Why Networked Learning Matters

Why Networked Learning MattersDr. Alec CourosUniversity of ReginaJuly 2011

#ece11bit.ly/ece11couros

Faculty Proﬁle

The Blur

Photo-A-Day

Open CV

Open Access Journal

Open Teaching

“Web 2.0 tools exist that might allow academics to reﬂectand reimagine what they do as scholars. Such tools mightpositively affect -- even transform - research, teaching, and service responsibilities - only if scholars choose to build serious academic lives online, presenting semi-public selves and becoming invested in and connected to the work of their peers and students.” (Greenhow, Robelia, & Hughes, 2009)

journey(quick version)

Knowledge

knowledge• what is k?• how is k acquired?• how do we know what we know?• why do we know what we know?• what do humans know?• who controls k?• how is k controlled?

human thought/ideas human language source codehigh-level language (e.g. C++, Java, PERL) low-level language (assembly language) code irretrievable machine code (binary)

@jonmott

Collaboration

“given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow” (Linusʼ Law, Raymond 1997)

“A key to transformation is for the teaching profession to establish innovation networks that capture the spirit and culture of hackers -the passion, the can-do, collective sharing.” ~ Hargreaves, 2003

Openness

“Open Education is the simple andpowerful idea that the worldʼs knowledge is a public good and that technology in general and the Worldwide Web in particular provide an extraordinary opportunity for everyone to share, use, and reuse knowledge.” (William & Flora Hewlett Foundation)

open(ness) (short version) open education free software open source software open educational resourcesopen content open access publicationopen access courses open teaching open scholarship open accreditation

• pedagogical affordance. • knowledge exchange,connected curation, wayﬁnding, crowdsourcing, (ness) collaboration, problem (short version) solving • facilitated through personal learning networks/environments (PLNs/PLEs)

Free/Open Content “describes any kind of creative work in a format that explicitly allows copying and modifying of its information by anyone, notexclusively by a closed organization, ﬁrm, or individual.” (Wikipedia)

Why Do Students Go to University? Content Degrees Social Life Support Services (Wiley, 2010)

Why Do Students Go to University? PLoS GCTWikipedia MCSE Google Scholar ACT OCW Content DegreesFlatworld K arXiv.org CNE CCNA Open Courses Facebook Twitter Skype Social Life Support Services MySpace Yahoo! Answers MMOGs Quora ChaCha (Wiley, 2010)

early lessons• knowledge needs to be free.• relationships trump content.• transparency & openness are powerful conditions for knowledge building.• distributed, weak-tie communities can help to solve complex problems.• education can greatly beneﬁt from the experiences of open (source) communities (i.e., networked communities of practice).

participatory media

ChangesEarly Day of PC in Schools Todayʼs Social/Mobile Reality

media stats (2010)• 107 trillion emails (89% spam), from 1.04 billion users.• 255 million websites• 1.97 billion Internet users• 152 millions blogs• 600 million Facebook users (sharing 30 billion pieces of content per month)• 2 billion videos watched on Youtube daily• 5 billion photos hosted on Flickr Stats as of January 2011 via Royal Pingdom

“The average digital birth of children happens at about 6 months.”

“The average digital birth of children happens at about 6 months.” “In Canada, US, UK, France Italy, Germany & Spain ... 81% of children under the age of two have some kind of digital proﬁle or footprint.”

cautions

Easily Copied Instantly SharedEasily Edited Viewable by Millions

PRIVATE by DEFAULTPUBLIC with EFFORT

PUBLIC by DEFAULTPRIVATE with EFFORT

Best Job in the World

On Digital Video • “Ten years ago, not one student in a hundred, nay, one in a thousand, could have produced videos like this. It’s a whole new skill, a vital and important skill, and one utterly necessary not simply from the perspective of creating but also of comprehending videoStephen Downes communication today.

unlikely inspirations

“Dear Photograph:Thank you for everything we had.”

Informal Learning • “Informal learning is a signiﬁcant aspect of our learning experience. Formal education no longer comprises the majority of our learning.” •George Siemens http://www.elearnspace.org/Articles/connectivism.htm

Shared Activities

Leveraging Networks

Crowdsourcing Content

Unintentional Teaching

“To answer your question, I did use Youtube to learn how to dance. I consider it my ʻmainʼ teacher.”

“To answer your question, I did use Youtube to learn how to dance. I consider it my ʻmainʼ teacher.” “10 years ago, street dance was very exclusive, especially rare dances like popping (the one I teach and do). You either had to learn it from a friend that knew it or get VHS tapes which were hard to get. Now with Youtube, anyone, anywhere in the world can learn previously ʻexclusiveʼ dance styles.”

RethinkingContent/Originality

additional lessons• growing modes of access and the ability to publish & disseminate to wide audiences are key affordances.• (digital) citizenship & (digital) identity are emerging content areas that heavily implicate emerging pedagogies.• crowdsourcing & social curation of content will prove transformational for learning experiences.

practice

open teaching

network mentors

non-credit students

course trailers

student-controlled spaces

aggregation

microblogging

shared resources

daily social digest

What We Learned• Open access, low-cost, high impact.• Courses become shared, non-local, learning events.• Students immersed in a greater learning community.• Rethinking of space/interaction (walled gardens, open spaces)• Learning spaces controlled and/or owned by students.• Development of emerging literacies, relevant for other courses.• Pedagogy focused more on connecting & interactions; content important, but secondary.• Development of sustainable, long-term, learning connections.

conclusion

Sharing http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/dolmansaxlil/4802611949/

On Sharing ... “itʼs about overcoming the inner 2 year old in you that screams mine, mine, itʼs mine.” (Wiley, TEDxNYED, 2010)

Opennesshttp://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/bombeador/4396467701/sizes/l/in/photostream/

Audience

Identityhttp://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/jaumedurgell/740880616/sizes/l/in/photostream/

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/will-lion/3356252350/

Relationships

“My student was delighted by the attention her blog post had received; it gave her conﬁdence in her writing and bolstered her enthusiasm for our class.... We were no longer studying an important work of20th century literature within the narrow context of my syllabus; instead we had become part of aconversation that involved the broader reading public.As a professor, I was displaced from the centre of the conversation, which became more open, distributed and student-driven than it had been before.”

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/admitchell08/2574455073

Don’t limit a child to yourown learning, for he was born in another time. ~Tagore http://couros.ca couros@gmail.com @courosa

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Why Networked Learning Matters

by Alec Couros on Jul 07, 2011

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