I haven't managed the time to fully review all my notes and papers from the Learning Technologies 2008 conference - so instead, I've captured a few snippets - or classic comments from the presenters - powerful, meaningful and just plain fun!
From George Siemens: "What happens when the tools of control shift from the educator to the learner?"
"Facebook & Twitter is a philosophy as much as it is a technology - enabling and amplifying"
From Danny Maas "Can I be charged for flashing my graphic in public?"
Howard Errey introduced us to: "Enogamy - our family, our tribe - we look after those closest to use - with an inward focus and exogamy - the outward focus beyond are closest circles" Q: How do we ensure that our learners and our learning networks don't become trapped in enogamy?
From Mark Dashper: "I like to twiddle around with the knobs too"
From Mark Keough: "The future is never designed from the past!"
And my personal favourite from the conference is awarded to George Siemens:
"Twitter is like sex...you can't understand what it's for by talking about it, you've just gotta do it...."
The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society's fifth
Antarctic Whale Defense Campaign to the Southern Oceans to defend
whales from the Japanese whaling fleet started today!
"This year's campaign has been
named Operation Musashi in reference to the legendary Japanese
strategist, Miyamoto Musashi (1584-1645) known as a great samurai
warrior, strategist and tactician and a personal role model and hero to
Captain Paul Watson, Founder and President of Sea Shepherd.
Captain
Paul Watson. "Our strategy is to prevent whales from being killed, to
force the Japanese whalers to spend money on fuel without killing
whales.
The name Operation Musashi was chosen to reflect Sea Shepherd's
approach of aggressive, yet nonviolent, confrontation and the
increasing global awareness of Japan's ongoing illegal whaling
activities. However, as with all Sea Shepherd campaigns, all strategies
and tactics are designed to avoid any physical injury to the whalers.
Musashi's Book of Five Rings included the approach of the
Twofold Way of Pen and Sword. The society adopted a campaign logo of
the crossed feather pen and katana (sword) under the skull with the
imbedded sperm whale and dolphin yin-yang symbol with a Banzai flag
background which gives reference to the ecological imperialism that the
Japanese whalers are committing against the whales of the Southern
Ocean."
"We have a few surprises for the whalers this year," said Sea
Shepherd 2nd officer Peter Hammarstedt of Sweden. "We intend to be more
aggressive and even more relentless in our interventions. We do not
intend to witness the killing of any whales; we intend to make sure no
whales are killed on our watch."
Learning Technologies 2008 ( 5 - 7 November) in Mooloolaba, Queensland, is now but a distant memory as we hurtle towards Xmas. If you missed the conference (don't let that happen again!) - here are some of the links to follow the action:
The conference community is still live on Ning - visit it here.
Speaker papers and slides - are mainly available here on the conference website.
Keynote and featured speaker video streams are available here. (You may need to download something from Microsoft to watch this - and if you're a Mac user, I'm still having trouble!)
There is an increasing disconnect between learners - students or workers - and their technology expectations. Most people expect (and some - Gen Ys - often demand) to be able to use the same applications they have access to at home, in their workplace or educational institution. Janet Clarey - from Brandon Hall research - sums it up rather neatly in this slide show:
Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating opening up the flood gates, but there are many ways we can integrate social software applications behind the firewalls that don't compromise the organisational security.
As educators, we need to responsibly address this disconnect - are our learning strategies meeting the learners expectations? I heard someone reply to this the other day (they shall remain nameless for their own security): "It doesn't matter what the learners want - they wouldn't know what was good learning anyway!" This type of response is a frightening position to be taking, in an economic climate that is seeing learning and development budgets being slashed, training being put on hold, and learners experiencing a disconnect... I fear for the future of relevance of learning in organisations and institutions if we continue to ignore the changes in society.
I've created a discussion forum about this issue over at the Learning Technologies 2008 conference Ning - drop by if you'd like to join the conversations - you don't have to be attending the conference to join in!
At Headshift Australia we've launched a new initiative: Social Software Executive Mentoring. The concept was informed by the number of requests from learning and development practitioners who wanted to extend their knowledge about learning strategies with social software, had specific workplace contextual needs, and wanted to learn more - but in a less structured way than offered by participation in a structured course or workshop session.
The program is designed for small groups of executives (no more than 5), who will collaborate and share their experiences and strategies - gaining knowledge and confidence from within the group.
Each participant (mentoree) will negotiate their learning outcomes - based on an individual working on a project that is relevant to their business context.
The program schedule covers a 12 week period, with weekly synchronous contact sessions and asynchronous exchanges in-between.
The technology platform we're using will enable ongoing collaboration between all group members (including the mentor, of course) builds an architecture of participation, that will form the basis of the mentoree's final outcomes. A process of critical reflection will be embedded in the weekly activities, designed to encourage the mentoree to analyse their research and consider application within their specified context.
The focus of the program is to not only provide guidance to the mentoree in their identified field of research, but also to facilitate transfer of knowledge to their workplace context embedded in a social learning landscape.
If you'd like more information, or to join a program, contact me: annebb <at> headshift. com
I'm immersed in a number of sustainability and environmental projects at the moment - facilitating an online community inquiry (I'll tell you more about that later - right now we're still in stealth mode!) and subsequently immersing myself in research, readings and attending events.
Yesterday, I attended a seminar hosted by DSRD (Department of State & Regional Development, NSW) as part of Small Business Month - called Sustainability Edge. The presenters were Jon Dee, founder of Planet Ark; Katie Patrick, founder of Green Pages; and David Trewin, NSW Department of Environment and Climate Change (DECC).
It was a really powerful seminar, made more engaging by such passionate presenters, who are committed to driving change and sustainable lifestyles! And a whole stack of stats that you just need to pay attention to - and if you don't? Well - see the bottom of this post - I think Greg, the science teacher says it rather well!
So - the question I've heard again and again over the past few weeks: "What can I do to make a difference?" Lots... both personally and professionally! Right now I'm going to focus on your professional environment - particularly your learning environments! Let's start with an office basic: Paper
Jon Dee is currently in the throes of launching his latest initiative: Project Paperless. Now - just to get you started.. did you know: The average Australian worker uses 10,000 sheets of office paper per year? That equates to 35 million trees a year by Australian workers.... (and then there's the amount of water and carbon emissions that accompany the production of all those trees into printing paper)! hmmm now that's scary!!! So, I wonder how much paper the average training department uses?
Do you provide handouts / reference materials to students / learners in hardcopy? Do you print these materials double-sided? Do you print articles 2-up? That's landscape to pages to a side?
Do you really need to provide printed materials? I've been asking this question for a few years now - and the response is always:
"But that's what people want? Something to take away and feel that they've got value for money?"
Well, sorry, but that's just not a good enough response anymore! Why not state - up front - that no printed materials will be supplied as part of your contribution to reducing paper consumption?
Providing participants with electronic versions of materials - whether from file respositories, on CDs, in intranet folders, even in LMS (although don't think that means I support LMSs) or perhaps let's use collaborative materials on wikis - is not only environmentally responsible, it's taking your role as an educator seriously. You, as an educator, are an influencer and thus socially responsible to provide informed guidance.
Now - as for "value for money" - that's about the quality of the learning experiences, is it not? Since when is a learning event measured by the quality of the handouts? And if it is... well - don't start me.. !!
Here's the challenge: Reduce your paper usage by 50% Project Paperless is asking for 20% - but I think learning initiatives could do soooo much more than that - let's prove that the quality of learning is not measure by the amount of paper we use, but by the learning interactions created!
If you join the Learning Technologies Ning community we'll be looking for innovative ways that learning departments can reduce their paper usage - so swing by and share your strategies, empower others to reduce their paper usage too!
This is rather like a quote for the day, but it's more of a learning moment, influenced by a quote:
"Conceptual growth comes from the negotiation of meaning, the sharing of multiple perspectives and the changing of our internal representations through collaborative learning"
'veI presented at 5 difference conferences and workshops over the last couple of weeks - and collected some interesting data / responses to 2 questions:
1. What do you LOVE (or like) about learning? 2. What do you dislike (not hate - I didn't go there!) about learning?
Here are the collated responses: 1. What do you LOVE about learning? new things, discussion, sharing ideas, discovery, different perspectives, sense of achievement, empowerment.
2. What do you dislike about learning? time commitment (huge number of responses here), lack of interaction, rote learning, long texts, too much reading, feeling stupid, information overload, being spoon fed, over structured learning, tedious sessions.
What's missing?? No mention of assessments or assignments or competence? Can we assume then that people don't consider learning in the same category as assessment? Maybe I should have asked the additional questions: what do you love about assessment? and what do you dislike about assessment??
The other issue that glares out from these results: why, as designers of learning events, do we continue provide learning events that pretty much address all of the issues covered in by the dislikes? Institutional boundaries? Organisational metrics driven courses? Legislative reporting commitments? Actually - it beats me... perhaps it's just easier to keep doing what has been done before? BUT - that's not a good excuse - and I won't be endorsing any learning designs I see reinforcing these strategies - so watch out, if I'm about to mark your assignments... there's a message here!
Considering the notion of deadlines in the context of the purpose of assessment almost seems an ironic contradiction... but let's just look at what a deadline is - or isn't:
What a deadline is not:
it is NOT when you start your submission
is NOT to be ignored
you do NOT wait until after it's passed to request an extension
you will NOT die if you do not submit on time (you may get penalised - but it's not fatal - probably!)
Who are deadlines for? A couple of perspectives: Students:
deadlines provide milestones to manage progress through subject matter,
feedback to encourage,
guidance for further development
must be adhered to for your marks to be processed and submitted to the greater administrative systems
Lecturers:
deadlines allow us to manage our time allocations / workloads (that's when assignments are submitted on time)
provide the lecturer/educator some feedback on how students are grasping the content being studied
is a compulsory part of the adminstration tasks
So - why do students not submit assignments on time?
too busy? (doing.. something more interesting?)
conflict between workloads - work versus studies
lazy?
not motivated?
fear of failure? Or not achieving?
don't understand the task clearly enough?
not engaged with the content of the subject?
don't care?
When was the last time you, as an educator, heard a student say how much they enjoyed an exam? Although - I have had some students admit to really enjoy some of their projects that are assessable at the end of semester... But - the final answer to the original question is clearly more complex than some of the tongue in cheek comments I've observed here! ;-)
