MicroLearning 2007
Where next?

I
I wouldn’t start from here …

TB‐L’s original vision
The original thing I wanted to do was to make
it a collaborative medium, a place where we
(could) all meet and read and write.
http://www.digitaldivide.net/articles/view.php?ArticleID=20

[From Paul Baran, \" On Distributed Communications: MEMORANDUM: RM‐3420‐PR,\" AUGUST 1964, the Rand
Corporation (available online at: http://www.rand.org/publications/RM/RM3420/.)]

Messiness and Education
WSJ 2001
Marc Eisenstadt, John Seely Brown, et al:
• interactive
• personalised curriculums
• lifelong learning
• distributed knowledge

1985: Born — Internet 2 years old; Nintendo release 'Super Mario Brothers'
1990: Start primary school — WWW being conceived
1992: 7 years old — first SMS message sent
1995: Amazon, eBay founded
1996: Heading towards secondary school — Hotmail launched;
pay‐as‐you‐go mobile tariffs; instant messaging
1998: Teenage years — Google founded
1999: Studying for GCSEs — Napster; Blogger
2001: Wikipedia; iPod
2002: Studying for A Levels — social‐networking services appear
2003: University — Skype
2005: Graduation approaches — YouTube
John Naughton: http://oscal.files.wordpress.com/2007/05/lecture‐text.pdf
See also: http://www.preoccupations.org/2007/05/making_the_poin.html

Slide courtesy of Bradley Horowitz, Yahoo! (http://tinyurl.com/3cjgpp; pdf)

IIa
Where next? Inspirations …

Creating a small piece that can be loosely joined with
others is truer to the spirit of the internet than building
the monolithic “virtual learning environments” and closed
communities that currently fill our schools and
universities.
That’s the true Dopplr shift: away from tools that deny
their users’ previous online existence, and towards tools
that fit into the way people actually live.
Richard Sandford (futurelab)

Calling a technology a coral reef
is the highest compliment I can pay.
Dave Winer

The Internet as a technology teaches us one
value more deeply than any other: the joy of
being connected.
David Weinberger

Matt Jones, May 2004. See previous slide for link.

IIb
Where next? First steps …

http://pinkyparky.blogspot.com/

http://thegordonschools.typepad.co.uk/ratemymates/

In the workplace, learners can, when they need, steal
their knowledge from the social periphery made up of
other, more experienced workers and ongoing, socially
shared practice. The classroom, unfortunately, tends to
be too well secured against theft.
John Seely Brown & Paul Duguid (1992)

Give good things!

Hey, this is my job; this is where I spend my days; it's my
time away from my friends and family. It better be nice.
Joel Spolsky

… we … have recently been collectively developing a
much clearer idea of what the Web is really like as a
medium in and of itself.
Marc Andreessen

III
Ch...ch...ch...ch...changes
for
Natives and Immigrants

As humans, we're sort of in the business of disturbing
each other. It might be good to embrace the
uncertainty that implies, and maybe also remember
the value of humility.
Johnnie Moore

… one reason schools work badly is that they're trying to
make intelligence using recipes for wisdom.
Paul Graham

But

Persistence
Searchability
Replicability
Invisible audience
http://www.danah.org/papers/Etech2007.html

Teens in America are in touch with their peers on average 65 hours a
week, compared to about 4 hours a week in preindustrial cultures.
Robert Epstein

Displacing Email for Personal Communication
Changing the Nature of Software Discovery and
Distribution
Facebook Marketplace: A Craigslist Killer
Facebook: The Power of Software that Knows Who You
Know

Facebook's Privacy Policy
3306 words long … And concludes:
We reserve the right to change our
Privacy Policy
and our
Terms of Use
at any time.
http://www.facebook.com/policy.php

IV
Play

http://tinyurl.com/ypjpvd
&
http://education.guardian.co.uk/schools/story/0,,2074528,00.html

What's needed is a willingness to allow more of
the apparent chaos.
Johnnie Moore

V
So, what next?

Schools are institutions of learning
but are they, themselves, learning institutions?
(to paraphrase John Seely Brown)

• creative, cross‐curricular ICT
• reverse IT & P2P work
• blogs, wikis
• audio‐ & video‐casting
• online photo galleries
• RSS & aggregators
• social bookmarking (del.icio.us) & tagging
• social networks & personal learning networks
• critical thinking (read & edit Wikipedia)
Acknowledgments to Demos: Their Space : Education for a digital generation (pdf)

• digital & media literacy throughout the school
• run a staff/pupil network council
• “cool tools” monitor
• educate the parents
Above all, create & sustain an ethos of trust &
openness.

1. You can’t control, but you can
influence.
2. Educate about ICT, don’t drill.
3. Recognise your medium is one of
collaborative, distributed networks.

David Smith
Talk at MicroLearning 2007
www.preoccupations.org
preoccupations@gmail.com