Digital Dialogues

Gong Xi Fa Cai!

Happy Chinese New Year!!!
2006 is Year of the Dog - so I'm expecting lots of good luck - considering there are 3 of them in my house and a cat who thinks he's a dog!
Here's what you can expect the year to be like:

"The Dog is an ethical and idealistic sign, and the year that bears its name will also bring increased social awareness and interest in society's less powerful members. Any tendencies to take, take, take will be replaced by a widespread sentiment of generosity and selflessness. In general, we will all be imbued with the Dog's keen sense of right and wrong."

If you were born in: 1922, 1934, 1946, 1958, 1970, 1982, 1994 0r 2006 - you're a Dog (and I mean that in the nicest possible way!). Dog people are:

"People born in the Year of the Dog possess the best traits of human nature. They have a deep sense of loyalty, are honest, and inspire other people¡¦s confidence because they know how to keep secrets. But Dog People are somewhat selfish, terribly stubborn, and eccentric. They care little for wealth, yet somehow always seem to have money. They can be cold emotionally and sometimes distant at parties. They can find fault with many things and are noted for their sharp tongues. Dog people make good leaders."

So - Happy Chinese New Year and Gong Xi Fa Cai (may you have wealth and prosper)!

Happy Australia Day!

Just another public holiday? Nah - it's Australia Day - time to have a barbie, join a thong throwing competition (the type you wear on your feet - of course!), bet on a cockroach race, or head for the Harbour if you're in Sydney! (Oh - there is also the Commonwealth Games baton running around Sydney today...)

And it's probably appropriate at this point to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land and that Australia Day celebrates the British invasion (and take over) of this country...

2006 Bloggies Awards

Nothing to do with edubloggers -  but if you want to take a journey across a variety of weblogs and different genres, drop by the 2006 Bloggies. Voting is now open - up until Tue 31st Jan - so you can vote while you're there!

On your way to mLearn....

If you're down here in the southern hemisphere and thinking about going to mLearn - you could do eLearn 2006 in Hawaii!

World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare, & Higher Education
October 13-17, 2006 
Honolulu, Hawaii
Call for participation ** submission deadline 27 April 2006 **

Organized by: Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE)
Co-sponsored by: International Journal on E-Learning
If you want more info - go to the website - it's a huge conference and there's way too much blurb to reproduce here!

Lots on mLearning

Just tidying up my files (and trying to review some of the ones I'd marked as "Read later") and I came across this conference URL!
Well - it's a gem!!!

The 4th World Conference on mLearning was held in Cape Town, South Africa in October 2005 - but don't worry if you missed it...the conference website has full papers and podcasts of the keynotes!
Fantastic resource!!!!

The 5th World Conference on mLearning (2006) is in Banff, Canada - 22 - 25October.
No details on abstract/paper submission dates at this stage...and no RSS feed...so you'll just have to bookmark it and drop back every now and again!

Cyberslackers....

The SMH ran this article yesterday (17Jan2006): "Study probes web habits of office slackers" .
The study conducted by Monash Uni (Melbourne) claims:

"Cyberslacking could be eating up as much as a quarter of the time employees spend online - and even more if they have outgoing personalities ..."

emailing friends was the most popular activity reported in the survey, which was attempting to match personality types with internet misuse at work - the findings indicated that, contrary to previous studies, introverted participants were not the key offenders!!! (Why is that so surprising??)

Kerryann Wyatt (the psych student researcher) conducted the survey to address "...the increasing concerns arising over internet usage at work."

"There is very little applied research being done in this area and employees need to get a handle on this issue to revise supervisory procedures," she said.

The article goes on to state: "Cyberslacking is not a new phenomenon. In 2000 internet security company Surfcontrol estimated that every employee in Australia was taking the equivalent of a two-week cyber-holiday each year, costing the nation $22.5bn annually."

What?? How did they manage to extrapolate that one out???? And of course, that's assuming that the internet searches being conducted and use of the internet wasn't any form of informal learning or perhaps just-in-time knowledge searches....right?
And - does this mean..when they (employers) now conduct psych testing prior to offers of employment they will be determing your personality type and consequently your level of internet access restrictions...hmmm?  Getting scary, isn't it?!
(Did they do a survey on how much time smokers spend standing in the street....and I wonder if that correlates to cyberslacking....?)

Innovate - Special Issue call for papers

The Innovate journal is preparing a special issue on open-source software (OSS) and are calling for article submissions.

"Cost reductions and commoditization have figured largely in technology adoption. The PC revolution gained momentum when original equipment manufacturers began offering inexpensive hardware. Toll-free access and reasonable service provider fees prompted the rise of the Internet, and free browsers and access to an almost infinite number of sites have fueled the expansion of the World Wide Web.

"Comprehensive, Web-based administrative/instructional software is on the same path. Expensive proprietary programs, available only to licensed users and limited in their functions, once were the only option. Now, a significant number of educational institutions have developed, independently or through institutional collaborations, open-source software that promises to transform the market. The result is a global open-source cooperative dedicated to sharing OSS with others and encouraging customized applications.

"The “Open” movement that promotes open source software and an open architecture, based on open standards is catalyzing a reconsideration of the rules for software development and distribution.

"We seek manuscripts that cover the following topics: (1) developments in open-source programs around the world, (2) challenges related to the development, deployment, and adoption of open source programs, including how specific software is being used, (3) the advantages and disadvantages of open source and proprietary systems, and (5) the future of the OSS movement. We expect authors to take full advantage of Innovate’s multimedia capacity; supplementary files that illuminate the text are welcome, and we are especially interested in the possibility of hosting “Try it!” sites that would offer readers hands-on experience with particular OSS features.

"If you would like to submit a manuscript on this topic, please review our submission guidelines and send your manuscript to the guest editor of this issue, Vijay Kumar ([email protected] ), and to the editor-in-chief, James Morrison ([email protected] ) no later than March 30, 2006.

Is Everything Bad Good for You?

In an interview for Online Learning and News (4th Jan 2006) [I can't give you a direct link to the article yet as it comes in an email format, then gets archived on the main site - and it's not archived yet...hmmmm!] Steven Johnson, author of "Everything Bad is Good For You: How Today's Popular Cultur is Actually Making us Smarter" made these comments:

"OLNR: Your book contends that the presence of multiple media options (movies, wikis, blogs, cable TV) improves our cognitive abilities to deal with complex, multifaceted problems, but trainers know that merely including new technology in courses doesn't necessarily improve results. How can various media options best be used to improve learning?

SJ: I think one of the main problems is that by introducing new forms of technology, you end up spending most of your time teaching people to use the technology, instead of having them use the technology to learn. Partially, I suspect this is a problem that will fade as more people are true "digital natives" who are comfortable -- who even enjoy -- adopting new technology without reading the manual.

But I think if you're giving people tools that are truly responsive and offer immediate feedback, tools that let people express their own thoughts and views on the world -- blogs and wikis are a great example -- then I think you'll find people being much more willing to scale those learning curves. Partially, that's because the new tools are so much more human than the old ones were. Using a computer training program 10 years ago was an exercise in humiliation a lot of the time -- you were asking a real person to interact with a relatively stupid piece of code. But blogs and wikis are about interaction among real people, and so the feedback is that much more rewarding."

I still contend that no matter how "digital native" or not the learners are, no matter how intuitive the software is (and hey, a lot of it isn't!) some time needs to be allocated to getting to grips with the ins and outs of the technology before any learning can take place.  If the learner is focused on how to get the software to perform some function - simple or complex - then that's where there attention is focused - not on the learning task. Taking some time out from the content or focus of learning and spending some time up front with the learners ensuring the technology is mastered to a comfortable level makes all the difference!

(You may be familiar with other books from Steven Johnson - Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software, Mind Wide Open : Your Brain and the Neuroscience of Everyday Life, Interface Culture : How New Technology Transforms the Way We Create and Communicate )

A few conferences....

Here's a few ideas for your 2006 calendar - no particular order or priority or whatever...they have just attracted my attention for some reason or other and...here they are:

Wikis, Blogs, RSS and Podcasting
beginning 16 January, 2006
The IEEE Education Society's Online Distinguished Lecture Series will be making its next presentation in mid-January. The presentation is asynchronous - this presentation will be made using PowerPoint with voice-over.
The speaker will be Burks Oakley II, Associate Vice President for Academic
Affairs and Director of University of Illinois Online at the University of
Illinois USA.
The full presentation will available beginning January 16. But the
presentation's 'Introduction' podcast is already available.
Presentation 2:  RSS - Will be available 19 January 2006
Presentation 3:  Podcasting - Will be available 23 January 2006
Presentation 4:  Wikis - Will be available 26 January 2006
Real-Time Discussion - 30 January 2006 - 2:00 pm Central Time US

BlogHui 
Wellington, New Zealand
17 - 18 March 2005
Call for papers closes 31 January, 2006

Education Research Students Conference
"Conversations on the Research Journey"
17 - 18 March 2006
University of Technology, Sydney
Kuring-gai campus

Keynote opening speaker:
Susan Groundwater-Smith - Adjunct Professor, UTS Faculty of Education
Plus Faculty students, staff & visiting speakers

Deadline for abstracts: 17 February 2006
More information and abstracts to: [email protected]

AITD (Australian Institute for Training & Development)
"Next wave in learning & development"
6 - 7 April 2006
Sydney
The conference theme is "The next wave in e-Learning"and will examine the radical changes in the learning landscape and emerging developments.
The AITD annual awards night will also be held at the same time.

DEANZ Conference 2006
3-5 July 2006
Auckland, New Zealand

"Enabling E-Learning Approaches in C21"
Reviewed Papers: 10 February 2006 (Extended)
Non-reviewed Papers: 31 March 2006 (Submission of abstract)
Posters: 31 March 2006
PS. I have to grin (just a little) the submissions are emailed plus a hard copy needs to be posted..including a copy on a 3.5 Floppy disk....ummm..sorry, but I don't even have a computer with a floppy drive any more...!

7th International Conference on Information Technology Based Higher Education & Training
10 - 13 July 2006
Sydney - Australia
The ITHET 2006 Seventh Annual Conference will bring together people from higher education and industry to explore responses in higher education and training to the convergence of current technologies and the accompanying transformation in how we communicate and access information. The power and sophistication of communication and information technologies continues to grow rapidly even as they become cheaper and faster.

First round paper submissions: 17th January, 2006
Second round: 28th February , 2006

Why go to University?

I picked-up an article when I was down in Melbourne from The Age (19 December 2005) - unfortunately, I didn't get the URL at the same time - which now means if I want a digital copy I have to pay $2.20 for it....sorry, but I'll keep the paper-based article and tell you what it says!

The article by David Rood & Meaghan Shaw was positioned at the time when the VCE (final year of school) results had been released the previous week and students were reviewing their scores and working out which courses at uni they could get in to....of course, that's assuming that they want to go to uni in the first place....! hmmmm - I seem to recall going through exactly the same process - and there was certainly NO doubt in my mind that I was going to uni....However, it does feel rather elitist and single-minded these days...doesn't it? I mean, there are plenty of other options - equally as important and valid. But I digress from the article....

Anyway - the article is questioning the fundamental assumption about finishing school and going to uni. Who drives it? The authors suggest parents, career counsellors and schools (many schools advertise -"boast" - about how many of their students go to uni) all drive the expectation that completing school results in attending uni...(there it is again - so if I choose as a student NOT to go to uni, I'm less than the others?)

So - the authors ask some thought provoking questions - at a time when universities are trying to figure out funding models (to remain sustainable educational institutions), research "relevance", and fighting for a slice of the international student market:

"...what should students be looking to gain from university? What should they study? What kind of knowledge should they have when they leave?"

To address these questions, they have asked 5 senior academics - here is a brief summary of their responses:

Peter Doherty: Department of Microbiology and Immunology, School of Medicine, University of Melbourne.
"What should the university experience do for you? Many will have science training at one level or another. Hopefully this will make you a passionate devotee of evidence-based reality. If you don't get that, you miss the point."
"A professional course such as medicine or dentistry should give you the basic knowledge to do the job...years of apprenticeship ahead in what may be an exhausting and to some extent dehumanising lifestyle."
"...the breadth of interest you develop as an undergraduate will become increasingly important as the years roll on."
"The humanities graduate may have a somewhat more relaxed time."
"Graduation is just a beginning: for some of you that self-discovery may be way in the future."

Catharine Lumby: Chair of the media and communications department, Sydney University.
"There are generic attributes that we hope all students gain from a university education: the ability to think critically and creatively; to argue cogently; to express themselves plainly and clearly; and to bring a sceptical mind to their research.
In a climate in which the Federal Governement has encouraged universities to turn themselves into businesses, there's a growing perception among students, understandbly, that they are clients and universities are service providers.
I think that's a problem because universities aren't just about the transfer of knowledge. They're about the transformation of self."
"A university is a community engaged in the free exchange of ideas, and the opportunity to be part of a community like that is a rare privilege.
"...it's not just about coming in and filling up with facts and going out and finding a job."

Marilyn Lake: School of historical and European studies, La Trobe University.
"Univerisities are rare and precious places - the only institutions in society that exist to foster curiosity, that encourage us to read widely and think critically and to explore new ideas and question old assumptions."
"The primary mission of a university should be to teach and research humanities and sciences, to generate knowledge of human history and the natural environment and the ways these have interacted, to promote inquiry into physical and biological sciences, philosophy, literature and culture."
"Vocational training - whether in dentistry or commerce, law or librarianship - should follow at a later stage."
"Most importantly, universities should encourage us to ask questions about the generation of knowledge itself: who produces it, from what perspective and in whose interest and how might new questions and a different standpoint generate fresh insights and new ways of understanding."

Larissa Behrendt: Director of Jumbunna Indigenous House of Learning, University of Technology Sydney
"Tertiary education should equip graduates to analyse and think innovatively within their discipline."
"The best kind of tertiary education not only provides students with the basic tools they need to flourish within their field but also provides an opportunity to develop in more holisitc way by providing an educational environment where students engage with their peers and develop their interests in other activities..."
"Finally, it is important to create professionals who have an understanding of the society in which they live and the social issues that influence it."
"A strong sense of civic responsbility will ensure that students not only contribute to their own profession but will also make a contribution to the community in which they work and live."

Raimond Gaita: Professor of moral philosophy at Kings College, University of London, and professor of philosophy at the Australian Catholic University.
"The concept of a university has become defunct. Not even the high-flying, elite institutions operate with a serious concept of it."
"....you can't say to many students that if they want really to attend a university, they should become educated in some of the disciplines of the humanities."
"Increasingly more students than not who go to university don't get an education as distinct from relatively narrow, vocationally based training."
"Students should leave university with a capacity to think seriously and hard. That's not easy. You can learn to become impressively clever and to think critically in a certain way, while caring almost nothing for whether what you think is true or false.
To be more than a high-flying dilettante you need more than intellectual skills. You must develop a certain kind of moral seriousness: you must try to overcome vanity, to have courage, to care more for truth than for status, and so on. That's as obvious as the need to be kind and just if you are to be a good person and it's just as hard.
Critical thinking can be taught. How and why really to care for the trutch can't be, not, at any rate, in the same way. For that you need example in your teachers and in the texts that you study. The examples won't all come from the humanities, but only the humanities can give what you need to reflect on their significance."

And, with those parting thoughts from Raimond Gaita, as I prepare the subjects I co-ordinate for 2006, I will commit to attempting to establish the kind of learning environment that is more than just vocational preparation, and that my teaching practices (hmmm - I think I might not even use that "teaching" word this year), that my guiding strategies enable my learners to develop a passion for some of the issues raised - particularly the critical thinking and caring ones!