The Future of Education - the Horizon Project Retreat

During this past week about one hundred past members of Horizon Report Advisory Boards from approximately 20 countries gathered to examine the future of education to celebrate the 10^th anniversary of the Horizon Report. As you can imagine a staggering number of perpectives were shared and documented over the 2 days and much of it will be publicly available soon. I just need to get down my thoughts on this event before too much time passes.

THE OVERWHELMINGLY OBVIOUS

On the second day the group spent some time sharing what trends we thought were operating on the current educational landscape. Just a glance at some of these trends tells me it is obvious that most of them (I'd say about 80%) fundamentally challenge the current structures and processes of educational organisations. For example,

1. emphasis on openness – open resources, open styles of management, open processes, open courses – the list goes on. Most organisations are a far cry from being open in any of these senses of openness, and in fact are positively threatened by the notion of openness.
2. Collective and collaborative (networked) approaches to decision making, lesson planning, resource creation, professional development, etc that reach out beyond the borders of organisations as opposed to the in-house, closed, top down method of management and teaching that characterises many workplaces.
3. Personalisation of learning: the growth of informal learning, students planning their own suite of courses/skills, decreased emphasis on whole qualifications, proliferation of tech devices and desire to use them on campus.

I could go on but the point is this:

Management

It is educational management and administrators who need to be made aware of these trends as a group. (Not only teaching staff.) People who make the decisions (as Bryan Alexander put it – those with power) should be given the chance of discussing the implications of these trends, and consider their response. This is what to me is OVERWHELMINGLY OBVIOUS – these people must see this information.

In my own work context, I have grave doubts if it is even possible to assemble all the stakeholders at one time, but nonetheless this information needs to be disseminated so managers and bureaucrats are informed at least. (Knowledge is power.)

Neutrality

On the first evening of the retreat we were asked to share what aspects of working on previous Horizon Report Advisory Boards we had found valuable. I said that I had been surprised, pleasantly, that the approach in assembling the reports was a neutral one. It was not a compilation of technologies and trends that has been pushed or advocated by anyone – it was simply a report on what a particular advisory board had thought to be true at the time.

There seemed to be a feeling from some present at the retreat that HR advisory boards, as a result of their deliberations and discussions on technologies of the future, should be advocates of change in their educational communities in the name of the Horizon Report. I'm not sure if this would be wise. Such a 'political' leaning towards a position of advocating change could compromise the results of the HRs. It may compromise its neutrality.

Making recommendations that change may be needed in the light of the data from HRs makes perfect sense. That is, educators can be urged, sensibly, to prepare for the changes ahead, but any activity that sniffs of a HR advisory board being advocates of wholesale systemic change runs the risk of them being seen as a group that finds trends to support beliefs they already have.

The Process

It was always going to be difficult to get the voices of all participants heard. The facilitation was excellent – David Sibbet's graphic facilitation was superb – but as one who felt unable to contribute to the whole group sessions I feel compelled to comment. I'd venture that about 30% of participants did not offer any comment in the whole group sessions, and there were many of them. Without going into the reasons why, I learnt years ago that in groups of more than 4 or 5 I become a passive listener. This is classic introvert behaviour. I am not shy. I will quite happily do a conference presentation to 200 people, but ways need to be explored to give the introverts more say. I was a lot more vocal in smaller group discussions, but these too sometimes became too large for meaningful input from everyone.

The following may help:

• More sticky notes types of activities where ideas are written down then shared. (Thiagi is a wonderful resource for such strategies.)
• more smaller group activities
• identified and/or trained facilitators in the group discussions

Still, a wonderful event, and it was a great privilege to be part of it. Stay tuned for more as the data shared at this retreat gets posted in the coming days.

Bad Management

SCENARIO

Government wants workgroups to save money and cut excess staff.

Workgroup sees it as a good opportunity to cut under performing staff and submit model of a process to be followed

Human Resources (HR) reject the workgroup process and implement one of their own.

Result: several better performing staff are culled from the workgroup leaving an inferior workgroup. Under performing staff are still employed!

Equals BAD management :(

Wouldn't it be nice....

Wouldn't it be nice if you worked for an organisation that:

• Crowd-sourced ideas on how to implement change and find solutions to externally imposed imperatives
• Used flat organisation wide communication tools like Yammer
• Flattened the hierarchical nature of bureaucratic structures
• Trusted the wisdom of colleagues and peers
• Operated within a culture of trust
• Openly shared content between and within the various arms of the organisation
• Offered staff opportunities to expand business rather than just constantly asking them to cut costs
• Had managers that showed educational leadership and modelled the use of elearning and social media tools
• Respected and supported individuals who choose to use their own preferred technologies to conduct their business
• Acknowledged that it is no longer a world where one size fits all
• Encouraged shared decision making at all levels of the organisation
• Had employees that spoke up honestly and respectfully about ideas imposed from the top which they know will not work
• Had teachers who stood up for what they know to be sound teaching practice, and refused to do things that interfere with their ability to be good teachers
• Encouraged teaching rather than training and focused on producing good citizens of society rather than workers in an economy.

Unedited Notes from !DEA11 Conference (Melbourne)

KEYNOTE PANEL (30/11/11) – Challenges and Ops in ICT in Ed

Tony Cook (DEEWR)

Matt Farmer (DEECD – Vic)

Challenges – there are none ;) technolgies can do everything

reaching the end of the age of predicatability
by the time we implement our plan it won't be needed anymore (we take too long!)
language: we need to be in conversations, not lectures; a test for tech: how will this X tech to have a better conversation?

Greg Whitby

look after the present and the future will take care of itself
only one skill matters: learning and re-learning
to change a culture you have to stand in it (the tech culture)

mobility (bring down the walls); integrate
“teachers teach”
we need professional learning networks
desperate need for good OL teachers; “teachers as pedagogical designers”
even the poor have mobiles; personalised learning will kill the dig divide

Learning Futures

3 anchors:

1)diversity – there is no one size fits all
2)learning/teaching (student/teacher/content - Elmore)
3)cloud

“mutate or get out of the way”

copyright, ownership etc is playing catch up in a world that has moved on
write up strategic plans at the end of the year!!!!!!; 5 yr plans are gone forever

Learning Futures – Seizing the Moment

Anne Mirtschin (Hawkesdale P12 College, Vic)

great Net activities with kids in rural school; links kids worldwide, brings in experts eg NY author on story writing

Mike Seyfang

seize the day has become seize the moment; be agile;
#qantasluxury – what to learn?
What do we do from an institutional perspective?

Howard Errey

smart phones, ipads > cloud (circumvents IT/helpdesk)
provide structured support for those moving into the 'new world'


“mutate”! (Whitby)


Why are we so obsessed about changing people who aren't interested????
libraries shd be into collecting info not just 'giving it out'.......

Larry Johnson (NMC)

check key trends section of H/Report eg perceived value of innovation and creativity is increasing ***
Challenges: personalised learning not supported by current practice; inertia of the status quo ('the system')

“the network will change us” “change us” “is us” (aka Wesch); the network has come to represent freedom; is everywhere

3G is replacing the Internet; 71% of world phones have HTML compliant browsers.
Biggest users of mobile are in Asia
for grandchildren (eg Luc and Marcus) the Internet is air.
Make kids' jaws drop ;) ie magic! - “that's all that matters”; (what about Mike Wesch's view about the environment
?)

Susi Steigler – Peters (Gen Manager), Telstra

'change wedges' – seems like a clumsy phrase – 'fries with that wedge'? (or salad?)
learners love to personalise, collaborate, innovate (based on Telstra 'research')
suggests personalised learning pathways – sure, but can you do this for everyone???
Telstra can help broker a “New Education Architecture”

Cost!=s Larry J $100/day just to do his work!!!!!!

!DEA! - allocate a problem for each table!!!!; a la 35 Things - this would work better...(too much one way talk)


DAY 2

Rob Abel – IMS (interoperability made simple)

“If you don't make IT happen IT will happen to you.”

Yes Rob but - the tools outside the school are often better than the tools the school offers

ebooks are their own special category

Larry Fruth – School Interoperability Framework (SIF)

technology is always ahead of policy

Sean Casey – NBN: Broadband Driven Education

will take 9.5 yrs to roll out over the whole country
move from Physical > Digital
post > email
DVD > download
music > iTunes

Science 360 (app)
Google Art Project

school used to be centre of a child's social scene; often no more the case
NBN could enable 3D walk-through of a heart
online ed is a business
NBN obviously has great relevance for flexible learning – anytime/anywhere becomes more possible and better quality

EASSESSMENT STREAM

Darrall Thompson (UTS)

Anne Murchison does agreat job of 'front end' teaching, but got nervous about how she assessess...

Q: What do our assessment processes say about what we value?

Assessment has moved from content > capacity building; addresses a broader range of graduate attributes; ie away from marks > 'interpersonal operability'
ideally shd cross subject boundaries
UTS has developed assessment tool that teacher and student can use and compare; when students can see % (grade) they don't read comments!!
make criteria explicit

Owen O'Neill

many barriers are not technical
how to move people to 'high-stakes' assessment

Melanie Worrall

add 'intentionality' to your assessment processes (a la Nancy White)


Delia Browne

p2pu – peer to peer university http://p2pu.org/en/
social, personal, dynamic, creative – domains of assessment
trying use of badges to verify/validate assessment/achievement
wd be interesting to design a course here WITH participants
are using funding from Hewlitt foundation

[put CC badge on bottom of every slide ***]
people are getting jobs after doing p2pu courses
they are happy for orgs to be involved

OPENING UP LEARNING CONTENT

Martin Dean (Pearson)

students expect to be able to remix/repurpose – so what are Pearson to enable this treatment of content???

Delia Browne – Open Education Resources

30% of the planet are under 15; student uni numbers will peak in 2025; (we will need 4 new unis/wk for the next 15 years to cater for these numbers!!!!!)

[Creative Commons for Educators – guide[check]; http://www.smartcopying.edu.au/scw/Jahia/lang/en/scw/go/pid/956

Helen Lynch – User Generated Content

ugc = homework/assignments !!
Open resources sometimes get used in a manner that was not originally instended

MAKING CONTENT DISCOVERABLE

AUSTRALIAN CURRICULUM CONNECT (Robert Randall)

site has diff points of entry depending on type of student, subject, type of school, etc; parents for example could check what their child is doing in yr 1

DAY 3

DESIGNING FUTURE LEARNING SPACES (REAL AND VIRTUAL)

Phil Long (UQ)

learing is regulated by biology and ecology; learning = development
Amazon now sell more ebooks than print

“active learing spaces”
non-formal learning spaces are critical
redesign to make group work in large spaces
there's a need for theory building – we are not sure yet what works
how do shapes reflect what teacher believes? - some of which are outside!

Many design firms include anthropologists on design teams (cf Mike Wesch)
#learningspacedesign on Flickr (4000 images)

Lee Sanderson (Blair Athol Birth to Yr 7 School)

“campfires in cyberspace” (Book by David Thornburg)
calling classrooms 'studios'/learning commons/piazza/watering hole/cave/mountain top
they are using the Khan Academy!!; call teachers 'learning advisers' (?)
contemplating smart tables; using Xbox ad Kinect for Phys Ed and Music
encouraging literacy with multiple devices
Studywiz is their LMS
think about the Qantas Lounge model.....
[check Apples iweb] [maybe see if she would like to do an interview for SIT?]
what about exploiting outdoor learningspaces via landscaping etc?

Pauline Farrell (Box Hill)

StudentWeb (designed by students) – includes Moodle (customised), epfs (Mahara), t/tables, results, how to connect with each other – integration and simplification were critical – nothing too fancy; worked from student wishlist

228 training sessions in 3 months – to give teachers 'love' while you stole their stuff and put it into a repository (Equella?)

StudentWeb allows tracking of learning analytics for each student!!
GPS Learing Pathways ????
refers to Learning Styles :( for each teaching area; shd be learning preferences
have 7000 students using epfs
test each student's digital literacy!!

Jo Dane (Woods Bagot Architects)

lecture theatres are 1600 yrs old!; at that time only the teacher had the knowledge!! so lecture theatres were approriate
'flipped classrooms' – lecture at home; activity in classrooms
other spaces could be capsules, booths, kiosk (scanning, uploading, recharging)

Justine Isard – MyLearning

before we start knocking down the walls....
21c learning spaces favour boys because 1) tend to preference active learning 2) include greater use of technology
if you don't consult about changes people feel disconnected from the changes and will resist it (as is happening with the intro of the Skills for All in TAFE SA at the moment!!; though people in charge of the implementation will argue that there has been consultation.)
advocates keeping the LRCs!!! - they are quiet communal spaces, and is where the info experts are

[check YT video on 'The Twitter Experiment']

RAMONA PIERSON (Promethean)

it's hard to learn to see again
if you consider the mobile as the primary device there is no dig divide
students are cognitively diff to adults (??) rewired?
Can you make technologies do what you want, or are you a victim of it?
OECD countrries have tripled expenditure on ed but outcomes stagnant; reason – focus on 'book learning'?
Edu trends driven by crisis – do more with less, dig content revolution, employability readiness
PARADIGM SHIFT:
schools are adjusting to needs of students (rather than the opposite)
creators to curators
personalised learning


next generation will need to leverage the cloud – ie share not hide

you learn best at the point/moment of failure!

SHIRLEY ALEXANDER (UTS)

Learning Futures: where to from here?

Each new ed tech makes similar claim – self paced, student centred, ete etc; but in essence it hasn't really changed
NBN – will that make the difference??
predicts that 5 yrs on funding will be outcome based
current students are time poor (eg working); they grab moments of learning eg 10 mins on mobile device; degrees taking much longer to be completed
student attendance at lectures decreases over the course of semester!

Stanford's MOOC model a little diff from MIT ie students can do exam [check further]

refers to data analytics [ compare with learning analytics]

PHOTOS FROM THIS EVENT

Distance Students - Options for Self-Assessment

AUDIO

Phone blogging tools can be a useful way for students to post regular audio reflections. The one below uses Hipcast (a paid service).

Other free options for audio are ipadio, and Audioboo, which is used via a smartphone app.

VIDEO

Options for using video include:

iPhone or other smart phone as the camera:

POV Technology

Other Portable Video Recorders such as Flipcam:

The Wonderful World of Flickr

Because I have suggested that an online facilitation group have a look at my blog I thought I'd better post something! So - just a couple of resources:

1) a video I created recently about how to find Creative Commons images using Flickr, and

2) an older more general resource about Teaching with Flickr.

My Flickr site.

ED-MEDIA (Lisbon); Moodle Moot (Sydney)

I’ve been a-wandering quite a bit later, and along the way there have been 2 conferences – the ED-MEDIA Conference in Lisbon, and the annual Australian Moodle Moot in Sydney. Having been in the elearning game for 14 years now it gets harder and harder to learn much from the average conference presentation. I go mostly for the keynotes. Two of the keynotes at ED-MEDIA were excellent.

George Siemens was there heading the research stream, and as ever, George presents new perspectives. It is the fourth time I have heard him speak now and he always has something new to say, unlike some keynote speakers who can present basically the same thing years apart.

George's presentation was aimed at researchers and how they might use the open web and social networking tools. He asked how do you get greater impact: publishing on YouTube a la Mike Wesch, or via the traditional means and publish in journals? He acknowledged that for younger academics still establishing their reputation and tenure, it might be unwise to go down the Mike Wesch route, but older established academics could follow the lead of people like Terry Anderson from Athabasca who will only publish in open journals.

He added that if you want to increase your profile then the information that shows up about a researcher on a general Google search is more important than the 'academic you' that is uncovered by a search on Google Scholar. He added that the profile that he himself now enjoys began by blogging

Another really engaging session was from Alan Law from the Open University UK. He replaced Denise Kirkpatrick who had double booked, but it actually wouldn’t have mattered who had done the presentation – it was more about the wonderful work the Open U does and it left me thinking how much I’d like to work for them. Such simple and engaging ideas. Eg entertaining animated cartoons on YouTube about lying that outlines the various philosophical standpoints one can take in relation to telling lies with a strategically placed ‘would you like to know more “ link close by that whizzes you off to the further info and enrolment pages for their philosophy courses. Smart.

There are no entry requirements for OU courses and still they manage to be among the top 5 unis in the UK for successful outcomes, and for research. Quite a remarkable success story.

Another initiative that really appealed to me was their iSpot program. Designed to get people interested and form communities of practice around local flora and fauna by photographing relevant subjects and posting to the iSpot site, it coincides with my new obsession for taking photographs and sharing them on Flickr. They are looking to expand the program beyond the UK, and perhaps beyond just flora and fauna, so I will be keeping an eye out for this in my neighbourhood.

Alec Couros was also on the keynote bill. I had heard Alec talk online before so I knew he’d be good, and he was. But I did find myself thinking that I knew several people who could do the job just as well but who don’t have the profile. And they’d be much cheaper. [Please see comments below for more on this.] I don’t think he made a convincing case to support his keynote title either – Why Networked Learning Matters. His summary slide seemed to consist mainly of loaded statements that are easily contested. Eg networked learning promotes ‘open access’ and have ‘high impact’. Whether I agree or not is not the point – offering open access as a reason for networked learning just describes it; it doesn’t explain why it is a ‘good thing’ or why it matters. Someone could just easily read that open access is connected to networked learning and conclude that it is not what they or their students want. “High impact”? On whom? Or what?

Another example – courses become ‘shared, non-local, learning events.” Again, this is a description, not an argument for why it matters.

Another person I saw present was Bert Kimura. I worked with Bert a few times in the early days of the TCC online conferences out of Hawaii, of which Bert is the pioneer, so it was good to share the same physical space with him.

Bert and team were reporting on a project that looked at Cross-Cultural Collaboration using video and social networking. Interesting to hear about, but like so many presentations from Higher Ed folks that report on research it was based on a very small number of participants that doesn’t allow anyone to make any valid conclusions about its usefulness for bigger numbers of students.

MOODLE MOOT

In contrast the keynote speakers at this year’s Moodle Moot were disappointing for me. For Mary Cooch (the keynote on day 1) however, the Twitter stream apparently was in general very appreciative. Somewhere between 70 and 90% of delegates were attending their first Moodle Moot (this was the third) and it could be that a great majority of those first time attenders are reasonably new to elearning. For them Mary’s address may well have been right on the mark.

It’s interesting after a conference to simply see what you remember what was of value without referring to any written notes. In this case just 2 things stand out:

1) Mark Drechsler from NetSpot’s excellent session on the new approach to files in Moodle 2.0 (No longer any central file manager; files will need to be stored in a Content Management System [CMS] like Equella, or Alfresco [OS], or elsewhere in the cloud.

2) The fact that several organisations have installed Big Blue Button on local servers and are supporting it to become the Open Source alternative to dear departed Elluminate which has been sadly bought by Blackboard. (I thought the moment that Elluminate went t o the dark side that one of the positive outcomes from this would be that an OS product would grab the chance and seize the mass market deserting Elluminate. It would be nice to see a mature OS virtual classroom product integrate with Moodle. It will happen. It’s just a matter of time. And it could well be Big Blue Button.)

There was much more but that's all I have time for right now :)