Paper presented to the Eudlearn09 Conference, International Conference on Education and New Learning Technologies in Barcelona, Spain in summer 2009

1. Information, Communication and Technology for Emergence (ICT4E)--
An Immersive Learning Community Blended with Virtual Worlds and
Web 2
Jan Herder
Johnson State College
Johnson, Vermont, United States of America
jan.herder@gmail.com
One of the paradoxes of Immersive education is the acknowledgement that our
classrooms and schools are not immersive! Somehow we lost the intentionally
immersive sense of them. Yet we are actively immersed in life and everything around
us. Somehow the classroom has lost the connection with this. At the Academic level the
fragmentation of the disciplines has led to a disjointed feeling associated with learning;
irrelevant, regurgitative, authoritative, stifled, entitled, etc. What other factors lead to
this lack of immersion in our classrooms? Architecturally there is a disconnection
between the activities of learning and the environment that surrounds the student.
Classes are enclosures from the environment. Students have no effect upon their
environment, there is no result to their efforts that alters their relationship to their
surroundings. In this way they are impotent, disempowered, devalued and lacking true
participation. Our solution is to transform the learning community using ICT, Web 2.0
and the immersive internet.
I have been struggling with a classroom design challenge, from
Openarchitecturenetwork.org (1) This challenge addresses the over crowding of
classrooms in India. A colleague commented that the issue was not the structure of the
classroom, but the structure of the educational system. Seeing one of these
classrooms makes one feel completely immersed--that is certainly not the issue. But
immersed in what? An overcrowded and archaic paradigm of education--certainly not
the lesson plan the teacher so valiantly struggles to provide. So how do you address,
architecturally, a shift in paradigm that reflects our emergent vision of education? One
solution is designing for emergence, which Bob Logan and Greg Van Alystne, (2)
characterize as,
“Design and emergence both represent processes of morphogenesis, as they both give
birth to new forms.... Both emergence and design involve a bifurcation, or fork in the
path of development, from the original form to that of the new organism, product or
service.”
The relationship with doing in an immersive virtual environment is intimately connected
to the students skill set. And much like a gaming environment learning new skill sets
allows you new powers of action, creation and movement. Immersed in an ocean we
are not drowning but swimming, exploring, enacting--interacting as a participant. Tools
such as Virtual Worlds and media rich environments overcome disciplinary
fragmentation and focus the student within

2. This spiral is from Michael Ben-Eliʼs discussion of Buckminster Fullerʼs idea of Design
Science. (3)
its learning environment. With sight, sound, touch and increasingly with haptic
devices--students are immersed in these environments. There, knowledge of the
environment has passed from doing into actively being in the environment, engaged in a
spiral, cyclical emergent repetition of intention, realization and evaluation.
To me, an indication of something really big going on, is that there has been an
epistemological change with Web 2.0. According to Chris Dede, Timothy E. Wirth
Professor in Learning Technologies at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, there
has been a seismic shift in theories of knowledge with Web 2.0. (4)
“the Web 2.0 definition of “knowledge” is collective agreement about a description that
may combine facts with other dimensions of human experience, such as opinions,
values, and spiritual beliefs...The epistemology that leads to validity of knowledge in
Web 2.0 media such as Wikipedia is peer-review from people seen, by the community
of contributors, as having unbiased perspectives. Expertise involves understanding
disputes in detail and proposing syntheses that are widely accepted by the community.”
Revelations in physics such as quantum mechanics and field theory have been rippling
though our world and only now are we beginning to understand the ramifications of the
these discoveries. Changes in theories of knowledge are indications of deeper changes
in ontology. Institutions and their pedagogies are perhaps the last to adapt to these
shifts--especially when they are monumental and entirely unprecedented. Where does

3. education stand in this shifting landscape? How can we adapt our teaching and learning
styles and assumptions to new emerging literacyʼs?
I was one of those students who felt it was a crime against nature that we should be
locked up during the most productive and exciting time of our lives, namely in school.
Remember that childhood desire to “showʼ your parents what you could ʻdoʼ? How
important it was. So, rather than separate our students from the world, and the ecology
and rich diversity of the systems surrounding them, we should empower them and value
their contributions. Wouldnʼt we want their help in solving some of our quandaries? All
good research and experimentation does precisely this--engages the students in ʻreal
worldʼ problems and situations. And we value their insights and discoveries. So why
isnʼt this extended into the entire educational process? There are certain pragmatic
restraints, of course. But it is here that the power of the ʻChildrenʼs Machineʼ offers a
insight into reconnecting our education with our world. Seymour Papert describes two
trends: (5)
“One of these trends is technological. The same technological revolution that has been
responsible for for the acute need for better learning also offers the means to take
effective action. Information technologies...open unprecedented opportunities for action
in improving the learning environment...The other trend is epistemological, a revolution
in thinking about knowledge...the powerful contribution of the new technologies in the
enhancement of learning is the creation of personal media capable of supporting a wide
range of learning styles.”
One of the fallacies of homogeneous disciplines and student cohorts is that learners are
best served by being surrounded by people just like them. We cluster biology majors
together, history majors together, etc. No doubt, there are some developmental
consistencies that many younger students participate in at a similar age. But this is
again a factory, industrial age paradigm. Whereas in a transformed learning community
there are multiple intelligences, skill levels, experiences, ages, and expertise. It is the
diversity of these elements which is as important as the similarities, just as in natural
systems. This is certainly true in a global sense. In a homogeneous environment
innovation is stifled, and rich interactive opportunities are lost. The relationship to the
teacher is an ʻus and themʼ relationship, based on power and a monopoly of knowledge.
In a transformed learning community, one which is totally immersive, there are many
teachers--we are all teachers and learners. This peer to peer teaching relationship
values the diverse contributions of everyone. It supports the development of
leadership-- in confidence building and sharing of skills, to accomplish tasks or learning
goals. This is an emergent environment fueled by diversity, empowerment, mutual
respect and community. It is full of serendipity and opportunity.
What is the relationship to design in this new paradigm? It is an essential one.
I can not emphasize this enough. Buckminster Fullerʼs vision of a “Comprehensive
Anticipatory Design Science” provides us with an understanding of the systemic power
of design.(6)

4. “A few distinctive elements characterize the Design Science
approach: as a process, it is comprehensive, driven by whole system
thinking; it is anticipatory and future oriented; it is aligned with nature,
reflecting natureʼs underlying principles; and, it is science based,
subject to rigorous testing and empirical verification.”
Why is design so important and how can it impact every level of the educational
process? With real time interactive 3 Dimensional virtual worlds to scale, such as
(7)Second Life, realXtend, etc.--Design has gone through a quantum leap. We can
inhabit and precisely model and simulate our living environment without using any
physical resources outside of the computer. We can illustrate the future and imagine its
transformation; we can experience what it feels like in an intimate interactive way,
changing things in an instant effortlessly. It is truly astounding from a designerʼs point of
view--well, from anyoneʼs point of view. Whatʼs more, I can invite you into the simulation
for you to experience and collaborate. The design becomes dynamic, interactive and
living in a way, that it never could be before, however cleverly modeled. In augmented
reality design is empowering, because designs can be realized and tested quickly and
show results immediately. When a design makes sense, you can build it. This is the
difference. We will already know what it feels like and how if functions. We have co
created with our world virtually, and it has in turn co created artifacts in the ʻreal world.ʼ
I want to go back to another of Buckminster Fullerʼs ideas--the trim tab, or point of
leverage in a system. There is no doubt that institutions of higher learning are slowly
changing their medieval ways. MITʼs new classroom for Introductory Physics tries to
walk the walk of ʻTechnology Enabled Active Learning (TEAL)(8) But frankly the $1.5
million dollar price tag is beyond the means of most of the 400 million that will need to
be educated. But initiatives such as their OpenCourseWare (9) project and other Open
Educational Resources (10) are suggesting a future that we can embrace and see some
real hope in. Yet it is in the immersive use of emerging technologies, coupled with the
internet, that an opportunity for quickly and radically transforming our societies has
presented itself. In so far as institutions of higher education can be adaptive, they can
certainly participate. But more suited to the task is the Telecenter movement. Often
coupled with the idea of ICT4D--or Information, Communication Technologies for
Development--the Telecenter is a phenomenon well worth our closer attention. I believe
they are a trim tab for making the paradigm shift so urgently needed.
One of the great system thinkers of the 20th Century, Donella H. Meadows offered
some succinct “Places to Intervene in a System.” (11) I want to focus on the aspect of
paradigm shift, innovation and diversity. In discussing ʻself organizing systemsʼ Donella
compares the variety of evolutionary raw material developed over billions of years, to
the human capacity for creativity and technology, embedded in human cultures,
developed over hundreds of thousands of years. She says,
“ Any system, biological, economic, or social, that scorns experimentation and wipes
out the raw material of innovation is doomed over the long term on this highly variable

5. planet. The intervention point here is obvious, but unpopular. Encouraging diversity
means losing control. Let a thousand flowers bloom and ANYTHING can happen.”
Isnʼt this a simile for our planet? The garden allusion is not lost on me. The tool we
have been given to tend our garden is the immersive internet: virtual worlds, co-
creation, asynchronous and synchronous learning, haptic interfaces, serious gaming,
the evolving web: 1, 2.0, 3.0--and who knows? Something almost with a mind of its own,
the noosphere of Telihard de Chardin, also called the Global Brain, by futurist Peter
Russel. (12)
Personally, I came upon the Telecenter quite accidentally. What struck me was how
archaic the instructional model was for the task at hand: rows of computers, just like
rows of chairs or benches oriented towards teacher talking time. Yet the computers
belied that structure because they offered an immersive window into another dimension:
augmented reality, connected globally to an ever growing ocean of knowledge and
immersion in that knowledge. Meanwhile, outside the door rampant poverty, illness,
degradation of resources, etc. contrasted starkly with the windows into the metaverse
that the technology offered. Here, pre-industrial cultures and societies were confronting
21st Century learning tools. The absurdity of the industrial model of education glaringly
cried out for change. 200 years of educational straight jacketing obviously was
inappropriate for the task at hand. Refreshingly, the institutional structures and
hierarchies of Telecenters--also referred to as Community Technology Centers,
Community Media Centers, etc-- are nascent, emergent, still unformed and
experimental. And even equally important, these telecenters are situated in the most
impoverished and challenged areas of the world. They have been conceived as a
means of reaching the so-called ʻbottom billion.ʼ And now with mobile technologies it will
be possible to extend these networks of information and knowledge to the ʻlast mile.ʼ
There are some negative aspects of typical American university models of learning that
Iʼd like to mention. There is much discussion about paying for college, the cost of
education, lost opportunities for the disenfranchised. As a parent of three college
students I know quite well the expenses occurred in attaining the degree. I retained my
position at the college precisely to qualify for a tuition waiver. But canʼt we deliver a
much better product at a fraction of the cost? We are already doing so with Open
Education Resources, Open software, and the other parts of the open source
movement. This is critical for scale up.
According to students at Rice University,(13) who engaged in a project based learning
component, the average Rice college studentʼs carbon foot print is 13.4 tonnes. The
average Americanʼs carbon footprint is 20 tonnes a year. This is four times the average
of any other citizen on the planet. Even if you lived on grass and walked to work in the
States, your carbon foot print would still be 4 times the average of other people, due to
our infrastructure. I see there is a strong correlation between average carbon footprint,
entries in Wikipedia, and GNP of a country. And it would seem to me that there would
be economies of scale at a college or university --to reduce their average carbon
footprint. Efforts at Oberlin Collegeʼs Living Machine (14) are addressing this in an

6. immersive enterprise in deep ecology. Their project begins with design. This effort is
an excellent example of what can be achieved in the new paradigm of a design driven
web 2.0 epistemological shift in pedagogy. As stated by David W. Orr, Professor and
Director of Oberlin's Environmental Studies Program, (15)
"Is it possible to design buildings so well and so carefully that they do not cast a long
ecological shadow over the future that our students will inherit? We now know that such
things are possible -- that buildings can be designed to give more than they take."
"We intend the Adam Joseph Lewis Center to be more than just a demonstration. It is a
means to the larger end of improving how creatively we think. In the century ahead all of
those who will be educated here must learn how to:
* Power society by sunlight and stabilize climate,
* Disinvent the concept of waste and build prosperity within the limits of natural
systems -- in ways that can be sustained over the long term,
* Preserve biological diversity and restore damaged ecosystems, and
* Do these things while advancing the causes of justice and nonviolence.”
Normally one does not associate technology with deep ecology. But it is clear that
complex systems imitate natural systems which are polymorphous, emergent and
adaptive. This is how living machines mimic nature, speeding up processes, and
offering opportunities for creativity and innovation. For the 21st Century Learning Skills
(16) that holds the promise of our future, this is an essential component and is
fundamental to the transition to a knowledge or wisdom based economy. The
Philosophy of deep ecology is described by Alan Drengson, (17)
“The long-range deep approach involves redesigning our whole systems based on
values and methods that truly preserve the ecological and cultural diversity of natural
systems....The distinguishing and original characteristics of the deep ecology
movement ...emphasize place-specific, ecological wisdom, and vernacular technology
practices. No one philosophy and technology is applicable to the whole planet... the
more diversity, the better.”
So my argument goes something like this: by propagating 21st Century Learning Skills
and Literacyʼs through the careful use of ICT 4 Emergence, a paradigm shift can occur.
We can begin to move from a carbon based system of wealth to one based on a new
theory of knowledge: dynamic, co-created and grounded in a deep ecology. In terms of
being-- it is knowing, of actualizing, which includes an intimate, shared and design
based augmentation of reality through the use of ICT. There is an ethical imperative
embedded within this dynamic. This occurs in the respect for the diversity of life at all
levels, an honoring of differences, of the complexity of life and the creatures that co
inhabits the planet, that co exists and co creates. The process is one of self knowledge,
of a deep, local, folk wisdom, of language and dialects, translated into wikipedia or
variety of wikis. In other words, a communities engagement with the Immersive Internet
and Web 2.0 applications. The construction of this knowledge base is the activity of

7. deepening the knowledge of a biome. In the process students achieve 21st Century
Literacyʼs--in this case the means become the end--the key to experiential learning.
In the excellent primer Opening Up Education, by the MIT Press (18), authors Diana G.
Oblinger and Marilyn M Lombardi describe the new vision of open education: Quoting J
Cole:
“A global network of tutor and student volunteers would produce a large pool of
collectively developed resources (1) evaluated and ranked by the community as a
whole, (2) distributed across the globe to be sampled, mashed up, remixed, and
recontexualized for effective local use, and (3) oriented to serve the needs of ad-hoc
learning communities”
The transformed learning community is a transformed learner, teacher, classroom and
school. It would be possible to use the emerging network of telecenters to be the trim
tabs of this transformation effecting many millions of people on the planet. The
emergent value proposition embedded in this paradigm shift is one of a deep active
knowledge of oneʼs local biome and community, and the facilitation of this new
knowledge to the millions who need to embrace it. By using Buckminster Fullerʼs
Comprehensive, Anticipatory Design Science approach, integrated with the immersive
internet, it is possible to transform out institutions and our society. The students are
eager to help, let us facilitate that as soon as possible.
References:
1. http://www.openarchitecturenetwork.org/competitions/challenge/2009
2. Designing for Emergence and Innovation: Redesigning Design
http://www.bealinstitute.org/blog/taxonomy_menu/2/32
by Greg Van Alstyne and Robert K. Logan
Beal Institute for Strategic Creativity
Ontario College of Art and Design
3, 6. Design Science adapted from Michael Ben-Eli
http://bfi.org/our_programs/research_and_development/
design_science_a_framework_for_change_an_online_discussion_with_dr_michael_ben_eli
4. A Seismic Shift in Epistemology, © 2008 by Chris Dede
http://www.educause.edu/EDUCAUSE+Review/EDUCAUSEReviewMagazineVolume43/
ASeismicShiftinEpistemology/162892
EDUCAUSE Review, vol. 43, no. 3 (May/June 2008): 80–81
A Seismic Shift in Epistemology
5. THE CHILDREN'S MACHINE
Rethinking School in the Age of the Computer
by Seymour Papert, 1993
Basic Books, New York , Preface page ix
7. http://secondlife.com/
http://www.realxtend.org/page.php?pg=main
8. TEAL: http://web.mit.edu/edtech/casestudies/teal.htmllecture/

8. Technology Enabled Active Learning (TEAL)
MIT’s new Classroom
cost $1.5 million
http://www.openeducation.net/2009/01/14/at-mit-the-slow-death-of-the-classroom-
Hilton is quick to point out that M.I.T. is not alone in the change. At Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, North
Carolina State University, the University of Maryland, the University of Colorado at Boulder and Harvard,
physicists “have been pioneering teaching methods drawn from research showing that most students
learn fundamental concepts more successfully, and are better able to apply them, through interactive,
collaborative, student-centered learning.”
9. The Open Course Ware site at MIT
http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/home/home/index.htm
10. Open Educational Resources
http://www.oercommons.org/
11. Donella H. Meadows, “Places to Intervene in a System”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelve_leverage_points#References
12. Teilhard de Chardin
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Teilhard_de_Chardin
and Peter Russel, http://www.peterrussell.com/Odds/SoundsTrue2012.php
13. Average Rice Student’s Carbon Footprint: 13.4 tonnes
www.owlnet.rice.edu/~enst302/documents07/Final%20Presentations/Carbon_Footprint.ppt -
Carbon Footprint quote:
Timothy Gutowski, professor of mechanical engineering, who taught the class that calculated the rates of
carbon emissions. The results will be presented this May at the IEEE International Symposium on
Electronics and the Environment in San Francisco.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080428120658.htm
“The students conducted detailed interviews or made detailed estimates of the energy usage of 18
lifestyles, spanning the gamut from a vegetarian college student and a 5-year-old up to the ultra rich--
Oprah Winfrey and Bill Gates. The energy impact for the rich was estimated from published sources,
while all the others were based on direct interviews. The average annual carbon dioxide emissions per
person, they found, was 20 metric tons, compared to a world average of four tons.” Italics, mine.
14. Oberlin Living Machine
http://www.oberlin.edu/ajlc/ajlcHome.html
15. Design Philosophy of David Orr
http://www.oberlin.edu/ajlc/design_1.html
16. Partnership for 21s Century Skills
http://www.21stcenturyskills.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=254&Itemid=120

9. 17. http://www.deepecology.org/movement.htm
Alan Drengson is an emeritus professor at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada. He is
the author of The Practice of Technology (1995), and co-editor of The Deep Ecology Movement (1995)
and Ecoforestry (1997). He was also the associate editor of a ten-volume collection of Naess’s works,
The Selected Works of Arne Naess, published in 2005 by the Foundation for Deep Ecology.
18. Opening Up Education: The Collective Advancement of Education through Open Technology, Open
Content, and Open Knowledge
edited by Toru Iiyoshi and M.S. Vijay Kumar, MIT Press 2008
Common Knowledge: Openness in Higher Education
Diana G. Oblinger and Marilyn M. Lombardi
and Cole, J. (2006) Remixing Higher Education--the open content university. In Open Education 2006:
Community, Culture and Content