Leaders and Legends Online learning - Professor Mike Sharples

 Dr. Mark Nichols' podcast on Leaders and Legends of Online Learning this week is with Professor Emeritus Mike Sharples. 

Began with an overview of his career, how it started with a degree in computer science and worked towards his PhD on cognition, computers and creative writing. He has always worked with AI and Gen AI for over 50 years. 

He compared the 'sudden awareness' of AI to how the internet developed. Much work undertaken over many decades before user relevance and other parts supporting the concept, took it into the mainstream. As with the www, important to think through implications and have guardrails with AI as there are many ways it can be utilised for good and also for bad.

Discussed his involvement across the 2000s with mobile learning as a means to provide more personal and individualised learning. 

Then provided an overview of how the UK version of MOOC - futurelearn - was set up to bring in good practice and pedagogy based on understanding of neuroscience into the design of futurelearn. A successful learning platform, distinctively difference from other MOOCs which are based mainly on lectures. In contrast, futurelearn stresses social learning opportunities along with the usual online learning platform mechanics.

Then introduced his most recent books including Story Machines: How computers have become creative writers.

Discussed the importance of social constructivist learning. Personalised learning is one piece but not the only one. There is still a need for learners to interact with their peers, teachers etc. to springboard and synthesise, discuss and defend their stance, weight up and evaluate their conceptual understanding. AI should not be only a technological tool but needs to be led by pedagogy. Encouraged the need to ensure the use of technology is more human centred. 

Summarised the important components of a new online system. Pedagogy is essential. Concepts include the need to have spaced learning, ensure learning is a social process, feedback is provided at the right time,and the need to build learner efficacy. AI-enhanced collaborative learning must be the goal.

Proposed the most important research is to find out how to best leverage technology to encourage and support social learning, rather than just go down the personalised learning route. New methods of assessment also need to be considered to allow for social learning and to focus on assessments for learning. Some ideas include peer assessments, the opportunity for learners to express their judgment, and evaluative and critical thinking. 

Now he is retired, his research interest centres around the future of technology-enhanced education. He is able to concentrate on research without the distractions of the other aspects of an academic career. Recommended to follow the work of colleagues at the University of Sussex and Looi Chee Kit (Nanyang Technological University and The Educational University of Hong Kong) who has had success introducing many principles of learning sciences at the primary school level. 

Using inaturalist

 

As blogged previously, I have found inaturalist to be a good way to learning about the flora and fauna of Aotearoa. It has been five years of support from many others as I bumble my way through trying to identify the many plants found on various walks and tramps.

I currently have just over 2000 observations across 800 plus species uploaded. A long way off the person with the highest number of observations (over 28,000!) That is a lot of data! 170 identifiers have helped confirm various plants, birds, insects, lichen, fungi that have been posted.

Last year, I took part in the City Nature challenge in May and then the Great Southern bioblitz which was held in October. As I was in Cromwell at that time, my observations were recorded for the Otago chapter of the bioblitz. Due to the diverse landscapes across Aotearoa, it is possible to find plants which are 'naturally uncommon' either due to their small regional coverage, or specialised growing conditions.

Inaturalist works because many people, with a passion for nature, convene to upload their observations, identify / confirm each other’s observations, and contribute to a better understanding of the earth’s diverse ecosystems.

In a way, the site epitomises what can be achieved through social media when there is a shared objective. 

As I look through and compare my postings from 2017 to the ones made recently, I can say that I have learnt much. Having a better phone camera has helped with the quality of close-up shots of small plants and insects. Through last year, I have started to record a wider range of flora and fauna. My ability to identify most native plants common in the Te Wai Pounamu (South Island) has meant I have started to diversify my observations to include grasses and lichens. It is still very much learning in progress. Even with ‘familiar’ areas, I am finding new plants. Sometimes because they grow primarily in one region but other times because their cryptic nature (small and ‘ordinary’) means they have been overlooked. However, as I become more conversant with the ‘common’, plants which are unfamiliar start to stick out. Hence, the inklings of the specific expertise required to be a proficient amateur botanist, are emerging :) Again, expertise takes time to develop but also strong motivation. Something we always need to remember when we introduce novices to a subject/discipline area or topic which requires hard work to attain.

Returning to LinkedIn as a resource - distance/remote learning

I joined LinkedIn quite a few years ago but never really participated until a couple of months ago.

The reasons are many, but one would be the 'corporate' or 'organisational management' focus for many of the posts in my feed due to the people I am linked in with.

However, the international effects of Covid-19 has meant everyone has been affected as people scramble, in their own contexts, to cope with the need for rapid change.

The effect on having to shift education online has therefore created a large amount of activity and LinkedIn has been a source of many good articles, resources, think pieces and guides on how to cope.

Here is a small selection, gleaned over the last couple of weeks:

- Inge de Waard has provided some 'quick guides' on shifting from f2f to remote/distance learning, albeit from a higher education context, but still good templates to customise from.

- Alison Miller who consults in the elearning arena, provides links to a range of resources.

- Mark Nichols work on distance learning is always good to keep up with.

- Derek Wenmoth often helps educators see beyond the present and presents implication for current decisions.

- Michael Sankey's work is focussed on bigger picture and organisation strategy  related to on-line learning.

- Peter Mellow often links to useful resources for educators.

- Joyce Seitzinger is a go to for learning design in the area of distance/online learning.

- Mark Brown provides a mix of links to the big picture and educator practice.

Therefore, tapping into the present social networking opportunities, provides for a way to benchmark what we are doing at Ara. In particular, some idea of what others are doing, the important theoretical underpinnings for decisions made on curriculum and learning design, and reflections on things that have worked and challenges. All in, a good way to be supported and not feel that we are not the only ones caught up in a massive shift from the known into the unforseeable.

Working from home

We live in challenging times. Although the number of covid-19 cases in NZ is still low and almost all originating from returning Kiwis or tourists, the government has raised alert level to 2 on Saturday, out of a 4 level scale.

Following have been persistent calls to raise the level to 4 , basically to snuff out any possibility of virus spread NOW rather than wait until there is clear evidence of community dispersal.

Given the dire experiences in China, Europe and now Australia (with a lockdown imminent in NSW and Victoria), it is perhaps best to pay attention to the calls for lockdown now rather than later :(

As part of level 2 alert, all employees who are able to are called to work from home. So today, after a series of planning meetings, all of my division will be working from home. We have had several 'tryout' days in the past two weeks. Zoom, our video conferencing platform and microsoft Teams have been mainstays for work productivity along with email and the Teams 'chat function'. As an institution, we are better placed than nine years ago, when the Christchurch earthquake struck and we lost all access to our internal networks and physical entry to our main campus for a whole semester.

However, many of our programmes, due to their vocational nature, will be hard pushed to go fully on-line. The practice-based / hands-on emphasis for our courses makes going fully into on-line and distance delivery, a major challenge. The focus for these courses is to develop small and well-structured 'projects' or inquiries for students to apply what they have learnt so far, to complete. We will evaluate how this approach has worked after things calm down.

For the moments, it will take some adjustment for all our team and the wider Ara community to adjust to working from home, whilst still being able to support each other as we move through the challenge.

Hypothes.is – annotating web pages

This tool - hypothes.is - was recommended as a possible back up for OB3 - which allows for quick upload of 'content' and seamless entry of discussion on the content.

hypothes.is ia a web annotation tool. Content is accessed via a weblink or similar and the annotations are then viewable by others.The target users are scholars and education. The site has examples and tutorials.

There is a critique at the chronicle along with a range of alternatives for web-annotation here.

Neither tool appears on Jane Hart's top 200 tools.

There are differences between the user interfaces for OB3 and web annotation. OB3 is more of a wiki type interface. Althought content can be 'protected' so that new entries are possible but no changes to existing entries. Web annotation works more like the addition of comments or notes as per Kindle or comments via Word. Both have a roled to play and the underlying pedagogical approaches may be similar. However, how each works, is different.

Going forwward, we will have to identify a list of 'tools' as our current LMS, Moodle, is starting to show its age and there seems to be limited work on the platform to update or maintain currency with the needs of our learners.

Learning through social media - becoming part of a learning community

In an effort to attain better work / study / life balance, I have started to bring some organisation into one aspect of my informal learning, which is of New Zealand flora and fauna. Having tramped (hiked) around most of the South Island for almost forty years, I learnt, through a process of osmosis, some of the common plants, birds, insects and lizards/skinks commonly encountered in NZ's diverse natural landscapes. As I near retirement, I am in need of an intellectually challenging hobby and my long standing forays into ‘naming things’ may become an avenue to take up time released through retirement from work.

My initial attempts to bring structure my botanical instruction began by collating photos of plants taken on various tramps / walks. To date, after 2 years, almost 300 plants archived on Picasa, now Google photos, with identification sought through references to a range of books on my shelves, library books and then an increasing array of digital resources found through Google. Of which botany has extensive resources, with this site a good one archiving the myriad links.

All the above makes use of my current research skills, albeit in a more visual medium. I also sought out botanically trained, or inclined walking companions, many of whom patiently explained the nuances of identifying the rather large corpus of plants in NZ. Including a wide range of small leaved shrubs - with this book by Hugh Wilson and Tim Galloway an essential reference.

Several months ago, on advice from one of these ‘teachers’, I subscribed to Naturewatch. The contribution of networked learning has increased my learning several fold. I have also been able to observe how the on-line community on Naturewatch interact and support kindred spirits. So now, I try to upload photos a day or so after I have recorded the specimens. I usually attempt to identity the plant/s as I upload them, so would have made an effort to find the plant in my ‘hard-copy’ or digital resources first or use the nifty visual matching facility on the site. Then, usually within ½ a day, my sample would either be confirmed, or alternative identification would be offered. Through this process, I have learnt to be more careful with my initial identifications and to especially take note of seminal identification features and regional aspects.

Remembering the names of these plants is a major challenge. However, I have found associating the plant to the place where the photo was taken, provides a good initial anchor into my neural framework. Then, repeating the plant name when I encounter another sample, helps to reinforce the memory and lead to better recall on following occasions. Plants which have been contentious and have led to a discussion on Naturewatch have also been helpful. The experience of interacting with others and discussing the rationale for identification, again assists with future recollection.

All in, a good foray into the realm of possibilities opened up by the internet. When I shared the above with a good amateur botanist friend of mine, who is in her eighties, she was impressed by the ease of information sharing. Replacing the time honoured method of snail mail correspondence and asynchronous interaction. So, my learning is work in progress. 

New World without Strangers - ChannelNews Asia TV series

Further from post summarising the first few episodes of the series  - New World without Strangers - a ChannelNews Asia TV series, episodes 8 and 9 are of interest and briefly overviewed / extended here. The series has shifted from highlighting the sharing physical resources – homes, meals, cars / rides and stuff – to sharing knowledge and ideas.

Episode 8 - sharing of ideas part one is of interest to educators. Examples of apps / sharing networks include:

Queri – help with homework – but also contribute to questions from others to earn tokens, which you can spend on getting others to solve your problems. See StraitsTimes article for more examples.

MOOCs in China with guoker and Coursera and rise of access to higher ed. covers Mooc production in China – QingZhou Education for teachers.

Pinyeke – lessons on mobile phone

Korea – Wisdom – courses taught by an expert in the topic.

Repair Kopi tiam – DIY ‘repair club’

The episode stressed the socio-cultural dimension of learning – internet and books can only go so far, meeting with people also needed to maintain motivation and trigger serenpidicious learning moments.

Also, Future Friday – Singapore – sustainable learning lab,

National design centre – one maker group, example of maker (Gabrielle Koh) a lifetime maker continuing work started as child with his father and uncle. Importance of working with your hands, got an idea – try to do it and learn by doing. In the process, you may find a better way of doing something.

China – had a history of innovation. However, presently thought of as ‘imitators’ and manufacturing cheap products. Need to change image to again invent – xinchejian (new garage)– maker space. No tech knowledge needed but collaboration across skills encouraged. China has a culture of valuing knowledge and innovation, so need to find what has always been there. Example of Argentinian entrepreneur with electronics knowledge leveraging off robotic / software expertise at xinchejian to produce prototype of a coding / robotic learning toy. Hackers in Singapore –National University of Singapore hack n roll – a 25 hour hackathon – brainstorming and making session to solve problems.

Episode 9 - This episode explores collaboration where by individuals work with governments to improve livability in cities.

How we make money, how we interact, how we live.

Korea – Kpop phenomenon – busking play – integrating busking into economy of a city. Promoting busking to Koreans, who did not understand the concept. From an audition video, aspiring buskers are screened and selected to be promoted – leading to more support from city government to provide ‘facilities’ and legislation for conducting busking – breathing new life into cities.

Code for Seoul – hackers who pick up public available data to improve civic goals. Dependent on governments releasing data into the public domain. Open data allows for more participative democracy to work.

Singapore – Social innovation hackertons. Geohackertons – assist non-profit organisations to produce apps / software to support their work. Example used on government opening geo-spatial information to allow for more efficient logistical type apps to be developed or for people with similar or complementary needs to meet / network / support each other (e.g. cancer patients and their supporters).

Episode 10 - last episode focuses on start-ups, how they acquire capital - social, physical. Allows entrepreneurs to get up and going.

Beyond buying and sharing to share money through ‘crowdfunding’ – an electronic version of depending on family and friends for seed funding. E.g. Kickstarter probably most common in Western economies. In Korea, 7 million (NZ8500) won can be raised by startups each year through crowdfunding. Pros and cons of crowdfunding are discussed.

Overall, the series provides a good (albeit quite long) introduction to how networking has changed the way in which we can now do things. 

DK on social media for educators - CORE breakfast session

Another well attended session, at the last Core breakfast for this year. DK, who now works for Core in Christchurch, presentation an introduction to contextualise social media, to the audience who are mostly education administrators plus also touched on young peoples' use of social media using concept of young people as a barometer of change.

Social media can be defined as 'digital dialogue', so not just a broadcast medium but a form of conversation.

Hi went through a timeline of ways in which we have moved into social media- including
first sms message in 1992 as a business tool.
1994 first mass mobile phone - nokia
1996 hotmail addresses
1999 first file sharing network plus start of blogger
2000 psp 2 allowed people to play with others via web
2001 wikipedia and crowdsourcing and ipod launched
2002 second life and linden dollars
2003 myspace -
2004 Skype, flickr - concept of geo tagging
2005 youtube
2006 twitter
2007 iphone
2008 use of social media in american presidential elections, Obama shows how to leverage
2010 amazon sold more ebooks than real books

Main point is change and technology continutes regardless, there should not be a 'digital divide' between us and although most of us are 'digital immigrants' we have more experience, money, power and have access to the same technology and software tools.

Used video from zefrank on ugly myspace pages and how do we become producers to make the point of consumers becoming producers and aggregators and how this changes they way in which digital media is constructed and viewed.
Introduced the six spaces of media :
secret - text email
group social - face book, myspace
publishing public - flickr youtube
performance world of warcraft, geocaching
participation showcase - threaddless kickstarter
watching - ppt tv

desire paths - when we want to go somewhere but the majority are shifted to go down another way - stefan sagmeister - video on using speech bubble stickers

play/neoteny - ted talks - steve keil: a manifesto for play, bulgaria and beyond - the need to continue to 'play' as adults

media snackers - 2007 johannesburg - young people with limited digital literacy becoming digital journalists

blogging - seth godin and tom peters - why blog open forum.com

social media business is in the work of creating and promoting change

= change - doing something different- alvin toffler -" the illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn"

The presentation covered a lot of ground in a short time frame and there were some thought provoking challenges for educators.  How can educators embrace social networking as a form of continual learning for themselves and for their students/

PIPTA and CPIT allied staff workshops

Did two presentations today. Firstly, a short presentation at Lincoln University, on “harnessing technology to enhance trades learning: mlearning, eportfolios and web 2.0” to the Primary Industry Polytechnic Tutors Association (PIPTA) as part of their annual moderation and professional development days. Most of the tutors work in the agricultural, forestry and horticultural fields. I was interested in my interactions with this group of tutors as it is a group I have had few opportunities to make contact with. Also, good to meet tutors who teach in the dairy industry as one of the groups of apprentices participating in the ‘first year apprentices’ research project are apprentices on dairy farms. An industry characterised by very long hours of work exampled by 4am starts to 6 pm finish and working for at least 8 to 10 days before a couple of days off


Second presentation followed by a workshop, similar to one I presented about a month or so ago at Weltec for tutors from Weltec, Whiterea and Open Polytechnics, sponsored by Ako Aotearoa Central Hub. The focus for today’s presentation slightly different as it is to CPIT allied staff, a varied group of people working in administrative and technical support roles. The presentation introduced concepts of Web 2.0 including the rapid movement towards mobile and cloud computing.

Of interest is the increase, when compared to feedback from presentations from just two years ago, of most people’s general knowledge in using technology in both their work and non-work lives. Social networking is now no longer a total mystery to many people and sites like Youtube, Twitter and Facebook are now mentioned so often in general media, that the average person will have at least heard of these although never actually used them.

With each of the above groups, I did a general survey of how many people actually contributed to Web 2.0 sites. There is a 100% response and this may be due to the wider use of consumer focused web 2.0 sites like trademe (buying and selling online), seek (job hunting) and services like internet banking and shopping. Not as many were familiar with ‘cloud computing’ and the move towards ubiquitous computing. However, most had heard about the ipad and net tabs may be the hardware tool which will shift the general population towards un-tethered, cloud-based access to the internet.

Off to Teaching and Learning conference tomorrow where I will present a keynote and a follow-up workshop on ‘Belonging, becoming and being: Learning from narratives of apprentices and trades tutors’. The presentation is on how to leverage off the metaphors of belonging to a workplace, becoming and being to assist tutors to enhance earning opportunities for apprentices, pre-trade students and to help new trades tutors draw on trades skills to become good teachers.

efest - eTLC2009 - day 2 afternoon keynote

Joyce Seitzinger from EIT presented on "You are not alone" centred on social networking sites including twitter and blogs. We are able to connect & contribute but there are thousands of web 2.0 sites, too much information to access!

Where to start? Join a community of practice. Find a community which appeals eg everybody, trademe. Ning was used as a site for the eTLC09. This is more than a website as it includes many opportunities for networking. Examples of smaller communities include online conferences & Special interest groups.

Start a personal learning network. Maybe based on a blog, wiki or a social networking site.