motivation, but rather access.  Pay off the phone and air time by answering questions correctly, and then move on.

Why not? If you think about investment in the long term, creating access and empowering young people to become educated, indeed self educated of sorts, would pay handsomely down the road. If you consider the vast amounts of money invested in ICT Development why not start the funding at the bottom and let it grow? What's the financial model? For participation in the program participants are asked to give back when they are successful. Yes, you have to subsidize the phone, the air time, the management of the system, an app, but really--this puts the device in the hands of the student immediately.

We ban the use of phones in class in the west. Its a lost opportunity.  There are some interesting examples of this technique in Sri Lanka for creating digital stories by Shilpa Sayura.  I think this might work in other challenging environments.

Here is a slide show of the major features of the Business Plan presentation for Naples2.0.

 

And some visioning excercises in the simulator at Reactiongrid.

The Environmental Editor is a powerful tool for changing the light of how you see things.  As a lighting designer this visualization helps me see things differently. My quasi intelligent agent, the avi-- inhabits the visualization.  Imagining anything you can on earth, or what is not on earth--there is SketchUp.

Geo location. Putting it on the earth. I know where this is going. Intelligent agents? Web 4?  As a designer I am very excited. With GIS integrated into the model we are at the dawn of the macroscope.

Trying to re imagine a way to experience geography--space, and time: falling through the present into the past. I am hardly an archaeologist. But aren't we all archaeologists of our selves? What is cultural heritage if not a re imagining and mash up of the past with the present?  Drawing strength and vision from each other.  If the presence of archaeological sites beneath your feet is like the hummus of the cultural garden, then rich indeed is the soil.  Which follows, what marvelous infinite resources can be harvested?

Random serendipity. I couldn't help recreate the Temple of Hercules:

The Forum Boarium is home to two small temples which are among the best preserved religious structures from Rome's republican era (between 509 and 44BC). The smaller, round building is the Temple of Hercules,

built at the end of the 2nd century BC by a greek architect, Hermodorus of Salamis.

The shape totally fascinates me. Someday I'll visit.   To try and experience the space I turned to my simulator on Reactiongrid, found the dimensions on wikipedia and played around recreating it using an earthship construction. It doesn't feel just right as the avatar (Pausanius) is about 7 feet tall. I'll keep working on it serendipitously.

 

I find the Temple entirely refreshing compared to the rectangular shapes of so many structures.  It's not practical. The use of space and light are provocative  What was the interior like? How did it feel to walk into the temple and pay homage to the god? Why were these shapes chosen and what is their connection? As a house designer and builder, and as a set and lighting designer I am curious about this.  This space evokes the sentiment of nature, something long obscured by rectangles. A platform like OpenSim gives me the visceral opportunity to design, construct, inhabit and connect my experience.

In the Light of Hercules

The full moon suprised me walking my dog, it had just come up.  But why 'Hercules'? Why 'Pausanius'? I went back to the interior of the temple.  It feels so feminine to me.  Hercules is decidely not, hmmm.  Its not the rectangular chamber of a cave like the brother temple, at the Forum Boarium  Portunes. 

The Temple to Portunes a the Forum Boarium. Ah, it feels much better with windows. Apparently the original statue? About the same size as the avatar--7'.

Stepping outside, Pausanius' spine glows as he stands on edge. This feels like the forest to me, not as old as the cave. Yearning for the wanderer ways. Remembering the pines that were the cathedral. Looking upon the figure of Hercules, now silent, Pausanius hovers.

 

 

 

Some shots from OpenSim Naples 2.0 Photo Shoot

Blended Learning is not integrating computers into the class room: It is integrating virtual reality with physical reality.

 

I struggled with blending computers with "classroom" instruction. But then the classroom passed and became a transformed learning community, inhabited by the students, and made their own. The technology, the computers, iPods, iPads, cell phones, etc., are used as the students use them--as a tool to get to the real and physical world. Or, in other words, a blended classroom isn't a classroom at all, but part of a place where what is constructed and connected through technology is enacted as a learning community. A computer lab..or a lounge, with wireless the technology permeates the space. Where what device is appropriate? Norms are getting redefined and I'm not completely sure about some boundaries--some are crystal clear, others fluid. Blending my classroom means dissolving it and merging it with a variety of spaces, extending it globally at the same time.  This is the point missed with on line instruction--it has to be enacted in the world simultaneously. In a traditional instructional model delivered on line, the learner is now isolated more than ever, not even being in the same building or room with their cohorts. By blending the model--including the corporeal with the virtual--you get the best of both types of delivery; socially on line instruction and experiential community based enactment. 'Community' is used in the widest context, and to include both narrowly focused and extended communities of practice. Community considered as encompassing virtual and physical groups that embrace all of the elements for life: protection, sustenance, energy, internet, solitude and celebration, large spaces and small: classroom as ecosystem.

As I prepare my syllabus for the Fall semester I keep getting distracted from the content, and keep going back to the process of learning and how it is changing.  Really, what content could I package that isn’t available in 2 minutes on line? I realize that we are in between paradigms of education and consciousness right now.  This cohort of ‘Generation Debt’ straddles the divide, with one foot in the fossil based, factory world view, and the other in the exploding, constantly shifting, post peak oil, user generated reality of quantum physics.  If Jean Paul Sartre could say we are what we eat, today we are what we share.  Comprehending and participating in this act of sharing accomplishes the leap of faith into constructionism and the connectivist learning theory of George Siemens where so much has changed, everything has changed. If you can’t see it because you are one side, it is even harder to realize what the previous world view looks like when you take the step to the other side.

 
I have to say I am constantly blown away by the strides that the disruptive educators from the K-12 world are taking. People like Lisa Nielsen the #edchat folks Tom Whitby, Steven Anderson, and Shelly Terrell (@shellterrell) and the visionaries such as Richard Heeks, John Seely Brown , Steve Hardagon and Angela Maiers--there are so many fresh and exciting voices there.  As a college Adjunct I have to say--where are the voices from higher ed?  There doesn’t seem to be something similar to the #edchat dialogue--I know they are out there,  (maybe you would suggest a few to me) but wow, the K-12 folks are kicking butt!

Maybe it is because they are confronting the generation shift earlier than we are at the college level, and so have had to address the need for articulating the paradigm shift, and finding strategies to address it.  Part of it is something I find very ironic, that K-12 teachers learn about teaching and learning, whereas college professors are discipline oriented and have no training as teachers. How did this happen? How did we leave the best and brightest to be ‘taught’ by subject experts with no consideration for their learning and teaching methodology?

As the distinctions blur between disciplines, the old silos start to crumble, and the mash up of thoughts, ideas and influences become more important--what responsibility do I have for the whole student? Its not my discipline, right? But if the process is in fact more important than the content right now, there are greater responsibilities facing us as ‘educators.’ I don’t remember eating candy in college? Do you? My students are candy junkies--or more accurately, high fructose corn sugar junkies. Maybe that’s why the new 18 is 26--or should I say the new 8 is 18? These things are intimately connected--candy and factory education; once the magic of their youth has passed these kids will be hostages not only to factory thinking, but factory pharma too. So as I prepare my syllabus I intend to include a Personal Learning Management System.  As far as I can see all LMS’s are about management, not learning. But make it personal for the student, endow it with passion; allow them to find a place to include their passion, and they can have a chance.  This is what Anya Kamenetz’s message of  DIY U is: to take ownership of one’s learning journey and not get spoon fed as we have been trained to do for all these years.

My presentation/hands on session for Free ELearning Conference Appalachain State University, Boone, North Carolina July 15

http://lts.appstate.edu/conference-sessions

Since then Google+ has swept me away and added an entirely new dimension to what the real time internet looks and feels like.

 

 

Real Time Internet for Passion-Based Learning

 

A MEDIA ECOSYSTEM

 

What does the Real Time Internet ‘Feel’ Like?  How do I step in and check it out? Is there a way to manage what I am learning on line? What about the learning?  I’d like to see where learning is ignited and the wealth of world information can be found. I’d like to see my students find their passion and become life long learners. How do I do this?

 

Yesterday an article came out (great timing for this session. ) Many thanks to Angela Maiers, Amy Sandvold, Lisa Nielsen, and George Couros, and Steve Hargadon

Nine Tenets of Passion-Based Learning:  

●     REACH OUT TO THE DISENFRANCHISED

●     SHOW RELEVANCE TO LIFE OUTSIDE SCHOOL

●     INDOCTRINATE PASSION INTO THE SYSTEM.

●     TRY USING THE SCHOOLWIDE ENRICHMENT MODEL

●     DIGITAL MEDIA IS KEY

 

this one is key to my technique:

●     TAP INTO THE WISDOM OF YOUR TRUSTED PEERS.

 

Social media and Personal Learning Networks (PLNs) are necessary. Teachers need to publish their innovative work and share it with their personal learning networks. It’s also important for teachers to help students get connected to PLNs via social media.

 

●     BECOME A DIGITAL CITIZENS

●     PASSION IS INFECTIOUS

 

and their number 9:

●     CONNECT WITH PARENTS

http://mindshift.kqed.org/2011/07/nine-tenets-of-passion-based-learning/ 

 

Which I would add:

●     10--FOLLOW YOUR PASSION.

 

A variety of strategies exist for integrating new learning paradigms: social media, the immersive internet and collaborative learning.   And if you are like me it is all very overwhelming--exciting, inspired--but difficult to manage. 

 

What I would like to share with you today is a technique I  use to explore  my own learning and teaching, that worked very well.  This is an Informal Learning Model that seeks to ignite passion for learning.  So many of our students are not connected to their learning journey, and have disassociated their passion from the classroom and the content that we offer.  The element of discovery, of exploration-- of passion is missing.  And yet when I immerse myself in the internet, in the web of contacts, links, thoughts and ideas I am wholly absorbed--my passions are free to explore.  What an incredible opportunity as a learner to have the world’s knowledge available on line! 

 

Let us dig right in and get started:  

Go ahead and set up a http://twitter.com account if you haven’t already. Give some thought to your profile, use keywords that reflect your passions. This connects you to people who share your passions and interests.

 

I like the mash-up approach for an LMS, --What works in this situation;  the emphasis is on the learning.   I see this as an experiential, hands-on and student empowered approach to learning. By using emerging technologies we actively combine a constructivist and connectivist philosophy of learning.  We construct our Personal Learning Plan by defining our streams, our networks of followers and hashtags-- by connecting ideas, people, links and actions in our learning journey, which we as learners actively pursue on line and off.

 

What is a #Hashtag?

The # symbol, called a hashtag, is used to mark the keyword or topic in a Tweet. Any Twitter user can categorize or follow topics with hashtags. Hashtags are the symbol which establishes that the phrase following it is an element of a folksonomy of some kind.  Whereas a keyword search is just that, while it picks up hashtags which are the same as the keyword, it doesn’t describe an intentional community of practice using the word.

 

You can check out http://hashtags.org/ to see trends and see if a tag exists. or check out http://hashtags.twittersearchengine.net/wiki/Twitter_HashTags_Wiki the hashtags wiki, or the dictionary: http://www.hashdictionary.com/Hashtag

 

I want to spend just a second on the important experiential difference between a taxonomy and a folksonomy.  A taxonomy has already been established, or started by other people  --fundamentally you are absorbing content that was created by someone else. 

 

 

 

Taxonomy 

...is the practice and science of classification. Typically this is organized by supertype-subtype relationships, also called generalization-specialization relationships, or less formally, parent-child relationships. In such an inheritance relationship, the subtype by definition has the same properties, behaviors, and constraints as the supertype plus one or more additional properties, behaviors, or constraints.

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Taxonomy       

 

Folksonomy

A folksonomy is constructivist/connectivist in nature, created by a local or familiar cohort of participants. It is only by connecting the use of our words, labels, terms and participants that develops their meaning.  This empowers the participants because they can share and collaborate in the creation of  content, expressing their passion and individuality.

 

 

http://pinterest.com/myan_duong/smarchitecture/ 

Sites like http://pinterest.com are building folksonomies of images.

A folksonomy is a system of classification derived from the practice and method of collaboratively creating and managing tags to annotate and categorize content;[1][2] this practice is also known as collaborative tagging[3], social classification, social indexing, and social tagging.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folksonomy 

 

Real Time Internet

Real time internet is encountered in a variety of social media--but by far Twitter is the most comprehensive for learning.  Facebook is taking on more and more of a real time character as it moves into enhanced chat and video, massive multiple on line games and other immersive technologies.   Twitter is also moving into a variety of enhanced real time media through twitpics, video and geo-tagging. But I think of Twitter as The Stream, or the Pulse of the internet, the synapses of the world brain if you want. 

 

I find I need to manage Twitter with http://hootsuite.com

 

 

So go ahead and set up an account there and link it to your Twitter.  You can add a Facebook tab if you want to start exploring the tool, especially if you mange a couple of pages.

 

Create a new Stream in your “Featured “ section of Hootsuite. Create a couple of things that interest you:  this is the architecture for your learning media ecosystem. Try creating a stream for our conference hashtag  #FLC11 which would be our hyper local tag, These Hashtags can be as fleeting as the Tweets.  As an example of how hashtags work in terms of communities of practice and developing a Personal Learning Network, take a look at this tweet:

 

Emory Maiden posted this tweet, retweeted by Steven Anderson:   @web20classroom RT @evmaiden: 150 Ultimate Round-Up of Helpful #Twitter Articles - http://bit.ly/buCnmR

 

 

This was only a couple of days before the conference, and it is perfect for this session, so I retweeted it and added the hashtag #FLC11, so we could find it in this session.

 

 

and let’s try #GIS--which would take us into the global context.

 

This is a map generated from social media reports of incidents during the Christchurch, NZ earthquake.

 

When I first typed #GIS in I was surprised how many jobs were posted here.  Now I see that many hashtag categories are full of job opportunities.  So I have my students look there for work. I bring #GIS up intentionally because geo spatial tagging and is where everything is going

 

Geo-tagging.  

If you notice on your settings in Twitter, you can allow your location to be included in your tweet as a metatag, not part of your 140 character allowance.

 

Geotagging (also written as GeoTagging) is the process of adding geographical identification metadata to various media such as photographs, video, websites, SMS messages, or RSS feeds and is a form of geospatial metadata. These data usually consist of latitude and longitude coordinates, though they can also include altitude, bearing, distance, accuracy data, and place names. It is commonly used for photographs, giving geotagged photographs.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geotagging 

 

But if you think about the use of geotagging in the context of a regional development strategy,  it has tremendous potential to enhance a local area network or region.
 
There are applications such as http://www.tweetglobe.com/ for iPhone. And Google Chrome has an application http://globaltweets.com/ 
 
 
http://trendsmap.com/topic/%23thinkagain 
 
 
 
 

Delicious.com

You find all this cool stuff, links that you have to organize.  I find I am not as apt to read a tweet if it doesn’t have a link with it. I dislike being excited about an idea but having no original or primary source to go to.  If you do some digging with the hashtags you can track it down, if you want to give it the time. But essentially it is an ocean of links, of bookmarks, organized by tags.

Here’s my Delicious account http://www.delicious.com/herderjan. Go ahead and create one of those if you haven’t. Delicious organizes my tags, my meta language. Get the button for your browser.  Avos just bought Delicious from Yahoo, the guys who started YouTube.
http://www.delicious.com/help/transition
Delicious helps you develop your vocabulary and organize your bookmarks through the use of tags

I admit I haven’t even scratched the surface of Delicious, Twitter or Hootsuite.  Each of them give you fabulous sharing, networking and aggregation tools.  You can tell how much of a newbie I am because I only have 495 bookmarks and 672 tags, so my vocabulary is in its infancy.

Its great to see Ed Gehringer at this conference talking about “student authored Wiki Textbooks: Authoring and Review”, which is where sense is made out of this massive amount of information.

This is an excellent wiki based on the community of practice of K-12 teachers using the hashtag #edchat.  #EDCHAT actually has a weekly schedule--It happens every Tuesday in a structured exchange based on a voted on topic the week before.  http://edchat.pbworks.com/w/page/219908/FrontPage created by  Tom Whitby, Steven Anderson, and Shelly Terrell.

Where you take if from there depends on your passion.  Remember its what we get OUT of the computer that really matters! Let’s use the tag and see what we learned. I would enjoy keeping the #FLC11 tag alive for awhile and you can experiment with it and this group of people. It would be great to have everyone say something about the conference, tweet it using this hashtag and see if it goes anywhere. I hope that we have made some good new contacts for our Personal Learning Networks.  Let me know if this takes off for you. Thank you--

Jan Herder
Jan.Herder@gmail.com
http://155.42.33.13/Academics/FineAndPerformingArts/Faculty/JanHerder.aspx
http://twitter.com/#!/jherder
http://www.delicious.com/herderjan
http://www.3de4e.com
https://www.facebook.com/jan.herder

I tested really bad in high school. Some people just do. College wasn't so bad because I kissed the Blarney Stone in Eire during an adventurous year I took off between freshman and sophmore year. Yeah, the gift of gab definitely helps in academia.  As a teacher I confront the challenges of testing (assessment) students who claim they don't test very well either. I believe them.  I have a technique that works great--stealth assessment: testing after the fact, or better put, telling the students they have been tested after the fact. For me I don't want a student to cram or prepare for a test. I want the everyday, authentic, deep demonstration of their competency.  "Oh, by the way, that last event, that was your mid term." What good is assessment if what you assess vaporizes after a week?  I want to see the knowledge demonstrated day after day. I want consistency, mastery in the everyday. This is the best proof--the pudding, what comes of it, the product, so to speak. Then let them reflect upon the event (test) and they can't tell me they don't test well. With so much emphasis on testing and assessment these days, we forget about what assimilation of knowledge (action) looks like. We have to quantify everything and then compare, compete. Stealth assessment takes the pressure off. Be cool all the time, then under pressure you are confident. It's obvious in the results. You can't cheat. What you see is what you get. We have a saying in theater: 'you are only as good as your last show.'  It cuts both ways, but inspires you to go on, to do your best, to be the best all the time. No humiliation. Much like self assessment--you are your harshest critic. I always ask students what they think they deserve for a grade-- you can tell right away, and usually they are much harder graders than I am. Well, I don't believe in grades anyway--I want to see growth, confidence, the assimilation of knowledge.