Learning or consumption?

Ubiquitous learning is a concept which I see quite often in articles. The idea is that learning is accessible anywhere and at any time. We can access the net, download lectures to our mobile terminals, communicate and collaborate whenever we want. But how often can it be truly labelled as learning?

We consume vast amounts of information every day but how much do we learn from it all? I watch films, read articles, listen to talks but I'm afraid I don't retain too much of it all. I have to do a fair amount of active processing before I can really say I've learnt something from it. Sadly I consume vast amounts of information without really reflecting over it. To learn something I need to reflect, discuss with someone, take notes or take some kind of action based on the information. Otherwise it just fades away into the subconscious leaving only a few random impressions. It would be more accurate to talk about ubiquitous information. We can access everything everywhere and there is an unlimited amount of it. To turn that into learning requires the addition of some kind of structure, some kind of timetable with deadlines. If not we merely consume.

We can fill the net with excellent educational content offering the potential for learning but without structures for reflection and processing we will seldom learn from it all. Consumption of information is passive whereas learning is active and I think the former is what we are mostly involved in. We mistake the presence of information for learning. That's where the teacher comes in - to provide framework and focus to turn information overload into learning.

The missing link?

After discovering the wonders of FriendFeed there's another tool worth noting that promises to link Facebook with a university's learning management system. It's called CourseFeed and enables Facebook to link with an LMS giving students the ability to integrate their social network with their academic studies. Sounds like the missing link offering the best of both worlds but the question is whether we should let Facebook log into our LMS and collect information. Michael Hotrum's interesting blog takes up this question and for more comments just go there.

Keeping tabs

I see there's a new service for social networking fans. It's called FriendFeed and the idea seems to be to enable you to keep track of what your friends are doing on all the other social networks (ie if they add an entry in Facebook, a new video on YouTube etc). I've been looking at all sorts of Web 2.0 services in the past months and have an enormous collection of bookmarks as a result. You can be a member of a handful but you can bet your friends will be involved in networks that you haven't even heard of yet. So now you need a sort of broker service to keep tabs on what's going on everywhere else! Fascinating phenomenon.

This leads me to wonder how this will affect the orderly world of university IT. At present we have relatively secure networks offering students and staff selection of applications including the learning management system. Our firewalls and anti-virus programs protect us from the big wide world and we have a certain amount of freedom to customize and personalize. Now as more and more people start using the myriad of free tools for networking, video production, publication etc. there seems less and less point in IT departments investing in expensive commercial products. The LMS seems to be more and more of a walled garden; safe but cut-off from the outside world. Students and a number of teachers are already using the new tools and this is going to lead to friction. How can we exploit the potential of Web 2.0 in a university setting without abdicating a certain level of control? A great deal of coursework and communication between teachers and students should not be open for public view and needs to be protected. Can you run a course on , say, Facebook? Of course you can but should you? Who owns it all in that case? If you have all your material on Google Apps doesn't Google own it? The university certainly doesn't.

Can we combine the security of campus IT with the innovative potential of Web 2.0? If I knew the answer to that one I wouldn't be sitting writing this little blog.

The sound of silence

I can remember when there was literally nothing on television. Weekdays were largely TV free till the late afternoon when the children’s programmes started. They showed the testcard so that TV repair people could check that the set actually worked. At around 11 pm a presenter would tell us that the evening’s programmes were over and wished us all a very good night. Sometimes they even played the national anthem as a subtle hint that it really was time to go to bed. Even radio stations were silent at night.

Today there is still very little to watch on television but it goes on round the clock. 57 channels and nothing on. When they can’t think of anything to broadcast they switch over to TV-Shop with hours of hysterical ads about miracle fitness devices and anti-wrinkle cream. Or they show 5 back-to-back episodes of some instantly forgettable Dallas lookalike soap from the eighties. Who watches this stuff in the middle of the night? Anything to avoid silence.

Some channels show a very special type of phone-in quiz show. A young aspiring TV presenter gets the daunting task of filling an hour or two of non-prime time TV by trying to persuade the sparse audience to phone in and answer questions. The cash prizes are quite tempting and the questions are often along the lines of “What colour is the White House?” But no one phones and the presenter has to fill the time by commenting on the weather, what she/he had for breakfast etc. They can go on for 20 minutes without anyone phoning and you can sense the creeping desperation in the presenter’s voice as the nagging suspicion grows that there may not be anyone watching at all. I must say I admire their courage. If you survive a few months fronting one of these shows you deserve to go on to more rewarding roles. It takes guts to talk and smile non-stop for 2 hours in front of a camera knowing that your nationwide audience may be in single figures, including several who are unconscious.

We fill our lives with noise. People of all ages have their iPods almost permanently plugged in; when walking, jogging, gardening or travelling. Comfortable, handy, fun but again a sort of padding to block out the world, the avoidance of silence. When do we have time to rest, to think, to just be? Silence is awkward, it demands reflection. Sunday as a day of rest was an excellent idea and just as relevant today as it was for the Israelites of the Old Testament. Imagine a day when the shopping centres are closed and people just rest. A day when it’s OK to switch off. Hardly likely in our 24-7 globalised individualistic society but a nice dream.

Mobile learning

Where does learning take place? We still tend to think that we learn when we visit certain buildings labelled school or university. Indeed, we still build such places on the assumption that they encourage and stimulate learning. Our students gather in classrooms for lectures and seminars but most of the learning that goes on happens elsewhere; in cafes, bedrooms, parks, trains, buses etc. Those places have always been learning environments. Discussions in student cafes were often more stimulating than the rather contrived discussions that took place in the lecture hall. The difference today is ubiquitous net access allowing students not only to discuss with colleagues but also with a global network of students and experts who share the same interest. Basically we have instant access to unlimited knowledge, the latest research is instantly available and in many cases you can easily start a discussion with the author of a report or thesis.
I’ve been looking at the impressive collection of lectures and teaching resources freely available on iTunes U. Almost 50 universities offer a wide range of video lectures in all subject areas that can be downloaded to your iPod completely free. All universities in this venture are in the USA but the question is when European universities take the step. Many universities are still sceptical to filming lectures and making them available on the net. Many are worried about copyright and teachers are worried that their jobs may be threatened if all their teaching is out on the net. MIT’s OpenCourseWare has made whole courses freely available to anyone in the world. Wikiversity is built around the idea of teachers from all over the world sharing learning objects and making them freely available.
We’ve seen the revolution that has happened in the music industry over the last 10 years. Remember record stores? The ones that are left are in trouble and instead we now download all the music we want and mix our own playlists as many times as we want. Is a similar process under way in education?
If you can access all the lectures, simulations, literature, research and discussion on the net what is the future role of the university? The trump card is still examination – you can access all of MIT’s courses but you can’t get the qualification unless you enrol and pay your fee. The key is the teacher’s role; not as lecturer but as guide: Helping the student to choose the most relevant material, developing their information competence and encouraging critical thinking. There is so much knowledge out there it is almost frightening. We need help to filter it all, to organise it and interpret it. Teachers who can help students with this and encourage them to exploit the potential of the net will be the key to the next generation of higher education. The ability to stimulate net-based group/project work and create dynamic virtual discussions will be essential.
Could we be able to compile a course with material from many sources in a similar way as we compile a playlist? Instead of receiving the traditional course literature list the students could be able to find their own course material consisting of both literature and multimedia. The teacher’s role is to be able to help the students choose wisely and providing them with a sounding board as they navigate their way through the course. No longer would the student be restricted to discussing only with classmates and teacher. Contacts from all over the world can be involved in the discussions and experts can be consulted at any time.
Where, then, does learning take place? Anywhere. Any time. Anyhow.

Everything 2.0

We live in a world of never-ending upgrades and enhancements all carefully designed to make everything instantly obsolete and ensure that you can never get off the rollercoaster of consuption. This has been going on for years of course so it's interesting that the current craze for Web 2.0 and Library 2.0 etc has only got as far as 2.0. We should be in double figures by now at least - makes me think of an old joke about the big Hollywood tychoon (maybe Sam Goldwyn) commenting on the latest Biblical epic production, "What, only 12 disciples. Think I'm some kind of cheapskate. Get me hundreds!" I'm keen to see what happens east of the decimal point in the near future; whether we get into web 2.3 applications and how they differ radically from web 2.2. Actually there's a very interesting blog called Life 2.0 which has many thought-provoking articles on creativity, innovation and our relationship to technical advances.

I'm compiling a guide to all those Web 2.0 applications and have tested quite a few to see how they can be used in education. A major hurdle for the curious investigator is that you have to become a member of everything and that means lots more user IDs and passwords. I try to use variations on a theme for the swelling number of clubs and services that I belong to but it gets harder to keep tabs on them all. The answer is of course to use one of those password services that store all your passwords behind one master password. Attractive but isn't that a giant security risk if someone gets their hands on the master password?

I'm trying a lot of different services, some of which may transform the way I work and others that will have little or no effect. Social networking hasn't really inspired me so far though I can see enormous potential for those more "social" than myself. I've been using Facebook, Linkedin and a few others but they seem to demand a lot of care and attention to become really worthwhile. They need to become firmly embedded in your daily routines and need regular updates (that word again!) in the form of new fun objects, links, films, comments etc. How many such applications can one person juggle with effectively as well as everything going on IRL (in "real" life)? I've been working with Second Life for over a year now and the learning process involved in getting established there took a lot of time and energy. It's funny how many of us claim to suffer from stress about all the demands of modern society and at the same time willingly join up for activities that demand high levels of participation.

The minute I join yet another community/service/club and the welcome message plops into my mailbox I accept a certain level of responsibility. I want to be a "good" member of the community, show that I'm active and creative and feel that I'm contributing to the cause. Sadly, however, I don't always reach that level of commitment and it gets added to the list of things I feel slightly guilty about not finding time for. Becoming a member of something is, at least for me, a commitment and at present there are several potentially interesting communities that I'd like to find out more about but am unsure if I want to become a member of. Illogical I'm sure but it bothers me. How many things can you be an active member of? Writing this blog is a commitment too even if my readership is bubbling around zero at present.

"I don't care to belong to a club that accepts people like me as members." Groucho Marx

Why?

I've contributed to a few blogs but never considered starting my own until now. The biggest obstacle has been the fact that the net is bursting with blogs that virtually no-one reads and why should I add to the pile? I belong to a generation that feels that you have to work hard to get published and if you can publish absolutely anything without even a bit of a struggle then what's the point? The point of this and probably the majority of blogs is not to become famous but simply to write down ideas and impressions and be able to access them anywhere. If you have a few friends or colleagues who want to contribute then that's a bonus.

I'm interested in seeing what happens when I start this blog and how it develops. I don't have a clear idea of what I want to do with this but I like the idea of just casting off and letting the wind blow me along. Will anyone stumble upon this and comment? How do you get noticed in the world of blogging? Will I turn up on other blogs? If I continue writing like this, probably not.

Has anyone done any research into dead web sites, defunct blogs etc? There must be millions of sites where nothing has happened for years but they still use up space on someone's server with digital tumbleweed blowing across the home page. Google sometimes offers one as a possible answer to a search but when you get there and it says "Last updated 20 July 2002" you get a sinking feeling. How many petabytes of space could be saved by dumping all that digital trash? Or should it be saved for posterity and if so who decides? If you want some web-based nostalgia take a look at the Internet Archive which has a vast archive of old web sites but I'm not sure how much of the blogosphere they preserve.

I promise to press the self-destruct button on this one before the tumbleweed hits town.