As a follow up to last week’s blog I followed up on George Seimen’s blog on ‘activity streams’ that proposes the internet as the new way to communicate after the phone, fax and email.
Linked to the above is dana boyd’s Educause Review article on ‘streams of content’ and the keynote from Prof. Agnes Kuklska-Hulme at the recent mlearning 2010. Dana links Csikszentmihalyi’s concept of ‘flow’ to the current ‘flow of information’ through social networking. Agnes discussed the concept of ‘social network’ as a form of conversation and how, for instance. Tweets, may be seen as ‘conversation starters’ and directors.
Of note is dana’s summary of how technology affordances, collide with current social mores. Four areas are democratisation of information, stimulation / attention, homophily (where people connect with others who are very like themselves) and power. Some good ideas to think through as we assume technology will solve the world’s problems, yet what individual’s want may not be what is better for society as a whole (depending on which side you are on). For example, Prof. Mohammed Ali’s call to researchers to harness their energies and networks to provide education for all through mobile learning is a worthy goal. However, does every government/political organisation support education /democracy for all? How does one package learning (what is education?)? Will education be used to further repressive regimes objectives? Who decides what is learnt?
So again, things are not as straight-forward as they might be! We need to continually test our assumptions of what is appropriate and if we change tack, why and for what reasons. On to another interesting week.
Showing posts with label dana boyd. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dana boyd. Show all posts
Monday, November 15, 2010
Monday, April 19, 2010
Future of the use of technology in learning aka currently as mlearning
Organising myself for conferences this year. The last bits of the $$ available from my tertiary teaching excellence award will be going towards several conferences in Europe which have an emphasis on mobile learning. First up would be Handheld 2010 from 10th to 13th of October in London, then a Forum Oxford: futures technologies conference on 15th October followed on with the annual mlearning 2010 conference in Malta from 19th to 22nd October.
I will be evaluating the progress of papers on mlearning and to work out if I will continue to follow this area of research. My work into apprenticeship learning is taking up much of my energies at the present. It is an area with very little research focus and therefore important to continue with. The use of technology into teaching is now, for many tutors at CPIT, a way of integrating technology into helping students learn.
My view on mlearning is that very very soon, all technology assisted learning will be mobile. It’s sort of the normal way which learners should be approaching learning, anytime and anywhere. It’s no different to what has taken place for 100s of years when we carried books around and read them when on the go and dipped into reference books whenever we had to find things out. Technology now enables this to take place much more efficiently. Instead of carrying a couple of books, I now carry hundreds on my ipod touch, instead of waiting to get home to look up something, I now google it if there is wifi available. Just in time approach is an innate human response. Wifi availability is also now becoming much more ubiquitious. For instance, there is 15 minutes of free Wifi available at my local Christchurch airport and Wellington airport offers free Wifi. The last three conferences I attended had free Wifi available to delegates. People now assume they will be connected wirelessly and for no cost.
The early work of mlearning learning on’micro learning’ etc. and working with small screens is all but obsolete with the coming of nettabs like the ipad. With an ipad, there is no need to reconfigure LMS like Moodle or web pages to optimise interaction with the hardware. The ease of use of the ipad will change the nature of how we access and utilise information. Therefore, before we know it, mlearning will be normal technology assisted learning. There has been a flurry of articles on using the ipad in education including pros and cons and various uses in learning.
Over the weekend, I caught up with an interesting presentation from Dr.dana boyd at Games based learning 2010 which was held recently. This presentation provides some suggestions for educators in leveraging social networks for enhancing student learning. For educators, there is a need to understand what technologies are out there, who uses them, how they are used and why. How these technologies are ‘rupturing’ the way in which how young people see the world and the role of educators in helping young people get the most out of technologies. She covers perceptive insights into the implications for young people and educators using social networking sites as examples. All of the social networking sites are now accessible via mobile devices and this migration from desktop to mobile is accelerating.
Also in the same conference, Professor James Gee presented a good overview of the role of games in providing situated learning opportunities for students which I am going to evaluate for suitability as a resource for my adult learning principles course. He is one of the members of the New London Group who authored the paper on the "pedagogy of multiliteracies" which is informing my practice and the various research projects I am working on at the moment.
Both the above presentations provide justification and food for thought on how technology may contribute to enhancing learning for students plus the ways in which ubiquitious computing is now almost mainstream.
I will be evaluating the progress of papers on mlearning and to work out if I will continue to follow this area of research. My work into apprenticeship learning is taking up much of my energies at the present. It is an area with very little research focus and therefore important to continue with. The use of technology into teaching is now, for many tutors at CPIT, a way of integrating technology into helping students learn.
My view on mlearning is that very very soon, all technology assisted learning will be mobile. It’s sort of the normal way which learners should be approaching learning, anytime and anywhere. It’s no different to what has taken place for 100s of years when we carried books around and read them when on the go and dipped into reference books whenever we had to find things out. Technology now enables this to take place much more efficiently. Instead of carrying a couple of books, I now carry hundreds on my ipod touch, instead of waiting to get home to look up something, I now google it if there is wifi available. Just in time approach is an innate human response. Wifi availability is also now becoming much more ubiquitious. For instance, there is 15 minutes of free Wifi available at my local Christchurch airport and Wellington airport offers free Wifi. The last three conferences I attended had free Wifi available to delegates. People now assume they will be connected wirelessly and for no cost.
The early work of mlearning learning on’micro learning’ etc. and working with small screens is all but obsolete with the coming of nettabs like the ipad. With an ipad, there is no need to reconfigure LMS like Moodle or web pages to optimise interaction with the hardware. The ease of use of the ipad will change the nature of how we access and utilise information. Therefore, before we know it, mlearning will be normal technology assisted learning. There has been a flurry of articles on using the ipad in education including pros and cons and various uses in learning.
Over the weekend, I caught up with an interesting presentation from Dr.dana boyd at Games based learning 2010 which was held recently. This presentation provides some suggestions for educators in leveraging social networks for enhancing student learning. For educators, there is a need to understand what technologies are out there, who uses them, how they are used and why. How these technologies are ‘rupturing’ the way in which how young people see the world and the role of educators in helping young people get the most out of technologies. She covers perceptive insights into the implications for young people and educators using social networking sites as examples. All of the social networking sites are now accessible via mobile devices and this migration from desktop to mobile is accelerating.
Also in the same conference, Professor James Gee presented a good overview of the role of games in providing situated learning opportunities for students which I am going to evaluate for suitability as a resource for my adult learning principles course. He is one of the members of the New London Group who authored the paper on the "pedagogy of multiliteracies" which is informing my practice and the various research projects I am working on at the moment.
Both the above presentations provide justification and food for thought on how technology may contribute to enhancing learning for students plus the ways in which ubiquitious computing is now almost mainstream.
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
handheld 2008 day 2 morning sessions
Day 2 of handheld learning 2008 starts off cool & cloudy. Last night, I attended the Handheld 2008 innovations award. A very interesting evening as it was great to see so many enthusiastic people working on bettering learning for their students. Many of the practitioner awards for primary & secondary schools went to ‘small’ schools which signals to me that the use of game consoles, pdas & mobile phones still attracts novelty value & is being used mainly by early adopters.
The days starts with short presentations from the various sponsors and then continued with Graham Brown Martin (conference chair) providing a short overview of how Handheld learning has developed including continuing the tradition of showing how ‘handheld learning girl’, Andrew’s 3 year old daughter is interacting with technology (a Nintendo DS). He also provided statistics from the BBC to encourage the concept of learning through play, 99% & 97% of girls between 9 to 16 play video games. Handheld 2009 to be held in London at the beginning of October.
Opening address from Andrew Pinder, the chair of Becta firstly covers the objectives of Becta. One major focus is to encourage the effective use of technology, in the hands of good teachers to improve learning outcomes for all learners. Various government policies to assist access to both hardware & connectivity for the most deprived learners was presented with a call to all suppliers, providers & educationalist to assist the initiative.
This was followed by a presentation from Steven Berlin Johnson. Steven covers some of the concepts presented in his book ‘Everything bad is good for you’ along with an update of what has happened since the book was published & the reactions that this book has brought up. Steven provided a great story about how the book came about (through his interactions with his nephews when they started to play Sim City together). He provided an engaging (mainly aural) presentation on the ‘sleeper curve’ which is how popular culture in the form of handheld games(Civilisation, Zelda), TV shows (Lost as compared to Gilligan’s Island) interactive web (what fans have build up around Buffy the Vampire Slayer including organising f2f meetups for fans), complex information (world of warcraft screen, Spore), social networks (blogs, wikis etc.) leads to cognitive learning that is actually difficult to actually teach (& often never assessed!).
After morning tea, dana boyd took the stage. She began her presentation about the role of educators in helping young people learn how to think. Introduction of technology does not equate to learning. Therefore educators need to understand what technology is currently available, what it is, how to best make use of it etc. She continues with an analysis of social networking sites, how they are constructed, how young people use them, what young people do on them, the customs inherent in posting, inviting friends, how some practices evolved etc. Four properties that young people bring to social networking included persistence, replicability, scalability & searchability. The dynamics in working with social networking sites include the need to deal with an invisible audience, a collapsed context (ie not distinguished by time, space, social mores), a convergence between public & private. Mobile technology brings with it the concepts of de-locability, knowledge dispersal (ability to read and add to various perceptions of ‘facts’), learning skills via learning the technology & ease of access to information. A thought provoking presentation which confirmed some of my thoughts about social networking & informed me more about how & why young people make use of technology.
Laurie O’Donnell, director of learning & technology for learning & teaching in Scotland ended the morning’s session with a presentation on ‘putting philosophy into practice.’ Compared 2 philosophies on teaching & learning with philosophy A as being the present situation whereby education can be fixed, technology drives change, teachers can be fixed, learners are the future workforce, innovation is good, success should be measured & the curriculum is not consultative. Philosophy B posits that education is a long term investment in the future, technology enables, supports & accelerates change, teachers are supported professionals, students are more than just the future workforce, curriculum is developed with guidance & support from teachers, innovation must also be scalable & sustainable & success is measured via wider term benefits.
The days starts with short presentations from the various sponsors and then continued with Graham Brown Martin (conference chair) providing a short overview of how Handheld learning has developed including continuing the tradition of showing how ‘handheld learning girl’, Andrew’s 3 year old daughter is interacting with technology (a Nintendo DS). He also provided statistics from the BBC to encourage the concept of learning through play, 99% & 97% of girls between 9 to 16 play video games. Handheld 2009 to be held in London at the beginning of October.
Opening address from Andrew Pinder, the chair of Becta firstly covers the objectives of Becta. One major focus is to encourage the effective use of technology, in the hands of good teachers to improve learning outcomes for all learners. Various government policies to assist access to both hardware & connectivity for the most deprived learners was presented with a call to all suppliers, providers & educationalist to assist the initiative.
This was followed by a presentation from Steven Berlin Johnson. Steven covers some of the concepts presented in his book ‘Everything bad is good for you’ along with an update of what has happened since the book was published & the reactions that this book has brought up. Steven provided a great story about how the book came about (through his interactions with his nephews when they started to play Sim City together). He provided an engaging (mainly aural) presentation on the ‘sleeper curve’ which is how popular culture in the form of handheld games(Civilisation, Zelda), TV shows (Lost as compared to Gilligan’s Island) interactive web (what fans have build up around Buffy the Vampire Slayer including organising f2f meetups for fans), complex information (world of warcraft screen, Spore), social networks (blogs, wikis etc.) leads to cognitive learning that is actually difficult to actually teach (& often never assessed!).
After morning tea, dana boyd took the stage. She began her presentation about the role of educators in helping young people learn how to think. Introduction of technology does not equate to learning. Therefore educators need to understand what technology is currently available, what it is, how to best make use of it etc. She continues with an analysis of social networking sites, how they are constructed, how young people use them, what young people do on them, the customs inherent in posting, inviting friends, how some practices evolved etc. Four properties that young people bring to social networking included persistence, replicability, scalability & searchability. The dynamics in working with social networking sites include the need to deal with an invisible audience, a collapsed context (ie not distinguished by time, space, social mores), a convergence between public & private. Mobile technology brings with it the concepts of de-locability, knowledge dispersal (ability to read and add to various perceptions of ‘facts’), learning skills via learning the technology & ease of access to information. A thought provoking presentation which confirmed some of my thoughts about social networking & informed me more about how & why young people make use of technology.
Laurie O’Donnell, director of learning & technology for learning & teaching in Scotland ended the morning’s session with a presentation on ‘putting philosophy into practice.’ Compared 2 philosophies on teaching & learning with philosophy A as being the present situation whereby education can be fixed, technology drives change, teachers can be fixed, learners are the future workforce, innovation is good, success should be measured & the curriculum is not consultative. Philosophy B posits that education is a long term investment in the future, technology enables, supports & accelerates change, teachers are supported professionals, students are more than just the future workforce, curriculum is developed with guidance & support from teachers, innovation must also be scalable & sustainable & success is measured via wider term benefits.
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