Good eLearning and Bad eLearning: how to tell one from the other

eLearning:the good and the bad
John Connell

Teacher
Headteacher
Local Government Official
Central Government Policy Analyst
Director, Scottish Schools Digital Network / Glow
Education Specialist, Cisco Systems

Working with educators....
....across the globe!
4

www.johnconnell.co.uk/blog/

Spot the Difference
Good eLearning
Bad eLearning

Spot the Difference

Good and bad eLearning are indistinguishable to the naked eye!!
...but...

...we can promote and encourage GOOD eLearning by our endeavours to understand the profound effects wrought by the emerging digital and networking technologies on Learning...

What are those effects?
Some developments in technology have changed what it means to know
Some technologies will change forever the relationship between teacher and learner
Some technologies are already changing our definition of the ‘school’ and the ‘university’
Technological development is bringing with it a host of new ‘literacies’ that we must recognize and understand

Education and Technology:Shared Characteristics

Education is the most powerful weapon you can use to change the world.

What should Education be about?
affirmative transformation
extending human horizons
realizing personal and social potential

What has Education too often been about?
maintaining the status quo
affirming social station
protecting and reinforcing the prevailing economic condition

What should Technology be about?
affirmative transformation
making the world a better place in which to live
extending human capacity and capability for collective benefit

What has Technology too often been about?
enforcing and controlling
damaging our world
rendering people (and peoples) passive

So, what’s the argument?

Socrates provides us with an analogy

“I cannot help feeling....that writing is unfortunately like painting; for the creations of the painter have the attitude of life, and yet if you ask them a question they preserve a solemn silence.”

(The spoken word is...) “...an intelligent word graven in the soul of the learner, which can defend itself, and knows when to speak and when to be silent.”

(The spoken word is...) “...the living word of knowledge which has a soul, and of which the written word is properly no more than an image.”

Socrates never knew the secret at the heart of reading: the time it frees for the brain to have thoughts deeper than than those that came before.

The mysterious, invisible gift of time to think beyond is the reading brain’s greatest achievement; those built in milliseconds form the basis of our ability to propel knowledge, to ponder virtue, and to articulate what once once inexpressible.

...and more...

Print culture, ushered in by the Gutenberg press in the middle of the fifteenth century, brought about the cultural predominance of the visual over the aural/oral....Print exists by virtue of the static separation of functions and fosters a mentality that gradually resists any but a separative and compartmentalizing or specialist outlook.
Marshall McLuhan

In schools, print shifted the emphasis from oral to written and visual communication. Teachers who had been only partly concerned with instructing their students how to read became by mid-16th century concerned with almost nothing else.
Postman & Weingartner

“Being illiterate in the processes of any medium...leaves one at the mercy of those who control it.”
Postman & Weingartner

Questions we should consider

learnscape: 21st century Learning Outlined
Networks:
social, interconnected, ever faster, long tail, anti-authoritarian
Work:
collective intelligence, it’s all of us, two-way, innovation, bottom-up, participatory, self-service
Learning:
sense-making, conversation, storytelling, collaboration, reflection, mimicry, know-how
Unlearning:
of secrecy, control, size, role clarity, specialization, hoarding, walled off
Risk Taking
innovation, speed, willingness to change, self-organization, ubiquity, perpetual flow
Platform:
interoperable, open id, the cloud, loose coupling
Web Technologies:
blogs, wikis, tags, links, RSS, search, open APIs, widgets
Network Values:
connections, peers, transparency, beta forever, intangibles, peer production
originated by Jay Cross
Jay Cross
58

Attention
What are the new ways that we pay attention in a digital era? How do we need to change our concepts and practices of attention for a new era? How do we learn and practice new forms of attention in a digital age?

Participation
How do we encourage meaningful interaction and participation? What is its purpose on a cultural, social, or civic level?

Collaboration
Collaboration can simply reconfirm consensus, acting more as peer pressure than a lever to truly original thinking.

Network Awareness
How we both thrive as creative individuals and understand our contribution within a network of others? How do you gain a sense of what that extended network is and what it can do?

Global Consciousness
How does the World Wide Web change our responsibilities in and to the world we live in?

Civic Responsibility
How we can be good citizens of the Internet when we are off line, working towards real goals in our communities and using the community practices of sharing, customizing, and contributing online towards responsible civic action off line?

Information Discernment
Without a filter (editors, experts, and professionals), much information on the Internet can be inaccurate, deceptive, or inadequate. How do we learn to be critical? What are the standards of credibility?

Purpose, Pedagogy and the Network

Ivan Illich
on the
Purpose of Education

“A good education system should have three purposes...”

“It should provide all who want to learn with access to available resources at any time in their lives....”

“It should empower all who want to share what they know to find those who want to learn it from them....”

Paulo Freire
on
Pedagogy....

...learners are active participants
and co-constructors
of knowledge...

...learning should be meaningful and purposeful to the learners...

...learning should have a critical focus...

Pedagogical theory is not only technical but cultural, ideological and political.
If it is to have any impact, it must be self-consciously all of these.
Jerome Bruner

Stephen Downes and George Siemens on Network Learning / Connectivism

Knowledge is not located in anygiven place (and therefore not 'transferred' or 'transacted' per se) but rather consists of the network of connections formed from experience and interactions with a knowing community...

Learning and knowledge rest in diversity of opinions

Learning is a process of connecting specialized nodes or information sources

Capacity to know more is more critical than what is currently known

Nurturing and maintaining connections is needed to facilitate continual learning

Ability to see connections between fields, ideas, and concepts is a core skill.

Pithamber Polsanion network Learning

Education is being displaced from its traditional confines of institutions to a generalized form
of learning that can take place anytime and anyplace....

....a form of education whose site of production, circulation and consumption is the network....

So what is changing?

“Education is an old ramshackle windmill
that goes on flapping its great arms long after the miller has left.”
RF Mackenzie

What 19th century education meant
The economy demanded mass-production of learning
Information was scarce
The curriculum was centrally -determined
Key sources of information were controlled by elites
Teachers were seen as the ‘founts of all knowledge’
Pedagogy meant ‘knowledge transfer’

Young people across the world today are possibly less bound by received wisdom than any generation in history.

The learner....is increasingly free to learn what, when, how, with whom he or she wants, and for whatever reason he or she decides.
A Wall Mural
in Soweto

Teacher Control
Learner Control
Who controls learning?
19th Century Education
Level of Control over Learning
Age / Years of Education
65

Criticality of Teacher Role ➤➤➤
Learner Control ➤➤➤
Teacher Control ➤➤➤
Who controls learning?
?
21st Century Education
Level of Control over Learning
Age / Years of Education
16

...and more changes...

...what it means to be educated...

...what it means to be literate...

...the diminishing importance of prescribed content within curricula...

...shifting focus away from the school or university building as the place where learning is supposed to happen...

...what it means to know...

...the changing role of the teacher in the learning process...

Learning
Within the Walls
Cultural Relevance
Traditional Pedagogy
Non-Traditional Pedagogy
Beyond the Walls
21st Century Context
Pervasive Technology, WWW, Ubiquitous Networks, New Skills
Protecting Values, Traditions, Principles, Social Stability
Local Community, Classroom-Based, Hierarchical, Instructional Design
Collaboration, Network Learning, Connections, Teacher as co-Learner
Knowledge Transfer, Content, Teacher as Subject Expert
Innovation, Collective Intelligence, Participation, Self-Learning, Distance Learning
Reflection, Sense-Making, Expertise, Knowledge-Building
PLATFORM
Interoperability, Open & Ubiquitous ID, the Cloud, Web Technologies

What should education look like?
A place where learning is the focus rather than teaching
A place where faculty and learners learn together
A place for social learning (and solitary learning!)
An entry-point for collaborative learning
An immersive environment stretching far beyond the campus walls
An open-learning environment built on negotation and mutual respect
An extended community resource

Creepy Treehouse Syndrome!

Creepy TreehouseSyndrome
Chris Lott
http://chrislott.org/

“….creepy treehouse is what a professor can create by requiring his students to interact with him on a medium other than the class room tools.....e.g. requiring students to follow him/her on peer networking sites such as Twitter or Facebook....”
Jared Stein

...an institutionally controlled technology/tool that emulates or mimics pre-existing technologies or tools that may already be in use by the learners, or by learners” peer groups.
Though such systems may be seen as innovative or problem-solving to the institution, they may repulse some users who see them as infringement on the sanctity of their peer groups, or as having the potential for institutional violations of their privacy, liberty, ownership, or creativity. Some users may simply object to the influence of the institution.
Jared Stein

Convivial Learning?

“I consider conviviality to be individual freedom realized in personal interdependence, and, as such, an intrinsic ethical value.”

“I choose the term ‘conviviality’...to mean autonomous and creative intercourse among persons, and the intercourse of persons with their environment....”

“....and this is in contrast with the conditioned response of persons to the demands made upon them by others, and by a man-made environment....”

“The transformation of learning into education paralyzes man’s poetic ability, his power to endow the world with his personal meaning.”

“Man will wither away just as much if he is deprived of nature, of his own work, or of his deep need to learn what he wants and not what others have planned that he should learn.”

Good and Bad eLearning?

Shifting to...
....the cloud
....device independence
....learner in control
....a different kind of teaching
....massive collaboration
....social learning
....mobility

There is a Difference!
Good eLearning
Bad eLearning

Good eLearning...
...is built on careful consideration of the purpose of the learning
...recognizes the changing relationships between teacher and learner, and between learner and information
...avoids the worst features of creepy treehouse syndrome
...recognises the cultural, ideological and political impact of education
...permits the learner genuine and increasing autonomy in their learning as they grow and learn
...enables learners to nurture rich, heterogenous personal learning networks
...makes room for conviviality in learning

www.johnconnell.co.uk/blog/
Email:
johncon@cisco.com
redpathjohn@mac.com
Twitter:
@jconnell
Skype:
redpathjohn
Facebook:
www.facebook.com/jconnell1
Scribd:
scribd.com/John_Connell
Slideshare:
slideshare.net/soutra

http://mymeanmeak.wordpress.com	1529
http://www.johnconnell.co.uk	605
http://ashleytan.wordpress.com	219
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com	15
http://elaulavirtual.wordpress.com	8
http://paper.li	2
http://translate.googleusercontent.com	1

Good eLearning and Bad eLearning: how to tell one from the other

by John Connell

Accessibility

Categories

Upload Details

Usage Rights

7 Embeds 2,379

Statistics

Good eLearning and Bad eLearning: how to tell one from the other Presentation Transcript