Technology Strategy?

Originally uploaded by Daniel Livingstone.

Posting from Second Life at the Technology Strategy Board island – and wondering more than a little what strategy they actually have for using the virtual world.

It is undoubtably a ‘nice’ island, but like many in Second Life it seems like an virtual world presence that has been created specifically to host a launch event, gather some publicity and allow the owners to say they are in Second Life. Are there any plans to actually *use* this space?

The blog linked to here doesn’t inspire confidence – having last been updated in December last year.

I *still* haven’t found time to watch all the videos from ALT-C, or review all the virtual world related papers that I picked out from the proceedings. Now the video and audio proceedings are available from Handheld Learning 2009, here: http://www.handheldlearning2009.com/proceedings.

I wonder if I download the proceedings to my phone and put it under my pillow if I’ll be able to absorb all the information by osmosis…

My talk earlier this week at SJSU SLIS on ‘Opening up education in games, simulations and virtual worlds’ went pretty well, with some good questions and response from the audience on campus and in Second Life. A video of the talk is being prepared by the tech support folks, but in the meantime I’ve posted my slides to SlideShare (under CC-Attribution-ShareAlike):

To summarise some of the key points:

• Generally speaking computer games are too expensive to produce for most OER purposes
• Even where games include source code and art assets, and allow remixing, the level of expertise required means that 3rd party remixing of OER games is unlikely
• User-generated content in *some* virtual worlds (Second Life is the key example) can be produced much more cheaply than creating novel games or simulations
• There are current challenges in effectively sharing OER content in virtual worlds
• ‘Open’ can refer to content that is free to use/visit, content that might be free to copy, content that might be free to give-away and content that might be free to remix/repurpose. Check the terms and conditions!
• Being able to backup content out of virtual worlds more readily will allow virtual world OER content to be stored in repositories outside of the virtual world, and help guarantee availability over longer periods of time
• Linden Lab have recently announced policies relating to copying items out of Second Life, and more action is expected soon. Using some copying technologies may result in banning?

A mind-blowing article in November issue of Wired (17.11 – not yet on the web) on page 158 – and it isn’t even on the cover. Demand Media, which runs sites such as eHow and has published tens of thousands of instructional videos on YouTube produce over 4,000 articles and videos EACH DAY.

Demand use a few computer programs to mine current search engine terms, the ad market and competitor articles to determine daily what topics and articles to produce. A computer algorithm generates suggested article titles based on this information, these are then proofed and edited by humans proofers before the titles are added to an online repository of articles needed. Freelance writers and video producers trawl this site, write up their articles or shoot their videos for low, low fees (a typical video producer might need to make 10 videos a day to earn a wage).

This is a highly industrialized method of production, production to meet demand in real-time. And all of this is funded through advertising revenues…

Are there ways that academia could better use some of these notions? I would hate to see such an industrialised mode of content production, but the contrast with institutions, consortiums and even nations that have in the past spent millions of pounds on distance learning initiatives that have failed to return even one tenth of the investment could not be starker.

Yet another Augmented Reality game makes it to commercial handhelds – this time the Sony PSP (with Go!Cam). Invizimals is a Pokemon pet training game that allows users to capture pets, then trade them or pit them in combat against friends’ pets – the twist being that you have to first find them in their hiding places somewhere around your house, and the AR interface places the Invizimals in the environment. Looks good – but from viewing the video I think I’m somewhat disappointed that the use of real world environment seems very limited – but I think more interesting and clever exploitation of the environment might be a bit beyond the current generation hand held hardware.

It would be great to be proven wrong though…

On Friday, Paul Bacisch of Re.ViCa gave talk and led some discussion at the University of the West of Scotland, just along from my own office. One of the key aspects of his talk was consideration of the Open Learning Innovation Fund – a large HEFCE initiative to support the development of distance learning activities of UK universities. But not for all the UK – as HEFCE’s remit only covers England, Scotland (along with Ulster and perhaps also Wales) is not covered. This would seem to put Scottish universities at a significant disadvantage, however as Paul’s talk amply showed large investments of money do not always lead to success.

Indeed many of the largest and most well funded distance learning projects fail to cover their own expenses. Paul has some direct experience of this from his time at the UK eUniversity, and his presentation was on the same day that THES reported on the small returns on investment so far from the large international U21Global collaborative distance learning project.

Technology is not a differentiator, with VLEs available to all – pedagogy is more important than technology. But Paul he was particularly critical of the lack of market research involved in many of the larger projects, and highlighted a number of success stories. These tend to be home grown, organically developed, and as likely to come from the FE or commercial sectors as from a university. Basically, universities that are doing it right have got a head start and are succeeding – most universities are not.

Meanwhile world markets are not sitting ducks – Paul pointed out that distance learning offerings come from over 100 countries. As well as other British institutions, American, Canadian, and European universities, colleges and companies, recruiters have to also consider the local competition.

At the end of the meeting it was interesting to discuss with other faculty from across the university about where we might be going wrong with some of our own DL offerings. Illuminating, but nothing I can share here

First post from this year’s Scottish Learning Festival. I made it to two talks so far – Derek Robertson’s presentation of Canvas – the OpenSim based 3D online art gallery for Scottish schools, and Ollie Bray’s more general one on game based learning. More on that later.

From the expo floor there is the usual mix of computer, smart board, educational play, books, software, etc etc vendors. What caught my eye the most was the connectED stand. For a few years now, connectED have been providing Sony PSP hardware, software and training specifically for the education sector – but it was not that that caught my attention.

They are currently working on a system called Second Sight – this is an augmented reality authoring toolkit for teachers. This was demoed on PSP, but education director Andy Goff assures me that a Nokia version is very well advanced with iPhone also in the works.

In the PSP screen you can see the AR dinosaur overlaid ontop of the camera view

connectED are apparently already working with English Heritage on using this on some EH sites, and have a number of collaborations active for rolling this out. Final product ready in about six months, but already the authoring environment seems very straightforward – allowing markers to be inserted into books, into displays or into the environment to add AR audio, video and 3D content.

After a little reflection, and reading a little more from the forums/blogs etc., I thought I’d ask what Connectivism is trying to be rather than the more obvious ‘What is Connectivism’ – but there is a reason for this, and I think it might help me get to heart of my issues with Connectivism. Apologies for any incoherent rambling below…

First up, the usual caveat: I haven’t completed this weeks required reading. In fact, I can’t access Stephen Downes’ website at the moment (has it crashed?) – and so can’t view the video from last week’s chat between Stephen and George Siemens where they discuss “What is Connectivism” – should be here: http://connect.downes.ca/cgi-bin/page.cgi?post=44447

Here are two things that Connectivism could be:

• A general theory of learning and knowledge in networks. This would not need to claim that all learning occurs in networks – but seek to understand and explain how learning does occur in networks, and use this understanding to develop improved pedagogies/andragogies.
• A grand unified theory of learning in homo-sapiens (incorporating what McLuhan calls ‘the extensions of man’ – i.e. technologies from writing to smartphones and everything in between).

Other people have picked out some quotes from Stephen and George which indicate that they are indeed trying to develop a general theory of learning in networks – e.g.:

A lot of discussions about networks that occur in society fall under the heading of discussions of social networks, so you get people like Duncan Watts and others and you’re looking at stuff like scale-free networks and all of that. And you’re quite right, connectionist literature focuses on what they call neural networks or simulations of neural networks and it’s focused on things like the brain and perception and recognition by computers and so on. Part of my position is that the two phenomena are one and the same, that what we’re seeing at the micro level in the brain is the same kind of thing that we’re seeing in society, that we’re seeing in different ways in different places in society. The same principles that govern crickets interacting with each other govern bloggers citing and quoting each other, govern the development of river systems and trees – those principles are also the principles that govern things like human brains and computer networks set up in certain ways.

Stephen Downes, 2007 – Quote picked out by Roel on the CCK09 forums.

This seems quite reasonable in many ways – networks are indeed a distinct class of phenomenon that are open to study irrespective of what the networks are made up of. Which is why, to pick an example I’m familiar with, it is possible to model language change and evolution using mathematical and simulation models that were originally convieved to model physical or biological phenomena. My own experience of this feels like half a life-time ago, but is encapsulated in my PhD thesis, “Computer Models of the Evolution of Language and Languages”, defended way back in September 2003.

The ability to study networks independent of what the networks are of is important in complexity science, and has led to books like ‘Weak Links‘ by Peter Csermely, which has the subtitle: Stabilizers of Complex Systems from Proteins to Social Networks. Proteins, neurons, social networks – all very different, but at some level all the same at a very abstract level.

Where I have problems is (as identified in my last post) is the ‘bit in the middle’ – the conceptual layer of Connectivism. At the bottom layer we have neural networks, at the top we have social and technological networks. In the middle, we learn by developing networks of concepts. As George said in reply to my previous post:

I learned by encountering concepts and connecting them in different ways. In fact, I’d go so far as to state that our understanding is related to how we have connected concepts. An expert has a more nuanced conceptual network – she understands how the introduction of a new element influences what already exists. A psychologist has an easier time learning a new theory of motivation than does a farmer. Why? The existing state of understanding (patterns of connections between concepts/ideas) is more developed in the psychologist in relation to psychological concepts. The farmer, in contrast, will better understand new fertilizers or the impact of weather on particular crops (where to irrigate and when).

And concepts are non-symbolic patterns:

concepts are not words and that’s why it’s not going to be a rule-based system; they are patterns in a network and that like the human brain or a network like society as a whole. In these networks, there’s no specific place where the concept is located. The concept is distributed as a set of connections across the same network and other concepts are embedded in the same network; they form parts of each other and they affect each other. (Stephen Downes, 2007)

It’s here at the level of concepts that Connectivism extends itself from simply trying to describe how learning occurs in networks into a new grand-unified theory of learning – by asking us to adopt this theory in place of the like of Constructivism. Without this middle layer of concepts, Connectivism would perhaps sit more easily alongside a wide range of other learning theories and pedagogies. As it is, trying to explain human learning simply in terms of networks of concepts seems tricky – again in his comments George admits:

The conceptual level then refers to “learning”…and, unfortunately, this is an area that is still rather underdeveloped…

I think that at this middle level, when concepts and networks are invoked we are actually dealing with a metaphor for learning – based on connectionist principles, agreed, but a metaphor nonetheless. And a very vague one at that. Connections are made or are not:

Connections form naturally, through a process of association, and are not ‘constructed’ through some sort of intentional action (Downes 2007)

So how do I use that to develop a pedagogy, or improve my teaching? I model some concepts for students and the connections either form or they don’t? George Siemens’ prepared a What is Connectivism googledoc that emphasises the challenge in developing a practical pedagogy from Connectivism. In a table, a number of learning theories are compared according to a range of factors. From this we see the following:

• Influencing factors in constructivism: Engagement, participation, social, cultural
• Influencing factors in connectivism: Diversity of network, strength of ties, context of occurrence

If I see a student in my class who is playing web-games instead of attempting the current activity I might consider that the student is not engaging with the class and possibly chat with that student and try to develop some strategy to improve that student’s engagement. This clearly is a constructivist approach.

What practical pedagogy does connectivism offer here? The idea that a student might have some specific learning intentions appears to be rejected by connectivism, and the question of engagement does not appear to fit with connectivist theory.

And this is, I think, a symptom of attempting to use general theories about networks and turn them into a grand-unified theory of learning. For me, Connectivism’s biggest issue is scope.

Enough for now. Back to work…

Edit: The table in the GoogleDoc mentioned above has a final row titled “Types of learning best explained” – this implies that Connectivism (at least as seen by George) is not trying to be a grand-unifying learning theory – but one that sits easily alongside others. In which case, why does it need the bit in the middle? After all learning involving “Complex learning, rapid changing core, diverse knowledge sources” could be described without reference to the neural level at all, and without insistence on the networks-of-concepts metaphor.

Steven Downes and George Siemens’ online course ‘Connectivism and Connective Knowledge’ has started its 2009 run. The introductory video is online here. Week 1 readings here.

Although it has only just started, I already have doubts about whether I’ll be able to keep involved with this over the semester – I’ve had to take on a new course (that I’m teaching) at very short notice, I have some work travel, and a bunch of extra deadlines already looming.

My position going into the course is that I have some issues with Connectivism – though I doubt I’ll make it through all this week’s reading list. I did review Stephen Downes description of Connectivism, where he also responds to some comments and critique from Tony Forster and Bill Kerr.

My initial thoughts below…

My feeling is that Connectivism is a somewhat forced attempt to combine two very different and distinct things – the neural processes involved in individual learning, and community processes involved in learning within groups/communities.

At one level we have a highly reductionist view – its all about the neural connections, how brains work at this low level. At the other level its about how people interact and make connections with other people. And entirely removed from this is any acceptance of higher level models or theories of how individuals may learn. Because brains have neurons, not models, explanations of learning that invoke mental models are rejected:

And ‘meaning’ is a property of language and logic, connoting referential and representational properties of physical symbol systems. Such systems are epiphenomena of (some) networks, and not descriptive of or essential to these networks.

Well, individual people can learn without networks of other people (though trial and error, dogged persistence, observation, etc.) – so perhaps networks of people can be considered an epiphenomena of individual learning – it does not appear to be descriptive (and is clearly not essential) to how an individual learns.

Meanwhile, I don’t quite understand why we need to reject the emergent ephiphenomena around individual learning – theories derived from thinking about how mental models (for example) are formed are not just useful for thinking about how learning occurs, they can lead to ways to improve teaching and learning facilitation. If we restrict our thinking to be just about how networks of neurons learn then we seem to lose an awful lot.

Meanwhile, if we consider emergent phenomena more generally we can argue out that medicine is a form of applied biology, biological systems are emergent, and dependent on, underlying chemistry. Behaviour of molecules and atoms themselves may be more accurately described through physics. Layer upon layer of emergence and epiphenomena are at work here. Doctors do learn about biology and chemistry, to a degree, but their expertise is focussed at the level of phenomena with which they are primarily concerned: the health of the individual.

If we accept the strong claims of Connectivism do we not also make the case for denying Psychology as a field of study? Stop studying human behaviour at the individual level, because it’s all epiphenomena and get with Congitive Neuroscience and focus our study exclusively on the neurons, because that is where it’s really happening?

I accept that this may be a gross misreading, but hey, as I said at the beginning I haven’t finished the recommended reading yet

What I did at ALT-C 2009…

Short version: I hung around for a bit, chatted to some people, then went to the pub.

Long version – featuring open education resources, debating the value of VLEs, Michael Wesch’s keynote and more…

Despite leaving home incredibly early, I managed to miss the opening of Michael Wesch’s keynote (due to some faffing about at Machester Airport). Wesch’s talk necessarily covered many points that featured in his well known videos, but with more depth and context – and had some fun stuff, such as tracing the evolution of ‘whatever’. From discussion after and reading online comments, reception was mixed – this being (apparently) largely the same keynote he’s delivered elsewhere, and some differing reactions to the talk itself. For me the issue was principally that if you’ve seen Michael’s videos already, and if you’ve read a few articles or posts from him online, the keynote didn’t contain enough surprises. There was a lot of humour there, and enthusiastic presentation. Good but not life changing.

Content wise, Michael mentioned that his group is studying how people ‘flock’ on the internet – they’ve adopted this term in place of ‘group’ as they feel it better reflects how people may come together, travel some way together, and split off at any time. I think it does capture the very informal nature of a lot of web-based groups with loose membership that changes over time – but I don’t think it helps us think about how people may be members of multiple (possibly overlapping, possibly not) groups at any one time. Conceptually, I understand multiple group membership better than multiple flock membership – which brings to my mind images of deadly avian pile-ups. Can anyone suggest a better term? If not, lets just call them groups, and not complicate matters.

I was going to see Richard Noss’ talk on the grand challenges for technology-enhanced learning next – but decided to check in at the halls where I was staying. This turned out to be a waste of time, as check in didn’t open till 2pm… back to the conference, where I caught up with a few folks and chatted networked.

Next session I went to was ‘Technology Enhanced Feed-Forward‘ – this presented results of a study of student reactions to audio (podcast) and video feedback. Quick take home message was that in the trial *many* students disliked getting feedback via mp3, and it was identified that tutors giving feedback via podcast have to be much more careful how they give their feedback. The feedback has to be much more constructive and very supportive in tone otherwise it can be a very negative – harrowing even – experience for the students. There was also some good discussion after.

More chatting networking over lunch.

The VLE is Dead was a deliberately provocative symposium session with a range of speakers defending or attacking the use of VLEs. This was a packed out session, with Josie Taylor valiantly managing to keep control in the face of heated debate with some audience members chipping in their comments out of order (ahem). What started as a debate about institional VLEs vs Personal Learning Environments (PLEs) developed into much wider debate about the role of universities and open vs. closed models of learning. The session was recorded, and you can see the video on James Clay’s blog here – The VLE is Dead: The Movie. Worth watching the opening statements at least – some very astute and  some funny metaphors and allusions thrown in for good measure.

The feeling I got from this overall, and speaking to some of the panellists later, is that students use diverse and individual ranges of technology regardless – so they already have their PLE, with the institutional VLE being but one part of that. Like many others I believe that the VLE brings benefits of providing a known and common ‘base’ for students’ online learning. One which members of staff can easily make the launch pad for a whole load of external Web 2.0 activities if they so wish – and that many faculty already do this. What didn’t make it into the debate, but is a worthy note, is how VLEs are adapting to the social web. Moodle 2.0, for example, is introducing a repositories API for interacting with the external web – where a repository can be Flickr, a blog or somesuch, not just some ‘formal’ or closed institutional repository.

There was a gap on my schedule after that – I hadn’t spotted the ‘Virtual Midwifery’ session. Instead I wandered down for coffee. Where my new laptop bag was spotted and greatly admired. Is it particularly shameless at this point to link to my wife’s Folksy store? Oh well, done it now. She sometimes takes commisions, btw.

Next up I was meaning to catch the HEA presentation – but ended up chatting networking some more instead. I was also hoping to catch up with someone at the TLRP stall, having missed Richard Noss’ invited talk earlier. But when I wandered down there was no one about. From the JISC intute stall I learned that subject specific versions of their online tutorial on evaluating web sources/resources exist. We’ve used their more generic ‘Internet Detective’ web-quest several times in induction sessions for new students before, the ICT-specific web-research tutorial might be even better.

During the final session I managed to make it to 1 1/2 sessions relating to Open Education Resources. First up, the Talis Open Education Incubator – Chris Clark outlined the program whereby Talis will be proving seed funding to a number of (mainly small) OER projects. Its a very moderate amount of funding overall, but hopefully enough to help get some good work off the ground. Then I dashed upstairs for the OER Matters session. Having missed the start, I didn’t realise till afterward that the panellists were each playing a character with a different take on OER. Opinion was divided as to whether this device helped make the views on OER clearer or whether this just made things a little confusing.

Still, as Im hoping to start publishing some of my own materials as OER soon, I took this opportunity to continue the chat about OER over dinner – sat between the OU’s Chris Pegler and Thursday keynoter Terry Anderson. When they weren’t both admiring the afore mentioned laptop bag, we did chat about OERs and some of the barriers to publishing. Chris commented that personal insecurity about the quality of notes was perhaps one of the biggest barriers to OER publication – that tutors are unwilling to publish notes before they are perfect prevents them from ever appearing. I have to agree that if I prepare materials for my own students it does not matter too much if there are mistakes – I am there with the students to discuss and work round any issues.

One solution is to publish materials within a conversational framework – knowing that the notes are not perfect but inviting comment and corrections – Tony Hirst has already provided an example of this, with his Digital Worlds game development ‘uncourse’. I’ll hopefully be able to get my finger out soon and get started on my own…

Finally, the pub with F-Alt and more chatting networking.