thoughts – Page 3 – D’Arcy Norman dot net

on mobile devices as a platform for learning

First, I need to clarify something. I’m not going to call this “mobile learning” or even the more web2.0 friendly “mLearning.” (although I’ve tagged this post with both monikers, because that’s what everyone else seems to call it). What I’m describing is simply the application of small, portable, personal devices with various features that can be leveraged in interesting ways to support and enhance the activities of teaching and learning. By calling it “mLearning” there is an inordinate emphasis on the shiny technology, and less so on their appropriate pedagogical applications.

Second, the concept of using mobile devices to support teaching and learning is nothing new. The New Media Consortium’s 2008 Horizon Report outlines some of the educational ramifications of mobile broadband. There are several pages on del.icio.us tagged with “mlearning” pointing to much more discussion on the topic.

What is interesting is the rapid pace of development of various network-enabled mobile devices such as the iPod Touch, iPhone, Blackberry, and other sophisticated and convergent smartphones. We are now carrying devices in our pockets which are running modern operating systems, on processors more powerful than were found in high end workstations only a few short years ago. These devices now let anyone access advanced applications, with broadband Internet access and, cameras, and geolocation. We now have devices available that rival or surpass the mythical tricorder in power, mobility and flexibility.

Again, this isn’t new – I was writing term papers, printing, faxing, and accessing the network in the mid 1990s from a handheld Newton Messagepad 120.

evolution — Newton MessagePad 120, and three generations of iPods - including an iPod Touch, which finally matched much of the functionality of the MessagePad (but over a decade later).

What has changed is the cost – my MP120 cost nearly a grand, over a decade ago (IIRC, the MP120 cost about $850 back then. after adjusting for inflation that is now equivalent to over $1200). Devices now cost only a couple hundred bucks. These things are now accessible by nearly anyone that wants one.

Which begs the question – what can we do with all of this mobile power suddenly available? How does this change the nature of educational technology? What new activities are now possible, and how can they be applied pedagogically? This is about more than having a bunch of shiny pocket sized devices available. This is about what pervasive, ubiquitous, mobile devices can do to enhance and extend the activities of teaching and learning.

The simplest application is just by allowing access to the Internet – web, email, instant messaging, from anywhere. Students can call up references from the classroom or lab, or even while experiencing activities in the field. This has been possible for awhile, but smaller devices make it easier and more likely to be used (and used effectively).

ipod-touch-geolocation — Geolocation, putting a person on a live map.

Geolocation can be used to place a person on a map, find information about that location, and to find other people who are nearby (or are interested in that region).

Where it gets really interesting is in the intersection of location awareness and augmented reality. Mobile applications they know where a person is, what they’re looking at, where they’ve been.

A student at an ecological field station can call up photographs taken at a given location over the last several years. Someone on a marine research vessel can call up images, audio and video describing the organisms that arebeing retrieved by the trawling nets on the ship. They can post media to document and share the experience. GPS coordinates can be embedded, making the media relevant to other classes and researchers.

hand scanner — Augmented reality - enhancing an experience by drawing on location awareness and networked data to enhance an experience in real time.

It’s not much of a stretch to imagine an application that is able to leverage the location-awareness of the mobile device, accessing information over the network to add layers of additional information based on what a person is doing, where they are looking, and what they need to learn about.

The hype has been heard before. Technology will change everything! All we need is a little more technology! Look! Shiny things!

Heritage Park - 7 — The production of an early form of mobile device with interesting applications in the practices of teaching and learning.

But, I really believe that there are many extremely interesting, and pedagogically sound, applications of these new devices. We just need to be careful about buying into the hype without thinking about how we should use this stuff. I’m not going to try to catalog a long laundry list of possible applications of mobile devices – I’m quite sure that the most interesting uses can’t even be imagined yet. But we need to start thinking hard about how we will integrate these applications, and how we will adapt our teaching and learning where relevant.

ps. the first draft of this (exceedingly long) blog entry was written on my iPod Touch, using the Notes application. I then emailed this so I could finish the post on my laptop (adding the images and links).

my final post on edupunk

I’m listening to the EdTechPosse podcast 4.3, and they’re talking a bit about “edupunk”. I fired a few comments into Twitter, but wanted to flesh them out a little more.

“Edupunk” is not about a bunch of middle-aged geeks reliving their youth. Back in the day, I was much too much of a dork to be a part of punk. I was never a punk as a kid. I’m not “reliving” anything. Edupunk is more than just reminiscing some form of adolescent anarchy. It’s not just trying to recapture lost youth. Although, if there is that angle for some people, more power to them.

“Edupunk” is not about the name. One could call it Super Happy Fun DIY Smiley People and it would be the same thing. The name has been more of a source of confusion than anything – but it has been valuable in that it did cause much conversation about the topic that wouldn’t likely have happened if it had been called Super Happy Fun DIY Smiley People. The *punk portion of the label was also important because it pushed conversation in the direction of tearing down walls and breaking down hegemony. That is important, and needs to be talked about. We need to be talking about these topics that make us uncomfortable.

“Edupunk” did not die a week after the initial discussion. It just went underground. The wordsmithers and people who were hung up on dissecting the “*Punk” portion of the name sucked the soul out of it, and, at least for myself, I’ve decided to just ignore all conversation on the topic and just do it. (says the guy listening to a podcast discussing edupunk, writing yet another blog post on edupunk…)

Anyway, here closes my last post on the topic. No more talking about it. Time to get back to work.

on content management and communities

I’ve been deep in thought, planning a set of resources to support a community project, and have been struggling with how to best position these resources to best reflect a dynamic, engaged, face-to-face set of communities.

My initial reaction was that the communities need to exist first face-to-face, and that any online resources are supplementary and intended simply to continue and extend their conversations. The online resources are not the community. I think this part is pretty obvious.

My second reaction was that I should whip up a new site in Drupal to host the online portion of the communities – discussions, notes, questions, presentations, etc… I’ve even deployed the site and begun to craft it to reflect where I hope to help steer the communities.

But then, after thinking over Cole’s post, I started thinking that the right tack would be to just have the community members publish wherever they like (with a few suggestions offered) and pull their various bits back together in one central aggregation site to help them track the activities. It provides much more flexibility, and each community would be able to draw on any tools and resources they wished to use.

BUT.

After thinking some more, I realized that most people aren’t in the same headspace as the edtech geeks like myself. They don’t get eduglu. They don’t get distributed publishing. They don’t get aggregation. Or tagging, or rss, or rip-mix-burn. And, quite possibly, they shouldn’t have to. I take a fair number of things for granted in how I interact with various resources online. Most people don’t have the context to make sense of this, and forcing them to jump into the pool without first sticking their toes in is not productive – people will be overwhelmed, overstimulated, and alienated.

They’re in a place where they need some guidance. Not authoritarian mandates, but simple guidance. They need constraints and limits, because without them all they’ll see and hear is noise. They won’t be able to participate effectively in distributed conversations, because they will have difficulty even finding the various threads.

There are a few parameters in how a community can select resources, and I think these parameters also reflect the style of the community itself. Here’s a grossly oversimplified 5-minute diagram to help illustrate:

What we’re trying to do is hit the sweet spot, where a community resource has enough flexibility, support, control, and ease of use to enable a high quality online experience to help extend the community.

I’m now convinced that my initial draft at the centralized website resource “hub” for the community is the right approach. I’ll be providing means for the individuals within the community to basically do whatever they want to, to create their own groups (both formal and ad hoc), and to publish whatever they want within the resource. But – they won’t be required to use this website. If they want to move into a WikiSpace, or start up a WordPress blog, or any of a billion other options, they are free (and welcome) to do so. But by starting things in a more centralized and safe place, there is less risk of leaving people out in the cold by forcing them to move too quickly.

my edupunk heroes

On thinking about edupunk, it strikes me that I’ve been drawn to a group of people that have embodied it for years. People that are open. That prefer to DIY. People who share, remix, mashup, and generally operate in the spirit of what is now being called edupunk. Here are my edupunk heroes, who inspire me every day (in no particular order). There are lots of other people that inspire me constantly, but when I think EDUPUNK, these are the people that really push me.

Jim Groom

Reverend Jim. The poster boy for edupunk. Jim’s been kicking out the jams on this stuff for years, running completely against the traditional establishment. He teaches courses without an LMS. He mashes up wikis and blogs. He incites radical DIYism in everyone he meets. Jim’s hardcore exploration of DIY and individual publishing have made me rethink the nature and value of enterprise systems (they still have a very important role, but not in the way I used to think they did…)

Brian Lamb

DJ Wiki. The man who lives in a realtime mashup. His work with the OLT interns is absolutely amazing. He’s taken a group of students as interns, and has essentially pushed them into the role of professional edtech developers, conference facilitators, and so much more. He provides guidance, and lets them explore. And the stuff they come up with as a team is mindboggling. Brian’s mastery of media and depth of literary knowledge are simply stunning, and only matched by his openness and willingness to share.

Jennifer Dalby

Viral professional development. Jennifer has been working to help instructors at BTC to adopt pragmatic openness – starting by sharing as much of her professional development activities as possible. She set up an Elluminate play session today for several of the BTC instructors, and invited people from outside (via Twitter) to participate. As a result, we had an interesting discussion while playing and exploring a new tool. It was a casual way to safely learn a piece of technology, while modeling the power of the Network. Very cool stuff. Jen is brave, open, and able to connect people in a way I’ve never seen before.

Alan Levine

50 ways to tell a story? Serious edupunk. Inspiring hundreds (thousands?) of people literally around the world to take DIY storytelling into their own hands and craft, publish and share their own stories. Alan’s been living edupunk for as long as I’ve known him (and that goes way back to the early 90’s when he ran the Director Web community website!) Alan has always been a trailblazer, an experimenter, and a pioneer of community based collaboration.

Alec Couros

Alec’s ego is big enough. I’ll just link to my previous post on Alec.

Stephen Downes

Anarchy and individual empowerment, modeled by a person employed by the federal government of a G8 nation. Stephen’s been pushing toward personal publishing and DIY for years – long before most of his colleagues (including myself) understood where he was going. I first met him several years ago while working on the EDUSOURCE national learning object repository project. He was talking about stuff back then that we’re only now starting to see come true, most notably the use of RSS as the syndication format. Stephen is one of the few people whom I trust to see through rhetoric and hype, to break something down to the simplest components, and to see how things relate to an individual’s ability to control their own destiny. OLDaily. gRSSHopper. hardcore edupunk.

Cole Camplese

The director of an edtech unit at a huge university, who hacks WordPress themes for fun and publishes to blogs, wikis, podcasts, and various other community sites with impressive frequency and depth. Cole constantly pushes the people he works with, and the people in his Network, by encouraging people to collaborate and contribute. He’s the one who first saw the value in Twitter, when I initially dismissed it as silly and banal. He gets community in every sense of the word.

I am humbled by what these incredible people do. And am trying to figure out if and how I contribute back to the edupunk culture. I suppose 366photos is pretty edupunk (but not particularly strong on the edu- side of things). I suppose helping push Drupal, Moodle, Mediawiki, etc… on campus is a bit edupunk. And eduglu could definitely be called edupunk – but it’s still just a McGuffin, so likely doesn’t count for much at the moment.

Still, when I consider the work that these people do on a regular basis, my head spins.

on edupunk

Jim’s been talking about edupunk a fair bit lately (starting with the killer post The Glass Bees, then Permapunk and finally tying in the awesome Murder, Madness, Mayhem wikipedia project), and Jen wrote up a piece that dovetails nicely into the concept. There’s something about the edupunk concept that is resonating deeply in me.

It’s a movement away from what has become of the mainstream edtech community – a collection of commercial products produced by large companies. Edupunk is the opposite of that. It’s DIY. It’s hardcore. It’s not monetized. It’s not trademarked. It’s not press-released. It’s not on an upgrade cycle. It’s not enterprise. It’s not shrinkwrapped.

It’s about individuals being able to craft their own tools, to plan their own agendas, and to determine their own destinies. It’s about individuals being able to participate, to collaborate, to contribute, without boundaries or barriers.

And it’s not new. The early days of the “edublogosphere” had a definite edupunk vibe to it. Long before that, we had seen edupunk, and it was awesome. I remember when Hypercard was commonplace. When teachers and students would regularly build and adapt their own interactive applications, games, and databases to support classroom activities. Without fanfare or infrastructure or strategic planning or budgets. When Hypercard was killed, it was an end of a renaissance era of DIY edtech.

But, the key to edupunk is that it is not about technology.

It’s about a culture, a way of thinking, a philosophy. It’s about DIY. Lego is edupunk. Chalk is edupunk. A bunch of kids exploring a junkyard is edupunk. A kid dismantling a CD player to see what makes it tick is edupunk.

I’m not about to suggest that technology isn’t important or relevant to edupunk – of course it is. But only as an enabling piece of infrastructure. Technology can empower individuals, amplify actions, and connect communities. But without the edupunk philosophy underlying it all, it’s just a bunch of technology. Uninteresting and irrelevant.

One of the coolest classrooms I’ve ever been in is the Engineering Design Lab at the University of Calgary. It’s a classroom from the outside, but is really nothing but rows of workbenches, armed with any tools and materials imaginable. Drawers full of Lego for building prototypes. Cabinets full of Mechano for piecing together simple machines. A full machine shop for building more complex ones. It’s a place where the students are not only allowed, but encouraged to explore and create. Working in groups to create and solve problems. Critical thinking. Inquiry. Experiential. And it is the most hardcore edupunk class I’ve seen.

twitter’s business model?

Twitter’s been flakier than usual this week, and supposedly the twitgineers are busy fixing database borkage and scaling stuff up and twiddling bits and furiously adjusting the machine that goes PING!

And yeah, they’ve had investors temporarily filling bank accounts to pay for the lavish web 2.0 drug binge parties development of a more robust and scalable nanoblogging platform.

But… Where is the money really coming from? It’s not advertising. It’s not subscription fees. The only other reasonably viable option is that they’re building it up to hope to sell it to some web 2.0 behemoth. And I can’t see why Yacrosoft! would pay $millions for it. Or anyone else, for that matter.

So, where will the money come from to pay for the server farms, pool tables, and cocaine parties growing workforce?

Twitter’s been a pretty stellar example of the power of community momentum. Even though the software is technically and demonstrably inferior to its competitors. The Twitter community stays put because nobody wants to be the first rat to jump ship, in case it doesn’t sink after all. Twitter works JUST well enough, and JUST often enough to keep us all coming back. “maybe it’s working now… how about… NOW! hmmm… now? or… now? YES!” The power of intermittent reinforcement in action. And none of the alternatives are dramatically better – they all suffer the same lack of clear business model that reeks of profound inability to scale sustainably.

A viable business model doesn’t look like this:

on being together

The 3 days in Saskatoon for TLt2008 were absolutely fantastic. It’s fun turning into “conference D’Arcy” – the side of me that is ever so slightly less antisocial and reclusive – the side that seems to show up at conferences. Not sure why that is, but it’s something I’ve noticed for years now. Maybe it’s the sense of being “away” – one part vacation, one part safe place to let loose.

I’ve had some of the most interesting, stimulating, and just plain fun conversations. All of which occurred off-site, while hanging out in neighbouring pubs, coffee shops, or just walking. I’m not going to list names because that makes it sound like some stupid elitist club, and what was so great about these conversations is that they were nothing like that. Newcomers. Academics. Lay-people. Teachers. Students. Geeks. It just didn’t matter. And it was awesome.

One of the highlights of the official conference portion had to be Brian Lamb’s live mashup. This was something that many of the conference attendees were likely to have never seen before – and I think a good chunk of the attendees didn’t realize that it was actually a live performance on stage, and not just a visualization. But, really, how many other conference presenters go the extra mile, bringing their own rented audio amp and even a cowbell on a stand? Hard. Core.

dj wiki drops beats

After the mashup intro, Brian gave a great presentation on openness, sharing, and riffed on some pretty deep topics. He even pulled in Harry to help tug at the heart strings.

Rick Schwier gave a fantastic talk, sharing some wonderful advice and stories. Dean Shareski followed the theme with another fantastic talk called Share Everything, and managed to cover some of the ideology behind sharing while providing concrete and pragmatic examples and strategies.

George Siemens gave something like 14 presentations during the conference, citing some pretty profound neurological research studies in the process (I’m eagerly awaiting his pending publication of the Theory of the Universal Male Brain). He was extremely eloquent in describing the nature of connectedness, what connectivism could mean to education, and why networks (and Networks) matter.

As Scott Leslie noted on Flickr, George is another person who talks with his hands. He’s such a natural, engaging, and conversational speaker, and it is a joy to hear him share his stuff.

Stephen Downes blew some minds when he took the stage to talk about The Future. His presentation was amazing on so many levels – he was talking about futurism and predictions, but that’s not really what the presentation was about. It was about individuals taking control back. It was about not sitting passively, of crafting a future that you want, rather than waiting for The Future to be handed down to you. And he modeled some extremely engaging and brave presentation techniques – things that I am quite sure most of the people attending have never seen before.

He gave the big presentation screens to the audience. And not in some half-assed lame lip service manner. He quite literally gave control of the web page that was being displayed on the big screens to anyone with a web browser. He was running Edu_RSS, and was using a portion of the app that let people post any text (or HTML snippets) to be put into a queue to be displayed for 10 seconds in a large font on the big screen.

It’s something extremely profound. He’s not just talking about engaging the audience with scripted questions, or planting ringers in the crowd. He’s handing control over (or back) to the people. He had no idea what would be posted to the screens. Or if it would be relevant. Or interesting. Or even if anything would be posted at all.

Many of the posts were silly. Many were extremely silly. Many were questions, probing what Stephen was talking about. Many were providing additional or background information to support what was being said. But, even the silly ones were a valuable part of the presentation. Just the simple fact that a person could trivially post some text, even if only to add some comic relief, helps to show that letting go of control is not necessarily a bad, scary, or dangerous thing.

I’ve grabbed a snapshot of the backchannel to show what was going on. Each post was displayed alone on the big screen for 10 seconds before being replaced by the next.

But, even as great as the presentations were, as brave as the presenters, and as inspring as they were, my absolute favorite part of the conference is still the conversations that I was lucky enough to be a part of after school was let out for the day. Magical, fun stuff.

I’ve mentioned it before, but it’s worth saying again here. My face is still sore from smiling so much.

TLt, and great conferences in general, are not really about presentations or content. They are about being together. And we all need to do more of that.

on being there

I spend a lot of time “being there” in various online places. I blog, I twitter, I post photos to Flickr, etc yadda yadda. I’m getting on a plane tomorrow, and planning on “being there” in the more traditional sense. I’ll be unplugging from the net as much as I can.

I’m not unplugging from my Network – many of the people in my Network are going to be there in person. I’m just deciding to not distract myself by constantly “checking in.”

I’m not bringing a laptop. I’m bringing my camera, my iPod, and my Moleskine (and some clothes).

I’m going to be there. I’m not going to be liveblogging the conference. I’m not going to be posting photos. I’m going to try not to post to twitter. I’ll plug back in when I get back. But, for the 3 days I’m there, I’m going to be there.

scattered vs. individual publishing

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about publishing things individually, on my own, as opposed to scattering stuff across the various services out there. Partially, it’s because of some sense of wanting to retain control and ownership of what I do. Partially, it’s a thought exercise to help figure out what it would really mean for an individual to fully maintain their own digital identity as opposed to relying on any number of ephemeral third parties to enable that. It’s all still quite unformed in my head, but here’s a really basic and oversimplified diagram of what I’m thinking about:

“Scattered” publishing involves a bunch of people navigating a bunch of services in order to find relevant bits published by the people they care about. “Individual” publishing involves individuals managing their content in one place, and letting the people they care about have access in any way they need.

Aggregators play important roles in both models, but in “scattered” the aggregator’s primary role is to pull decentralized bits of a person’s various bits of content back into the context of that person, and then in the context of the reader’s personal network. In “individual” the aggregator is primarily pulling people together, and filtering the subsets of a person’s content to meet the needs of each reader.

on intolerant believers

Walking through campus this morning, I witnessed a red faced, agitated young man. He was ripping posters off of a poster board, and shredding them in his hands. I looked a little closer – wondering what he was doing. He was being quite selective in the posters he was ripping – they all appeared to have been informational posters about “new atheism”. I saw him rip two of the posters. I didn’t see the information on the posters, aside from the title, but a quick Google turned up this web page describing the movement. Obviously, it must be suppressed.

I almost confronted the man, and then realized that there likely wasn’t much that I could say that would do anything but aggravate him further. He was doing God’s work, removing the traces of blasphemy.

From a University poster board. At a research university, where all ideas are supposed to be valued and freely explored. Where tolerance, understanding, and communication are to be valued, cherished, and nurtured.

On a campus that boasts a “Chair of Christian Thought”

I’m hoping that whoever put the posters up will replace them, if only to show red faced agitated man that information can’t be destroyed.

He did have the forethought to leave the posters of almost-nude, oiled up hotties for the Bermuda Shorts Day parties around town.