An update at our Ambient Learning City work with a focus on useful conclusions that others can use in design learning cities, and what problems they might have to solve in creating one

1. Ambient Learning City
ELSE11, Bucharest, April 2015 @fredgarnett
Bilbao Bordeaux Lewisham Lisboa Pula

2. Ambient Learning City
ELSE11, Bucharest, April 2015 @fredgarnett
• Background
• Emergent Learning Model
• New Partnerships New learning eco-systems
• Learning Contexts ‘beyond the classroom’
• Metaphors & Object-centred sociality
• Building new informal learning eco-systems
• Conclusions; 1 - 6

3. Ambient Learning City
ELSE11, Bucharest, April 2015 Open Context Model of Learning
• Background
• Web2.0 Architectures of Participation
• Tech Tools; participatory & collaborative
• Can learning be participatory & collaborative?
• Open Context model of learning
• If we can learn in multiple contexts
• How do we design for learning contexts?

4. P A H
Teacher
School
Teacher/
Learner
Learner
Research
Cognition Epistemic
Cognition
Meta-
Cognition
Adult

5. Ambient Learning City
ELSE11, Bucharest, April 2015 Emergent Learning Model
• Emergent Learning Model
• Post Bologna process EU wanted to integrate;
• formal, non-formal & informal learning
• But! By sector; school college community
• We wanted to integrate by learning process;
• Social, resources, accreditation
• So we created a development framework (a
tool to support problem-solving in undefined contexts)

6. Ambient Learning City
ELSE11, Bucharest, April 2015 Ambient Learning City
• New Partnerships; New learning eco-systems
• An Ambient Learning City needs partners
• The partners create a resource eco-system
• Can be learning, cultural, touristic, history…
• We worked with Manchester City Council
• Industrial, textiles, shipping, football, MUSIC!
• Northern Quarter, digital corridor, Universities
• Peoples Voice Media; LSEN, MADlab, Media City

7. Ambient Learning City
ELSE11, Bucharest, April 2015 Social Cities of Tomorrow
• MOSI-ALONG Partnership;
• JISC Community Content Project
• A cultural partner knowing economic history
• Museum of Science & Industry (MOSI)
• LSEN, Community Centres City, Libraries,
• developing Digital Learning Champions
• People’s Voice #Digital Media Literacy (NGO)
• Stories of Economic History & Futures…

8. Ambient Learning City
MOSI-ALONG

9. Ambient Learning City
ELSE11, Bucharest, April 2015 The Participatory Museum
• Learning Contexts; Beyond the Classroom;
• Not! A community collection curated by
experts like RunCoCo
• More than content – A participatory museum
• Creating narratives with object-centred
sociality using people’s own objects
• Using new metaphors to stimulate learning
• Digital Cabinets of Curiosity

10. Ambient Learning City
Digital / Cabinets of Curiosities

11. Ambient Learning City
ELSE11, Bucharest, April 2015 Cabinets of Curiosity
• Developing New Contexts for learning;
• With object-centred sociality (Nina Simon)
• (#digital) fascinating Cabinets of Curiosity;
“collections of objects whose categorical
boundaries were…
yet to be defined”
(Wikipedia, 2015)

12. Post-scarcity Ecology of Resources rethinking contexts
Making Curricula, Organisation, Administration Adaptive

13. Ambient Learning City
ELSE11, Bucharest, April 2015 Everything is a Metaphor
• Building New Informal Learning Systems;
• Inviting Mancunians to create digital ‘Cabinets’
• Working with digital learning support staff
• Rethinking social media use (AtC)
• Created informal learning eco-system for
• a) people interested in Manchester econ history
• b) using social media to support their own ways of
learning, curating and discussing

14. Ambient Learning City
What we’ve learnt so far…
Bilbao Bordeaux Lewisham Lisboa Pula

15. Ambient Learning City
ELSE11, Bucharest, April 2015 Information Ecologies
• Conclusion 1.
• build new partnerships to source funding and
create a framework in which proposed new
informal learning might develop and flourish
• design appropriate information ecologies
which reflect partners interests and provide
appropriate resources for the new informal
learning eco-systems you hope to develop

16. Ambient Learning City
ELSE11, Bucharest, April 2015 Architecture of Participation
• Conclusion 2.
• The more complex the new informal learning
eco-system you hope to develop then the more
problems you will have to solve
• The most critical & most significant problems
will emerge during the project and cannot be
anticipated nor solved before you begin
• that’s Emergence! – Development Frameworks
for design will allow new problems to be solved

17. Ambient Learning City
ELSE11, Bucharest, April 2015 Before & After MOOCs
• Conclusion 3.
• You have to address the critical problem of
how to create a transformative system for
informal learning
• existing institutions are only interested in e-
enabling existing, customary, formal practice
• New metaphors for stakeholder engagement
can be a way of addressing this – metaphors
create new spaces for new eco-systems

18. Ambient Learning City
ELSE11, Bucharest, April 2015 MOSI-ALONG Social Media Festival
• Conclusion 4.
• You need to develop new ways of measuring
the successful outcomes of new models of
informal learning in order to satisfy both
partner organisations and participants
• we developed a social media festival to
showcase work produced during the project

19. Ambient Learning City
ELSE11, Bucharest, April 2015 Aggregate then Curate
• Conclusion 5.
• We also developed a social media learning
model, Aggregate then Curate, to solve the
problem of linking the informal use of social
media to formal learning outcomes
• Aggregate then Curate captures one dimension
of emergence, that is the non-linear nature of
the project, and still needs further testing…

20. Ambient Learning City
Integrating the Physical & the Digital with Social Media

21. Ambient Learning City
ELSE11, Bucharest, April 2015 Aggregate then Curate paper
• Conclusion 6.
• Building Ambient Learning City is an emergent
process with unanticipated problems to solve
which all partners must deal with
• The best outcome an Ambient Learning City
project can produce is A complex learning eco-
system & a new learning information ecology
• (Full paper for this presentation)

22. Ambient Learning City
ELSE11, Bucharest, April 2015 Ambient Learning City Full Paper
• Resources Used;
• Open Context Model of Learning
• Emergent Learning Model
• Ambient Learning City
• Social Cities of Tomorrow
• The Participatory Museum
• Cabinets of Curiosity
• Everything is a Metaphor
• Information Ecologies
• Architecture of Participation
• Before & After MOOCs
• MOSI-ALONG Social Media Festival
• Aggregate then Curate
• Aggregate then Curate paper

23. Ambient Learning City
ELSE11, Bucharest, April 2015 @fredgarnett
Bilbao Bordeaux Lewisham Lisboa Pula