edinburghmsc: via @sbayne: Cultural Attitudes towards Technology and Communication 2010: Diffusion 2.0. Canada, June 2010 http://www.catacconference.org
After a tip from Twitter buddy @dav_hamill at Edinburgh Coffee Morning today I discovered some of the pitfalls of "related items" type searches on, say Amazon. On the German Amazon site a search for "aluminium baseball bat" turns up some unexpected results, show that even muggers, bandits and thugs seek out good deals on their kit:
We invest millions in "technologies for learning" and often bypass those which are not explicitly designed for that "learning market", especially if this general purpose technology also happens to be free. iTunes U exists not because the iTunes Store itself is so terrible at attracting and sharing learning content - it's actually more successful - but because traditional institutions and those working in them want educational stuff to be labeled educational. Give us a tin that says it'll be good for us and we'll eat it, even if the contents are as sugary as the stuff sold in the other tins.
No, we prefer in eduland to use technologies which are slow-moving (the slower the better), costly and not interoperable with the 'realworld' technologies we use outside the institution (I'm still looking for the Virtual Learning Environment that bites the bullet and allows cross-postings to and from a kid's Bebo or Facebook profile).
Martin Weller sums up what we have settled for with most Virtual Learning Environments: they are to learning what PowerPoint has been to presention. In the hands of a (rare) maestro either tool adds value. In the hands of the rest of us, they tend to bore young people, relative to the other technological wonders to which they are used. Moreover,when an educator starts using either technology they stand a real risk of getting hooked on this low-grade drug of connectivity, without ever finding the high quality, more complex and engaging stuff that lies beyond:
I think what the VLE and Powerpoint have in common is that they are in the first wave of digital democratization tools.
Such tools can’t be too far removed from traditional practice, otherwise people simple won’t use them. So they provide a useful stepping stone onto a more digitally enhanced future (where it’s always sunny and everyone loves each other).
The danger with both of them is that they represent not a potential stage on a journey for many, but the endpoint. Their ease of use and similarity to existing practice is seductive in this sense, you don’t really have to change what you do much.
"We're boring the kids" is, unfortunately, an argument which, despite its powerful and valid reasoning, is too easily dismissed by beancounters and risk-averse compliance-obsessed decision-makers as something for which we can strive but never quite attain given the multitude of other, far more important concerns (two of which will always be the security and safety scapegoats, arguments for which they also strive, believe to have attained but actually never can).
Most Virtual Learning Environments would, in a consumer-led market (i.e. student-led market) not make it past the beta, and wouldn't interest any Angel or VC investor in further support - the market wouldn't bite when there are so many other ways of engaging with content and people online which are fun in so many other ways. They succeed largely down to, at worst, a laziness on the part of institutions, at best a reluctance to challenge their 'customers' or users to see the world differently.
Brian Kelly presents a compelling argument for not sticking to this Microsoft- and institution-led status quo in which we find ourselves. Brian is nervous about a world of institutionalised users using institutional equipment, software and services which are operated, developed, run and molded by faceless corporations, themselves happy with the ignorance of the user base in what lies beyond the current offerings from technology.
...If the initial evidence reflects a more general trend, we seem to be living in a world in which most users use an MS Windows platform to access institutional resources – they’re not interested in Linux, for example, despite many years of evangelism from the open source community. A computer’s a computer, just like a fax machine is a fax machine – only nerds care about what goes on underneath the bonnet.
But if this is true, what are the implications for accepting that we are in a postdigital age? Don’t we then accept that our IT environment will be owned by the mega-corporations – Google and Microsoft. And let’s forget debates about device independence and interoperability – unless the mega-corporations feel such issues may provide a competitive edge.
It strikes me that the postdigital agenda is a conservative one, in which we are asked to accept that we (in our institutions and in our working environment) cannot shape our digital environment. And for me that is a worrying point of view which I don’t accept.
Update: There's another interesting, pedagogical aside, which shows not only that there might be 'postdigital' reasons like Brian's not to let Learning Management Systems or Course Management Systems (CMS) run over us willynilly, but that there are teaching and learning reasons, too. New research shows that by accepting the defaults of a CMS educators can find their pedagogy affected negatively, too, moving towards a more administrative bent:
The defaults of the CMS therefore tend to determine the way Web–novice faculty teach online, encouraging methods based on posting of material and engendering usage that focuses on administrative tasks.
Quite literally, teaching by checkbox?
Pic by James Jordan
British education and technology agency Becta has emulated The Cabinet Office's style for accessing the best ideas our citizens have to offer, by opening a national competition for ideas on how we can best help people access information on informal learning opportunities, with TeachUsALesson:
You might have a vision of an amazing design for a learning portal website, or a concept of an awesome live data feed which other sites and services could use. Or, maybe, you could help design a Facebook widget, or an iPhone app which could make finding learning opportunities a doddle.
There are £25,000 packages of dosh available for the best ideas to come forward, presenting a timely and enviable opportunity for those with visions of how simple uses of existing technologies could be harnessed to help 'regular' learners outside the schooling system discover the learning moments on their doorstep.
It's great to such an innovative approach to seeking ideas. I only hope the Great British Learning Public can come up with ideas to match.
Through my work as Digital Commissioner with Channel 4's 4iP I've gone through a Himalayan-like learning curve in assessing the hundreds of ideas we receive each quarter. Throughout the year I've been blogging much of these learnings over on the digital media industry community I founded at 38minutes. Here are some of the main posts which will hopefully be of some use in stimulating creative ideas (and knocking on the head those puppies that might be worth killing):
edinburghmsc: via @sbayne: just out of the exam board, great results all round - congratulations all dissertation-ees!
edinburghmsc: via @sbayne: Global Learn Asia Pacific 2010, Malaysia. Call for participation http://aace.org/conf/GLearn/call.htm
edinburghmsc: via @sbayne: Two new positions in Media & Communication at Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane http://bit.ly/7R6jR
edinburghmsc: via @sbayne: Assistant Professor New Media and Digital Culture, Utrecht University, http://bit.ly/9lIdx
1950's television documentary special that includes interviews with Hitler's sister Paula Wolf and a fellow prisoner who was incarcerated with Hitler, actual footage shot by the Nazi's and Eva Braun's rare home movies. This film is in the Public Domain
Short film of Northern Irelands Troubles in the 1960s/1970s
THIS IS THE TIP OF THE TIP OF A HUGE ICEBERG. Big Bucks, Big Pharma pulls back the curtain on the multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical industry to expose the insidious ways that illness is used, manipulated, and in some instances created, for capital gain. Focusing on the industry's marketing practices, media scholars and health professionals help viewers understand the ways in which Direct-To-Consumer pharmaceutical advertising glamorizes and normalizes the use of prescription medication, and works in tandem with promotion to doctors. Combined, these industry practices shape how both patients and doctors understand and relate to disease and treatment. Ultimately, Big Bucks, Big Pharma challenges us to ask important questions about the consequences of relying on a for-profit industry for our health and well-being.
This documentary profiles the Obama campaign's massive youth movement and Obama's 27-year-old speechwriter Jon Favreau. What made the Obama speeches so appealing to young people? And why does the Millennial generation born after 1981, and now coming of age as voters, seem the perfect generation for Obamas message of hope and optimism? What impact did the campaign rhetoric have on the Millennials and is Obamas young speechwriter Jon Favreau the voice of this new generation? Young campaign volunteers in Virginia and Obama's national student leader in Washington DC explain how the Obama speeches inspired them to join the movement. There are also interviews with Jon Favreau's former college professors. Who is Jon Favreau? What shaped his political views? And how much of the speeches that gave words to the hope, aspirations and energy of a new generation is Jon, and how much is Obama?
edinburghmsc: via @sbayne: The International Multi-Conference on Complexity, Informatics and Cybernetics: April 6 -9, 2010 Florida. http://bit.ly/3FEvVf
edinburghmsc: via @sbayne: 4th Surveillance and Society conference, City University, April 2010: call for papers. http://bit.ly/ZLHT1
edinburghmsc: via @sbayne: Lecturers in assessment and e-assessment wanted at Curtin University of Technology, Perth Australia http://bit.ly/3psK2c