Living, Learning, Communicating in an Immediate World

Living, Learning, Communicating in an Immediate World ADETA, October 2007 George Siemens

For the most part, educational futurism is a mixture of trendiness, bad psychology, and technological impressionability
Carl Bereiter

Mixed messages
Networks and tools
Access and impact
Granovetter meets Gibson
Students and employees
Their World
Our need
Our response?

1. Networks & Tools

Learning
Neural network
Conceptual network
Physical network
People
Content

What do networks do?
Understanding yields understanding
Nodes increase opportunities for more connections (history, multi-faceted understanding of disciplines)

...the tools we use, when learning, shape and very largely determine what and how we can learn
Kieran Egan

Immediately?
Access: OER,
Find:
Connect:
Communicate: Mobile

Immediately?
Locate:
Collaborate: wikis
Create:
Share: Presently

Immediately?
Plan:
Publish: blogs
Interact: two-way dialogue &
Tie it together:

We shape our tools and then our tools shape us
McLuhan

What have tools done?
Opened access
Distributed control
Raised noise
Immediacy
Symmetry of effect
everything gets impacted (information)

Rhetoric of the electrical sublime
long-standing, naive, and utopian expectations
Carey & Quirk

2. Access and Impact

Education’s future will be shaped in developing countries
China: HE enrolment doubled, 2000 – 2003
16 million. Exceeds US
India: by 2010,
40% of all HE education
will be distance
Carnegie Foundation (2006)

Access
70+% level in many countries (Net)
Mobile/PDA (21%) web access – doubled in 2003-2005-2007
88% have mobile
Steep decline after age 55
Oxford Internet Institute

IT Ownership
73% own laptops
91% have high speed
86% mobile phone
Net Generation age group is more highly engaged than older students in technologies that enable socializing
ECAR Study (2007)

We live in a society in which the “channels for distribution of change” are carried with us as part of daily life.
Sharples, Taylor, Vavoula

Mobile computing, portable devices, and ubiquitous broadband mean that we have access to people, information, and data wherever we may be
Horizon Report (2007)

What is the impact of immediate?
Control shift
Weakened filter
Can you spare $4 billion?
Real is fake

3. Granovetter meets Gibson

Weak ties
Empirical evidence that the stronger the tie connecting two individuals, the more similar they are, in various ways
Mark Granovetter (1973)

Weak ties provide people with access to information and resources beyond those available in their own social circle; but strong ties have greater motivation to be of assistance and are typically more easily available.
Mark Granovetter (1983)

Weak ties
weak ties of communication
weak ties of information
(content is not understanding)

Gibson’s Affordances
Action potential
Preconditions for activity
Agent, object, interaction
Affordance is a property of this interaction

Nature of ties is an affordance of the medium
object, actor, activity
Parent/child (twitter, IM)
Friends
Colleague
Some one you’ve never met f2f

A new medium does not add something; it changes everything.
Neil Postman

4. Students and employees

This isn't the MTV generation we're talking about this is the everything, all-the-time generation
Tim Blackmore

Millennials

Coddled, narcissistic praise junkies
US Navy

Engagement

Participative web: user-created content
OECD

Capturing
Capturing what used to be transitory
Mobile phones
Justin.TV
Their lives are being captured and shared

Their view of IT in courses
60% - improved my learning
40% - more engaged when IT is used
73% - more prompt feedback
58% - helps me better communicate with classmates
59% - better control of course activities
ECAR Study (2007)

5. Their World

What type of world will our students inherit?
Complex
Information saturated
Conflict-riddled
Self-destructing
Hopeful
Democratic
Innovation
Equality

Need for advanced learning
2 of every 3 new/replacement jobs require PSE
Canadian Council of Learning (2006)

6. Our Need

Understanding requires time, depth, sustained attention
Takes 10 years to become a master
Howard Gardner

Complex tasks require
greater engagement and
focus
than weak attention ties permit

Ubiquitous computing and wireless connectivity, embedded in physical environments, will turn physical places into aware contexts – environments that recognize people, information, and activities, and respond appropriately.
Map of Future Forces Affecting Education (2006)

Digital literacy
Information literacy
21 st century skills
Harvard curriculum
Play, performance, networking, distributed cognition
(Jenkins)

Depth...
Slow Learning
Geetha Narayanan
Deep smarts
Deep understanding

Disciplines of Understanding
Reflection
Review
Connections
Socialization
Explication
Slow, deep, immersive
Multi-faceted

7. Our response?

How have these changes impacted education?

Stages
Adopt tools and methods
Adapt practices
Adjust policies

Exist in the spaces they exist, understand their culture

What shall we change?
Libraries
Classrooms
Policies
Schools
Accreditation
Experts
Curriculum
Change toward understanding. NOT Educator peer-pressure

www.elearnspace.org
www.connectivism.ca
www.knowingknowledge.com
http://ltc.umanitoba.ca/wordpress

Living, Learning, Communicating in an Immediate World

by gsiemens on Oct 18, 2007

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