Kerr Presentation
From LTCWiki
Online Connectivism Conference Day 4
February 7, 2007
Bill Kerr
A Challenge to Connectivism
Abstract
"The skin is not all that important as a boundary" BF Skinner
The notorious Skinner got that one right. The boundary issue is crucial. In considering the learning process we need to ask: What happens inside our body / brain, what happens outside, in the external environment, and how are the inside and the outside connected? What is the mind, where is it and how does it work? These are core theoretical questions about learning with immense practical significance. The necessary process of formulating a new learning theory ought to incorporate and struggle with a modern synthesis of philosophy, cognitive science (including artificial intelligence research) and the history of learning theory. My critique of George Siemens's Connectivism suggests that a better job could have been done.
Housekeeping
George: We’ve had a little bit of a concern previously. There are sections where we’ve had a bit of a challenge with Bill dropping in and out of the session, so it might be a bandwidth issue, even though I think someone blamed the phone lines in Australia, so the government is officially responsible. So if that does happen where Bill drops out, then we will give it a second, and Bill will pop right back in. Each time it’s happened so far, he’s been back in the space quite quickly.
To begin: I am now officially beginning the recording, and as you’ve noticed in the past, the text and other areas are made available which I’ll share with the group later on. Some individuals are grabbing mp3 files so excellent as well. But we’re going to begin the recording now. I’ll do a quick introduction. Bill who is officially not here, I think I just talked about this, that he has a tendency to drop out for whatever reason. I’d like to wait until he’s here before I introduce him.
So the recording of the session has been initiated. I want to say a quick thank you to the organizations responsible for sponsoring this event: we have the Learning Technologies Centre here at the University of Manitoba, the organization that I’m affiliated with, so particularly thank you to that organization for sponsoring the Moodle installation and for the time, obviously, in putting an online conference like this together. I also want to thank Elluminate; they’ve been great for obviously allowing this platform for this particular session here. Thank you to both those organizations. I also want to say an additional thank you to Sylvia Curry. I don’t know if she’s in our particular space right now, but she’s been messing around in our Moodle installation and tidying things up, making them more user-friendly. So that’s great.
Introduction of Bill Kerr
As we begin our session, I’d like to introduce Bill Kerr. He’s coming to us from Australia today, which is the reason we’ve got this small adjustment in our time. Some of you who are just joining right now, we’ve been talking about if occasionally Bill cuts out, he’s usually back in fairly quickly, so we’ll just deal with that small inconvenience as we go forward. I’m very grateful to Bill for agreeing to present at this session. We’ve had an ongoing dialogue online with regard to connectivism: is it a learning theory, is it not? I asked Bill to play a role of critique, playing a critical role in evaluating connectivism. There were a few other individuals that I’d approached; unfortunately, they weren’t able to do it because of schedules, so Bill has put together an excellent Wiki, some critical thoughts there, as those of you who have followed his comments in the Moodle forum certainly know how seriously he is taking the role of being critical thinker in this, so I very much value that, and I’m sure the rest of us as a conference, as well, have found his insight valuable, too. So with that said, Bill, I’m going to turn the microphone over to you. Bill has opted for a slightly more casual approach, namely a little more dialogue, a little less lecturing, so keep your questions front and centre, and we’ll get started.
Bill: Thanks, George. I think I’m coming through OK. As George mentioned, I’ve tried to structure the session so that there will be three breaks during my talk, possibly five minutes each, or even a bit longer, and a bit of time for discussion at the end.
Introduction
When I read George’s paper in 2004, I thought “Interesting ideas, I like the sound of some of this.” Later George wrote a paper evaluating constructivism, which I didn’t like, so I blogged a critical response, and thought “That’s the end of that.” To my surprise, George did get back to me and invited me to this conference as a critic, so I think he deserves a lot of credit for doing that.
Connectivism Resonates
In this part, I sneakily try to establish credentials that I understand what is called Web 2.0. Some people have said, “Connectivism resonates with me,” and that was my initial reaction, too. I agree that connectivism is a good metaphor for the current age. The network is very visible, and a medium of radical change as we speak. Our ability to communicate, interact, and collaborate is augmented many fold by recent developments in the read/write Web. As George points out, our ability to remain current, diverse, and connected is far more possible than in the past. There’s also offers the prospect of an educational transformation from just in case to just in time. I see these things as positives that have become associated with the theory of connectivism.
Excitement
"It's not about technology, it's about a new and vibrant information landscape that reshapes teaching and learning"
"Technology should be like oxygen - ubiquitous, transparent and necessary"
http://school20.wikispaces.com
More than resonance, there is upbeat excitement about what this could mean for education. For example, in Sydney, Australia, there’s been a new school created under the leadership of Greg Whitby. I wrote about this in my blog and I mentioned some URLs I posted at the start, the URL I put at the start, if you follow that to my notes paper, I’ve put a number of other URLs there, and one of them is to the Greg Whitby school. What a school – Internet wireless network, an open classroom arrangement, and it sounds fantastic. If you look more closely at it, everything has been reformed except the curriculum. They’re still stuck with the traditional New South Wales Board of Studies curriculum. Even though the school could be described as a connectivist school in all its principles, it still hasn’t reached the stage of curriculum reform. Also, the excitement of connectivism I’ve noticed in visiting the new School2 Wiki and I’ve picked a couple of slogans up there to illustrate the point, which are on the slide.
My argument
Something is happening but it's not radically new at the level of learning theory.
OK, so what’s my argument then against connectivism, which has become associated with exciting new thoughts and developments? What I’m saying is that something interesting is definitely happening, but it’s not radically new at the level of learning theory. I’ll illustrate this by reference to some older learning theorists. Initially, I’m just providing a brief overview of my position, three main parts, with more detail coming later.
Vygotsky AND Papert
The role of language (Vygotsky) and "objects to think with" (Papert) in learning theory predates the internet.
Firstly, the ideas of Vygotsky and Papert. The role of language as explained by Vygotsky and “objects to think with” as explained by Papert in learning theory predates the Internet. I’ll get more into these theories later.
The mind
What and Where is the Mind?
The Mind is a construct which is distributed from the brain to the environment.
Second, how should we think about the mind? The mind is something we’ve been arguing about for more than 2000 years. I’m just stating my current view here for discussion purposes; treat it like a hypothesis for discussion.
What and where is the mind? The scaffolding provided by language and objects to think with extends our mind from the brain into the environment. That is, the mind is a construct which involves our brain, our biological systems, our hormonal systems, our perception, and structures we create in the environment. This idea comes from a book written by Andy Clark in 1997, ten years ago, called Being There.
Now why am I going on about the mind in this presentation? This is partly in response to the Achilles heel statement in George’s book Knowing Knowledge.
Achilles Heel
"The Achilles heel of existing theories rests in the pace of knowledge growth. All existing theories place processing (or interpretation of knowledge on the individual doing the learning."
Knowing Knowledge, p.33
The quote is on the slide that you can see. The Andy Clark view of the mind does not place all the processing and interpretation of knowledge at the level of an individual. Simply put, there are other theories around about distributed cognition. These theories have been around for more than ten years, so why do we need a new one?
Invisibility
"Language and "objects to think with" are so ubiquitous that are not always noticed."
Network based learning theories might be more visible because the network is more visible."
The third part of my theory has to do with invisibility, that some things are more noticed than other things. Marshall McLuhan once said, “I don't know who discovered water but it wasn't a fish.” I think that what might be happening is that language and “objects to think with” are so ubiquitous in our lives that they are not always noticed; on the other hand, network-based learning theories might be more visible because the network is more visible, new, and exciting. This is not a complete explanation of the popularity of connectivism – a thousand registrations to this conference – but it does serve as a reminder that we need to go back and have a good hard look at existing learning theories and what they have to offer.
I’m proposing to have a break here of at least five minutes, maybe a bit longer, if you can monitor the time, George, so I’ll turn my microphone off. Even if we could pass the mic around, I’d like that if that’s a possibility, but I’ll concentrate my attention on the chat window for the next few minutes.
Questions and responses
George: Thank you for that overview, Bill. There’s already been a bit of discussion going on on constructionism and constructivism and connectivism and death by isms, so certainly if you have questions in there you can deal with those. Beyond that, I’m going to release the mic and anyone who wants to post a comment or share a viewpoint may do so at this point.
Bill, you might as well, someone just sent me a text here, bump up your speaker mic as well, you have the ability to increase that slightly. What’s the easiest way here, Bill, do you want me to pick out questions out of the discussion forum and throw them your way? Nobody seems to be grabbing the mic, so just so we don’t have too much dead air, subsequently, would that be an option for you?
Q: I’m wondering about the definition of what a learning theory is. How does Bill define that word?
Bill: I think I look at it from the point of view that it is something that gives us insights into how people learn, in a nitty-gritty sort of way. So when I look at Papert’s ideas, for example, he’s got ideas for how people learn. I’m transferring in the red, I’ll turn it down. I’m not sure what level I’ve got my mic at. Sorry about these technical problems. So inside Papert’s constructionist ideas, for example, not only does he have ideas about learning, he’s also creating a language, or assisting to create a language – I don’t think Papert should get all the credit – he’s assisting to create a language which in his theory helps people think. So it’s a very tangible, almost concrete, conception, idea, about learning. Part of the problem I have with George’s theory is that I find a lot of it is too much at the level of generalization, not to my taste. I’ll stop there. Other people might want to have a say.
Jason: Hi Bill, nice to hear an Aussie voice presenting, it’s really nice, and thanks for what you’ve done so far, it’s a good introduction. I’ve got a question for you. You said before that other learning theories do what connectivism tends to do or say. Can you give us some specific examples of that, like what other learning theories already do what we talk about in connectivism?
Bill: Yes. Thanks, Jason, I think it was. I mentioned Andy Clark and his book Being There, and it’s been around for ten years. Let’s see, I think it might have originated by someone called Varilla?, who I did read about years ago. The name of it, it’s a theory of cognition and how it develops and it’s called enactivism or embodied active cognition. There’s other theories around – another theory called distributed cognition, that’s cited in Andy Clark’s book, and I’m trying to remember the author of that one - I can’t off the top of my head – but it’s a person who wrote about boat navigation and that went through the theories about how people in a boat will incorporate to organize navigation of the boat, and that author came up with a theory called distributed cognition. So that’s a couple. I think there may be some others, but they’re two that I’m a little bit familiar with. The one I was thinking of wasn’t Tom Brown.
George: Vicki made a point. Is there maybe some reason why connectivism is gaining such steam here - I’ll be very neutral here – educators feel the current ones are missing out on some vital aspect of affecting our teaching, so the question to you, then, Bill, is are you saying that connectivism is in other theories, and would you say that perhaps those theories are not being taught correctly to educators?
Bill: No, I think, I don’t see it like that. I see connectivism has arisen out of what is called connectionism, which is an artificial intelligence viewpoint of neural networks. Once again, connectionism has been around for a while, and Papert and Minsky wrote a book on connectionism called Perceptrons which goes back 20 years maybe. They said connectionism couldn’t achieve much, and then about ten years after that there was a revival of connectionism, and it has achieved some very interesting things. This is computer space as configured as parallel networks and in different paths, different weights, and that artificial intelligence device learning things as it goes along, and that’s the theory of connectionism. I think I see connectivism as arising out of that. I don’t know what George’s thought would be on that. There is new important stuff, new ideas arising out of that theory of connectionism. Once again, I think Hayek has moved beyond that as well, and I’m more interested in more recent artificial intelligence authors such as Rodney Brooks, for example, who talks a lot about things being grounded, and the importance of embodiment and situatedness, which was actually a problem in the connectionist neural network theory, because those connectionist devices didn’t have sensors to the environment. So a lot of my thinking is based on thinking about reading about artificial intelligence research, so it’s a bit of a complicated answer, and I’m not sure if I’m being terribly clear.
George: At this point, and again, this is your show here, Bill, so I want to make sure that I’m giving you the time to take it in the direction you want. If you want, I can respond to a few things you’ve said about connectionism, or if you’d prefer to just move through your presentation, because I know you do have quite a bit of material planned to move through, so I’ll let you determine the best approach.
Bill: I’d like it if you’d respond, George. I think that’d be great.
George: Well, the challenges that I see, and without getting too much into a discussion of the theory or origin or these types of things, there’s no doubt ideas always have overlap and have a sense of relatedness because ideas arise in something, and any new idea – assuming we even call connectivism a new idea – will always retain elements that come from the space in which it arises. A completely novel idea is completely useless simply because none of us can relate to what it means or in what context it’s applicable. Now with connectivism, I’ll just give you the background and space in which it occurred. It largely occurred based on how I was interacting with people through blogs, through wikis, through technology, and finding that what was being said by these individuals who fly under the banner of constructionism or constructivism or cognitisim, behaviorism, or even any other theory or viewpoint of learning was that what I was being told didn’t resonate with what the theory itself held. Now there’s a key difference here. The theory and the theorists – let me rephrase that – the theory and the researchers are separate entities. Vygotsky would say “this is what learning is” without putting it under a banner of a particular type of a terminology. He was later, by those who came down the road, brought into this space. They said, “Well, he’s a constructivist,” even though it’s not a term that he used. I think Piaget explicitly used the statement constructivist, but it wasn’t one that Vygotsky used. So good ideas run across numerous boundaries. So if someone has a good idea in a particular discipline, say what Vygotsky had with his understanding of language, it doesn’t fit only into the container that someone subsequently has decided to place it into. So in my dealings with this rapidly evolving information and knowledge landscape, I found that what I was seeing with learning wasn’t reflective of what I was told in a theoretical basis. So connectivism came out of that fairly messy, chaotic space where I saw the chaos, tried to make meaning of it. I didn’t construct knowledge so much as I connected knowledge, and put pieces together, and it was the pieces I put together that created the ultimate by-product of understanding that came out for me. With that as a little bit of a background, the connectionist approach that Bill brought in came from the discipline of what was happening partly with artificial intelligence, partly with neuroscience, and connectionism is something that I’ve validated, something that I feel has a strong role in being able to move forward as a model for how learning occurs. Neuroscience is daily breaking new grounds on what happens in our head, and right now, the best model we have is neurons, dendrites – we don’t always know how memory works, we don’t always know how things get brought into this particular space, so the understanding of connectionism is important, and that’s part of it, and I’ll gladly defer that to other individuals who are doing the active research in that space. The difference, though, with what I’m trying to communicate with connectivism on an external sense, is that it has a component with what we do within our head, with the neural systems that we create – that I’ll leave to those who are more skill and are more research-enabled to deal with. The aspect that I’m more focused on is the external networks, the networks that I create when I mediate through technology relationships and ongoing understanding.
Martha: I just want to make two remarks if possible. One that I think it’s very positive to have a different approach to connectivism, and probably is not a place to defend a theory, but try to be open to the critical side. Another thing I wanted to say is that it is very important what it was said on the presentation, that visibility plays a crucial role. When Vygotsky was making his theory, when constructionism was also developing as a theory, the Internet did not exist; therefore, the Internet makes possible now in our days to be really building theories one with the other, one in connection with the other in what is called knowledge management. So really knowledge management facilitates or is a space to bring more theories, to construct theory, to be connected. And I therefore believe that all of these ideas that are new, as you were saying, George, are because we are in this new era. And even if they’re not that new, we are reconstructing them from our perspective and from our possibilities.
George: Bill, I see you’re back here again, so just by way of quick overview, just chatting a little bit about the duality, the connectivism being from what goes on internally in our mind in a connectionist sense, and what occurs externally as we mediate our understandings through technology we distribute it across a network. Martha just stated again that - the notion expressed in the chat forum is why do theories need to be in conflict – I do have a post that I need to upload on your response to Stephen Downes there which I’ll get to a little later today – but essentially Martha was stating that the theories maintain elements of other theories, and that the conflict – it’s nice to be open to ideas and be prepared to listen to ideas. That’s essentially what I caught out of her statement, but Bill I’m going to turn the mic over to you and ask you to go forward or continue initiating the conversation here – whatever works best for you.
Bill: Thanks, George. I’ll go forward because I’m starting to worry a little bit about the time, and I’ve missed some of the conversation because of dropping out a couple of times. I want to turn to what I call connectivist slogans; some of these were in George’s initial paper and have been repeated in his book Knowing Knowledge.
Connectivism slogan
"The pipe is more important than the contents (simply because content changes rapidly.)"
The first one there is “the pipe is more important than the contents” slogan, which I have put up on teacher’s lists, because it was an interesting slogan, so I put them up for discussion, because I thought it was interesting and viable. And part of my learning has come from the discussion from a teacher’s list in South Australia. So in response to this slogan, the immediate rejoinder from others is that content is important, too. And then some will argue, reasonably, that some content is more important than other content. This leads into a discussion of the nature of knowledge or content. Is there some knowledge that is more fundamental than other knowledge? What is the difference between a new idea of substance and a fad? This is a discussion which has to be had. The slogan leads into this discussion but does not provide an answer to it.
"The half-life of knowledge is declining"
Then moving on to another connectivist slogan, “The half-life of knowledge is declining,” I say, yes, but I would say that at any given time some knowledge is more durable and important than other knowledge - and that the “half-life of knowledge” argument obscures that fact. This term is provocative and good a discussion starter but needs more analysis.
I am not arguing that there is such a concept as “fundamental knowledge,” but that at a given time some knowledge is more important than other knowledge. What do I mean?
What is described as “learning how to learn” skills or meta-cognition, or the methods by which these are acquired, such as effortful, directed study deserve some emphasis in my opinion.
Also, perhaps some of the principles that help us understand how the net works should be emphasized, too, at this point in time, as in the YouTube video which has attracted a lot of attention, The Machine is Us/ing Us. The separation of structure from style in digital documents, advanced search skills, RSS feeds, aggregation, folksonomies, some of this knowledge might turn out to be short-lived in historical terms, but it does seem very important for the present.
Alan Kay's Non Universals
The main point, though, in response to the half-life of knowledge declining arises from a talk that Alan Kay gave to a Python conference in Europe last year, in which he presented a series of non-universals; that is, things that are not learnt spontaneously, and his list arises from anthropological studies of all know human societies. Now how are we going to go about teaching these things? From the slide, I’m referring to things like deductive abstract mathematics, model-based science, democracy, slow deep thinking. If these are non-universals and are not learned spontaneously and we regard them as important, then we need to have some method of teaching them, and so I think the implications from Alan Kay’s list about the declining half life of knowledge slogan is that it does require a lot more analysis.
Questions and responses
I did plan a break here, George, do you think – I’ll turn the mic off for a second, concentrate on the chat. I’m not sure about the time factor, though; if you could keep an eye on that for me.
George: OK, there’s a few people who are saying we don’t need a break, let’s just keep moving. There’s some context, you’ve basically introduced Kay’s non-universals. I think if you’re comfortable with keeping moving through the material, that’s probably the best thing we could do right now, until we get to a pause where we can challenge a few of the ideas or just see what the determination is of how it impacts us.
Bill: OK, I’ll keep moving along.
Papert
contructionism: "Objects to think with"
Examples:
- logo programming language
- LEGO logo robotics
- Instructional Software Design Project
Returning to more detail on Papert's idea, his constructionist idea of “Objects to think with” being used to facilitate learning. Examples from Papert’s learning theory include, as illustrated on the slide, the logo programming language, LEGO logo robotics, Instructional Software Design Project. This was both a radical and a tangible program for change.
George: OK, I’m not sure, I think we’ve lost Bill again. So there’s a few questions coming out here. It’s unfortunate that we keep losing Bill in the conversation here, because what he’s sharing with us is I think the heart of what we’re trying to get to in terms of is something a theory or is it not a theory? While we’re waiting for Bill to pop back into this space, one of the big things we need to discuss somewhere along the line – I think Tony Forester mentioned this as well – at some point it doesn’t matter if something is a theory or not. I’m inclined to say that, yes, I do think it matters, but then it’s possible I’m just a smidgeon biased. But one of the things for us to get the point across and the irony here is, well, I think it’s valid, we’re seeing here at least the vitality of connections, and I hate to say this, but it’s not a conspiracy. But a theory needs to do a few things - and it’s something we can chat about while we’re waiting for Bill to pop in - I think a theory does need to explain and predict; it needs to play a key role of advancing a discipline in particular. A theory is there especially in educational contexts. We need a theory that can move a discipline forward. I said this in my session when I presented earlier in the week: it needs to be descriptive of what’s happening and prescriptive of where we need to move forward to. So that’s something to think about as we look at what a learning theory is or what a learning theory should do. As well, to a large degree at least to prepare and anticipate future needs. I see Bill is back here, so I’m going to let him continue.
Bill: I dropped out and I wasn’t clear exactly a while back. I was explaining Papert’s learning theory and going into a bit about some recent developments which have questioned Minsky’s ideas about the development of frames. And then I was moving on to the political level that Logo fought School, School eventually won. Why did School win? Naturally there is dispute over this, but according to Papert and Alan Kay the reasons logo –
George: As we wait for Bill to come in, does anybody want to throw out some discussions just for random conversation, because unfortunately I’m feeling I’m dominating the conversation too much here. Conceivably Bill is critiquing the ideas that I’ve put forward, so I would love to have others speak into it, so that it doesn’t end up being a defense thing, and I’m certainly trying hard not to react to the ideas that Bill’s presenting, because I think they’re very valuable. Does anyone want to throw their hand up, request the mic, or throw out some discussions or general points of interest?
- Tiny, tiny poster here. One thing has been coming up in discussions: games and constructionism, constructivism, and connectivism. Just commenting on what has been said in the chat. Connectivism has got good links with Web 2.0 and computer games. I’m a bit vague here what I’m saying. The other thing I wanted to comment on was whether or not learning theory is important, whether it’s important that connectivism is a learning theory. I think you’ve got to be quite clear about what’s a theory and what is not, but my comments previously were that even if connectivism isn’t a learning theory, the discussion we’re having is important, and the issues we’re discussing are important. Anyway, I’ll hand the mic back.
Bill: Sorry for dropping out all the time. I’ll try to keep moving along to Vygotsky.
Vygotsky
Language scaffolds human development
Language scaffolding for self development, private voice, keeping secrets and solving hard problems.
Beyond the often repeated slogan about the zone of proximal development, I'm not sure how deeply Vygotsky has been understood or implemented by teachers. On the surface his ideas seem more generally accepted compared with logo, but then language has always been seen as more important than maths and science.
Language scaffolds human development itself, a deeper insight than the obvious proposition that we use language for communication.
In his “blog of proximal development”, Konrad Glogowski, who is a registrant at this conference, I notice, documents that to create a real community of learners who interact with meaningful semantic relationships can take students two years. So, to achieve deep change requires favourable environments and teachers who understand the issues deeply. Deep change is not a magic bullet, or as I should say, really, blogs and the two-way Web, the read/write Web, is not a magic bullet.
However, now that written language has combined with the read/write web in the form of blogs, for example, we are observing the same sort of resistance that previously happened with logo, that is, default censorship of the read/write web by School filtering systems accompanied by moral panic from the media about the dangers from pedophiles and on line harassment.
Writing And Blogging
"We use language to author ourselves, assisted by many co-authors as we grow up." Daniel Dennett
Good blogging is Vygotsky writ large.
Although Vygotsky is not new, I think the insight that language scaffolds self development is reaching the awareness of more people as they blog, receive comments and feedback on their blogs, and develop new thoughts through this process.
Consistent with the earlier view of the Mind that I presented, we should treat writing and speaking as an environmental manipulation that transforms the problem space for human brains. We are constructing some form of internal and external higher order structures in this process, even though their exact form has yet to be discovered or fully worked out.
Web power
Conversation, communication, and collaboration
No argument but not new concept
Scaling is not the same thing as innovation or a new idea about how learning works
People say of the Web that it promotes conversation, communication, collaboration - that these things are augmented many fold. That our ability to communicate, collaborate – there’s no argument from me here. However, good educators have always recognized the importance of these things. The fact that the read/write Web has scaled and augmented our ability to communicate and collaborate I don’t think is the same thing as an innovation or an idea at the level of learning theory. The scaling is not actually innovation.
I’ve put forth some parallels to my argument here. For example, Alan Kay has argued that there has been little development in computer science for 20 years, that programming languages such as LISP and the language he developed, Smalltalk, were developed 20 years ago and really there hasn’t been much progress since then. The link to that is on my wiki if you want to follow that one up.
David Wheeler has argued that software innovations are far less frequent than most people think, that due to Moore’s Law, things are changing very fast, and things are getting faster, cheaper, better, things are speeding up, but that’s different from someone having an innovative idea in software development. So I’m just presenting there a couple of parallels to the argument that the fact that things scale and augment is, I see, actually different to new innovation.
Radical Discontinuity
read/write web:
So I raise the question of radical discontinuity. I believe, and I think everyone here knows, that we are entering some sort of period of radical discontinuity, but let’s try to look at that more closely and say, what is the nature of that radical discontinuity? With regard to new tools and Web applications, yes, there’s a radical discontinuity. There’s new Web apps coming online every day, hundreds of them.
New learning environments – augmented conversation, communication, collaboration – this is – we have teachers coming online all the time and saying “this is how I do it” with regard to building new environments with their students, so yes, there are brand new things happening in that area.
New curriculum – is the new curriculum happening? I can’t really see that, I can’t really see that people have clear ideas or something has developed in that area of new curriculum come forward. I mentioned the new school in Sydney, which could be described as connectivist – it has all mesh wireless networks and open classrooms, but it doesn’t have a new curriculum.
Are we at a period of having a new epistemology, a new way of looking at looking at knowledge, a new learning theory? Well, yes, in some ways I think we are. I mentioned connectionism and anti-coaxial ideas, and I certainly think there are new ideas coming forward, but I don’t actually see connectivist theory as having added a great deal to that, and I don’t see the need for that new theory.
Do we have new political awareness of what needs to be done in this new era? I certainly think that we need that at the moment, and a lot of the things that are blocking us from moving forward at this stage are happening at a political level.
So I planned to have another break there. I’ll just switch the mic off for a sec and see what you think, George.
Questions and responses
George: Well, thank you for those comments. By the way, you’re doing great. I know it’s probably more frustrating for you to be knocked in and out of the room, so I think you’re doing very well with it. The questions here - if anybody would like to ask a specific question, please just raise your hand and I will turn the mic over to you. While I’m waiting for the questions to come out there, I would just throw out to you, Bill, from your experience in terms of, let’s say, building the wiki that you put together for this particular conference – and excellent resources there – would you say that was an experience of connecting knowledge sources, or was that a stage of construction, or are those questions redundant all together?
Bill: Rather than the wiki example, George, the example I give is I used blogs and wikis last year to teach students, year 11 students, in Australia, about 15 years old, in a course of programming using Gamemaker, and the use of the blogs and the wikis was great in terms of enhancing the communication and collaboration, but in terms of coming to grips with the core concepts of programming, I think that’s got to come – and how to teach it – that has to come from someone who’s really expert at programming, has insights into that. Just as when Papert developed logo, he had an idea you could teach calculus to young children by this idea of the logo turtle moving around in a circle, forward a little bit, right a little bit, forward a little bit, right a little bit, and so I feel he was operating at that level of a basic epistemology of knowledge and how knowledge works, and providing a real insight into that. So the communication and collaboration is fantastic, but I still think at the level of knowledge we need new insights.
A hand’s raised.
- Hello, Bill, Tiny poster here. Just in the chat we’ve been talking about games and various game creation tools, and I just wanted to ask you, Bill, how your experience with computer games relates to your understanding of the three learning theories of connectionism, constructionism, and constructivism. Over.
Bill: Right. Well computer games – I suppose my experience in using Gamemaker and computer games arise out of my experience of using logo, and arise out of my reading of Papert and the constructionist learning theory, so that was a fairly smooth transition. I just moved from logo Gamemaker because Gamemaker had a more modern interface and seemed to appeal to students more. When the connectivism theory came along in 2004, that certainly did made me think about well, this relates to the read/write Web, but it didn’t really have much impact –
George: I think we’ve lost Bill again, so again, I’ll throw it out to individuals who would like to share some general opinions or reactions on where we’re at here. Please raise your hand and we’ll turn the mic over to you so that we have people who’d like to share viewpoints or ideas on it have the ability to do that. Somebody says I should just give the mic over to Vicki; I think that’s the response. OK, Vicki isn’t ready. So again, there’s some rich text going on here. We’re dealing with some big issues, and I think it reveals a bit of what’s at stake when we start talking about learning. There’s a reason we get passionate about learning, is because it’s such a central part of our lives, and when we take a new educational approach and we subject it to our kids, there’s a lot at stake. Learning isn’t one of those things where you bought a bad sweater and now you take it back to the store and you get one that fits better, has a better color to it. Learning is one of those things where the stakes are enormously high and people are enormously passionate about what’s going on, and I think that’s why we have this level of response when it comes to learning theory and when it comes to talking about learning theory is that we have a lot vested in this. And so I think it’s great that we have people who are passionate and who are eager to be involved in the dialogue.
Bill, I’ll turn it back over to you. We’ve got about another, well, technically, it says three minutes according to my schedule here, but let’s say if we give you another five minutes, do you think you could wrap it up in that time, and we can always have an informal conversation if anyone would like, but just for the sake of ending the recording?
Bill: OK, I’ll just move on. I understand time is running short now.
Social Discontinuity, School 2.0
Pursuing this theme of radical discontinuity that I’ve just raised, I like this slogan from the School 2.0 site. “The future is here. It's just not widely distributed yet” – from William Gibson.
I would say distribution as mainly a political issue: who is stopping the future from being distributed?
I don't really describe myself as an edu-blogger, and I don’t really like the term blogger evangelist because I think they don't identify the most important issues. The most important issue is not teachers who haven't woken up to the potential of the internet yet, it's those who are blocking the process higher up the chain of control.
A political issue
I think what is really needed is for those of us who want to change education to form a more politically aware movement, something that teachers have been reluctant to do in the past.
In the next few slides I canvas a couple of the political themes which I think are important to take up.
Rights of the child
Supporting the rights of the child to explore new technology, as supported by that quote from the United Nations convention.
"The child shall have the right to freedom of expression, this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of the child's choice." (Article 13, UN Convention on the Rights of the Child)
George: OK, well, again while we wait for Bill to re-enter the room here, I think that the emphasis that he’s making stems from what we were just talking about a few minutes ago, just how important these ideas are and how critical it is to have this discourse, just because the stakes are so enormous, especially when it comes to things like the rights of the child or the rights of individuals within society, and I think one of the things we’re encountering here – and unfortunately it’s an unfortunate proof of concept – but just the criticality of a connection, especially when the knowledge is distributed across a particular network, or when it’s distributed across a large group of people, or when it’s distributed globally, as our conversation is here today. It’s not as simple to just walk down the hallway, knock on someone’s office, and have the conversation go that way. Someone mentioned this must be very trying for Bill, yes, I think Bill is doing a great job, especially under the circumstance. I see Bill’s back here. I certainly value his patience in dealing with this, even though we’re having some technical issues. So Bill, the mic is yours again, and great quote, by the way.
Bill: Thanks, George. Glad you like the quote. Moving on, risk of risk free.
Risk of risk free
In my opinion, “a risk free society is very dangerous.” The second quote "the fear of what might go wrong can't stop us from doing what is right" is from the School 2.0 site.
George: OK, what I’m going to do now, in the absence of Bill not being here and waiting for him to come back in, once he’s back in I will take the liberty of advancing to his next slide of some issues relating to intellectual property, and again, it still comes from the discussions we’re having about that power shift. Those who held power and control aren’t very likely to give it up. Even today, reading that Steve Jobs is desiring that DRM be revisited, and you just start to sense that there are some colossal battles forthcoming in our discussion here. So what I’ll ask Bill to do once he’s back here is just to wrap it up and we can certainly thank him for performing very well under fairly trying situation, and those of you who would like to stay and dialogue can, after the fact, but we do want to end this so that individuals who listen to this as an mp3 file or view it online they’ll have the ability to view it at that point within roughly the timeline we’ve had. So, Bill, welcome back again. I was just commenting that you’re doing very well under trying circumstances. If you could do a quick wrap-up, we can close the recording and then have a casual discussion for those individuals that wish.
Bill: Yes, thanks again. This was actually on the last slide, so the timing’s worked out reasonably well.
Intellectual property battle
The intellectual property issue is a huge one, and very central. It does tend to force us into a situation where we need to step out of our teacher perspective onto a political stage, because that intellectual property battle is being fought in broader society. I’ll just illustrate it the breadth of the struggle around this issue.
Hardware - tampering with hardware to prevent copying and digital rights management (DRM, TPM).
The economic issue - locking in – in my state of South Australia, we have the Microsoft Schools Agreement, which does have a terrific impetus in locking in users to proprietary brand and stopping the spread of free software, which is a very exciting movement.
Standards – people become locked in to *.doc standards rather than *.odt, like if you send an *.odt attachment around, a lot of people would ask you, “What’s this and how do I open it?”
The legal issue - copyright law has been strengthened in Australia recently, and in other countries.
Software – the use of automatic updates and they’re being used to spy on users’ computers. That to me is tremendously offensive.
And the cultural aspects – people who question the view are then demonized and labeled as "pirates" – pirates in the bad sense.
So I think we should take a leaf out of the pirate party in Sweden who contested the elections last year and were happy to get 4% of the vote and get a candidate into parliament. They didn’t achieve that goal; they ended up with ½% of the vote, but that’s still ½%, still a considerable amount of people that came onside. So I just wanted to raise that as perhaps we need to step onto the political arena more than we are doing at the moment.
And that’s the end of my presentation. Sorry for the interruptions, just kept dropping out here.
George: Hi Bill, well first, on behalf of the attendees, I’d like to say thank you for your presentation, for the wiki you’ve put forward, and certainly for the effort you’ve put in coming to the conference. You’ve certainly been actively involved in the dialogue that has gone on in the Moodle forum, so there’s an opportunity there for all of us to go back in there and to carry this conversation on with you. Again, critical thinking – the whole value of a network is that things don’t need to be in black and white opposition that they are if we’re seeing it in a duality. When you have a network, you can have many ideas existing that somehow connect to each other, but one doesn’t necessarily have dominance over the other. So Bill, you’ve done a wonderful job here today, especially the ability that you’ve come back. You’ve provided a critical viewpoint, so thanks again for your effort.
Reference
slogans from school 2.0 wiki http://school20.wikispaces.com/
Greg Whitby new school http://billkerr2.blogspot.com/2007/01/21st-century-school.html
David Wheeler on software innovation http://www.dwheeler.com/innovation/innovation.html
Alan Kay on computer science being stagnant http://learningevolves.wikispaces.com/alanKay
