One man’s dystopia is another man’s nice new neighborhood. — William Gibson

It’s a cool early September evening outside the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco @jccsf. It’s to be expected really, set back a few of klicks from the Pacific shore. The fog rolls in over the hill as if being piped in by a Hollywood special effects team. I keep looking for surly grips holding massive blowers hidden off camera nearby.

Tonight writer William Gibson, author of Neuromancer, coiner of the term cyberspace, noted oracle known as @greatdismal on Twitter is draped comfortably on plush honey-mustard colored chair with high arm rests and a plucky Ken Goldberg, Craigslist Distinguished Professor of New Media at UC Berkeley (Ken’s work alone is worth an hour and a half of discussion so pairing these two heavyweights was a laudable coup for the community). The crowd, an assortment of local digerati, including the likes of John Perry Barlow, Craig Newmark, V. Vale, all comfortably tousled in dark knits and warm handheld screens. Gibson’s untucked midnight blue shirt said: I’m cool. I’m relaxed. His slate-toned wide-striped socks and low-top Jack Purcell sneakers said: I’m cooler than you think.

On writing
What makes Gibson particularly endearing tonight is his candor. There is little if any pretension left in him after years of writing professionally. Gibson is a code breaker. He grew up differently than the world he saw in movies, on t.v., in magazines in the 50s, early 60s. He could not connect what he saw in his daily life to the images he gleaned on tv. He saw a language, a syntax, in the way people dressed, the clothes they chose and wore. Clothes, apparel, were messages to Gibson, coded statements he needed to decipher, a language made flesh.

While certain critics have never been easy on Gibson, he has learned to push back. His writing reflects his own character: a novice initiated into a new reality he never knew existed. He’s not afraid of looking forward since the past and present are still up for grabs. He offered insight into his own writing process exposing a dilemma of getting a central character through a door. A simple process in one sense. The bad guy needs to get into the room to plant a tracking device, but how does he get into the room? What is his motivation? And how is this motivation compelling enough to create a remarkable story?

This simple movement, getting from point A to point B, is behind every conceivable action devised by a writer. In truth, so much depends on how the man gets through that damn door. An activity at once so mundane and so overpowering for a writer, it can become paralyzing. The entire shape, tone, and tissue of the story depends on this one simple act. One Gibson calls out to illustrate the daring and the indeterminacy of his art.

Doomsday roots
Gibson is tall, well over six feet, taut, and even a bit gaunt. The look of a former leader singer in 80s punk band. Haunted may be a better word. His dystopias or utopias, depending where you stand in life, draw their origins from his own childhood fixation on The Bomb. He grew up in a world, rural and unencumbered, where his interest in science fiction overcame his sense of being remote and isolated, connecting him to great minds past and present.

My mother who is about Gibson’s age used to tell me about growing up with dreams of a complete nuclear wipe out, total destruction, hell in a white bikini. The 1962 Cuban missile crisis made a massive impact on Gibson like it did my mother. 13 days our world stood on the edge of complete annihilation, mutual assured destruction. This was no joke. And then nothing happened. No bombs went off as assured, promised across pulpits, bars, kitchen tables, and newsrooms. Yet, the feedback loop caused by it generated ripples of panic, distress, and anxiety that bound and gagged a generation’s psyche in numerous geopolitical/geosocial ways we are still feeling today.

Writing was Gibson’s toolkit, his way through the past and into the future. Neuromancer advances an argument where nuclear war is averted by capitalists who find death and destruction simply bad for business. In this sense, Gibson paints himself an optimist. As a writer he created a new space for things to happen. His oracular power is derived from searching not for a scientific answer, but for a poetic one to decode the jargon spoken by researchers, futurists, politicians, criminals and lunatics. By listening to the sweet, spell binding, rustling of language, Gibson was freed to see things anew. This ability to listen served him well: had he thought to call cyberspace the World Wide Web, he would not be on stage today.

A space where the audience and the broadcast are one
Gibson is a fan of the absurd. He has taken to Twitter like a duck to soup, tending his feed, adjusting it to teeth, searching for spiciness and variety. He follows a hundred or so people at a time preferring the stark raving insane to the timid, the insane being the “salt on the egg.”

The beauty of Twitter for Gibson is it’s surface lack of complexity. It acts more like a street compared to the Facebook’s shopping mall. For Gibson, social media sites that stream like Twitter allow users to not necessarily “cure their souls” (i.e., curate), but to create a living, daily magazine chock-full of stories, links, references, news, useful and inane information, community events, inspiration, new and renewed contact. He applauded the design beauty of the retweet (RT), the ripple in the pond, the fun of tinkering with Twitter like a customizable sidebar. The tail begins to wag the dog.

When asked about Steve Jobs and other Silicon icons/tycoons and their impact on his work, Gibson playfully responded that none of the computer industry guys registered as “mythical” for him. Instead, he invented his own myths: “They are much weirder.”

Coda
As the evening came to a close all too quickly, I boarded the 1 bus to take me back to the Embarcadero to catch the train back east to Berkeley. These Bay Area cities make regular appearances in Gibson’s work as liminal spaces, the spaces in between, “and there’s a lot of in between the in-between.”

Speaking as a recent transplant from the East, I find myself regularly observing life in-between-the-in-between within a psychological topology that feels designed to allow me to do this. The Bay Area is as real a place as it ever is, which is difficult to understand until you’ve been out here and seen it close up, licked it’s teeth. SF and Berkeley are house proud, eager to please; cities so irresistibly kinetic and charming, from their skylines and bridges, to the microclimates, microcultures, coffee roasters & houses, and remarkable cocktails. SF & B sit on the edge of the continent, at the edge of international commerce, the edge of scientific and social innovations that have changed the way the world does business. It’s multi-ethnic, bio-diverse, health- and spiritually conscious area that shifts geophysically on a daily basis; two cities that are the living result of throwing artists and criminal into the same room and throwing out the key.

William Gibson will continue to write what he sees. He’ll ask himself each time he picks up a pen, “Is this something Neal Stephenson would have written 10 years ago?” He will continue to put it out there, “whipping the oracular on us” from time to time. He enjoys playing the role even though he takes it slightly seriously. We should be so lucky.

Published Tuesday, September 4, 2012

From a network perspective, all organizations are organic, based on complex sets of relationships between people and among groups within an organization. While we may not be able to control networks in a traditional cause and effect sense, we can influence the context of a network and the environment in which it operates.

Here are four methods or tuning protocols (Allen, 1995) for facilitating network transformation explored by Senge (The Fifth Discipline), Patti Anklam (Net Work) and others. These methods leverage the diversity and breadth of a network by using collective intelligence, building scenarios, gathering stories, relying on principles of self-organization, and tapping the power of effective conversation. The idea is to use a particular method to help “tune” a particular organizational process or network to a higher standard.

These methods are not limited to one specific point in the life cycle of a network or committee. Instead, consider them as what Anklam describes them, as probes, as a means of generating a reaction, creating a connection, and/or highlighting a specific element in the network. Such methods are designed to be generative, not prescriptive; each offering a particular means for framing problems, situations, and solutions.

These four methods offer a useful way to put a team, group, community back on track or on to a new course. These methods involve knowing and practicing effective speaking and listening strategies and tactics (e.g., active listening).

Conversation should be a collaboration, not a contest. After all, conversations are the core business process: they manage activity, initiate rapport, allow possibilities to emerge, new breakthroughs, they have the power to simultaneously solve and create problems within the same breath.

What these methods and others like them offer is a way to reformulate issues and concerns. Of course, it is not always necessary to discount or throw out well established techniques and tactics. Consider, for a moment, what Marvin Minsky calls The Investment Principle (Minsky, 1998, p. 146):

Our oldest ideas have unfair advantages over those that come later. The earlier we learn a skill, the more methods we can acquire for using it. Each new idea must then compete against the larger mass of skills the old ideas have accumulated.

The investment principle is so deeply ingrained in the way we have evolved, we are practically enslaved to it. For example, the genetic code for plants and animals has scarcely changed over a billion years. (!) Evolution-wise, we are well equipped to deal with the short run, yet the Investment Principle makes us less likely to examine well established skills and foundations for fear over disrupting deeply held beliefs and assumptions. The danger is not relying on what you know, what you are comfortable with. Instead, danger lies in supporting established ideas by accumulating ways of side stepping their deficiencies. This only increases the chance that our old ideas will overcome new ones and lead us to anchor our style of thought on less and less.

Methods like Future Search and Appreciative Inquiry can be used to open up conversations, explore ideas, and challenge conventions when conventions stop working as well as they used to. It should be noted that such methods and tuning protocols cannot offer significant change if the attitudes and behaviors they are built on are not open, trusting, generative, and respectful.

Which of the four methods above are best to use?
Practically any problem is easier to solve the more one learns about the context in which that problem occurs. No matter what one’s problem is, provided that it’s hard enough, one always gains from learning how things work. Leveraging from the collective intelligence of a network has proven benefits for extra-large to extra-small organizations. Consider running an experiment or two, run a pilot study, build a sandbox, but build it with a purpose. No one plays in a sandbox alone. They work best when you invite many kids over. Invite people with the time, energy, and willingness to explore different ways to learn. If you’re still not sure your group is ready to push the button and would rather side step your organizational deficiencies, you can always invest more time studying opportunity costs. Just saying…

References:
Allen, D. (1995). The tuning protocol: A process for reflection. Studies on Exhibitions No. 15. Providence, RI: Coalition of Essential Schools.
Anklam, P. (2007). Net Work: A Practical Guide to Creating and Sustaining Networks at Work and in the World. Burlington, MA: Butterworth-Heinemann.
Bushe, G. R. (1988). Appreciative Inquiry with Teams. Organization Development Journal 16(3) 41-50.
Minsky, M. (1988). Society of Mind. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster.
Senge, P. (1990). The Fifth Discipline. New York, NY: Doubleday Currency.
Weisbord, M. R. (1987). Productive Workplaces. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

The book’s focus falls on change agents, people who practice or aspire to be mind-changers. Gardner lays out his argument in a manner that is immediately approachable by non-academics. This method, while working well for the masses, offers a host of rabbit holes for practicing researchers. Nevertheless, like his theory of multiple intelligences, Gardner sets the stage for further research and debate that makes it a worthwhile read. I have chosen to limit my post and analysis to the parts of the text associated with educators. The book itself goes into greater detail about changing minds on a number of levels that would take far too long for me to adequately and appropriately cover.

When we think about an idea (i.e., the contents of the mind) we generally conjure a mental image in our mind that contains both content (semantic meaning) and a form/format (the language or system of symbols in which the content is represented). Gardner argues that multiple versions of the same idea represent a potentially powerful way to shift our way of thinking (other contents of mind that can affect change include concepts, stories, theories, and skills). Gardener then introduces a framework of seven factors or levers that could be at work in cases involving changing minds (pp. 15-18):

Reason – a logical, rational approach

Research – a collection of relevant data/findings that is formal or informal

Resonance – the approach/change feels right or fits the situation

Representational Redescription – the change lends itself to multiple representations in a number of different forms

Resources and Rewards – positive reinforcements

Real World Events – the broader context surrounding one’s environment

Resistances – difficulties associated with change or reasons not to

For Gardner, “a mind change is most likely to come about when the first six factors operate in consort and the resistances are relatively weak” (p. 18). When resistances are strong, good luck and good night.

Growing up we acquire prevalent sets of concepts, stories, theories and skills that make up our mental schema for interpreting the world around us (i.e., our underlying belief system). Changing our mind requires us to first be open to change (which, for some, is no simple feat). Change also requires a level of trust; we must trust those outside experiences, forces, and/or people that are attempting to sway our opinions (e.g., they must appear reasonable, they must resonate with us, the rewards for taking on this new point of view must present themselves clearly, etc.). Gardner explains:

It is more difficult to change the mind when perspectives are held strongly, and publicly, and by individuals with rigid temperament. It is easier to change minds when individuals find themselves in a new environment, surrounded by peers, of a different persuasion (for example, when one enters college), or when individuals undergo shattering experiences (for example, a severe accident, a divorce, an unexpected death) or encounter luminous personalities. Even so, however, fans of mind changing must often mute their claims of victory. The opportunities for backsliding are patent among those who make a lot of noise—indeed, they may be especially patent among those who are given to histrionic statements (“it’s an entirely new ballgame”) and then register disappointment when the rest of the world remains much as it was before. In other words, it’s easier to talk about changing minds in general than to effect enduring changes in any particular mind (p. 62).

When discussing changing minds, Gardner means changing the way one thinks or behaves (i.e., significant changes) as opposed to trivial changes like eating bagels for breakfast instead of eggs.

In terms of educating educators, I have attempted to adopt some of Gardner’s findings as they apply to working with students. As such Gardner suggests that three conditions must first be met:

Resistances must be clearly recognized and confronted. In other words, it is necessary to directly confront the myriad of conceptual and methodological misconceptions that educators hold. This means confronting people’s inadequate modes of thought and conclusions about the world and technology head on using sound principles, logic, and reason.

Second, we must provide many rich, illustrative examples culled from research, practice, and the work of others.

Finally, once we fully immersed in our examples, we then have the opportunity to approach the topic from multiple perspectives, using a variety of lens’, tools, and ways of seeing.

For working with students/learners, Gardner offers the following entry points for changing minds (pp. 140-141):

1. Narrative – telling stories about the topic and the people involved with it
2. Quantitative – using examples connected to the topic
3. Logic – identifying the key elements or units and exploring their logical connections
4. Existential – addressing big questions, such as the nature of truth, beauty, life and death
5. Aesthetic – examining instances in terms of their artistic properties or capturing the examples themselves in works of art
6. Hands-on – working directly with tangible examples
7. Cooperative or social – engaging in projects with others where each makes a distinctive contribution to successful execution

Essentially, Gardner feels that educators need to address the “multiple intelligences” he associates with the mind when attempting to influence the thinking of others. He does offer the following caveat:

The mind changes involved in disciplinary learning are profound ones; given the strength and ubiquity of resistances, they are difficult to effect even under favorable circumstances; and those educators who can help to bring them about constitute a precious human resource” (p. 141).

The take away from this conception is that there are many effective ways to present content, and the tipping point is most likely to come about if educators use “several formats flexibly and imaginatively” (p. 141). I associate this way of thinking with differentiating instruction; that is, providing multiple opportunities for students to engage with both the content and each other.

For the educational technologist in all of us, I feel it is critical for us to model how we, as innovators, go about looking at the world (see Brown, Collins & Duguid’s notion of cognitive apprenticeship). We need to show (not tell) how we are demanding of ourselves; how we look for holes, how we are skeptical, how we conduct research, how we probe, how we experiment, how we try to break things, and how we are willing to suspend our beliefs until we are proven otherwise. We need to show others what motivates us, how we know when something feels right to us, and how we utilize our resources.

Overall, I find Gardner’s work thought provoking. I can’t say that I find all that he says resonating. I feel that he overlooks a lot of important research associated with the social nature of teaching and learning although I find it seeping into his work occasionally (and unattributed). I like the essence of his seven factors, even though he seems to be consciously limiting himself by only incorporating words that begin we the letters R & E.

His preface includes one more important point that I hinted at earlier and I wanted to reprise, and that is the notion of trust and trustees. “No community can exist without a measure of trust” – author’s emphasis (p. xiv). This includes the desirability of trustees – those members of the community who have an ability to see things clearly; those members who are wise, skeptical, and who look out for the best interest of the community as opposed to their own interests. Trustees have power and sway over others and are important elements of change. To be a powerful agent of change, then we must instill a sense of trust in those we want to affect. This essence of trust may not be earned in 5 minutes or perhaps it can, as long as we perform our work with integrity, with honesty, and with truthiness.

References:
Brown, J.S., Collins, A., & Duguid, P. (1989). Situated cognition and the culture of learning. Educational Researcher, 18(1): 32-42.

Gardner, H. (2006). Changing minds: The art and science of changing our own and other people’s minds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School Press.

• How can you keep track of students’ performance if you don’t test them constantly?
• How can you improve teaching if you have no accountability for bad teachers or merit pay for good teachers?
• How do you foster competition and engage the private sector?
• How do you provide school choice?

How well has this obsession worked for us? Judging from the PISA survey which compares 15-year-olds in different countries in reading, math, and science conducted every three years by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), I would say “not well.”

In America, it is time to begin thinking differently. We should start by doing the exact opposite of what we’re doing now. That’s right. It’s time to implement the Costanza Theory: “If every instinct you have is wrong, then the opposite would have to be right.” [VIDEO: George Costanza Does The Opposite]

Looking at Finland’s school model is also a good place to begin. Their success is especially remarkable because Finnish schools assign less homework and engage children in more creative play.

There are no private schools in Finland. Of the small number of independent schools that exist in Finland, all are publicly financed. Parents can also choose, but the options are all the same. There are no tuition fees. There are no private universities. Every person attends public school, whether for pre-K or a Ph.D.

There are no standardized tests except the National Matriculation Exam taken as students exit high school.

Teachers are trained to assess children in classrooms using independent tests they create themselves. All children receive a report card at the end of each term, based on individualized evaluation by each teacher.

In Finland teachers and administrators are given prestige, decent pay, and a lot of responsibility. A master’s degree is required to enter the profession. Teacher training programs are among the most selective professional schools in the country.

There are no lists of best schools. Cooperation is the main driver of education policy is not competition between teachers and between schools.

When the Finnish school system was badly in need of reform, the goal of the program was never excellence. It was equity. Excellence was already assumed.

It begins with the basics. Finland offers all pupils free school meals, easy access to health care, psychological counseling, and individualized student guidance. While these services are available in most public schools, their quality and caliber are uneven.

“The problem facing education in America isn’t the ethnic diversity of the population” reports Anu Partanen, a Finnish journalist based in New York City who is writing a book about what America can learn from Nordic societies, “but the economic inequality of society, and this is precisely the problem that Finnish education reform addressed.”

The canyon between Americans who can afford $40,000 in tuition per child per year or even just the price of a house in a decent public school district and the other “99 percent” is painfully clear to anyone paying even half attention.

Finland’s experience suggests that to be globally competitive in the new economy, a country has to prepare ALL of its population well.

As Partanen so eloquently notes in The Atlantic: http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/12/what-americans-keep-ignoring-about-finlands-school-success/250564/

“As a challenge to the American way of thinking about education reform — Finland’s experience shows that it is possible to achieve excellence by focusing not on competition, but on cooperation, and not on choice, but on equity.”

More equity at home. What a capital idea. Now how hard can that be?

The problem will not be solved in Washington, D.C. It will need to start with local school leaders. No one else is going to fix it. Colleges and schools of education will need to help lead the way, offering sound training and design. But I’m not sure they are not part of the larger problem. Opening up the walled gardens, offering open, freely accessible classes and coursework is a brilliant first step. How this move plays out, one that runs counter to many university trustees’ thinking, remains to be seen.

Re-examining the roles that colleges and schools play in our global economy requires a new protocol. I suggest we start with the Costanza Theory, a theory that works exceedingly well when everything else you’ve tried has not worked.

Motivation is very much a personal, psychological issue, one that resists a grand, unifying theory. Motivation focuses us on a task; it assists us in directing our attention; it helps us persist in our endeavors in spite of obstacles, and motivation aids us in the form of goals by which we measure ourselves and our learning.

In terms of learning, research suggests several strategies that can enhance motivation. These strategies are based on rather fundamental pedagogical conditions such as activity and engagement, learner choice and control, prior knowledge and beliefs, how we approach processing information, our ability to self-regulate, our ability to actively reflect, and often includes a good role model who embodies/demonstrates motivation.

So how do we produce learning environments that meet essential psychological needs and make effective/meaningful learning possible?

Educators make decisions that influence a learner’s sense of efficacy, their ability to make choices (and understand the consequences of their choices), and their ability to make connections on a variety of levels. Since learning is a self-regulated process, educators can only influence student learning, they are not the cause of it.

Educators thus are responsible for five major aspects of the learning environment’s organization: level of participation by the actors (in this case, the educator(s) and students), the context within which learning and interaction takes place externally (which can have internal consequences), the content and intended outcomes (goals), and the strategies used to direct learning. It is also worth noting that surrounding this learning environment is a larger institutional environment and culture that shapes what occurs within the immediate learning environment. Each of these aspects is necessarily porous and intertwined with the others and is greatly influenced by the design of the learning environment.

Motivation is similar to learning in that it involves intentionality, processes, and outcomes. Ideally, we want learners to be self-determining, purposive, and intrinsically directed. We may even infer that the most desirable learning experiences are ones that are not only self-directed, but that involve a sense of discovery.

It must be noted that in formal learning environments, not all learning experiences are intrinsically motivated. We attend school often out of necessity. Researchers such as Levesque et al (2006) suggest that

•  [b]y creating learning environments that satisfy students’ basic psychological needs, educators can facilitate students’ natural propensity to integrate their reasons for behaving and move toward more self-determined forms of motivation (p. 101).

Therefore, the authors suggest that the goal of formal educational ecologies should be

• to create environments that facilitate the internalization of extrinsically motivated behaviors instrumental for satisfying the basic psychological needs of autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Those positive forms of motivation would in turn foster engagement, knowledge transfer, and the development of metacognition in students, which would then lead to positive learning outcomes (p. 101).

In other words, the authors suggest that as we become comfortable with and supported by externally regulated behaviors (that lead us toward achievement and success), we can begin to internalize these behaviors and possibly integrate them within ourselves and our identity, thus making what was once an extrinsic motivation and intrinsic one. When you put it like that, it sounds rather simple, no?

The bottom line
No one make you learn something you don’t want to learn. Yet educators can influence certain facets of the formal learning environment that allow learners to feel empowered, competent, and capable of making positive use of what they’ve learned.

Motivation and educational technology
This is why I am thrilled to see so much energy being poured into educational technologies, computer games, blogs, wikis, informal learning, and other areas that are a part of our world that until recently would never be considered educational. Engagement is key. Interactivity is key. Empowerment is key. Connecting to others both globally and locally can help foster an understanding and an appreciation for “otherness” that currently divides people unnecessarily (i.e., the social in social software).

Now that’s motivating.

[Note: this review of motivation and learning is offered for formal learning environments (i.e., much more could/should be said and studied regarding informal learning motivation).]

Reference:

Levesque, C.S., Sell, G. R., & Zimmerman, J.A. (2006) A theory-based integrative model for learning and motivation in higher education. In To Improve the Academy V 24 Sandra Chadwick-Blossey & Douglass Robertson (Eds).  Bolton, MA: Anker Publishing.

Originally posted June 09, 2006

A wonderful photo of my dear colleague Wendy Drexler is shown and a vague (read: buried) reference to our MOOC is mentioned. Still, it’s good to see Wendy get some exposure.

Here’s a link to the Chronicle article linked in the timeline.

Why video games are important:
Video games present us with a safe environment to preform different types of thinking and simulations. Games likeCivilization, The Sims, and World of Warcraft provide us an opportunity to experience empathy for complex situations. These games require players to make lots of decisions; they contain hundreds of variables that require us to think not only of the immediate future but also for the long now. Such games allow the user to take both the feet-on-the-ground perspective as well as the God’s-eye view of the world they are interacting in. (Unlike reality; however, video games often have a clear win-state — a clearly more complex concern in our real-time universe.) Scientists regularly adopt a similar view of their work — they get inside their problems and attempt to think both as an electron and as a scientist watching events unfold. Scientists, in this sense, practice an embodied empathy for the complexities they study. We run simulations in our heads all the time based on experiences and expectations of things and events. These self-generated sims prepare us to solve problems. So…

Games in the classroom: What if we could put this level of learning into our schools?
What if we set up curriculum where students take on different roles and are required to negotiate solutions given complex scenarios?

What if we give students tools to build and model complex scenarios and require them to document and report on the changes, the successes, the failures of their models?

What if we allowed students to not just play games, but produce and modify these games?

What if instead of giving students the manuals of history (i.e., textbooks), we gave them a model of history and then allow them to play in it? To succeed, they might have to do a little research, read up on historical events to find out why certain events led to the recorded reality we currently know.

What if we shifted schools the way participatory media shifted our experiences on the Web? What if we treated students as producers of information and knowledge instead of just consumers?

What if we allowed students to produce curriculum?

Playing games gives participants a chance to adopt a level of expertise, allowing them to theorize on how things work, allowing them to test these theories in practice, which in turn sets this whole cycle of reflection, discussion, and action into motion again. What if classrooms and curricula where set up this way?

An equal opportunity to learn does not mean equal access to content/materials. An equal opportunity to learn means we share the same experiences. To learn best, we need to start with experience, and then turn to the texts. This allows us to situate meaning were it makes the most sense.

Game designers are concerned with not only creating a piece of software; they are also concerned with creating a community that will interact with each other.

The goal of education should be to allow students to surmise new possibilities.
Games do this. Are teachers?

What schools need to do:
Provide opportunities for students to discover their passions–to teach students the importance of “grit” — that is, passion combined with persistence. This is the quality of all creative, passionate, artistic, scientific experts.

—

What is the role of colleges of education?
Teaching the other professions in the university how to reorganize learning using digital tools. The sciences need the knowledge good educators have. Education needs to be at the center of the academic enterprise, instead of at the periphery (both literally and physically). Educators need to be savvy at using digital tools that allow others to surmise new possibilities. It is the colleges of educations golden age and golden opportunity to step forward and away from the status issues that are making schooling unable to adapt to the 21st century realities.

Status issues need to be resolved. The old guard who still cling to their cherished ways of doing things need to go away. The baby boomers who are not changing with the times “are not dying off fast enough.”

Originally posted January 15, 2009

Abstract
An open online course provided the platform for facilitation of student construction of personal learning environments (PLEs).  Hall’s (2010) Level of Use instrument was used to evaluate how a PLE was used by participants, how effectively it was used, the factors that affected its use/nonuse, and the outcomes experienced by users/non-users.  Course designers further compared the Level of Use of for-credit participants with those who were accessing the course free of charge.  The overall increase in the Level of Use suggests that by engaging with others, participants who participated actively found benefit from constructing the PLE and sharing their experience.  Those taking the course for credit showed significantly higher levels of use than open course participants.

Intro
A plethora of emerging web applications and widget-based aggregation tools provide numerous options for learners to access, synthesize, organize, and create content.  At the same time, networked individuals enjoy unprecedented access to subject matter experts and open opportunities to collaborate with fellow learners around the globe.  The convergence of these capabilities paved the way for a massively open online course (MOOC) focused on learner construction of personal learning environments (PLEs).

A MOOC is one example of a larger movement to create and share open educational resources (OER). Open educational resources are defined as teaching and learning materials that anyone may freely use and reuse, without charge (OER Commons, n.d.).  The massively open PLE course, offered through a major university in the southeastern United States, provided a moderated learning opportunity for students seeking college credit along with anyone else in the world who chose to participate in the learning experience.  The open course developed by the authors was eight weeks in length and designed for practicing educators in K-12 and post-secondary environments. The course was offered for university credit for 20 graduate students and free of charge in an open-access format for up to 300 registered participants. For participants enrolling free of charge, a certificate of completion could be obtained to count toward professional development or continuing education credit for those who participated fully. The moderated open course design was optimal for studying and constructing personal learning environments.  All course content was offered in an open forum and all participants had access to virtually every learning opportunity available on the open Internet.  The goal was to create a PLE that harnessed content and relationships in an effective, sustainable manner.

Graham Attwell (2010), one of the first researchers to write about personal learning environments, defined them as “the spaces in which people interact and communicate and whose ultimate result is learning and the development of collective know-how. In terms of technology, PLEs are made-up of a collection of loosely coupled tools, including Web 2.0 technologies, used for working, learning, reflection and collaboration with others” (p. 1). Personal learning environments give learners more control by customizing the learning experience and connecting the learner to others (Downes, 2007).  “PLEs are power tools.  They empower the powerless to break out of their boxes. PLE’s invite self-directed learning” (Haskins as quoted by Wilson, 2008, p. 19). The concept of a personal learning environment (PLE) continued to gain credence as researchers convened for the first PLE Conference in Barcelona, Spain in the summer of 2010.

The purpose of this study was to provide an open forum through which learners could construct personal learning environments on a self-selected topic of study.  The designers sought to determine:

1. In what ways is a personal learning environment being used by participants?
2. How effectively is it being used relative to the foundational processes necessary for constructing PLEs?
3. What factors are affecting its use/nonuse?
4. What outcomes are experienced by use/nonuse of personal learning environments?

Theoretical underpinnings
The major theoretical consideration serving as a framework to support the development of the MOOC was social constructivism (Vygotsky, 1978). The course designers aimed to create an online learning environment where joint activities and reflection served as the main focus. While participants were required to create artifacts including construction of a PLE as a way to externalize knowledge and make it accessible to others, i.e., a constructionist approach (Papert, 1991), the course designers were equally interested in the individual learning and reflection of learning processes taking place.

The designers also considered the importance using technology as a partner in the teaching and learning process to engage and support thinking and reflection. To this end, the work of Jonassen, Howland, Moore and Marra (2002) provided additional theoretical support highlighting five important principles associated with learning with technology. These principles posit that meaningful learning is active, constructive, goal directed (i.e., reflective), authentic, and collaborative. Participants were given clear goals to achieve in their writing and PLE artifact designs. Given the course’s structure, participants had the option to set their own goals and reflect on their progress in an effort to allow them to understand their learning and perhaps apply this learning to new situations in the future. Participants were placed in the role of a producer of content, artifacts, and knowledge requiring them to make decisions and wrestle with real issues associated with designing a meaningful personal learning environment. Finally, participants self-selected groups within which they would work. This required each member of a group to achieve a common understanding of the tasks presented and agree on the stages and the methods they would use to achieve the goal of the project.

Connections to the literature
In terms of developing the learning environment itself, social constructivism served as a vehicle, in essence, which allowed the course designers a reliable means for converging a number of accepted learning theories (e.g., constructivism, situated learning (Lave & Wenger, 1991), social cognition (Bandura, 1985), activity theory (Leont’ev, 1978), and distributed cognition (Hutchins, 1995) about how people come to know (Jonassen & Land, 2000). In addition, the work of Siemens (2004) and Downes (2010) provided both a connectivist approach to networked learning design and a framework for offering a moderated open course with potential for becoming a MOOC.

The course designers viewed technology as a partner in the teaching and learning process to engage and support thinking and meaningful activity (Jonassen et al., 2002). Key processes necessary to support construction of personal learning environments were addressed.  These included practicing digital responsibility, practicing digital literacy, organizing content, collaborating and socializing, as well as synthesizing and creating (Drexler, 2010).  The Networked Student Model (Drexler, 2010) for constructing personal learning environments further informed the instructional design of the course. Finally, the work of Gene Hall (2010) on achieving high-quality implementation was critical as a means to evaluate the extent to which the course goals were achieved by participants.

Mode of Inquiry
To assess the effectiveness of the course in terms of having participants effectively integrate personal learning environments into their practice, the authors wanted to investigate four questions based on a Level of Use Instrument (Hall, 2010):

1. In what ways is a personal learning environment being used by participants?
2. How effectively is it being used relative to the foundational processes necessary for constructing PLEs?
3. What factors are affecting its use/nonuse?
4. What outcomes are experienced by use/nonuse of personal learning environments?

In addition to the questions regarding level of use, the course designers also sought to determine whether there was a difference in level of use between for-credit students and those who were taking the course free of charge.

Data was collected collected in two stages using a mixed methodology. An initial survey was distributed to participants based on a Level of Use instrument (Hall, 2010). Analysis of the results was then used to develop a questionnaire to be mailed to participants at the end of the course further exploring their experiences.

An online questionnaire was created using Google Forms. The participant weblogs were searched and analyzed about the use of PLEs. Personal narrative analysis (Chase, 2005) was conducted in order to identify specific groupings or themes associated with the coursework. These themes included PLE use/nonuse. These themes were a part of the course content and were discussed and explored by the instructors and participants throughout the eight weeks. The results of participants’ activity were analyzed and participants were placed into four groups (highly active, moderately active, somewhat active, not active). The survey was emailed to all registered participants.

Findings
Data analysis is ongoing and will yield detailed results as to the percentage of course participants achieving each Level of PLE use at the start and end of the massively open online course (MOOC).

Table 1.  Levels of Use (LoU) of the Innovation:  Indicators

(Hall and Hord, 2011)

An overall increase in the Level of Use suggests that by engaging with others, participants who participated actively found great benefit from constructing the PLE and seeing what others did. This form of peripheral participation served participants well and supports the idea of learning as a socially constructive activity.  It further supports the need to develop processes necessary to support construction of PLEs.  The higher Level of Use experienced by for-credit students indicates that earning transcript credit could be a motivating factor in student engagement and propensity toward full completion of the course activities.

Factors associated with use and nonuse of a PLE included motivation associated with selected topic of study, whether a learner was taking the course for credit, time to devote to course activities, and comfort with Web applications and use of new technologies.

Outcomes associated with use of a PLE included cultivation of professional relationships, greater sense of learner autonomy and empowerment, increased comfort contacting and communicating with others online, increased comfort using Web applications to organize and manage knowledge, and increased ability to locate and evaluate resources.

Contributions to the field
The massively open online course format (MOOC) allowed the instructors to reach beyond the core course participants.  The implications for students was to extend their learning beyond the small for-credit closed-course model to one in which they had access to virtually all connections possible via the Internet.  Students could benefit from others’ PLE models and incorporate the components that best met their learning needs.  Course designers gained greater insight in how to scaffold networked learning in a massive online environment as well as facilitating the quality implementation of personal learning environments.  Further research is warranted to explore differences in motivation between for-credit students and those who participate without receiving credit.  Of particular interest is the motivation of those students with high Levels of Use who do not receive credit.  What are the motivating factors that keep these students engaged?  How can courses be designed to further engage those learners?  Follow-up research after at least a year would be helpful to determine the sustainability of PLE Level of Use as well as changes that occur in the PLE based on new technologies, different areas of study, and continued relationship building.

References
Attwell, G. (2010). Context and the design of Personal Learning Environments. Presented at the PLE2010 Conference, Barcelona, Spain. Retrieved from http://www.pontydysgu.org/2010/07/context-and-the-design-of-personal-learning-environments/

Bandura, A. (1985). Social Foundations of Thought and Action: A Social Cognitive Theory (1st ed.). Prentice Hall.

Chase, S.E. 2005. “Narrative inquiry: Multiple lenses, approaches, voices.” In N.K. Denzin and Y.S. Lincoln (eds.) The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research, 3rd. ed. Thousand Oaks CA: Sage, pp. 651-679

Downes, S. (2007, June 11). Open Educational Resources And The Personal Learning Environment. Taipei, Taiwan. Retrieved April 25, 2009, from http://www.slideshare.net/Downes/open-educational-resources-and-the-personal-learning-environment

Downes, S. (2010). New Technology Supporting Informal Learning. Journal of Emerging Technologies in Web Intelligence, 2(1). doi:10.4304/jetwi.2.1.27-33

Drexler, W. (2010). The networked student model for construction of personal learning environments: Balancing teacher control and student autonomy. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 26(3), 369-385. Retrieved from http://ascilite.org.au/ajet/ajet26/drexler.html

Drexler, W. (2010). A Networked Learning Model for Construction of Personal Learning Environments in Seventh Grade Life Science. Presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Denver, Colorado. Retrieved from http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/search/recordDetails.jsp?searchtype=keyword&pageSize=10&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=drexler&eric_displayStartCount=1&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=au&_pageLabel=RecordDetails&objectId=0900019b80412bc7&accno=ED509294&_nfls=false

Hall, G. E. (2010). Technology’s Achilles Heel: Achieving High-Quality Implementation. Journal of Research on Technology in Education, 42(3), 231-253. Retrieved from http://74.125.155.132/scholar?q=cache:oKQ-u045yeUJ:scholar.google.com/+gene+hall+level+of+use+2010&hl=en&as_sdt=40000&as_ylo=2009

Hall, G.E., & Hord, S.M. (in press).  Implementing change:  Patterns, principles and potholes (3rd ed.). Boston, MA:  Pearson.

Harel, I., Papert, S., & Massachusetts Institute of Technology. (1991). Constructionism: Research reports and essays, 1985-1990. Norwood, N.J: Ablex Pub. Corp.

Hutchins, E.L. 1995. How a cockpit remembers its speed. Cogn. Sci. 19, 265-288.

Jonassen, D. H., Howland, J., Moore, J., & Marra, R. M. (2002). Learning to Solve Problems with Technology: A Constructivist Perspective (2nd ed.). Prentice Hall.

Jonassen, D. H., & Land, S. M. (2000). Theoretical foundations of learning environments. Routledge.

Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge University Press.

Leontiev, A.N. (1978). Activity, Consciousness, and Personality. Hillsdale: Prentice-Hall.

Siemens, G. (2004, December 12). elearnspace. Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age. elearnspace. Retrieved February 22, 2009, from http://www.elearnspace.org/Articles/connectivism.htm.

Vygotsky, L. S., & Cole, M. (1978). Mind in society: the development of higher psychological processes. Harvard University Press.

Wilson, S. (2008). Patterns of Personal Learning Environments. Interactive Learning Environments, 16(1), 17-34. Retrieved April 25, 2009, from http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?vid=5&hid=103&sid=6e4b6188-ddd1-45be-a909-0090767e96e5%40sessionmgr3&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=aph&AN=27901557

So how will computer networks be defined? The answers depend on “the emergence of standard technical affordances, practices, and legal, organizational, and cultural forms associated with the technology and determining its social meaning” (Feenberg & Bakardjieva, 2004, p.15).

Web 2.0 currently affords users a certain level of democritization in influencing computer use and design. Open source technologies, AJAX, and other tools, for example, allow users to craft applications to their specific needs; they offer lay interventions, as opposed to ones defined by bureaucratic or commercial interests.

In a sense, Web 2.0 is democracy in action; it is about participatory design. It allows for creative appropriation, mash-ups and rip, mix, learn. These are the halcyon days where we are all able to participate freely in multiple gardens.

Feenberg and Bakardjieva suggest that the “consumption model of the Internet is a plausible version of its future given the structural realities of the world in which we live. The alternative community model would take much more conceptual work, design efforts, and political mobilization…. It is the human actors, putting their competencies and resources to work, fighting for their beliefs and desires, who will determine which of the emergent structures prevail” (Feenberg & Bakardjieva, 2004, p.24).

Is there a strategy that will allow this practice to be sustained? Will corporate rationality and determinism attempt to confine this medium? What can we do to proactively keep networks free? I believe this is an important issue for all of us to carefully consider in an age where democracy sometimes feels like a historical artifact.

Reference:

Feenberg, A. & Bakardjieva, M. (2004). Consumers or citizens? The online community debate. Community in the digital age: philosophy and practice. Eds., A. Feenberg & D. Barney. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.

This is the question under discussion:

Given the needs of today’s learners, as well as the current context of technology in most school districts, what are the most important ed-tech leadership issues that are not receiving attention?

Two themes are elucidated in the article – the need for a new vocabulary for discussing educational technology with various stakeholders, and the need to overhaul the teacher education process.

While I agree that a new vocabulary and an overhaul of teacher education programs are popular, hot-button issues, perhaps they are actually one in the same. Allow me to explain….

A relatively recent study of teacher education programs reveals the following features of a successful program (Darling-Hammond, 1999):

• A shared vision of good teaching that is consistent in courses and clinical work;
• Well-defined standards of practice and performance that are used to guide the design and assessment of course work and clinical work;
• A common core curriculum grounded in substantial knowledge of development, learning, and subject matter pedagogy, taught in the context of practice;
• Extended clinical experiences (at least thirty weeks) that reflect the programs vision of good teaching, are interwoven with course work, and are carefully mentored;
• Strong relationships, based on common knowledge and beliefs, between universities and reform-minded schools; and
• Extensive use of case study methods, teacher research, performance assessments, and portfolio examinations that relate teachers’ learning to classroom practice.

Now, that’s quite a thorough and articulate list. What is needed in teacher education is clearly understood. Where the disconnect occurs is transferring this theory into practice (an age old problem in the field of education, for sure).

Will a new vocabulary make the transfer easier?

A new vocabulary might allow us to create new metaphors for thinking about the integration of technology into classrooms, but the trouble begins when we attempt to enact these new/old concepts.

While educational technology has gained a foothold in many private and public higher education institutions, it often resides as a curricular add-ons as opposed to fundamental building blocks. Most of the professors at my uni do not use technology aside from email and powerpoint presentations. In the teacher education program, one educational technology course is required, a fundamentals class, that is most often taught by advanced graduate students. While these graduate students do an outstanding job of activity-based instruction, the content of students’ other pedagogical course work is not directly tied to their use technology. So the buck stops there.

The reality is, the teacher educators I work with who are reluctant to use technology in their curriculum do not use it for several of the following reasons:

1. they don’t want to learn about it;
2. they don’t see any value in its use;
3. it’s not the way they learned;
4. its considered just another educational “fad;” and
5. they don’t know any body else using it effectively.

Another excuse I’ve heard from teacher educators is the fact that most schools offer limited technological access and resources, so if they use IT to teach with, then students will go into the world trained inappropriately with skills they will not be able to employ.

Hmmm… a major disconnect indeed.

While many kids’ social life hinges on digital social networks, many schools have not figured out how to tap into their power. Instead studentscode switch, i.e., they use theirMySpace,Facebook, anddel.icio.us accounts for their personal life and drop them in their school life. Given that we are capable of multiple ways of thinking, believing, acting, perceiving, and evaluating, this code switching sometimes strikes me as a better alternative to having ill-prepared educators require us to use technology in an overly prescriptive, uncreative fashion.

As of today, getting educational technology written into the curriculum in a meaningful way will require significant effort. A core set of curricular frameworks for teacher education is just now being tested and evaluated (seeDarling-Hammond & Bransford’sPreparingTeachersforaChangingWorld, 2005)  The good news is, because teacher education experts are still hammering out such frameworks, there’s room to expand and add technology appropriately into the core requirements. But here again is where things get tricky and perhaps a better might vocabulary come into play. Clearly, we need to articulate what we want kids/adults to do with technology.

For example, do we want kids to engage in multicultural experiences that raise their awareness and sensitivity to other cultures and societies? If so, then we must write curricular frameworks that have students engaging meaningfully with students from around the globe via the Internet (like the flatclassroomproject).

Obviously we want to steer away from the use of any one particular piece of software, yet we can advocate the use of technologies such as weblogs, wikis, virtual worlds, simulations, etc. as they provide a means to enhance our ability to connect, think, experiment, care, and share.

Transforming schools, classrooms, and teacher education programs is a momentous task. I am convinced that eager, well-educated, committed educators can and will make a difference. We already have the knowledge, skill, and technology to transform students’ lives. Perhaps what we require is the collective will do to so.

Reference:

Darling-Hammond, L. (1999). Educating teachers for the next century: Rethinking practice and policy. In G.A. Griffin (ed.), The education of teachers (pp. 221-256). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Originally posted April 03, 2007