Tli Ny

Connections and Conversations: What Happens to Content? George Siemens April 9, 2008 Presented to: Technology Leadership Institute Briarcliff Manor, NY

A quick look back
Why failure?
The cycle of change
What does technology do?
Information
Interaction
Networks

Déjà Vu all over again?

Bold predictions of tomorrow’s world

For each successful but humble beginning...

Many, many, bold, failed visions

Darryl Zanuck :
demise of television (1946)

Ken Olson (DEC):
Why would anyone want a computer at home?

Louis-Sebastien Mercier :
all learning in four books

Visionaries see a future of telecommuting workers, interactive libraries and multimedia classrooms.

They speak of electronic town meetings and virtual communities. Commerce and business will shift from offices and malls to networks and modems.

And the freedom of digital networks will make government more democratic.

Baloney.
Newsweek, 1995

Education’s battle with new tools
New tools resisted...negative impact on learning
futurelab: 2020 and beyond

A quick look back
Why failure?
The cycle of change
Information
Interaction
Networks

Why do promises fail?

Duplication of existing approaches, new medium

We make learners use different tools, different processes, different contexts

A quick look back
Why failure
The cycle of change
Information
Interaction
Networks

“ Revolutions are not easy on us”
Design and the Elastic Mind

Mass education designed for the industrial age meets the needs of neither the pre-industrial village nor the post-industrial future...indeed, all education - has to be totally reconceptualized.
-Alvin Toffler “Revolutionary Wealth”
3

New ideas require new structures
Gombrich, 1950, p.379

Film - 1940s
Television - 1950s
Programmed instruction - 1960s
Systematic instructional design - 1970s
Computers - 1980s
The Internet - 1990s
Social networks & Web 2.0 – 2000s
Richard Schwier

Associative trails
As we may think, Vannevar Bush - 1945

We cannot evolve to adapt fast enough

We extend ourselves through technology

Distributed Intelligence
Information/learning/knowledge not only “in our head”
Wittgenstein, Spivey, Salomon, Vygotsky, etc.

Regime transition
“ Development and coordination of a vast array of complementary tangible and intangible elements”
Paul A. David (2000)

Fischer (2006)

How we interact with information today creates our structures

Our structures preserve, and help us to makes sense of, information

But...

Our structures also influences future affordances

And...

Our information structures inhibit progress

A quick look back
Why failure?
The cycle of change
Information
Interaction
Networks

What is the role of technology?
Loosening transitory pull of structures created based on how we have previously interacted with information and each other

Technology encapsulates current ideas
Shepherd

...and to connect

...and to interact

Our devices
2.7 billion mobile phones
800 million cars
850 million PCs
1.5 B phones
1.5 B TV sets
http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2007/01/putting_27_bill.html

A quick look back
Why failure?
The cycle of change
Information
Interaction
Networks

Capacity to stay current
New tools to extend ourselves to stay current, to function, in our climate

Information Explosion
From 1550-1750
Daniel Rosenberg

“ Confusing and harmful abundance of books"
Conrad Gesner 1545

How have people sought to curb information growth?
More books
Encyclopaedia's
Ignore books
Categorize and select
Different strategies within context (reading)
New approach all together...

As long as the centuries continue to unfold, the number of books will grow continually, and one can predict that a time will come when it will be almost as difficult to learn anything from books as from the direct study of the whole universe
Diderot

Information is the currency & barometer of humanity’s progress

What do we do now with information?

create

re-create

co-create

Associative trails between information

The attributes of information dictates a new approach, not fine-tuning existing approach

A quick look back
Why failure?
The cycle of change
Information
Interaction
Networks

Social context

Participatory sense-making
(De Jaegher & Di Paolo)

Associative trails between people

A quick look back
Why failure
The cycle of change
Information
Interaction
Networks

Welcome to complexity
Uncoupling cause-effect
Multiple factors interacting
Diversity and emergence

Knowing today means accepting ambiguity and uncertainty

Information is networked

Communication is networked

Learning is networked

“ More than anything else, being an educated person means being able to see connections so as to be able to make sense of the world and act within it in creative ways.”
(W. Cronon)

And where shall we have a regime change ?

Classroom

Courses

Teacher

Institutions

Copyright/IP

Filtering role

huh? How?

Networks

“ Networks are the language of our times, but our institutions are not programmed to understand them”
(McCarthy, Miller, Skidmore)

Social

Global filtering

Global classrooms

What about the existing tools?

Blogs, wikis, blah, blah, blah

It’s not deep enough
Tool-based

Information

Systemic

Significant outstanding issues
Control
Meaning making (fragmented dialogue): how does this impact society?
Privacy/security
What are the systemic changes required?

www.elearnspace.org
www.connectivism.ca
www.knowingknowledge.com
gsiemens AT elearnspace DOT org

http://blogfle.timuche.com	9
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http://afccdsd.blogspot.com	3
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Tli Ny

by gsiemens on Apr 11, 2008

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Tli Ny — Presentation Transcript