Leigh Blackall

Edit Wikipedia - win a trip to London

2012-01-12T22:31:00.001+13:00

The Australian Paralympic Committee will send 2 Wikipedia editors to London to cover the Paralympic Games later this year. Make editing Wikipedia an assignment in your course work, and your students could be thanking you for a trip to London! http://www.paralympic.org.au/news/wikipedians-aim-london-2012

Wikipedia and tourist information

2012-01-02T21:46:00.000+13:00

My family have been driving through the Victorian and New South Wales alps the past few days, and I've noticed fantastic historical information is often held in unexpected places. Like in pubs, usually hanging all manor of historical artifacts, most notably early settler photographs, but equally as interesting, the trophies and symbols of the sport and industry in the area. I sat in a few, eating my angus steak, and feeding little Eve the chips, and sometimes asking the publican what the background to the images were.

"Oh!" she'd say, "that's the big snow of 52" or "thats the 1902 VFL team, yeah I don't know what the name was of the black fella in the front, no one wrote his name down!"

In these towns there was nearly always an individual, association or information centre who was the local authority, and almost never was it a library or out-of-towner.

This had me thinking about who Wikimedia Chapters target when they run workshops. It seems to me that galaries, libraries, archives and museums have a limited amount of motivation beyond cataloging certain forms of information, and not much in the way of the forms of information I saw on walls. Pubs, historical societies, tourism information centers, and the like, have something more in the way of motivation, esspecially to inform their visitors about their towns. And slowly, more and more of them are becoming reluctantly aware that Wikipedia (and it's information reformatted into Google Maps, Facebook, and personally printed travel guide books) serves that motivation well. With their smart phones updating their locations, navigating roads and discovrring back country, reviewing what they see, eat, do, and where they stay, tourists are using new forms of information to find their way.

I might be running a Wikipedia and Commons training session in Hobart in a few weeks, and if I can, I think I'll try and target these people more. If such work ever was a paid gig, it would be a lovely way to travel around Australia, teaching towns folk about editing the big wikis, and helping them to improve articles about their towns and significant sites, then moving on to the next town.

Maybe Australian towns will be more open to this in a couple of years. We are after al, expecting to see a stronger internet culture developing off the back of nation-wide broadband connectivity.

The speech of the Great Dictator

2011-12-16T21:26:00.000+13:00

The Speech of the Great Dictator of 1940

The Great Dictator

Packing up, moving on

2011-12-16T19:44:00.000+13:00

I lost my job, ending 23 December (thanks UC). So, we bought a shipping container and filled it with our stuff. We'll store it and hit the road until we know where we are. Or maybe, just maybe, if I can wing it on the income front, I can talk Sunshine into the container house plan :)

20 foot high cube empty

Amazing that it all fit!

Waste water management guidelines at the Mornington Peninsula

2011-12-07T23:00:00.001+13:00

Mornington Peninsula Shire - Wastewater Management

and on a divergent note:

Agricultural wastewater treatment - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

BPS2011 Webstats

2011-12-07T22:58:00.000+13:00

What does this all mean then?
BPS2011 Webstats

FACEBOOK

(facebook.com/pages/Business-Politics-and-Sport/127657700659888)

BLOGGER

(bps.ucniss.net)

Maarten De Laat - networked learning

2011-12-06T09:48:00.005+13:00

eLearning Reviews: Networked Learning
Interesting to see a formal researcher talking about networked learning at the same time we were running Future of Learning in a Networked World in New Zealand, especially along similar lines as Downes' Groups vs Networks talk at Auckland on that tour. But as usual, I'm surprised our informal group's work has been missed or ignored by the formal researchers.

Chapter 8 contains a synthesis study that looks at the processes and procedures involved in joint networked learning. The results of De Laat's case studies frequently concur with the literature he quotes. Finally, chapter 9 sets out these results and lists the implications for the PKN. De Laat's thesis ends with a description of a community-driven approach to networked learning, with a consideration of both individual and collective learning processes and results. He lists a number of guidelines for a more community-driven approach to networked learning and leads for further research.

Translated to Spanish

2011-11-25T11:36:00.000+13:00

Diego Leal has, along with a few others, translated to Spanish some video statements I made in 2009 on the relevance of education.

They're perhaps not the best words I've ever used to introduce my thinking on the matter, and I hope Diego might also consider, Teaching in Dead, Long Live Learning or The Disconnect Between Education and Learning. But I realise that might be asking too much ;)

I need a job

2011-11-15T16:57:00.000+13:00

Last week, I was given notice by the University of Canberra that my services would be no longer needed. As much as I have tried to show that the opposite might be the case, my submissions to policy and strategy reviews, my demonstrations of new teaching practices, the research and development projects I manage, and the events I have coordinated, have not had the intended impact... On the 23 December I will be unemployed.

Yep, that's pretty rotten timing and I have a bit of a bad feeling about this one, so I'm using this blog to try and find an opportunity elsewhere.

In my CV (recently designed for recruitment agencies) I try to state what sort of work I'm looking for:

To gain full time employment in a dynamic organisation that draws on my strengths in research, innovation, teaching and policy in social media, online communications, networked learning and education.

Actually, to find part-time work along these lines, that paid enough to cover the bills would be perfect :) that would give me a little more time to hang out with Eve, and fiddle with those crazy experiments I do from time to time. We all live in hope.

Here's that CV in full:

LeighBlackallCV

So far I've sat a couple of interviews with private enterprises, including a media and PR firm interested in social media work, and I intend on making contact with a few educational organisations I've seen advertising positions too. I hope to find an organisation more ready for the ideas and methods I've been developing consistently over the last 10 years. If you know anyone looking for someone like me, or see something come up that you think I should apply for, please let me know.

OERU vs Pearsons vs OEU

2011-11-15T16:30:00.002+13:00

Wayne Mackintosh is making rapid progress joining the dots around the Open Education Resources University (OERU), with some 15 "Anchor Partners" in the fold (although it is hard to say for sure, going by the info on their website). Those anchor partners include two universities from Australia, the Uni Southern Queensland and the Uni of Wollongong.

Cashing in on that word "open" is Pearsons Publishers, who made a dull thud a few months ago with their Open Class idea. Uni of New England is signing in with Pearsons around that, from which I imagine Pearsons will attempt to replicate Apple's iTunesU initial marketing methods, to secure their investment.

All these initiatives make the common mistake of overly focusing on content, and in doing so they are chipping away at the institution's strangle hold over assessment and accreditation - which is ultimately where these developments matter most.

OERU by name, seems largely focused on content, but under the hood they use scenarios that say different. They should drop the word Resources from their name, and go with OEU. At the moment the message is still heavily weighted to the idea that they believe content leads to learning, and are working on formalising recognition and accreditation through that channel of content. Leaving aside questions about content access resulting in learning, or that access to free and open content somehow results in learning (an abstract concept for most), ultimately it is the shortest and least expensive path to a respectable piece of paper that really matters here, and their scenario PDF captures that sentiment.

While OERU's principles around content are admirable, what is more exciting is what they are potentially establishing around educational services for assessment, recognition and accreditation services. If they can continue to develop that aspect of their initiative, and drop the suggestion that such services are available or somehow more valuable through the use of their free content, then I think their onto a game changer, if only by significantly undercutting the hyper inflated competition.

Video used in Alternative Ways to Earn Your Degree: Discussing OER University with Rory McGreal

If they were to successfully influence their anchor institutions to develop sophisticated Recognition and Assessment of Prior Learning (RAPL) services, then they would be enabling people who set themselves to learning, using any content or method they choose, including assignments that meet their own needs and those of the assessor's, an opening to formal education that has to-date been quite closed off.

Places like OERU are potentially important alliances for small to medium sized institutions and private providers who will have to compete with the likes of Pearsons, Google or perhaps even iTunesU, who are clearly moving into this space, or more obviously - the sandstone universities and aspiring global institutions like MIT, who stand to dominate the space the moment they choose to invest in flexible assessment services. If recognition of informal and networked learners were to become the focus of the likes of OERU, then they should change their name to OEU, let content play a very minor part, and work intensely on setting up innovative assessment methods, that meet the standards of the anchor institutions, and maintain integrity in the process.

It's a no-brainer really, and why the formal institutions are so slow to recognise the opportunities here is staggering. If a person can learn something through their own resources, and demonstrate their competence and levels of understanding to assessment standards that we can only assume are robust and have integrity by virtue of their regulation, then why aren't more institutions offering such a service to people?

There are many reasons, not least of all that the actual people who would do the assessing have difficulty separating assessment from their teaching and content. Based on my experience proposing and defending the methods we tested in BPS2011, these veterans of the institutions still expect attendance, and a certain style of teaching. They set assignments and exams that are more aligned to their content rather than to the assessable learning objectives. Then there are the faculties and discipline areas who see this level of service a threat to their bottom line. They imagine a future where everybody takes this pathway to accreditation and stop paying for teaching all together. And there are the die-hard believers in 'educational institutions for the public good', who resist all attempts to further commoditise education, refusing to acknowledge that most of that has already taken place, and that a new and diverse range of learning (I hope to show) is increasingly happening elsewhere, whether it be informally self directed, part time night classes, through networks and communities of practice, on the job, or a combination of all of these.

The freedoms and flexibility that would be opened to people in how they go about getting formal recognition for their knowledge and skills is conceivably quite wide, and is not a new idea at least in the vocational training sector. People would not have to forgo employment to satisfy compulsory or otherwise mandated classroom attendance. Migrants could have a greater opportunity to demonstrate their abilities than arbitrary credit transfers from a very limited range of recognised institutions. People raising families may have more of an opportunity to further their qualifications. Internationals can do more of their study at home, and spend less time in foreign countries with expensive costs of living. People in newly regulated professions may seek assessment of prior learning instead of enduring coursework again. And so on.

In many regards, demonstrating this concept is what motivates my efforts to obtain a PhD through informal and networked channels, but it's difficult because as yet, too few educational institutions have seen the opportunities open to them, and have not invested enough or any thought in how they might take the advantage in this. Instead they choose to continue limiting their intake to a mostly young, school leaving, reasonably affluent, perhaps even directionless class of people, effectively discriminating against all those who might adequately satisfy the assessment standards, if given the chance.

Teaching nearly over, back to the PhD

2011-11-04T23:34:00.001+13:00

Banner for the unit. Image by Karenkayho on Flickr

Over the past 13 weeks, I've been working with Keith Lyons teaching a unit called Business, Politics and Sport. Our goal was to modify the pre-existing unit outline enough so we could run an open, flexible, invitational learning event, where we could curate a guest lecture series, put everything online (not so much on university systems, but on real-world web sites), to make attendance intrinsically motivated, and to set assignments that were challenging and that would make a valuable contribution to wider, open knowledge communities. It worked, and we're getting really good feedback.

In the end, we used UC's Moodle in a very basic stripped back form, making it open access, and providing a link out to the unit website, with a forum set up if anyone needed it
We set up a unit website on Blogger, which fed through to a Facebook page, and used these to document progress in the unit
We used Wikiversity to prepare the unit content, and develop and submit the assignments
There were three assignments: an essay on Wikiversity, an online presentation, and an "open book" exam, where open book means the use of personal computers and the internet in the exam.

BPS2011 sitting the exam

The exam was a success. The room had a buzz about it as all 95 participants filled the room, plugged their computers in, connected to the wireless, set up the chat rooms, and awaited further instructions. At the end, everyone agreed it was the most intense, exciting, and full-on challenging exam they had taken!

All of the essays are in, as well as the presentations, and all of the exam responses. Now begins the marking! All of the 95 participants have really risen to the challenge. We have some fascinating essays and videos published, from pole dancing to rock climbing, all with copyrights (hopefully) cleared, some with open standard format videos embedded, one in Arabic (although he will need an extension due to outside pressures), and many having been peer reviewed by other participants. The full list of works are here on the BPS2011 category on Wikiversity.

We have gained some really nice feedback so far from two of the participants already, and we're hoping for more when the exam and assessment is out of the way. We plan to produce a PediaPress printed book from some of the best essays, in combination with work from Ben Rattray's group working together on Wikibooks, producing a book of factsheets about disease and exercise.

It has been a pleasure to see this model of teaching work so well, and we can only hope to see it scale more with other staff taking up the principles and practices here. We're directing participants to engage in productive, real world knowledge communities, using contemporary information and communications technology, to produce openly accessible information from their work, drawing more on their intrinsic motivation than not, and it seems to have worked well.

When the unit is over, and the mountain of assessment is out of the way, I'll be using BPS2011 as a case study in my PhD. We were given an opportunity to implement some of our ideas on open education and networked learning, and while we couldn't take it all the way - for example, I would have loved to have tried open and rolling enrollments, or done more in terms of coordinating with other similar units or community groups, or mapped several of the learning objectives to vocational competencies where they obviously connect, we did manage to show something of a model worth thinking about. The workload has been well within the recommended limits - although the marking will be hefty, the learning objectives have plenty of evidence of being met, and the student feedback is looking excellent.

The Climate Change scare machine

2011-10-17T20:42:00.000+13:00

JoNova has a good post outlining, and partly accounting for what she calls the Climate Change Scare Machine. It's a bit harsh in some areas, such as in questioning James Hanson's income, but the chart really says it all, and could easily apply to any number of scares.. AKA Adam Curtis' Power of Nightmares

Another day of inhumanity

2011-10-12T22:53:00.001+13:00

The box of Cards Against Humanity, a party game.
By TeachingARobotToLove

Today was a tough day. It started nice, ended terrible.

I have a new bluetooth headset, that enables me to listen to music on the lakeside ride into work. It was a lovely sunny morning this morning, but as I pulled into work, a phone call interrupted a track from the beautiful Archie Roach, singing about another type of systemic inhumanity to that which I'm about to describe.

The phone call was from Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA), who administer superannuation in Australia. I've stepped in to communications with them, to help Sunshine's mum deal with their incredibly dense bureaucracy. They are playing very hard ball with her appeal to get an early release of a small amount of her very small retirement fund, to cover the funeral costs of her mother. Femm is from the Philippines, speaks English as a third language, and struggles with mind numbing bureaucracy like most of us. APRA is refusing to release some of Femm's money because Femm can't provide them with the kind of receipts they recognise. Femm's mum's funeral was held in the Philippines, where receipts aren't common practice, and actually quite costly to get. The phone call was just more hard nosed cultural insensitivity from an inhumane person working in an over bearing Australian institution that nannies people's retirement funds, for some other greater good...

Then, directly after that horrible phone call, I stepped in to conduct a lecture, but couldn't sign into the University's network. My account had been suspended. I called the help desk who explained that my employment contract had expired. I explained I was giving a lecture, they said see your supervisor, and they couldn't give me access, even for the lecture I was apparently now giving as a volunteer. When I got home today, I discovered that I was left off the payroll too!

Now, I know the hard nosed people who seem to be everywhere these days will say I should have known my contract was going to expire, and that when it did, I'd be promptly taken off the system. Actually I expected my 1 year contract to just roll over like a lease or something, until someone met with me to say we don't need you anymore - especially as I'm teaching until the end of the year. I didn't get a single message from anyone that my contract was expired, and that my access to the network, and payroll would be stopped.

My supervisor is onto it, and being the incredibly humane person he is, will help me financially if this situation takes a while to remedy. We can't do anything about the network access however, so tomorrow will be another day of dodgy lecturing.

Our tools have made us blind to what it means to be human. Gestures of humanity are all too easy now, because by and large, blunt cruelty is just common place.

Lost Innocents of Kashmir

2011-10-04T23:23:00.001+13:00

My Dad's film, Lost Innocence of Kashmir, made from Super 8 Footage he shot in 1989, was screened at Raindance yesterday.

It is a haunting, tragic and very relevant film, and I'm working on him to get the full version up, which he said he'll do once it's done the festival rounds. Montreal next.

Psy-ops, or black-ops, set everyone up for their fall in strategic places like Kashmir. Agitators cause trouble, trigger discontent, to which security forces respond. So starts the war of spin, propaganda and suspicion on the path to terrorism, retribution and torture. Meanwhile, poor refugees have nowhere to go. A personal story, told from memory, triggered by revitalising these Super 8 images of 1989. Filmed, written and narrated - David Blackall Edited - Oliver Kutzner and David Blackall Music - Kraig Grady and David Blackall Lost Innocents of Kashmir was selected for the Raindance Film Festival, where it made its world premiere Monday 3 October 2011 at 15:45 in London.
Lost Innocents of Kashmir has also been selected for the upcoming Montreal International Documentary Festival.
A short (22 min) documentary with a special emphasis on creating social impact, to create awareness, instigate change and bring a unique and personal perspective to the topic of world agendas being played out in a small place like Kashmir.

Opening up Science. ABC Radio National

2011-09-29T12:44:00.000+13:00

Wikimedia Commons, picture of the year - 2011

At last! A large and well resourced media outlet has produced a radio documentary about the Open Science, or Open Academic movement. Opening up Science by ABC Radio National's Future Tense back in February 2010, does a good job explaining where our closed practices came from, why they're inappropriate now, and what's going on to change things and why. It interviews articulate voices who convey the principles and critique things like commercial secrecy.

While it does ask if there is really any evidence that open practices will solve the problems it says it will, unfortunately it didn't delve into questioning the deeper motives of movement, or the possible consequences, and surely we know that all change campaigns generate unintended consequences that can be retrospectively seen as negative to the initial principles or related ethics. Openness as a new kind of cultural domination, or neo colonialism for example, promoting a further homogeniety of thought rather than a diversity - most obviously in language and linguistic bias, or the very idea of 'science', or the constructivism that underlies that.

Admittedly there aren't many people asking these questions that I'm aware of.

MP3, 29 minutes. 13 Meg.

Guests

Dan Gezelter
Assoc Prof of Chemistry at Notre Dame University & Director of the 'Open Science Project'.

Julian Cribb
Science Communicator & Co-author of the book 'Open Science'

Dr Andy Farke
Project Head, The 'Open Dinosaur Project'

Dr Michael Nielsen
Author, 'The Future of Science' (forthcoming).

Further Information

Future Tense glossary

Radio National Podcasting guide

The Open Science Project

Link to OpenWetWare website

Julian Cribb's blog

The Protein Data Bank website

The Open Dinosaur Project

Michael Neilsen's blog

April 2009 interview with Dr Christopher Dyer about the Sci-mate website

Wikipedia entry about The Worldwide Telescope

Publications

Title: Open Science - sharing knowledge in the global century
Author: Julian Cribb & Tjempaka Sari
Publisher: CSIRO Publishing

Music

Track title: 'She Blinded Me With Science'
Artist: Thomas Dolby

Track title: 'The Dinosaurs Song'
Composer: Directed by Bernard Derriman
Publishing/Copyright: Biggreenrabbitt.com

Presenter

Antony Funnell

Producer

Andrew Davies

Global sized

2011-09-29T10:38:00.002+13:00

Seattle, 1999

Why do people use the word "global", what does that even mean?

It means planetary (Earth limited). It means all the world, and everything in it. The air, the water, the soil, the plants, the animals, the resources, the climate, everything. If global is everything, then global is nothing.

Why not international?

Because international is limited to people, preserving their cultural differences, based on national borders.. nationalism.. imagine no countries.. did Lennon and all his listeners, really know what he was suggesting?

How about intercultural?

I for one feel very uncomfortable with the word Global, just as uncomfortable as I was with the word, "World" when economists started using it in combination "World Trade Organisation". Since the Seattle riots, and similar inspired events of the time, they seem to be using "World" less these days, and using the word "Global" more.

Who is they? Well, start with the hegemony of the dominant English speaking nations for a start. Namely the USA and UK. They're not alone in their regular-as-clockwork, violent and hypocritical intrusions on other people's relative peace and civility. They continually project their colonial aspirations, like policing a world war on terror, and their internationally destabilizing concepts like the Global Financial Crisis, as though it was affecting everyone in the world, because it affects them.

I simply don't trust those with power in the world today, so why would I accept their faceless, all encompassing terminology like, Global, Globalism, Global Financial Crisis, Global Economy, Global Warming, and the agendas those words convey. It seems obvious to me, the true meaning of Global. One that does not respect national sovereignty and cultural difference, or even begin to appreciate different perspectives. One that freaks out at a hypothetical future climate scenario, and ignores the very same scenario here and now today, and yesterday, and the day before, while it drops very expensive ordnance all over Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and God knows how many other secret locations. One that is a certain, identifiable class of diplomats, walking out of a meeting of nations in the middle of a speech from one of the last remaining voices of descent, like spoiled, bullying teenage girls, or more clearly - violent minded corporations and governments who will resort to such bullying to pressure other nations to alienate their enemy, and (apparently) one who is developing an arsenal to attack us all... did I mention Global Spin?

Globalism is a concept that wants not just everyone, but everything, to submit to the hegemony of the word, and is one I simply will not use. I feel so strongly about this, I even catch myself stopping midway through any document that uses it, and re-evaluating it on those terms. I know most people use "Global" unthinkingly, but that unthinking use is precisely why I re-evaluate what they write. What else in there is un-thought-through. Suddenly I see all our parts in this, it's an easy word to replace if you try, and doing so may start to remove your latent acceptance of the violence in your culture, and your unquestioning propulsion of an idea you might actually disagree with.

LORN - ITYS

2011-08-15T11:56:00.000+12:00

And we fought so many pointless battles with those who doubted the longevity of social media, and the value of open educational resource development. They wouldn't stop and reflect on the reliability of the Australian sector, from directories and actual educational content, through to public media initiatives like POOL.

The decommissioning of the Australian Flexible Learning Framework's Learning Object Repository Network (LORN), (at very short notice, and very poor timing for teachers I might add) comes as no surprise, and is another I-Told-Youz-So (ITYS) moment for those in the sector who have consistently questioned the wisdom of such expenditure.. but will the recognition come? Of course not. Will the same mistakes repeat? Of course they will. WASTE!

May I repeat the call (6 years on), for all Australian public investments in content, to adopt a Creative Commons Attribution copyright license regime (the only real inter-operability standard, and one finally endorsed by Federal Government) and fund a campaign to get that content distributed across targeted, popular, reliable and infinitely more useful media channels, like Youtube, Archive and the Wikimedia Foundation projects, and to lobby Australian libraries and archives to do more for capturing and storing Austalian content on its way out the door to these more popular and reliable channels, but in a way that compliments that trend...

Dear Colleagues,
Some sad new about LORN...

As you may have already heard...LORN is to be decommissioned from 31 August 2011.

From 31 August 2011 the Learning Object Repository Network (LORN) will be decommissioned.
This decision comes as the result of a recent review of the Australian Flexible Learning Framework and development of a National VET E-learning Strategy by the Flexible Learning Advisory Group (FLAG).

From 1 September 2011 users can:

1. Continue to browse and download free digital learning resources direct from the
Framework's Toolbox Repository - toolboxes.flexiblelearning.net.au/repository - which hosts the
Flexible Learning Toolboxes, E-Learning Innovations and E-learning for Industry collections

2. Cirectly access the jurisdictional repositories (TAFE VC, WestOne and Tasmanian Polytechnic)
subject to any access conditions placed on these by jurisdictions.

Skills Victoria has advised that access to the TAFE VC collection is limited to registered Victorian TAFE staff and RTOs only; please direct all enquiries to: enquiries@eworks.edu.au

In the interim enquiries regarding access to LORN and the downloading of learning objects book marked through the 'My LORN' function should be directed to: Helen lynch, ACT Toolbox Champion, 6207 4031 or lorn@flexiblelearning.net.au

Adult and Community Education - CIT Solutions style

2011-08-09T16:49:00.001+12:00

I was fortunate to meet Rob Howarth today - business manager of the Centre for Adult and Community Education, at Canberra Institute of Technology Solutions (CIT Solutions). I initiated the meeting as part of my effort to get to know existing community outreach work in Canberra, for the Access, Choice and Flexibility project I'm engaging in.

Rob is one of those guys who just emanates enthusiasm for ideas and his work, tempered by experience and sensitivity. Rob and his team are responsible for an amazing Adult and Community Education (ACE) program, culminating in the well known booklet that comes out twice a year in Canberra, listing a very wide range of short courses people can do in anything from Social Ballroom Dancing (8 x 1 hour sessions with Naomi Nicholson for $175) to AutoCAD (7 x 3 hour sessions with Alan Perry for $350).

Rob's team operate a privately owned company, coordinating some 800 short courses that enrolls around 8000 casual students each year. CIT Solutions emerged out of the ACT Aid Trust in 1983, and have successfully established and sustained a self funded ACE program for the past 18 years. Anyone in the community can approach Rob with an idea for a course, and if the proposal has a good looking plan, and 3 good references, Rob will post the course in the booklet and go from there. The teachers remain independent operators, working under the banner of CIT solutions, many running the courses at their own venues with Rob covering insurance. Others use CIT and partner venues. The program is interested in very broad ranging, introductory courses, leaving specialist tuition and consultation to businesses and contractors, many of whom run intro courses for the ACE program.

The business operates basically on brokerage fees. The teacher sets their rate, Rob ads an overhead, and that determines the fee for the course. If the course doesn't get the baseline number of students, it doesn't run. Simple as that. The courses are non credited, offering only a statement of attendance, but in many instances they can lead into formal and accredited courses offered by CIT. CIT retains the credited training, such as what industry needs, and Rob tries to compliment that where possible.

In one sense, CIT Solutions' ACE program is a community outreach interface for formal training, in another it remains financially independent and therefore free of such conditions. I wonder though, if the program might benefit from another layer of outreach, creating an even further distance from CIT and other formal stakeholders. I'm thinking along the lines of The School of Everything and their Illich inspired, smart use of social media to enhance face to face gatherings for learning. Or what about the Free University Movement (re emerging from the 70s), like Melbourne Free University. Might Rob's business model be something those initiatives could use? I'm also wondering about the nature and potential of a relationship between businesses like CIT Solutions, and large, more established volunteer organisations like Melbourne's Centre for Education and Research in Environmental Strategies (CERES), and other such community groups who even more clearly identify as community benefit initiatives. What if Rob's work interfaced more with those organisations, helping them to gain more traction and legitimacy in their wider communities, as well as interfacing with formal training and certification. And then there's the relationship that all of them might have with very large international projects like Wikiversity or Wikipedia...?

It was a very interesting, energetic, and refreshing conversation today, and frankly, a relief. Working full time in a place like UC can too easily prevent you meeting people like Rob, and the can-do attitude he brings to his work. I hope we will get a chance to meet and dream big and small again some day.

Greater Access Choice and Flexibility: Learning at University of Canberra

2011-07-29T15:23:00.003+12:00

I'm part of a small group of people at the University of Canberra, tasked with writing a 'strategy' paper, for teaching and learning. As a first step, I'm asking my network both online and off, for their comments and suggestions. If you have opinions, comments, suggestions or experience with access, choice and flexibility in educative work, please send them to me, or write them into the wiki directly.

We'd especially like to hear from people who engage in educative activities outside the university and higher education system, and how they think we should relate to such work. I hope this post generates some activity on the wiki.

Proposal for TINA's Critical Animals panel

2011-07-29T14:09:00.002+12:00

I've made a proposal to join a Critical Animals panel discussion at the This Is Not Art (TINA) festival later this year. The brief is for a paper and 20 minute presentation with 2 other panelists, discussing technology and archives... this is what I've pitched:

Leigh Blackall

Leigh first saw the then 5 year old Internet Archive project when local Novacastrian Adam Bramwell showed their Way Back Machine in his talk, Tools and Techniques at the National Young Writers Festival of TINA 2001. Little did he realise at the time, the significance of this introduction.

Early in 2005, Archive.org began hosting the not-for-profit community benefit project, Ourmedia.org, and at the same time a for-profit, commercial venture called Youtube was started. A number of other commercial and non commercial ventures also came online, offering seemingly free and unlimited online publishing services to anyone and everyone.

Both a capital rich business model, and a new or renewed perspective on community benefit has emerged, based on the affordance of storing almost anything and everything that anyone wants to say or show online. This phenomenon has altered cultural expression, and is challenging our libraries and archiving sector. What we have now is supposedly social and participatory media on an international scale, with questions being asked around regulatory mechanisms like copyright; or social concerns around culture and localism; or the business and political problems of broadcast media, and ultimately what the new roles for centralised galleries, libraries, archives and museums are.

What is the role of our Australian libraries and cultural archives in the face of this increase in cultural expression, and greater access to collections online and off shore? Why are our organisations seemingly reluctant to appreciate this challenge, leaving projects like The Wikimedia Foundation, Project Gutenburg, The Internet Archive, The Open Library, Google Books and Amazon to pressure new roles for them instead? What are some examples of Australian initiatives to date, and what are some ideas for our future directions? These are the sorts of comments and suggestions that Leigh will bring to this panel.

Leigh is a researcher, developer and commentator of things networked and social media. He is currently focused on a body of work around networked and social learning, that increasingly intersects with questions of culture, technology, and social studies. He is based at the University of Canberra, where he is employed to contribute to developmental work, and directional thinking.

Q&A

2011-07-12T12:02:00.004+12:00

Anyone cringe to death watching Q&A last night? Our brain dead PM, getting bludgeoned by an audience of wife bashers, yet turning her other cheek with that persistent monotony in her feminine resoluteness. We'll love her in the end.

We need someone with an understanding of semiotics and the ideology that is conveyed through such imagery, to deconstruct Q&A, and to bare its inner workings that are bluntly hidden from view, in that dark yet lit ABC studio. Someone like John Berger or Bill Nichols, but more contemporary and Australian, so as to pick up the more subtle cultural meanings.

Like reality television, Q&A pretends to be live, and it is, after all the staging and choreographing of what the producers think are the issues. Then there are the camera operators, the video mixers and the Twitter monitors, all reacting to that staged and choreographed tension, hunting for image based meaning, all too often semi consciously reinforcing new stereotypes, or not so subtly projecting their own bias and prejudice.

And I can't help notice, or maybe wounder, about the host, Tony Jones. Does he carry this sort of critical insight for his productions? Sitting there with a look like he knows better, like he's seen it all before, through his designer glasses that will age suddenly in a few years. Sitting there like a conductor of a country town marching band, he knows all the questions and the answers - the city slicker. Occasionally he spontaneously tries to circuit break the predictability of it all, but never so much as to disrupt the trajectory of the production - the message that is hidden from plain sight. In the end he surrenders to the "democracy" of it all, them the aristocracy, us the masses. Packaged in a new form of infotainment, all rising up from our technopoly.

May it all collapse some day.

Notes on Philippa Levy's methodological framework for practice-based research in networked learning

2011-07-11T18:26:00.006+12:00

Project Vortex. Dimmitt Tornado by Harald RIchter

I've just finished reading Philippa Levy's Methodological Framework for Practice-Based Research in Networked Learning. I was looking for ideas and directions for my own work in progress, Networked learning a biomass heat transfer system, and was recommended Philippa's paper, along with several others included in Advances in Research on Networked Learning.

Philippa's paper is academically dense, and is careful to demonstrate her understanding of qualitative research traditions and frameworks, and where her work fits in. This in itself is a massive undertaking, suggesting months if not years of very specific reading.

To make such a comprehensive undertaking sound even more foreboding, a friend and reviewer of my work - Russell Butson (from the University of Otago) gives such foundational understanding of research some very heavy weighting:

All research is pivotal on methods – which requires sound alignment between:
World view (philosophical framework)
Methodical approach (methodical framework)
Methods (operational framework – including the definition of what is data and how it is appraised/analysed).
You need to be clear on all of the above before you undertake research (empirical or theoretical). It’s easy to pick when a writer doesn’t have sound alignment between philosophy-methodology-methods-conclusions (it’s a measure of researcher honesty)

All of this comes down to being honest as a researcher and therefore it’s about justice: justice regarding the topic, the participants, methods, the outcomes and mostly – the subsequent conversations (publications). Most research is dishonest breaking the rules of social justice. Publishing is seen as a private good (promotion – personal self-esteem) rather than a public good (the advancement of honesty knowledge).

I went back country skiing with Thor on the weekend.
We took a bottle of Tawny Port.

I agree with this principle.. although I have some reservations when it comes to what I see as the use of needlessly impenetrable language being used by academics who seek to demonstrate such an understanding. Essentially they render their work inaccessible to people who neither have the expertise, or the time to study up on the meanings of every second word. So, I'd take Russell's advice further, and suggest that an honest researcher is one who has come to terms with the specialist language, and is able to use plain language to convey the same meanings.

Philippa explains her approach to research, as being based in the ideas of constructivism, which is to say people develop their understanding of the world through their experiences, and through interactions with others - their knowledge is constructed (Chet Bowers has a few interesting things to say about constructivism however). Philippa cites action research as her general approach (although I think she meant Participatory Action Research, where action research is predominantly a work in progress, and knowledge emerges from that process, and participatory action research involves the people who are being researched, involved in the research process itself. It's a very democratic framework and approach, and with this as the basis, Philippa specifically uses practice-based research as her method, where she is using a case study of an educational course she was instrumental in running, for her study of people engaged in networked learning.

So, if I'm right, the framework for Philppa's research method can be summarised as follows:

Worldview = Constructivism, and related to that is relativism
Approach = Action research
Method = Practice based research through a case study

Philippa goes into much more depth and detail though, both to describe and to justify where she is coming from, and it is worth the read for that alone. Attempting to simplify her language is a useful exercise in testing your understanding of her framework too. I hope I got it right...

Unfortunately, Philippa's paper doesn't go into much depth with regard to the case study itself, which I think would have been useful for understanding the appropriateness of her over all worldview, approach and method.

Her case study is set within a university, and the people included in the study were all taking part in a course in that setting. Right at the outset then, I can see a potential problem - relating to the definition of networked learning (as I'm debating Chris Jones over on the discussion page of the Wikipedia entry of Networked Learning, which is easier to follow in the comments to a recent post on my blog). Philippa herself acknowledges some of the problems with this setting, but only in as much as it relates to her research framework:

One obvious structural dimension of the research relationship between myself and other participants in my project was my status as course leader, referred to in retrospect - albeit humorously – by one participant when she characterised me as “[like] the Vice-Chancellor – you were in charge!\

But I would take this issue further, and argue that the setting of Philippa's case study appears not to be networked learning, but online learning, or online education, where the structures and power dynamics remain mostly unchanged from how they would be in a formal education setting, where learning networks are arguably difficult to establish due to the artificial constraints of institutionalised learning practice.

It was a course, delivered in sequence by a 'teacher', to a cohort of people called students or learners, who can usually be identified as a class, determined by economic status, profession, age, gender, or sometimes even religion, managed in an administrative system, where the 'teacher' prescribes 'constructivist' learning activities, despite probably identifying as a facilitator, and involving some form of assignment and assessment process. And on the critique of institutionalised learning goes (see Deconstructing Behaviorism within Social Contructivism and To Facilitate or to Teach). I can't know this for sure, but if Philippa is using this 1999 example of Internet-based continuing professional development: Perspectives on course design and participation, then it appears to be the case.

I don't accept such settings as being places of networked learning - enough to find anything particularly useful in research at least. But my definition is at odds with what Chris Jones asserts is the authoritative definition, where the use of computer networks is what distinguishes networked learning from other forms of learning. That authority to a definition is also drawing from research almost exclusively dealing within university settings. I'm at pretty extreme odds to the establishment it seems...

In the process of looking for Philippa's work, I came across a paper that supports my position in its introduction at least, that networked learning is not limited to computer based networks. It's by Benjamin Kehrwald from the University of Southern Queensland, in the Faculty of Education, and its called: Learner Support in Networked Learning Communities: Opportunities and Challenges. Benjamin's introduces his paper with:

"The network component of networked learning refers not only to technology, but also to particular social structures (networks) in which relationships are structured by networked logic and the accompanying notions of culture, power relations, production and experience ( Castells, M. (1996). The information age: ecomony, society and culture volume 1. Oxford: Blackwell.)."

The Castells reference lead me to this book: The Rise of the Networked Society (2009), with chapter 3 devoted to, The Networked Enterprise: the Culture, Institutions, and Organisations of the Information Economy.

As with my challenge to the definition that Chris Jones is defending, Benjamin is using Castells to point to a wider understanding of networks and networked learning. With this wider appreciation, the likes of Philippa Levy's work, indeed all the papers in the book I found her paper in, (Advances in Research on Networked Learning, edited by Goodyear and others), are bound by the more restricted definition of networked learning, not just determined by computer networks, but by institutionalised settings for learning. Even Benjamin, who acknowledges the wider scope of it, limits his work to university staged courses.

What a shame universities, the places where most commercial free research and theorising can afford to go on these days, appears so consistently limited in its outlook with regard to networked learning theories and research. This partly explains why technology like Learning Management Systems have survived as long as they have - because so much of the research that relates to questions of learning, online learning, open and distance learning, and even networked learning, have referred back onto their own institutional settings, inside very limited frameworks for learning, such as coursework for classes. How this has gone on for so long in the face of popular referencing of Lave and Wenger's Situated Learning and Communities of Practice, and unjustly scant references to Illich's Learning Webs and Conviviality, remains a mystery to me, accept that it is further evidence of the university based education researcher being far too introspective.

I'm becoming more confident that I've found a significant gap in the literature around networked learning, and sincerely hope that if those mentioned above come across this post, they will enter into a discussion with me, in the spirit and tone I've established here - which is I hope, not one of outright hostility or disrespect, but admittedly one of significant challenge, and one I think is needing a defense.

Progress on ubiquitous learning paper

2011-07-06T13:50:00.000+12:00

I'm still working on the second draft of the Ubiquitous Learning paper, after receiving some thorough feedback from my network (logged on the talk page).

Alex Hayes prompted me to submit an abstract to his AUPOV2011 conference in Wollongong later this year, so I've used the opportunity to continue to practice talking about this topic, that seems to be dominating my thinking space lately.

Alex has created an interesting set up for the AUPOV2011 conference website, asking for audio submission via SoundCloud, where he racks them up on the site. I've submitted mine on SoundCloud:

Leigh Blackall AUPOV2011 by Leigh Blackall

And here it is on the Internet Archive:

Where does it end?

2011-07-06T00:03:00.001+12:00

I just received an email that does not appear to be spam, and seems to capture in it all that is wrong with university education in ... well, not just Australia I'm sure.

Here's an excerpt:

"The Science Reference Group also approved the Science Standards Statement before we presented it to the Australian Council of Deans of Science (ACDS). The Science TLOs for bachelor level degrees in science have now been formally endorsed by the ACDS. They took particular note that the 'generic' science TLOs have been successfully adapted by the Chemistry Working Party to their specific disciplinary context. The ACDS has affirmed their support of the LTAS project by agreeing to support implementation of the project outcomes via the ACDS Learning and Teaching fora, and through the Science and Mathematics network to be established this year. The next stages will include, for example, to develop teaching activities and assessment tasks that match the TLOs. This will help to ensure that the project's outcomes continue to be relevant to academics, students and employers."

Open Definition

2011-07-04T11:47:00.000+12:00

Janet Hawtin relayed a link into the TALO email list, from Alex Hayes pointing to the Open Definition: Defining the Open in Open Data, Open Content and Open Services.

I'm involved in a research project evaluating openness in the Australian Research Council's (ARC) Excellence in Research for Australian (ERA) initiative. Our project is in its early stages, where we think we have sorted out a purpose and methodology.

The ERA is the primary driver and reward process for research conducted in Australian universities, partly by putting out a list of academic journals that they recognise as 'quality', and rewarding researchers based on what research is published in which journals. Some of you may have caught the news recently that the rankings in the ERA list has been dropped, acknowledging that it was having an adverse effect on research directions in Australia. The overall thinking behind the ERA initiative, is to somehow quantify research in Australia, hold publicly funded research more accountable, and to be in a position someday to report on Australian research outputs in an international comparison (Globalism).

Of the many consequences of the ERA initiative, our research is focusing on its influence over academics at our university who might be attempting to adopt open academic practices. We are evaluating both the journal lists, as well as the ERA guideline documents, for any recognition of principles of openness, especially in the light of the obvious policy trends internationally, not to mention market trends such as major publisher's attempting to develop open publishing within existing business models like authors paying for their papers to be published as openly accessible.

We are still in the early stages of our project, but can already see that the ERA lists have next to no open journals in the discipline areas of education, health and governance, with our criteria for open journal being:

Accessible (online)
Reusable (copyright)
Reusable (format)

We would have liked to have included "open governance" in our criteria, such as the reviews of articles being also accessible, but elected not to include it this time.

While we've been using older initiatives to develop that evaluation criteria (such as the Free Cultural Works Definition), this new site involving some of the same people, helps support our criteria further.

On another note, and in a new post entirely, are my questions about openness generally, and recently as they relate to Neil Postman's ideas around Technopoly and information glut...

Technopoly

2011-06-26T12:12:00.000+12:00

Not since 2002, when I read Teaching as a Subversive Activity, have I sat down to read another book be Neil Postman. I can't explain such neglect on my part. But, as with Illich I want the people in my network to explain why we are not referring to Postman more? His 1992 book, Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology for example. I know Shirky and Wesch both mention Postman by name at least, and maybe i just miss other references. Certainly i seem to be more impressionable, but it seems to me that the points made in this book are very important to our discourse, and missing.

I'm sitting in the sun at South Bank Brisbane, waiting to join the Wikipedia Brisbane meetup. I've just finished the introduction to Technopoly...

Function follows form. P7

New things change old words. P8

Undeserved authority. P9

Private matters made known to powerful institutions. P10

Technologies change the way we think and feel. Ideologically. P12

On assigning marks for student work as a strange conception and Techno implementation. P13

The unforeseen consequences. The clock for God, but serving Mammon. P15

On computers in classrooms. The balance between orality and text is tipping to text. P17

Technology as ecological. P18

What is a definition of networked learning?

2011-06-15T15:18:00.001+12:00

A UK academic has been assisting with the editing of the Wikipedia entry for Networked Learning, and it looks as though we might disagree on a suitable definition. I take issue with a definition suggesting that networked learning is tied to ICTs.

The most stable definition of networked learning was developed by CSALT, a research group at Lancaster University, UK. Their definition states that networked learning is "learning in which information and communication technology is used to promote connections: between one learner and other learners, between learners and tutors; between a learning community and its learning resources." ^[1]The central term in this definition is connections. The interactions this term points towards include human interactions with materials and resources, but interactions with materials alone are not sufficient and networked learning requires aspects of human-human interaction mediated through digital technologies. This definition takes a relational stance in which learning takes place both in relation to others and in relation to learning resources.^[2]

I challenged the CSALT based definition when it first appeared back in August 2006, and tried to pen a more inclusive definition that didn't exclude methods of networked learning that weren't based on computing or computer networks. But Chris stands by the claim to an authoritative definition.

The definition is in current use and it is one of the most widely referenced over the past 9 years. Opinions on the definition may vary but it should be represented as it is in circulation and supported by severla books and the conference series. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Chris R. Jones (talk • contribs) 16:06, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

To be honest, this Wikipedia project is the first I've heard of CSALT, and I've not yet attempted to verify Chris' assertion to authority. My perspectives on a definition are shaped by reading Illich, Downes, Siemens and more recently Wenger (of course many others, but these names capture it), but I find it difficult to use such references to support a rewording of the definition, in the face of an academic institution. I'm wondering if anyone reading this might assist? Either in changing my mind, changing Chris', or helping us write an inclusive definition with all necessary citations.

Review and feedback needed on: Networked learning a biomass heat transfer system

2011-06-10T00:24:00.000+12:00

I've finished a first draft paper, of a research project that I hope to build into my networked and open PhD. From 9 - 17 June 2011 I am seeking comments and feedback on this draft, which I'll document in the discussion page, and incorporate into a second draft by mid July 2011. I'm following a similar process with the other publications I'm drafting on Wikiversity, many thanks to everyone who has offered review and feedback on those.

Networked learning a biomass heat transfer system

From 2008 to 2010 I casually studied Jean Pain composting, or the heating of water using compost. This paper reviews my attempts to use networked learning methods to study Jean Pain Composting, including research and practical study involving an actual replica build. The objective of this research is to present an example of networked learning being applied, to identify instances of tangible learning, to find a reusable method for analysing networked approaches to study and practice, and to begin a consideration of questions on what an educational institution's role might be, in a relationship with a networked learner like me.

Read more...

Our epistemology, and entrepreneurial learning

2011-06-02T12:15:00.003+12:00

Have you struggled to understand or explain the word epistemology?

Try this:

learning can be framed around the traditional Hellenistic knowledge dichotomy episteme and techné. Episteme stands for big picture learning, for learning about the world as a whole and one’s position in it. It represents education towards cultural citizenship, i.e. the responsibilities and contributions one makes to the society by participating in the community and generating culture. Techné instead focuses on learning about special traits, i.e. learning the techniques of a profession and producing economical value by performing the tasks associated with it through the division of labor – this knowledge allows for what Delanty (2001) dubbed technological citizenship.

If that's an accurate depiction, then I think I reject this framework for thinking about knowledge. To suggest that technical skills and knowledge is not concerned with big picture and culture, seems a ridiculous distinction to make. I must be missing the point (again). Is this really the (epistemological) framework for thinking about knowledge that our research and 'higher' education institutions follow?
This quote comes from an article recently suggested to me called, Entrepreneurial learning in the networked age: How new learning environments foster entrepreneurship and innovation. By Max Sengles, John Seely Brown and Howard Rheingold. It seems, as I begin reading through it, to be another article trying to explain the significance that computing and Internet technologies (and culture) has over notions of knowledge and learning. From, or I should say in their explanation, they are attempting to make the arguments for change. A change across the board, more inline with this so-called new understanding of knowledge and learning.

The sway that the subject of technology has over discussions about education and learning, is giving me increasing cause for concern. Absent from the explanations of new understandings of knowledge and learning, and their arguments for change, is some balance to the largely utopian ideals. The sub headings in the 'entrepreneurial learning' article for example, read like evangelical slogans, without a single word for caution or circumspect (that I could see by scanning). What would one include to strike a balance? Most obvious would be Postman, in particular his warnings in Technonopoly, but their could and should be many others. Surely we agree that technology gives potential to all traits of humanity, not just the bits we'd like to pick out.

For example, reading through the first few pages of 'entrepreneurial learning'..

Rather than developing in parallel with technology and modern businesses, education is still dominantly geared to condition its subjects to embody what Germans dub «Fachidioten» – people who are well suited to adapt into hierarchic organizations, and to perform repetitive tasks.

Are they suggesting that technology and modern business is going to somehow free us from fachidoten, because from where I sit, looking at corporations like Google for example, or worse Goldman and Sachs, it sure doesn't look like it. Perhaps their suggesting that corporations themselves are being challenged by "technology and modern business"? I wonder what the authors are going to make of Curtis' new doco, Machines of Loving Grace?

By focusing on the potential of innovative socio-technological learning environments, we address this discrepancy by proposing an enlightened humanistic educational paradigm

Enlightened humanistic educational paradigm! I feel like getting dressed up and putting on a wig. Is this article reading like it really is going to focus on the potential, in ALL its expected forms... oh but wait, it seems I can't get through a single sentence without a jolt of anxiety!

When all information is available, the educator’s challenge is to identify and select materials

Its a stark contradiction. Surely they'd rather not have an 'educator', most likely someone who has succeeded in a system of fachidoten, identify and select materials for people they'd class as 'learners'? And will there ever be a time when all information is available? Nothing new in that, plenty of potential for a not so pretty future really.

I think I have to stop reading... see if anyone challenges and motivates me to read more. So far I'm too uncomfortable to read on. I'd like to say however, that I respect the work and perspectives of the authors, despite my way of writing. I hope people can ignore my expressions here and see the point trying to be made. Show me how to discuss these points with civility and innocence - I'd like to remain in the conversations...

McLuhan - designer or prophet?

2011-05-31T13:59:00.002+12:00

I recently had a brief Twitter exchange with Stanley Frielick of Auckland, that lead me to a thought on McLuhan and technological determinism, and a paper by Norman Clark (1993) explaining the role of television in training our reception for technology in a technopoly. Could it be, that McLuhan's influence on anyone interested in media and technology, has coached their imaginings, and so coached our reception of their media and technology artifacts?

enactivist: RT @brainpicker: If you read one thing today, make it this: Wikipedia And The Death Of The Expert http://j.mp/jMU8SZ #longreads #mcluhan
leighblackall: @enactivist That Wikipedia article didn't go anywhere! I thought is was going to lend weight, instead it gave another sales pitch!
enactivist: @leighblackall not sure what it's selling? for me the point is learners are doers not recipients and McLuhan / Wikipedia are teachers..
leighblackall: @enactivist It dismissed critics of Internet and crowd sourcing, and quoted McLuhan uncritically. I was hoping for the opposite. Still good.
enactivist: all..will lose their..private identities...knowledge...will be available to all...everybody will be nobody.. http://bit.ly/j5qLaZ #mcluhan
leighblackall: RT @enactivist: To what extent might we think #McLuhan designed the Internet rather than foresaw it? http://bit.ly/j5qLaZ #natureornurture
leighblackall: @enactivist While searching 4 open copy of that McLuhan paper, found: reinforcement and compulsion of technology http://j.mp/klkG4L

As usual, the limitations of Twitter caused me to come across with aggression. Thankfully Stanley knows me. My aggression is well intended :)

In the article Stanley originally pointed to, Wikipedia And The Death Of The Expert by Maria Bustillos, I was excited that this might be an article that looked into such a proposition - disembodied expertise. Instead, it followed the familiar format of argument that promotes Wikipedia, crowd sourcing, and the challenge to authority, leaving me unsatisfied that the proposition in the title was fairly treated.

It starts with a familiar history of Britannica vs Wikipedia, (I'd love to see interviews with Britannica people these days) then extends to an equally familiar history of academia vs Wikipedia and the Internet, then uses Marshall McLuhan to validate the ideas today as forecasted, using that point to introduce contemporaries like Clay Shirky to carry the line forward.

Don't get me wrong, I am just as guilty (and largely convinced) of this format of argument myself. But I'm trying to question it more, firstly to better understand the contemporary Luddites, and secondly because in my experience, to be honest, it hasn't been all its cracked up to be. Very few people in my real world use the Internet in the ideal way described by most social media commentators, I'd say its a new class of people - the technocrats. Yet the ideologies conveyed by commentators have had significant destabilising affects in my local network despite the lack of locally sensed evidence for what the technocrats describe, and because I worry about the absence of critical consideration, in projects like Gov2.0, open education, Creative Commons, etc. But I'm getting side tracked..

In the excellent comments to Maria's Wikipedia and experts article, was one by MikeBarthel (#1,884).

Not to be a boring ol' academic, but quoting McLuhan uncritically seems pretty problematic, and the fact that the only modern cosigns you could find aren't in the fields of media or technology studies (SCT) is telling. McLuhan's view is worrisomely prevalent among amateur theorists on the Internet, and in particular his underlying assumption that technology is deterministic makes us all a lot less critical about technology and humans' own role in creating it and shaping how it's used.

Anyway, I have to go to office hours and you already know how I feel about Shirky, so etc. etc. etc. I mean, it's not like collaborative projects weren't extremely common before the digital age (they form the basis of the modern academy, kind of!), and there's always been lots of amateur-generated knowledge out there, so I dunno how this is a shift, I guess.

This somehow lead me to wondering, to what degree might McLuhan himself, have determined the trajectory of technology and media? Hence the question to Stanley on Twitter:

leighblackall: RT @enactivist: To what extent might we think #McLuhan designed the Internet rather than foresaw it? http://bit.ly/j5qLaZ #natureornurture

So, I went searching on the question.. and didn't easily find much in the ocean of search results with the word McLuhan in it! But I did find a paper by Norman Clark titled, 'Open Hailing Frequencies, Data': Television's Reinforcement and Compulsion of Technology in Communication, where he uses the TV series Star Trek to consider the use of, and behaviors around, communications technology in the show, and consider the coaching influence that has on us the viewer, as we too face similar technology emerging in our real world (technopoly) communities.

With the rise of technopoly, society loses any transcendent narrative for moral underpinnings, social institutions lose their strength to control and filter information, and technology rushes in to take control. Doctors and patients feel they must use all of the available technology, even if it is unnecessary. Students think they can't write a paper without a word processor. Statistical objectivity becomes the only source of authority; statistics abound on television, granting newscasters a status equivalent to the oracle at Delphi. Scientism becomes religion as we use natural science to study human behavior, try to organize society around "scientific" principles, and place our deepest faith in science. Traditional sacred symbols are trivialized and used to sell anything (look at Christmas), an action Postman calls "cultural rape, sanctioned by an ideology that gives boundless supremacy to technological progress and is indifferent to the unraveling of tradition" (p. 170). This "secularization of imagery" ("She wants her TV," 1991, p. 50) depletes and degrades the content of our symbols; the "interesting" symbolic content of the Sistine Chapel for most American visitors is the techniques and technology used to restore the paintings!

Now that reads more like the disembodied authority I was hoping for in Maria's article!

The control of technology is reinforced in the various communication technologies; the content of our media is often the promotion of the technologies of our media. Television provides us with images of technology that "presume the efficacy of the contemporary technological society, itself a result of the confluence of science, cultural practice, and economic formation" (Banks & Tankel, 1990, p. 24). Technological progress is not critically confronted since technology is the prejudiced cultural symbol system. The presumption of efficacy allows television to uncritically promote the propagation and proliferation of technology. Television in a sense retums the favor of the technological power that created it by reinforcing and compelling society's consumption of further technologies.

So, similar to the saying, who watches the watchmen? I'd like to ask, what do the scriptwriters read? What I mean is, in the similar way that television coaches its viewers to receive technology, academic theory and other literature coaches science fiction writers to depict technology. So, to what extent has Marshall McLuhan, through his sheer epic proportion of influence, actually designed the media and technology we have today, by coaching designers, engineers, and developers to think about their work, in a way he determined? A kind of butterfly effect, or in McLuhan's case, a typhoon effect.

Global Learning - what a name

2011-05-28T21:42:00.001+12:00

Congratulations Cable Green, the new director of Creative Commons Global Learning (What the hell kind of name is that??!!). I hope the first thing Cable does is rename the project, removing the word Global. I want to keep faith in Creative Commons, so will watch for work that is culturally grounded, and sensitive to problems of neo colonialism, even imperialism in all concepts associated to Globalism - issues I raised at OER 2009, and many times since.

A summary of Chet Bowers, The false promises of constructivist theories of learning: a global and ecological critique

2011-05-27T12:56:00.000+12:00

Chet Bowers. The false promises of constructivist theories of learning: a global and ecological critique. Peter Lang, 2005. ISBN 0820478849

[hide]

[edit]Chapter 1 - Introduction

The globalization of the West’s view of economic and technological development is now being accompanied by the aggressive promotion of Western values and ways of thinking—through television and Hollywood films, and by Western universities that have established in the public’s mind (and the minds of foreign graduates of these institutions) what constitutes high and low-status knowledge. High-status knowledge, which is represented as the basis of modernization, includes the assumption that the individual is the basic social unit, the source of intelligence and moral judgment; that literacy and other abstract forms of representation for encoding and communicating knowledge lead to a more rational and progressive mode of being; that change is the expression of progress; that Western science and technology are both culturally neutral and at the same time the highest expression of rational thought; that cultural development is governed by the laws of natural selection whereby the fittest (the more efficient and scientifically based) prevail over the less fit; and that the major challenge is to bring nature under human control and to exploit it in ways that help to expand economic markets. Bowers 2005 Page 2

Western universities have a long history of colonizing the governing elites of nonWestern countries with the same fervor and ethnocentric thinking as Christian missionaries. This ongoing process is now being supplemented by introducing Western values and patterns of thinking into the educational experience of the youth of nonWestern cultures. The Western-educated elites that control the educational bureaucracies of countries such as Peru, Bolivia, Brazil, and Mexico are now promoting what in the West is called a constructivist approach to teaching and curriculum. This same approach is being introduced into the teacher training programs in Muslim countries such as Turkey, Albania, Macedonia, and Pakistan—and in the Baltic countries, Russia, and even in South Africa and Taiwan. At last count, constructivist approaches to learning are being used as the basis of educational reform in 29 countries—and the list is growing. This same approach to teacher education is also being promoted in New Zealand, Australia, Great Britain, Canada, and the United States. Constructivism is, in fact, the dominant approach to the education of teachers in those countries that are characterized by hyperconsumerism. The connections between the form of individualism fostered through a constructivist approach to education and the process of colonizing other cultures to the patterns of a consumer-dependent lifestyle will be one of the main issues to be explored in later chapters. Bowers 2005 Page 2

One of the most important cultural assumptions underlying the high-status knowledge promoted by Western universities, by Western scientists and technologists, and by the proponents of the different approaches to a constructivist pedagogy is that change is the dominant feature of everyday life. Thus, change and progress are viewed as synonymous by most Western thinkers—which transnational corporations exploit by representing every innovation, no matter how minor or superfluous, as a progressive step over previous ones. That what is new and thus interpreted as a progressive step forward is driven by the West’s incessant efforts to expand the industrialization of production and consumption does not seem to bring the myth of progress into question—except for a few critics Bowers 2005 Page 4

The colonizing nature of constructivist pedagogies becomes clearer when its Western assumptions are compared with the patterns of thinking and values of cultural groups that still maintain that traditions are essential to the vitality and interdependence of their communities—or what can be called the “commons” (which I shall use as interchangeable with the nonmarket-oriented aspects of community-centered relationships, activities, and forms of knowledge that do not undermine natural systems). Bowers 2005 Page 5

Generally overlooked in the worldwide effort to promote the Western model of development is that one of the primary driving forces is the further automation of the process of production—which not only makes the possession of skills and craft knowledge economically irrelevant but at the same time reduces the need for workers. That is, the Western technologically driven approach to progress creates the double bind where there is an ever-increasing need for bringing people into a money-based economy so they can purchase the everexpanding list of consumer goods and services, and where there is an increasing number of unemployed or underemployed because robots, computers, and other new technologies have reduced the need for workers. Bowers 2005 Page 5

When governments promote educational reforms that foster the myth of being an autonomous individual in a world of unending progress they are contributing to the spread of poverty and helplessness. This is because educating young people to construct their own knowledge creates a condition of alienation whereby the knowledge and skills essential to participating in the community networks of mutual aid are not acquired. Thus, the double bind. Youth are being educated to become workers in a hypertechnological and capital-intensive environment where there is no certainty of long-term employment. The false promises are now being played out in Mexico where integration into the economic system dictated by the North American Free Trade Agreement is displacing the peasants whose cultural life has been centered for hundreds of years on the growing of corn. Now with China’s ability to combine even lower-wage earners with the most advanced Western technology, Mexico’s manufacturing industries are beginning to disappear. In effect, the promise of economic development that is the basis of so many governmental efforts at educational reform, including that of Mexico, is giving way to the brutal realities of global competition for markets that are already flooded with consumer goods. Yet, the government of Mexico, like many governments in other third-world countries, continued to promote constructivist-based educational reforms. Bowers 2005 Page 8

[edit]Chapter 2 - Misconceptions Underlying Individually Centered Constructivism and Critical Inquiry

[edit]On John Dewey

[Dewey's] silences and misconceptions can be organized into three categories: his failure to recognize the world’s culturally diverse knowledge systems, his failure to recognize how different knowledge systems are based on intergenerational traditions that contribute to patterns of mutual aid that have a smaller ecological footprint, and his failure to recognize the need to conserve cultural traditions that represent alternatives to the industrial model of production and consumption that is now being promoted on a global basis. Bowers 2005 Page 17

[edit]Regarding Dewey's preference for scientific mode of inquiry

The wisdom of elders or of people who have been mentored to carry forward traditions of knowledge gained and refined over generations of collective experiences, such as the knowledge of the healing properties of plants, simply has no place in Dewey’s way of thinking. Rather, what he places an emphasis on is that experimental knowledge must meet the test of only one generation’s experience, which he sees as an ongoing process of reconstruction within the experience of that generation. Bowers 2005 Page 18

[edit]Regarding Dewey's view of democracy

We can recognize that this untiring advocate of democracy argued for the universal adoption of the scientific method of inquiry and the abandonment of what he called the spectator approach to knowledge. He also advocated that his understanding of a progressive linear form of change be universally adopted, and that each generation should rely upon their immediate experience in determining which traditions were relevant to reconstructing current problematic situations. Neither Dewey nor his followers recognized the contradiction in suggesting that other cultures could become democratic only as they gave up their traditions of decision making and approaches to knowledge and values. Bowers 2005 Page 19

[edit]Regarding Dewey's view on cultural diversity

In assessing Dewey’s ideas within the context of multiple cultural knowledge and moral systems, it is important to keep in mind that he relied upon an evolutionary interpretative framework that led him to refer to cultures that were not based on his method of experimental inquiry as backward and as examples of “savages.” In his way of thinking these less evolved cultures were driven by the quest misconceptions underlying constructivism and inquiry for certainty, and relied upon a spectator approach to knowledge. The more evolved cultures, by way of contrast, understand “ideas are anticipatory plans of action and designs which take effect in concrete reconstructions of antecedent conditions of existence” (Dewey. The Quest for Certainty. 1960, pp. 166–167). Bowers 2005 Page 19

[edit]On Jean Piaget

Four dogmas:

That knowledge cannot be conveyed to another person
That curriculum must be appropriate to the student's stage of cognitive development
That curriculum aligned to cognitive development will lead to the autonomous individual
Critical inquiry and experimentalism should be central to process-oriented learning

Bowers 2005 Page 20

[edit]Regarding Piaget's Darwinian views of intelligence

As Keiran Egan points out, one of the most important ideas that Piaget borrows from biology to explain psychological phenomena is that intelligence should be understood as a biological process of development that is genetically driven (Keiran Egan. Education and Psychology: Plato, Piaget and Scientific Psychology. New York: Teachers College Press 1983, pp. 83–95). Bowers 2005 Page 21 and 22

[edit]Regarding Piaget's error on language

Egan, one of the most insightful scholars and critics of Piaget’s theory of learning, notes that Piaget viewed language competence as *following* the development of cognitive structures. To quote Piaget on this critically important issue: “Language is not thought, nor is it the source or sufficient condition for thought (1983, Egan, p. 71). As will be explained in the next chapter, this is one of Piaget’s most basic misconceptions—one that led him and his followers away from considering the role of language in the intergenerational renewal of the epistemologies of different cultures. Bowers 2005 Page 23

[edit]Regarding Piaget's stages of development

The teacher’s task is to match the curriculum to the stage [of cognitive development] the student has reached... Piaget’s use (or misuse) of science to give legitimacy to his theory of cognitive stages does not provide teachers with a fail-safe scientific approach to interpreting which stage of development the student has reached. In effect, his theory leads to the same problem that is found in Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple forms of intelligence—which is also based on a biology-determines-form-of-intelligence argument (which has not been scientifically proven). Gardner’s theory also places on the teacher the responsibility for determining which form of intelligence the student possesses, and then to match the curriculum accordingly. The problem in terms of both theories of readiness is that the teacher’s cultural biases, subjective judgment, and own lack of knowledge become critical factors in shaping curricular decisions. Bowers 2005 Page 24

[edit]Regarding a contradiction to constructivist theory

One of the differences that should be kept in mind is that Dewey was an advocate of participatory decision making as the basis of social intelligence, while the goal of the educational process for Piaget was the achievement of individual autonomy. The deeper implications of this difference are being generally overlooked as the promoters of constructivist approaches to learning, in their attempt to create the impression that there is a broad consensus of support, often identify with other theorists who have conflicting ideas about fundamental issues. Bowers 2005 Page 25

[edit]On Paulo Freire

In Education for Critical Consciousness (1973), Freire identifies three stages in human, cultural, and cognitive development. He labels the first stage as “semiintransitivity of consciousness,” which is followed by the higher stage of “transitivity of consciousness,” with the highest and most culturally advanced stage being “critically transitivity of consciousness: Men of semi-transitive consciousness,” he observed, “cannot apprehend problems situated outside their sphere of biological necessity. . . semi-transitivity represents a near disengagement between men and their existence. . . (they) fall prey to magical explanations because they cannot apprehend true causality” (p. 17). He identified the oral cultures in the “backward regions of Brazil” as examples of this primitive, animal-like state of existence. The highest stage of cultural evolution, which he identified with critically transitive consciousness, is “characteristic of authentically democratic regimes and corresponds to highly permeable, interrogative, restless, and dialogical forms of thought” (pp. 18–19). Bowers 2005 Page 26

[edit]Regarding Freire and democracy

It is important to note that democracy for Freire means that the nonWestern cultures must abandon their own systems of knowledge—which is the same position that Dewey took—also in the name of achieving democracy. Freire even extends his core idea that each person must speak a true word and not live by the words of others—particularly the words of the older generation. As in all of Freire’s pronouncements, there is no recognition of differences in cultural contexts, the possibility that some forms of intergenerational knowledge are essential to membership in the commons and that autonomy is an ideological construct of Western thinkers who did not (and still do not) understand how thinking always reproduces even as it individualizes the taken-for-granted cultural patterns of thinking. Bowers 2005 Page 28

[edit]Chapter 3: Toward a Culturally Grounded Theory of Learning

Like the physician who needs to understand human anatomy and the lawyer who needs to understand the foundations of the law, teachers need to understand the cultural ecology that influences their ideas, values, and every aspect of classroom communication, as well as the cultural ecology of their students. That is, at the core of their professional knowledge should be a deep understanding of culture in all its varied dimensions. Bowers 2005 Page 35

[edit]The Cultural Construction of Knowledge and Personal Identity

The writings of Peter Berger, Thomas Luckmann, Mark Johnson, George Lakoff, Richard Brown, Edward Shils, and Gregory Bateson can more easily be translated into culturally informed pedagogical practices. Bowers 2005 Page 35

Unlike Piaget’s claim that language competence follows the development of cognitive structures and Freire’s claim that individuals must avoid the false words of previous generations by naming the world themselves, Berger and Luckmann point out that at the center of the relationships that constitute the individual’s social (cultural) experiences are the multiple processes of communication. These include the non-verbal exchanges, the spoken and written word, thought patterns encoded in and communicated through the material/built culture (design of buildings, roadways, organization of public spaces, clothes, and so forth). In some cultures the plants, animals, rocks, wind, rivers, etc. also are understood as sources of communication. In effect, Berger and Luckmann represent the languaging processes of a culture as its core constituting and sustaining characteristic.Bowers 2005 Page 36

[edit]Chapter 4: How Constructivism Undermines the Commons

The key point here is that since the child’s everyday taken-for-granted reality is largely culturally constructed, the analysis here will focus on how constructivist pedagogies and curricula reinforce the Western bias against the intergenerational knowledge that is the basis of the commons of different cultures. The analysis will also be focusing on the destructive impact on the commons when students adopt the Western assumptions that are reinforced in constructivist classrooms. As the Western icons of a consumer lifestyle are being adopted by students in different parts of the world, we can expect that many of them will readily embrace the Western values and ways of thinking promoted in constructivist classrooms. Children and teenage youth in other cultures cannot be expected to resist the allure of Western images of material success and individual happiness when, for example, people rooted in the sophisticated Chinese civilization begin to build in the outskirts of Beijing gated communities with Western street names and California-style houses. Bowers 2005 Page 60

[edit]The Commons of Indigenous Cultures and Non Western Cultures

Perhaps the best way to introduce the profound differences that separate the assumptions and strategies of constructivist-learning theorists (including Piaget, Dewey, and Freire) from the way of knowing that influences what and the way Quechua and Aymara children learn is to consider what Carlos Ortega Hores (a ten-year-old boy from the district of Plateria, Puno) says about his knowledge and responsibilities:

My parents taught me how to nurture the animals: to graze and lead them to the places where the pastures grow. I know all the animals that my father nurtures. I know how to ride a horse . . . I know the diseases like diarrhea of the offspring which we know how to treat with creosol. Mother alpacas are covered at two years of age and at three they are already giving birth . . . We do Uywa chuwa (a welcoming ritual in the nurturing of alpacas) at Christmas time. I know how to cook and sleep alone tending the animals. Rengifo, 2001, p. 12

Carlos did not learn about the practices essential to maintaining the health of the animals through critical or even experimental inquiry. Nor did he acquire this knowledge on the basis of his subjective experience. Rather he learns, like other Quechua and Aymara children, from watching parents and others in the community, from conversations that are part of participating in the work and festivals of the community, and from listening to the sounds and observing changes in what we call the environment—which the Quechua and Aymara consider to be persons like themselves who are engaging in an ongoing conversation. As a group of Smith College students report, based on their field research among the Quechua done under the guidance of anthropologist Frederique Apffel-Marglin, learning is largely embodied and mimetic. Just as the Quechua farmer does not rely upon a chemical analysis of the soil to know if it is “tired,” but on feeling the soil with his hands, the child also learns about the condition of the soil in the same way. Mario Arevalo, a former educator and founder of the NGO, Pradera, further clarifies how Quechua children learn by noting that Quechua knowledge is not viewed as located in the head alone, but in the farmer’s hands, eyes, nose, soul—and in the ongoing dialogue with the other forms of life that are members of the commons (Shmulsky, Marlowe, Daniel, 2003, p. 3). Bowers 2005, p. 62

Notes on this point: http://leighblackall.blogspot.com/2011/05/researching-with-my-bare-hands.html

[edit]How Constructivism Undermines the Commons in North America

The revitalization of the commons is integral to addressing the eco-justice issues that are increasingly being ignored as public schools and universities in North America align themselves more closely with corporate culture. In the United State, corporate logos, fast-food outlets in public school and university cafeterias, and the use of computers are now the most visible linkages. The forms of knowledge that universities have elevated to high-status print and other abstract language systems, scientific inquiry, incessant drive to create new ideas and technologies, and assumptions such as anthropocentrism (which is also the basis of eco-management courses) mechanism, individualism, and the equating of a university education with a higher material standard of living—provide the necessary conceptual and moral framework that leads to a consumer-dependent lifestyle. As I have pointed out elsewhere (1997, 2001, 2003), what has been relegated to low-status by being omitted entirely from the curriculum or severely marginalized, are the forms of knowledge essential to the health of the cultural and environmental commons. That is, the non-monetized relationships, activities, how constructivism undermines the commons and forms of intergenerational knowledge that enable students to become active participants in the cultural commons makes them less dependent upon consumerism. This, in turn, leads to a lifestyle that helps address eco-justice issues.

The five unresolved and too often unrecognized aspects of eco-justice that are directly related to our hyperconsumer lifestyle include the following: (1) the impact that the industrial toxins and wastes have on the health of marginalized social groups in society; (2) the disruption of local economies and traditions of selfsufficiency in third world countries that results from the exploitation of their resources in order to sustain our level of hyperconsumerism; (3) the destruction of the symbolic foundations of the commons that results in people being more dependent upon consumerism to meet daily needs—even as the opportunities for earning a living wage are decreasing; (4) the failure to limit the pursuit of materialism in ways that ensure that the quality of life of future generations will not be diminished; and (5) the right of other species to renew themselves and to not be reduced to an exploitable resource.

The responsibility needs to be taken on by all teachers and professors—regardless of their discipline. Indeed, one of the most cogent recommendations that Rolf Jucker makes in Our Common Illiteracy: Education as if the Earth and People Mattered (2002), is that a transdisciplinary approach needs to be taken if students are to understand the cultural roots of the ecological crisis, and the cultural changes that will contribute to a more sustainable future (pp. 333–334).

If we examine the educational background of the people who promoted the Free Trade Organization, run the World Bank, and support the expansion of the North American Free Trade Agreement, we would find that they are mostly graduates of the country’s most prestigious universities. And if we inquire into the educational background of the politicians who are now promoting the American imperial world order, as well as the heads of corporations that are supporting this project on the grounds that it will open up new markets for the steady stream of new technologies, we would find that few if any encountered professors who helped to clarify the connections between this imperialistic agenda and the destruction of the commons—both in North America and in other parts of the world. The connections between a university education and a hyperconsumer lifestyle, with its accompanying status symbols of a sports utility vehicle, an oversized house, and latest computer gadgets, would be relatively easy to research—that is, if sociologists and anthropologists were to become interested in how the failure to address eco-justice issues affects the commons. It would also be relatively easy to research the size of the ecological footprint of people whose lives are based on the forms of intergenerational knowledge and values that are currently excluded from the curricula of public schools and universities. Bowers 2005, p. 71-73

[edit]Chapter 5 Constructivism The Trojan Horse of Western Imperialism

Kirkpatrick Sale’s observation about the industrial approach to production and consumption brings into focus what has been generally ignored by constructivist learning theorists who equate emancipation of the individual with gains in social progress, justice, and democracy. In Rebels Against the Future: The Luddites and Their War on the Industrial Revolution (1995), Sale describes how the intergenerational basis of community self-sufficiency had to be undermined in order to create the form of individualism that would be dependent upon the products of an industrial system in order to survive. As he put it:

All that ‘community’ implies—self-sufficiency, mutual aid, morality in the marketplace, stubborn tradition, regulation by custom, organic knowledge instead of mechanistic science— had to be steadily and systematically disrupted and displaced. All the practices that kept the individual from being a consumer had to be done away with so that the cogs and wheels of an unfettered machine called ‘the economy’ could operate without interference, influenced merely by invisible hands and inevitable balances and all the rest of the benevolent free-market system. p. 38

As the constructivist learning theorists share the same taken-for-granted cultural assumptions with the classical liberal theorists who provided the ideological justification, including moral legitimacy, for the earlier and, now, current phase of the Industrial Revolution, they have not recognized how their ideal of the autonomous, critically reflective individual is essential to the industrial, capitalistic system they often criticize.

[edit]Chapter 6: Toward a Culturally Informed Eco-Justice Pedagogy

The principal concerns that should guide the reform of teacher education, and thus the education that occurs in classrooms, have been articulated by several writers who have kept in focus the connections between the cultural patterns that are degrading the environment and the rise of political conflict, as well as the spread of poverty around the world. In the last chapter of Our Common Illiteracy (2002), Rolf Jucker discusses 27 reforms that will contribute to transforming classrooms from sites of indoctrination into the culture of consumerism and environmental exploitation into sites for learning how to live in ways that contribute to a sustainable future. His recommendations range from incorporating into the curriculum examples of ecologically informed approaches to development in other parts of the world and making education for a sustainable future the core feature of every course, to providing staff development in how to teach an ecologically informed curriculum.

David Orr has also recommended several basic reforms that will contribute to ecological literacy. In addition to suggestions for how to contribute to the student’s knowledge of place, as well as his recommendations for making school buildings more energy efficient, Orr’s insights into the pathology of American culture that teachers need to avoid perpetuating express a Wendell Berry-type of wisdom. As he writes in The Nature of Design (2002):

Ecological design at the level of culture resembles the structure and behavior of resilient systems in other contexts in which feedback between action and subsequent correction is rapid, people are held accountable for their actions, functional redundancy is high, and control is decentralized. At the local scale, people’s actions are known and so accountability tends to be high. Production is distributed throughout the community, which means that no one individual’s misfortune disrupts the whole. Employment, food, fuel, and recreation are mostly derived locally, which means people are buffered somewhat from economic forces beyond their control. Similarly, the decentralization of control to the community scale means that the pathologies of large-scale administration are mostly absent. Moreover, being situated in a place for generations provides long term memory of place and hence of its ecological possibilities and limits. pp. 9–10

His summary of the basic relationships that are too often ignored can be interpreted mas a set of guidelines for teachers in how to renew the commons and local democracy. While some readers may interpret Orr as suggesting that we should return to an earlier, less technologically driven lifestyle, a more accurate interpretation would be to view these recommendations as practical steps for resisting the technological and economic forces that are subverting what remains of local democracy and are increasing the economic vulnerability of local communities.

In effect, Orr is reiterating the danger of becoming increasingly dependent upon an industrial system that is not accountable in terms of the needs of local communities, the limits of local ecosystems, and the prospects of future generations.

Bowers 2005. p. 103-104

[edit]The Teacher as Cultural Mediator: Guiding Principles

The teacher needs to be aware that the student’s ability to exercise communicative competence in the political sense where language and background knowledge are essential to the determination of what issues are raised and future consequences are made explicit is dependent upon how the teacher mediates the process of primary socialization. p.113
The teacher’s mediation between the different cultural forces and trends needs to contribute to the revitalization of the commons. Furthermore, the teacher must be knowledgeable about the differences in cultural ways of knowing and the characteristics of the local bioregion in order to avoid mediation’s becoming a process of colonization. p. 115
Mediating between the neoliberal ideology promoted in universities and by politicians and spokespersons for corporate culture and the conserving practices of environmentalists and others working to renew communities and cultures should be a constant focus of teachers who are concerned about eco-justice issues. p. 119

To summarize the main point: the key question that needs to be asked in both Western and nonWestern classrooms does not fit what teachers in constructivist classrooms would consider to be politically correct. However, I suspect that in non-Western classrooms many students will recognize the messianic and colonizing nature of the neoliberal ideology that underlies constructivist approaches to learning. And while their Western-educated teachers and educational bureaucrats may not recognize that the liberal assumptions underlying modernization are not universal principles that govern the “evolution” of all cultures, the parents and other members of the community still steeped in nonWestern traditions will be aware that the state’s educational reforms are a source of intergenerational alienation. Whether the students will resist the pressures to become entirely dependent upon a money economy, which is promoted through the spread of industrial culture, is another question—especially when they realize that the promises of the industrial culture can only be achieved by the elites who control the system. Bowers 2005. p. 120

[edit]Themes and Issues that Need to be Addressed in a Western Curriculum

the tensions between the sustainable practices within the commons and the spread of industrial culture— with its dual emphasis on consumerism and the further automation of production;
the difference between modern and indigenous (or low-impact) technologies;
the gains and losses connected with scientifically based technologies, including the colonizing nature of Western science;
the ideology that represents change as a progressive force and traditions as a source of backwardness—and the destructive impact of this view of tradition on revitalizing the commons and local democracy; and
the aspects of everyday life that can be enhanced by learning to think ecologically as opposed to thinking via an industrial model.

Bowers 2005. p. 124

Researching with my bare hands

2011-05-26T11:05:00.002+12:00

Hand harvesting wine grapes in Sicily. By Fabio Ingrosso

Yesterday, I was speed reading and making summary of the 4th (of 6) chapters in Bowers' book:False Promises of Constructivist Learning. Powerful points in a poorly edited book IMO.

The 4th chapter is on how constructivism destroys knowledge commons - where commons is holistically understood to include inter generational, cultural, embodied, felt... using examples of how specific indigenous and non western communities (in South America) come to know things. The farmers in these examples, know the health of the soil by touch and smell, rather than by chemical analysis. Or can forecast the coming seasons by observing the number of eggs a certain bird lays in its nest. Constructivist ideals are being introduced to these communities, along with schools, foreign teachers, and other instruments, that carry with them a Western way of knowing. That way of knowing is, as it always has, disrupting - even destroying the knowledge commons developed over centuries.

This has deposited an idea in me, still forming, up for shutting down.. what if as researchers, we too limited our tools to our bodily senses, in a deliberate attempt to simplify, make more accessible, pass on and spread, and most importantly - embody rather than disembody our knowledge?

What information does statistics really give us, and could it be possible to come to know that information by means other than separation, codification and re-presentation as graphs?

I'm fully conscious of the romanticism in this idea, but it touches on our shared ideal of openness, where not only are our outputs, methods, and processes made accessible, but our tools are as well. Accessible by way of simplicity, bare basic, so easy even a child can make use of them. Tools for Conviviality, for a post industrial western society.

Getting by: our cost of living in Canberra

2011-05-11T22:03:00.000+12:00

Sunshine and I are frustrated by money. We're in the best income bracket we've ever been in, yet we recall better living when we were students! We live as frugally as practical in Canberra, and still we can make no headway. We dream of home ownership - not investment house speculation, but realise both are not possible.

Ideally, and morally, we think living comfortably and with long term considerations should be possible on a single income basis in the family (gender has nothing to do with this). But as it turns out, that's just not possible. Put your kids in day care not so you can save more money, but so you can simply hold down two jobs and careers, for when your kids are in school and you might save a few dollars a week then and slowly get ahead. Too bad if you're single parent, crash and burn in divorce, or are a primary care giver for an aged or disabled relative/friend.

There simply is no room to move in this economy, and we feel alone in this as the media reports noone else feeling this way. We are just above the average income level in the ACT, so I just don't know how others do it! Oh, yes I do.. forget the Australian dream of home ownership and getting ahead, that's actually a nightmare created of want makers. Accept high rents, precarity, and the wasted money that that means. No real self determination, no capital, no alternative.

Here's how our expenditure breaks down each week for 2 adults and a baby:

1300 Single income after tax
430 Rent mid to low range rental cost)
250 Car. includes repayments, fuel, rego, insurance and service. Not possible to live without a car in Canberra
300 Food, cleaning products, personal hygiene, clothing, for 2 adults and a baby
150 Utilities, including gas, electricity, phones and Internet
200 Discretionary spending for payments on loans if we take them (such as the emergency trip to the Philippines), some lunches, a cheep take out meal, a Sunday drive, and maybe a DVD

Position: -$30 each week

So, the other parent goes to work, So far, 2 days a week

350 Additional income from second parent working 2 days
150 Childcare ($75 per day)
50 Extra discretionary spending such as doctors and medicine brought on by childcare
30 brought over from the single income family negative position

Position: $120 each week

We "save" $120 per week, which is more than most, but to be honest - there's always something to spend that on, like repaying those emergency loan, or covering an unexpected cost like a car repair or speeding fine.. Even though I reckon we live frugally, if comfortably, every day I wonder about those less fortunate than us, or with more than one kid. How the hell people afford a 10-20% deposit, only to find themselves in a $600 per week or more mortgage, plus rates, plus renovations or repairs! Forget it. Investment property should be made an entirely separate activity to home making, and those trying to reduce their cost of living and use of resources. One is immoral, the other essential.

Notes on Herzog's film: Where Green Ants Dream

2011-05-07T15:22:00.001+12:00

I'm a massive fan of Werner Herzog. His films are some of the most astounding, ambitious, deeply meaningful works of cinema we have yet. When my father found out about my fandom, he shared me his favourite Herzog film, one I hadn't seen or heard of! One made right here in Australia, directly after he finished his most famous film Fitzcarraldo.

Where The Green Ants Dream is an amazing film, depicting the insurmountable gulf between traditional indigenous Australia, and its industrial migrants. The scene: White Man's Speech, captures the complete, non negotiable divide in this relationship.

But, its the Mr Malilah scene that moved me most, in a film absolutely packed with profoundly moving, funny, bazaar, and disturbing scenes.

The opening credits are just incredible! Especially at and after the transition around 2 minutes to the end.

It's a shame this sample cuts off at 4 minutes 39, because the scene goes for at least another 3 solid minutes! Incredible!!

Where The Green Ants Dream is a MUST see for anyone interested in the issues between indigenous and migrant Australia, land rights, traditions vs change, and the question of sustainability. Herzog, devoted this film to his mother, and took liberties in the basis of the story, making it entirely a work of fiction, but it is none-the-less based a whole range of real events. He certainly captures the depth of the issues, in a way Herzog only can, offering us in Australia, the valuable perspective of a thinking outsider to our plights. As always, the audio commentary from Herzog in the extra features of the DVD is well worth a viewing also.

Situated art, situated learning - En Route by One Step At A Time Like This

2011-05-04T11:06:00.001+12:00

I caught ABC's Artworks on the weekend, where they covered a fascinating group of artists based in Melbourne called One Step At A Time Like This. The radio doco looked at their alternative theater production called En Route, and it turned out to be exactly the sort of participatory art production I've been looking for, one that captures the essence of situated and networked learning.

en route is a pedestrian-based live art event on the streets of your city. A love song to your city, in which the private and the public, imaginal and concrete, intersect and overlap.

Using audio, mobile phone communication, urban streetscapes, walking, passers-by, and cafes, en route invites participants on a journey, inward and outward, through the thoroughfares and back-alleys of both the city and what they make of it. Directions, instructions and audio - snatches of narrative, musings, sound, song, dialogue, philosophy – intertwine with the wanderings, observations and (found) experiences of the participant, opening up a field for multiple ways of seeing the city, themselves, and others. The spontaneous choreography of passers-by, streets, alleys, buildings, detritus, becomes the site onto which the participant projects their own narratives and meanings.

Part traveler, witness, voyeur, the participants are able to view a world in the process of making itself – en route – emerging, dissolving, as perceptions, insights, senses, make and remake the city they inhabit.

See the city like the first time.

The radio doco is fascinating listening, with particular highlights for me being discussion of the effect the experience had on its participants. The experience was curated by the group sending directions to individual participants via text and signs, and occasionally placing deliberate and therefore sanctioned art en route. People were directed onto trains, trams and buses, up lane ways and into cafes. Told to stand and wait, and then move on... While taking part in En Route, participants explained the feeling that their senses for everything around them, and their awareness of the very present moment were heightened. Their concerns for getting somewhere and how, where taken away, leaving them free to be in the moment, awaiting further instructions. People couldn't be sure what in the experience was sanctioned "art" and what was not, and so everything became potentially art, determined largely by what they themselves noticed in the free state of mind. Importantly, this sort of situationism subverts the idea of sanctioned and staged art, bringing it into 'the street' where its true value might be discovered.

I'm reading Lave and Wenger's 1991 book, Situated Learning: Legitimate peripheral participation, with the foreword by William F. Hanks capturing its essence succinctly:

This last remark raises a final, still broader suggestion that is implicit in the book, namely, that learning is a way of being in the social world, not a way of coming to know about it. Learners, like observers more generally, are engaged both in the contexts of their learning and in the broader social world within which these contexts are produced. Without this engagement, there is no learning, and where the proper engagement is sustained, learning will occur. Just as making theory is a form of practice in the world, not a speculation at a remove from it, so too learning is a practice, or a family of them. This entailment of Lave and Wenger's provocative book brings it into line with important developments in a range of other human sciences

Similar to the En Route production, but much more aligned to the question of learning, is of course San Diego group AgitProp and their University 2837 project, which after running a series of lectures and talks, asks participants to then go out into the street and identify learning spaces and situations based on the new eyes they have for it from the lectures and talks.

Combine this approach with George Siemen's concept of curatorial teaching and we come even closer to One Step at a Time Like This' En Route concept, blending curated intent with participant freedom to discover what's in them and what's around them, with 'learning' being the primary question rather than, or as well as 'art' or 'space'.

I think the artistic intent of these concepts could be enhanced with study of Joseph Beuys' work, particularly the Free International University, as well as Situationist International and their desire to create environments for discovering and appreciating the true value of things rather than their staged value.

All of this makes for excellent examples to add to my essay in progress on Ubiquitous Learning - a critique, where I'm trying to argue that the words ubiquity and learning have nothing inherently to do with technology, and are instead words of ethical dimension, so the phrase ubiquitous learning should become one more to do with an ethical approach or framework to learning, and not one suggesting a technological determination of it.

Global warming

2011-05-03T10:40:00.000+12:00

A friend at Appropedia recently sent me a link to an article arguing that Richard Lindzen's global temperature forecasts have been consistently incorrect.

Here's a video summary of Lindzen's arguments.

The trouble is, the article didn't install any faith in the data for me, though I appreciate the quality of the effort to argue the point it was making. Lindzen would be frustrated by it, because essentially what he has been trying to say is the data can't be comprehensive or precise, so nor can the discussion. The reality is, we have surface data from 1981, and very rough data prior to that going back only so far as 1880. No adjustments made for geo political change either - which effects the availability of data collection points - such as the fall of USSR, apparently ending data collection in many locations in Siberia and Arctic regions... or the realisation that the few data collection stations we do have, is still not enough for a full global picture. Oh, and the rejection of geologists attempting to add their long view perspectives. Added to this is the working over of the data revealed in Climategate. So the window we have on the question is tiny, not enough to know for certain, too late if it is revealing something.

It seems to me, we (humanity) is neither politically or technically able to think globally, and so we can only continue to think and act locally, within our natural given senses of a community's ecological zone. This means to me, improve our local sensitivity, and respond. Globalism is the opposite to that effort. So far, anyone willing to try and think and act globally, invites the evil of Goldman and Sachs and other global economists, and the hegemony of the corrupt West, and global trade which breaks our ability to monitor resource use and impact. The discussion of global warming plays into this.

We've always known locally that many of our actions hurt our habitat, and don't need difficult conceptions of gas and global temperature models to confirm that. We know that deforestation is bad for fertility, rivers, farmland, local climate, and our spirit, and we have the technology to monitor and gauge that locally. If we lack the capability to act locally, Global power is not going to fix that. Globalism, whether it be economic or ecologic (they don't dare speak socially yet) is a distraction from our ability to think and act locally. For example, an increase in local taxes, to in a large part pay a global exchange system shown to be corrupt, pretends to be action when its nothing of the sort.

Emergency trip to Leyte, Philippines

2011-04-26T23:37:00.005+12:00

Originally posted in Life South.

Sunshine, Fem, Eve and I just finished a last minute trip to Baybay in Leyte, Philippines to see Lola - Fem's mum, and all the family. We had to take a bank loan to get there, but it was a great trip thanks to the wonderful hospitality of Mary and Titing, helped tirelessly by Celia and Tintin, and made fun and easier by all the family.

Lola was very old, and restricted to a bed, unable to move, mostly sleeping. It was very sad for Fem and Sunshine to see their Lola this way, knowing that death was not far away, but at least they were able to be with her, if only for a few days. While we were there she had managed to open her eyes and smile at them. Lola died the night we arrived back in Australia, leaving her 7 daughters and 1 son.

Eve the monster

The journey from Sydney to Baybay was a nightmare, and the whole time in Leyte was dreading the return trip. Thankfully the return trip was overnight, so Eve slept at least half of it. Once awake however, she became the monster, very restless in the confined space.

At 14 months, Eve seems to be entering a hyperactive and unsettled phase, coupled with clinginess to her mum. Sunshine endured a total 30 hours of Eve's restlessness going to Baybay, starting from Canberra and a 4 hour drive to Sydney, then a 9 hour flight from Sydney to Hong Kong. Connecting to a 2.5 hour flight to Cebu City where we were met and helped by Santos, Mary, and Fely (Sunshine's uncle and aunties). We all taxi'd to Cebu port where we boarded a ship for the 5 hour night cruise to Ormoc, then a 1 hour bus to Baybay, and finally a putput (cycle rickshaw) to Mary and Titing's house - arriving at 4am local time (6am our time).

We slept the first day away - except for Eve, who went wild playing with all the other kids. It was great to not have to worry for her any longer, and just trust all the family to pass her around. Apart from the journeying, Eve was great to have around, and the family really helped make it much easier.

Mary and Titing's house

Mary and Titing's house was packed wall to wall with family all week, and while Sunshine, Eve and I were given a comfortable room with a bathroom, everyone else slept on all other available floor and couch space. The joyful, family spirit was just awesome to be around, something I think many Australian families have lost...

Baybay
Baybay is a charming little town in Leyte Province, with its own port, market, shops, schools and a nearby university. Flanked by mountains to the East, and relatively far from Cebu City, tourism does not appear to be adversely affecting Baybay.

A new shopping mall has been established, and while it's footprint is large, it seems to cater mainly for the more wealthy, and doesn't appear to be having too much of an impact on the older, more complex trading areas.

Homes
In the Baybay central area buildings appear to be influenced by old Chinese terrace house designs with ground story shop fronts and second story living. Larger 2 story concrete, brick and timber warehouses exist on larger properties. Outside the central areas, formed and reinforced concrete (prepared onsite) post and beam, infilled by brick, is the preferred building material and method. A large number of interesting and intricate timber, bamboo and thatch buildings still exist, but appear to have slowed in use. Termites trouble unprotected timber where it is used at ground level.

Services
Low pressure water is piped to permitted buildings, but is not potable before boiling. Water heating is not common and though it is not used, simple solar heating could save time and fuel for boiling and washing. Low voltage electricity is also wired, but again, simple photovoltaic could be used to supplement the generally low power usage. Gas is bottled and delivered for those who can afford it, otherwise solid fuel such as wood is used for fuel. Rocket stoves would greatly improve fuel efficiency, reduce emissions and improve health for those using solid fuels. I didn't see any use of biogas, and while I heard that pig farming was too costly, I saw no evidence of methane gas generation from pig farms. Sewage is piped, and grey water is allowed to drain into normal water ways. Again, composting toilets and grey water treatment could help I think. Land line telephones and internet is available, but it seems most prefer to go without. Mobile telephone use is common.

Villa
On Wednesday afternoon, Uncle Boy picked us up in his 4WD Suzuki mini ute (now on my Christmas wishlist) for a beautiful drive up the Makinhas River Valley, to Fem's home town, Villa (pronounced Vilya). We ate the most delicious feast at Manang Soring and Manoy Badoy's house, again with all the family, and then we walked up to see the progress on Boy and Naty's house (one of Fem's 7 sisters).

Boy (64yo) then challenged me to a mountain walk, and we were both outdone by the Leyson sisters, who led us to survey their 6 acres of coconut farm in a steep mountain re entrant just over Villa.

Hot, sweaty and itchy, we climbed down to Domingo's house (son of Uncle Santos, Fem's only brother) who generously refreshed us with coconut wine, cola and bread. Domingo keeps a spectacular pet bird, native to the Philippines, called a Kalaw.

Land

When the Japanese were repelled from Leyte, people living in provincial towns such as Villa squatted and farmed coconut, banana, yams and bamboo. At some stage after the war, the Philippines government issued titles for the land to the squatters, charging an annual tax from then on. Today that tax is about 2000 Philippine Peso (PhP) per year for 5 acres of land (Au$47).

Today, land central to Baybay township is of highest value and seems to sell at around PhP1000 per square metre with 1000m2 being a large section. A designed and quality building seems to cost about 20 000PhP per square metre.

Governance
Politically, Leyte seems stable and content, with provincial towns governed and administered by committees called Barangays. I did hear of one remote southern provincial mountain town called Monterico, that defends an autonomy from central governance however. Police and security were visible in Baybay, but low key. Their primary role seemed to be in the town central, defending businesses, and the port.

Socio economics

An extreme difference in income exists side by side in Baybay. A general labourer's income sits at around PhP120 per day, and a teacher around PhP500. A common meal costs PhP40. Poverty seems to affect at least two thirds of Baybay's population, but food such as yams, coconut, banana's and of course rice grow everywhere, and building materials such as bamboo and coconut seem readily available. Access to these foods and resources is negotiated with land owners, who usually expect a share of the harvest. The skills and techniques for using these resources seem to be commonly held by the poor. Coconut oil seems to be a significant secondary industry. Coconut that is roasted ready for oil production, fetches around PhP35 per Kg, and fibre for rope about PhP45 per Kg. Bananas, about PhP1 per banana.

Dentist
On Wednesday, Sunshine and I had some basic dental work done by a lady easily as skilled and resourced as any Australian dentist I've visited, but affordable, gentle and pleasant! Sunshine had a back tooth seen to, that had chipped away during her pregnancy. I had a clean, and general check up with surprisingly nothing found that I need to worry about. My Australian dentist injected fear and lifelong worry about a toothless old age plagued with deformity, so mine was a PhP1500 well spent!

Cebu
We caught the fast cat back to Cebu on Thursday, as there were no boats on Good Friday. On Friday we saw a small passion play of Christ's trial and parade, and decided to take a taxi tour south to the St Catherine Church of Alexandra in Carcar City, where devotional crucifixions take place every Easter. Unfortunately this year, they couldn't secure a sponsor for the event! No matter, the tour out to the church and back was worth a look.

Final thoughts

After seeing the quality of in-home nursing care that Lola received from Celia and the family, thanks in part to Fem sending money each month; and thinking about the many problems with the Australian aged care sector, not least that most Australians never really see death as part of life, I've been thinking a lot about the comparison in our ways of life.

Also, the opportunities that our two country's dollar value disparity presents. It is common for the wealthy classes in many countries in Asia, such as Hong Kong, Singapore, or Taiwan for examples, to hire Filipinos into care roles. I wouldn't hesitate hiring someone like Celia to assist with our family's care needs and preferences, if it were permissible in Australia, as the cost of doing so would be massively less than hiring locally, including flights!

But I also get to wondering why more Australians don't consider retirement in places like Baybay - where Australian Dollars can go so much further, and the quality and extent of services being so much more...

An inspiring visit, staying with an extremely welcoming and hospitable family, gave us such a valuable incite into the life and culture of people living in and around Baybay, and pause to reflect on our own conditions for living in Australia. For one, our family units are relatively broken down compared to what I saw in the Leysons. We don't have the level of interdependence in our families that people in the Philippines seem to have, and I think we are poorer for it. Also, the opportunities that transnational income disparity presents people from both regions. There's more to this than meets the eye of course, and I'm looking at things through the eyes of Illich as usual, where he would say of Australia and all industrialised societies, and as a warning to regions undergoing post colonial industrialisation:

[e]lite professional groups . . . have come to exert a 'radical monopoly' on such basic human activities as health, agriculture, home-building, and learning, leading to a 'war on subsistence' that robs peasant societies of their vital skills and know-how. The result of much economic development is very often not human flourishing but 'modernized poverty,' dependency, and an out-of-control system in which the humans become worn-down mechanical parts.

The rest of our photos are here, and videos here.

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The False Promises of Constructivist Theories of Learning: A Global and Ecological Critique

2011-04-15T00:29:00.001+12:00

Remember Chet Bowers? I used his book Let Them Eat Data to cast a critical perspective on Second Life for education.

Well, I was browsing other books by Chet, and this one caught my eye: The False Promises of Constructivist Theories of Learning: A Global and Ecological Critique. (I now notice that I missed the pointer to this text in a comment by Stian, to this text back in 2008!)

In The False Promises of Constructivist Theories of Learning: A Global and Ecological Critique, C. A. Bowers examines why constructivist-based educational reforms fail to take into account these current critical issues: the deepening ecological crisis, globalization, and undermining of the world's diverse cultural commons. Special attention is given to the enthnocentrism and Social Darwinism that created the foundations for the ideas of Dewey, Piaget, and Freire. Also considered is how the neo-liberal promoters of economic globalization share their taken-for-granted assumptions. Additionally, Bowers explains how teachers in different cultures can contribute to the revitalization of their cultural and environmental commons without engaging in the cultural imperialism that characterizes constructivist approaches to educational reform.

The Loudspeaker on the Tower

2011-04-14T14:02:00.003+12:00

I had heard that Illich rejected the use of a microphone.

Earlier this week I thought to attempt a talk about the ideology that comes with technology. I ended up talking about something different, as I could sense the business audience was not the right place to raise the question unfortunately.

Here is a short essay by Illich, that I would happily give to those who try to reject online and networked learning on an intuitive basis of it disturbing their sense of place and intimacy. It might be useful in understanding the ideological assault felt by these people, and develop more empathy for them.

http://www.davidtinapple.com/illich/2000_loudsppu.pdf

For a quarter of a century, now, I have tried to avoid using a microphone, even when addressing a large audience. I use it only when I'm on a panel, or when the architecture of the auditorium is so modern that it silences the naked voice. I refuse to be made into a loudspeaker. I refuse to address people who are beyond the reach of my voice. I refuse to address people who are put at an acoustic disadvantage during the question period because of my access to a microphone. I refuse, because I treasure the balance between auditory and visual presence, and reject that phony intimacy which arises from the distant speaker's overpowering "whisper."

More often than not, both host and audience have accepted my decision. The auditorium is hushed, people strain to listen, the few who have impaired hearing move to the front. Several young persons have told me by letter that, since the evening we first met, they have trained their voices to increase their reach and timbre - as rhetors have done for a long time.

But there are deeper reasons why I have renounced the microphone - its use in those circumstances in which I am physically present...

Ubiquity

2011-04-11T17:50:00.000+12:00

I've been invited to talk tonight, at the University of Canberra's Faculty of Business and Government Business Resource Showcase 2011.

I'll be sticking with ubiquity in this 15min, end of the evening talk, and taking the opportunity to flex some of the ideas I've been working on in the essay-in-progress, Ubiquitous Learning - a critique.

Here's the slides

The links and references for this talk are at http://delicious.com/leighblackall/ubiquity

I'll try and record audio and add it to a Slideshare copy tomorrow.

Who owns schools - ubiquitous learning

2011-03-18T18:25:00.001+13:00

Some UC colleagues and I have been loosely collaborating around the idea to write a critique of the notion of ubiquitous learning. The experience of collaborating around a wikiversity article for this has been great, especially because the people I'm collaborating with are more closely known to me.

Through this project, I've met Ian Hart, who as far as I can tell may have been the first to link Illich's Deschooling Society to the emerging social movement in the Internet. He published Deschooling and the Web through a Routledge jounral back in 2001. Yes, I know! surely someone linked Illich to the web before then!?

Ian also wrote and directed the 1979 film, Who Owns Schools, which was banned by the Queensland government Ian tells me. I enjoyed a viewing Who Owns Schools at the National Film and Sound Archive yesterday. Many things impressed me about it, such as the rapid editing and story telling for a 1970s film that must have been seen as futuristic, certainly demonstrating great skill on the part of the film editor. The open ended moral to the story, being careful not to prescribe, even expressing self consciousness in this point. This was highlighted by a skit toward the end, featured 3 stereotypical teachers forecasting the future of a 15 year old girl. This scene in particular caused me to reflect on my own opinions and actions regarding education systems. But at the very end, as is so often the case, the film finally asked children the question, who owns schools? Perhaps revealing the film's original intent. I hope to play a role in getting a digital version of the film uploaded and made more readily accessible soon.

Who Owns Schools? is an enjoyable, funny film, about an all too serious question, from a time long enough ago to give us some perspective. What perspective? That not much has changed these last 32 years! The would-be change agents have achieved so little in the face of it all. All part of the larger failure of the "Left" perhaps, but why? What is this invisible force that overwhelms all attempts at change? False consciousness and hegemony? The fact that Queensland bureaucrats banned this film says something of the kind...

As for the wiki that might become our collaborative critique on ubiquitous learning, for some darker corner of the web known as a ranked journal, I have made a few more edits and additions. I thought to do more consolidating of sections, down to now 4:

I've added some research dug out by Pam Hook recently, that has been ignored in our futuristic techno-love - that reading comprehension rates are significantly reduced in screen based environments. See section 2 for a link to Pam's work. I've also added reference to a book (care of Barbara Dieu in a TALO discussion), and a documentary film, looking at the link between 1960's counter culture and the cyber culture utopianism of today. See section 1.

If you'd like to contribute to this collaborative critique, by all means!

How might we teach and learn social media?

2011-03-15T13:51:00.001+13:00

I'm leading the next Creative Research Discussion Group session at the University of Canberra at 12 noon, on 23 March, in the Teaching Commons of UC. The aim of the session is to discuss how teachers and assessors at UC might consider social media topics, how we think people go about learning it, how - or if at all, we might go about teaching it, and how - or if at all, we would go about offering assessment and certification towards it.

Hopefully this discussion with inform the developments of the Social Media page on Wikiversity, perhaps as a shared space for those attempting to teach it and learn about it.

Proposal to use Wikibooks for The History of Paralympics

2011-03-15T12:05:00.001+13:00

Based on the open textbook work developed at Otago Polytechnic and more recently at the University of Canberra's Psychology Department, Keith and I prepared a proposal to the Australian Paralympic Committee (APC) - to use Wikibooks and Wikimedia Commons to produce a text and multi media resource called, The History of the Paralympic Movement in Australia.

When APC called for proposals we immediately responded by way of an open tender, authoring the first to the last word on Wikiversity, and submitting the final proposal as a PDF exported directly out of the wiki. Keith had the wonderful idea to extend an open invitation to all other tenderers, to join with our tender in whole or in part, if they saw particular strengths and weaknesses they could speak to.

Having the proposal openly available as it developed drew incredibly useful feedback, as well as support from potential partner organisations such as Wikimedia Australia. Graham Pearce, a Wikipedia Administrator in Western Australia and someone who does his work via use of a screenreader, offered a letter of support as well as some copy editing over the proposal. It was very reassuring to hear from Graham just how usable MediaWiki is for people using screenreaders. Graham is on our team now, to assist with copy writing, training and support, and to ensure we author documents that are as usable for screenreader technology as possible.

So, we now wait for official feedback from the APC, to which we have a 2 week period to respond before they make their final decision. Our invitation to collaboration still stands and it will be interesting to see if the APC sees fit in encouraging that to happen if the proposals they receive have equal strengths and weaknesses.

The whole process has been a much more the pleasant experience than proposal writing is normally. Firstly, the APC's call for proposals was informative and helpful in framing the need. Rather than proving a template to fill in, we were left to pitch our proposal in the best way we thought how. I would have liked to have produced a video with it (and may still do that).

Joseph Beuys

2011-02-11T18:09:00.001+13:00

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Beuys

Some time ago, Brent Simpson urged me to read up on Joseph Beuys.

Its taken too long to get to it (too distracted by the prolific outputs to be discovered in Illich!) But I finally found my way to a documentary on Youtube about the life and work of Beuys.

Beuys' conceptualisation of art, and of education is certainly the alley I want to go down. Serious, spiritual, humanistic, metaphoric, controversial, universal. He set up the Free International University for a start... which is a framework and legacy that I hope Roberto Greco, Dougald Hine, Joss Winn and Richard Hall (The UK Connection) will consider aligning with.

Beuys breaks a path I can follow with this "OpenPhD" too, where I aim to develop an output for the requirements of a Creative PhD, namely a 20 thousand word thesis and an artistic exhibition.

Youtube user AccountOfTheSun has done a great job uploading the video documentary of Beuys, and I've collected it into my own playlist below.

Hopefully Dougald Hine is working on an event to introduce the work of Beuys to educational audiences via someone he knows is knowledgable.

Florian Schneider's (Extended) Footnotes On Education

2011-02-09T17:38:00.003+13:00

Robert Greco tweeted me a link to one of the most outstanding contemporary readings on the situation in education I have seen in a long time. Florian Schneider's (Extended) Footnotes On Education.

Referring to early rejections of institutionalised education in the 60s and 70s, and how they have successfully infiltrated and perhaps laid the seeds for undermining the institutions:

Those who realized that it had become pointless to reproduce the gestures of their masters did not only understand that there was nothing left to learn from, within, or against the institutions; they decided to take an interest in precisely the disciplining character of those institutions, the confinement of knowledge and subjectivities, the exclusion of differing and deviant forms of knowledge production.

Establishing deschooled ideas where:

...learning could suddenly take place anywhere: in the streets, in bars or clubs, in self-organized seminars, in the office spaces of so-called social movements, in soccer stadiums, through subcultural fanzines, in squatted houses or even science shops (“Wissenschaftsläden” as they were called in German).

Today, I am noticing a lot more work like this, including:

Although many of these are exciting, they are still only consequential...

Today’s crisis of the educational system, with all its consequent phenomena, can also be understood as a result of the refusal to be subjugated by the command of an educational system that represents the fading paradigm of industrial capitalism.

Ultimately, the network is the great destabliser/enabler..

The advent of digital technologies and deregulated networks triggered a long-overdue process of deinstitutionalization and deregulation that from today’s standpoint appears to be irreversible. This process was based on a fatal promise: self-organized access to knowledge, independent of any further mediation other than that of the medium itself.

BUT!... and this is the risk in relation to the MOOCs and independent teaching...

As soon as learning becomes an exclusively private concern, the primary goal of what is by then a required self-education is to demonstrate and perform the permanent availability of the self in real time rather than just perform discipline in a system of spatial control. It becomes necessary to continuously perform “selves”: not as mirror-images that reproduce the gestures of a master, but as self-managed profiles, animated images of a self that needs to be multiplied infinitely in order to satisfy the insatiable demand for omnipresence that renders possible the very idea of control.

And the institutions and corporations stand to profit from this approaching twilight, again with the MOOCs...

Today it seems that institutions and ekstitutions [networked learning environments] correspond to complementary rather than antagonistic modalities. What once appeared a challenge to the traditional educational framework, turns out in the current situation to be a correlate that compensates for the deficits of institutional frameworks that are gradually losing their conceits.

...

Nevertheless, there is an urgent need to develop experimental formats for generating findings that bring forward a process of “self-valorization” of knowledge that jumps across the pitfalls of the contemporary self.

Florian goes on to rightly criticise standardised (Taylorised, and ultimately commoditised) understanding of knowledge and competency. The same model of assessment and accreditation that I have based my approach to open educational development on! Florian argues that breaking everything down into assessable units drives all skills and knowledge into discrete assessable items that plays into the commodification of learning, and further disenfranchises independent learning.

Florian then all-too-briefly proposes an alternative, which in many ways IS what the MOOCs - especially DS106 is doing when it throws structure to the wind and organises simply a happening..

Not as a conclusion, but rather as a very preliminary proposal, one of these formats thought to resist the sliding scales of neo-Taylorism in the creative industries could be entitled “virtual studio.” In the first instance, the studio has striking associations with both the workplace in creative industries and the permanent need for self-organized studies.

Furthermore, this distinction is supported by the very notion of the “working” mode; it asserts the unfinished character of the studies undertaken, which culminates in an otherwise precluded appreciation for the aleatory essence of both working and studying.

Florian's final (and I think more convincing) proposal is in relation to more collaborative spaces as a stronger act of resistance, which might be why I'm so attracted to Wikiversity.. I dunno...

In that respect, collaborations are a practical way of reading the division of labor against the grain, and may turn out to be a way of swimming against the current of an enforced and blatantly absurd measurability of immaterial labor. Only in collaborative environments is it possible to embrace the infinitesimality of what is essentially beyond measure. The outcome of a collaboration is rampant, unforeseeable, and always unexpected. Sometimes it may not turn out nicely, it may even be harsh, but one thing is for sure: it cannot be calculated, it has to be imagined.

An introduction to Foucault. Where's Illich? And why our research is so safe these days

2011-02-08T14:43:00.002+13:00

A friend on the outer edges of my ONPhD/OpenPhD network has recommended I look into Foucault, and gave me this audio recording as an introduction.

Interview with Professor Stephen Shapiro, Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies

The first question on listening that popped into my head was, what are the connections between Illich and Foucault, given they seem to talk to very similar themes, and were born in the same year. To my surprise, a quick search revealed very little connection, and I haven't yet found a reference by Illich to Foucault, nor Foucault to Illich.

In a forum archive there is this interesting response to someone asking the same question:

There are several common ideas between Foucault and Illich. Foucault would say: it doesn´t matter if I read or not the books of Illich; the important thing is to know why in the middle of this centuary some modern ideas related to education are being criticised.

So we have a little mystery to explore. Perhaps its just academic snobbery. Certainly Foucault is quoted and pretended to be known by just about every academic I've ever met, where as Illich remains the unknown and unread.

In the recording starting at 14.40, Stephen Shapiro makes an interesting observation on the mechanism of academic control in the UK presently. He refers to the research rating and reward scheme they have there called called PBRF (Performance Based Research Fund). New Zealand uses the same scheme and the Australian equivalent is called ERA - Excellence in Research Australia. Stephen says:

All scholars have to deliver their research to be evaluated on a system of one to five, right, or one to four, I mean it changes all the time. That's the other Foucaultian thing - the rules change so you can't put any logic to it or retrospective studies. The work is sent to a central committee to be evaluated on merit. The work is rated but, no one is ever told what rating that work got. The individual isn't told, the department isn't told, the university isn't told. So let's say I write a book, and I send it in to be evaluated and its going to be rated on a scale of one to five. I am never told what that book is actually rated as. So that means I have to spend my entire time wondering, was this a four book, or was it a five book!? This is the mechanism of control right. So in other words, every time I write something I'm wondering is this really good or is this maybe not so good... we start to police ourselves. One of the effects of this is that individuals would start to worry about taking risks, or about saying things that might cause them to be controversial, because maybe controversy isn't excellence. There's a very thin line between ground breaking work and terrible work. If there is this committee of people who are credentialised to make these evaluations, that never have to explain what those evaluations were to you, you're going to hang towards the middle. That is a tremendously powerful mechanism for controlling the academy, which was threatening - maybe not the most threatening thing under the Thatcher years, but definitely threatening, because Briton was known in the Western world for having a very bolshe left wing academy. I don't think you could say the same thing today.

The self regulation that results from the anxiety of not knowing, based on general and non specific ratings from hidden research evaluation committees, encourages the individual academic to shy away from risk and away from radicalism.

Its sounded just as plausible to apply this same view onto Australian academia and its ERA, and New Zealand academia and its PBRF. Both are financially rewarded based on their evaluations, resulting in an all but silent subservience to the authority, and its quiet and distorting level of control over academic expression.

The Age of Professions

2011-02-08T12:46:00.002+13:00

The Age of Professions will be remembered as the time when politics withered, when voters, guided by professors, entrusted to technocrats the power to legislate needs, renounced the authority to decide who needs what and suffered monopolistic oligarchies to determine the means by which these needs shall be met. It will be remembered as the age of schooling, when people for one-third of their lives had their learning needs prescribed and were trained how to accumulate further needs, and for the other two-thirds became clients of prestigious pushers who managed their habits. It will be remembered as the age when recreational travel meant a packaged gawk at strangers, and intimacy meant following the sexual rules laid down by Masters and Johnson and their kin; when formed opinion was a reply of last night's TV talk show, and voting the approval of persuaders and salesmen for more of the same.

...

It would be pretentious to predict if this age, when needs were shaped by professional design, will be remembered with a smile or with a curse. I do, of course, hope that it will be remembered as the night when father went on a binge, dissipated the family fortune, and obligated the children to start anew. Sadly, and much more probably, it will be remembered as the age when a whole generation's frenzied pursuit of impoverishing wealth rendered all freedoms alienable and, after first turning politics into the gripes of welfare recipients, extinguished itself in a benign totalitarianism. I consider such a descent into technofascism as unavoidable unless the major thrust of social criticism begins to change from the support of a new or radical professionalism into the endorsement of a patronizing and sceptical attitude attitude towards the experts - especially when they presume to diagnose and to prescribe. As technology is blamed for environmental degradation, the complaint may be turned into a demand that engineers ought to study biology. As long as hospital catastrophes are blamed on the rapacious doctor or negligent nurse, the question of whether the patient can in principle benefit from hospitalisation is never raised. If mere capitalist gain is blamed for an economics of inequality, industrial standardisation and concentration - causing an unequal power structure - will be left uncriticised and unchanged.

...

The return to an era that fosters participatory politics in which needs are defined by general consent is hampered by an obstacle that is both brittle and unexamined: the role that a new kind of professional elite plays in validating the worldwide religion that promotes impoverishing greed. It is therefore necessary that we clearly understand:

The nature of professional dominance
the effects of professional establishment
the characteristics of imputed needs and
the illusions which have enslaved us to professional management

Ivan Illich, The Disabling Professions. Page 12-15

Recent Changes Camp take 2

2011-02-07T22:24:00.000+13:00

We hosted another Recent Changes Camp at the University of Canberra on 28 January, this time for the full 3 days.

Wikimedia Australia sponsored Mark Dilley's flights in to facilitate the session and report our RCC back to the US. They also sponsored the flights of several others, to the worth of $5000. UCNISS catered the 3 days, and AboutUS covered Mark's work load while he was away.

22 people attended, and we covered quite a range of topics:

The thing that struck me this time, is what a difference 3 days makes as apposed to 1, and when the participants all have experience (as diverse as that was) with wikis and collaborating online.

RCC2011 is being archived here, where you'll find photos, videos, and notes for the sessions.

Lucrative teaching? A quick look at Josh Kaufman's The Personal MBA, and Jim Groom's potential to rule the world

2011-01-26T15:22:00.002+13:00

Peter Rawsthorne tweeted me a link to Josh Kaufman's recent article on CopyBlogger, Has the Internet Made Teaching Lucrative? adding the question:

why even go down the working for a university route?

Josh's article is a nice addition to conceptualisations of independent teaching practice, from someone who IS doing it, and claims to be making a fair living doing so.

My initial investment in some basic digital publishing training and equipment has produced the highest ROI imaginable: a debt-free, global, six-figure teaching business. I’m making more than most college professors with a fraction of their schooling.

The business model

http://personalmba.com/

Josh mixes his skills in marketing and promotion with his ability to empathise with his target groups, to produce a self-help flavoured learning package of subscription emails, blog based articles, reading lists, short videos, a book, and courses.

The book sells on Amazon for nearly US$16 plus postage.
The courses are chunked into 6 tax deductible fees of US$297, or a discounted one payment of US$1497
The blog articles and subscription emails are free, as are the videos that preview his ability to present and explain concepts in accessible and engaging language.
To be approaching a 6 figure income, Josh must be selling about 1000 books and 60 full course enrollments a year... as well as a little extra for writing articles and speaking, which would probably be largely part of the free/marketing work...

As Josh says in his CopyBlogger article:

Attracting students requires learning the arts of content marketing and sales — and using them every day.

Delivering quality training requires developing technical skills you may not yet possess. Above all, you must overcome your discomfort in charging what your services are worth, and learn to ask for the sale.

We can only take Josh's word for it - that he is happily earning a comfortable living in the US doing this, certainly he pushed the right buttons for me with:

I can work from anywhere that has a stable internet connection and a phone line. I operated my business on a dialup connection in the mountains of Colorado for six months. And I could easily move anywhere in the world at any time.

The marketing, enter Jim Groom

Marketing should be education, education should be marketing

Josh markets and promotes everything he does, (it must suck trying to have an honest conversation with the guy ;) and that's the key point of difference to your average institutionalised teacher. Josh's website, products, and services are, at face value, well packaged, and sharply communicated, to a very broad audience, never missing a promotional opportunity, always on message. He has a tried and true balance between free access and paid for service and content, using the free to almost over-market the fee based stuff. I don't know many gaol house teachers (plain English for institutionalised) who have the skills and frame of mind to do this, but I do know one who could do it better than anyone - Jim Groom.

Where it all began. Image: Wikimedia Commons

Jim Groom is also a natural marketeer, but with an obvious point of difference to Josh - working in a niche, establishing face value trust more easily, using a more sophisticated style of media and message, to market brand jimgroom, and more recently the course DS106, but not as yet attempting to make a living from it all like Josh does.

Jim markets himself and his teaching with a self mocking invitation to engage, a sophisticated handling of media and message based on cinema industry symbolism, and drawing on a loyal "fan base" who share in the vision and help with the marketing because its fun.

Jim's products and services are still developing, and it is in this that he could take a leaf out of Josh's set up. To achieve the 6 figures and be independent, Jim needs to set up a product line. EduPunk and DS106 t-shirts for $30, nude posters with a course calendar on em for $10, underwear for the highest bidder, and a textbook-comic for $40. Sell all this to 100 people a year and he's made $8000 without even blinking yet! Put a price on a corner of his teaching service, and he rakes in the rest (more on this below). 6 figures Groomy, and from anywhere you like!

But can Jim Groom and others like him, do this without forfeiting the trust and contribution of his fan base, or the authenticity of his brand? I think he can, with the open, self mocking honesty he naturally has.

Is Jim Groom's niche big enough to deliver his family a comfortable and happy living? I'm not sure, I think if he widened the scope, and targeted businesses wanting to develop their own marketing messages with more sophisticated story telling, bingo! Jimbo has a fee based corner to draw an income from, and he can start sending fat cheques my way because he wants me.

The precarity

There is precarity in this business model however. It relates to the balance between free and fee. Josh and Jim have established reputation to ride on for a time, but their competition is with the others, who offer more free and less fee, all-the-while building a reputation over time. What happens when the next Salmon Khan starts offering business skills tuition in his Kahn Academy? Digital Story telling even? As I type, my brother-in-law Chris is learning guitar for free from martyzsongs. That just put the next guy, offering some free and more fee, out of business. The balance between free and fee just keeps sliding to free.

So Josh and Jim need to stay nimble and keep quick. Get the next thing on the boil, leverage their existing reputation, and dominate the next available space. Develop product, set up courses, and rely on it for a year or 2 before going onto the next thing. Most of all, and as Peter suggests up top, get out of gaol free, work toward independence.

Further reading

My interest in this all began with Kathy Sierra's post, Marketing should be education, education should be marketing. I've posted a whole bunch of thinking drawn from that, but most recently was A crisis for institutions, opportunity for teachers. Linked from there are better articulations of why and how teachers need to get out of gaol: Out From Under the Umbrellas and What Would it be Like to be the Rain. But if you're really stuck on making the gaols work (like me) then, adapting Josh's approach back into the institutions might be more your style with, The role of marketing in educational development.

Agitprop and The 2837 University

2011-01-25T21:46:00.000+13:00

Roberto Greco used Twitter to alert me to The 2837 University, a 5 week participatory project that seeks to document learning spaces in a neighborhood, and see if they can't collectively reinvent a local university based on historical ideals, and in critical resistance to the corporate university of today.

The 2837 University will be broken down into two parts: The first several meetings will focus on examining what and why we are looking at these spaces (see ‘Conceptual Framework’ below). The second part will ask participants to enter the neighborhood and document the spaces in question through the use of video, photos, interviews, drawings, paintings, etc, etc.

The goal of this course is to act as a participatory feasibility study in order to determine if Agitprop should expand its interests into the field of education and to see if a “university” could be pieced together from preexisting spaces that lend themselves to the construction of some form of knowledge.

I wish I could be in San Diego for this event, but can only hope they'll document it all. In fact, it would be great to internationalise this project, by streaming (or simply Youtubing) their seminars, and put links out to their readings and conversations, so others can follow the critical thought, and apply it in their own neighborhoods, and document the learning spaces they find.

The Agitprop space is a place in North Park (San Diego) that attempts to blur the lines between individual art practice, the Studio, the Gallery and the Neighborhood. These attempts have taken the form of exhibitions, literary readings, live art critiques, collaborations with larger institutions and other neighborhood entities.

OpenPhD - shifting focus

2011-01-25T19:02:00.004+13:00

The zoetrope. Media on Wikimedia Commons

Recently I posted What am I doing? where I questioned my direction, and focus on open education, copyright and institutional change. I want to instead focus on what it means to network learning, both formally and informally.

I've since reflected on my PhD now too. The only reason I have for submitting to this process is because I'm required to by my employer. I respect the benefit it can have on learning and research skills, and willingly go where my own research skills and learning may be improved, but have not been convinced that formal enrollment is any better than informally conducting a PhD.

Originally, I wanted to simply diarise my work with UCNISS, as they consider the open and networked teaching, research and learning practices I propose. Quickly I could see that significant barriers existed across the whole university, and so to progress work in UCNISS, I needed to shift focus to whole-of-university change. But this work would take far too long, and involve too many considerations for one thesis. Instead, I want to refine my understanding and awareness of the practice of networked learning as it is practiced everywhere and anywhere. This will enable me to stay closer to the writers, theorists and contemporary practitioners I respect, and look further afield than the University of Canberra for examples and considerations.

So the topic of my PhD is focused on networked learning, what it is, how it is practiced.
Additional to this change in study focus, I want to follow something like a creative PhD. In a recent seminar on why do a PhD, what is known as a Creative PhD was described by one of the participants as a body of creative work (in my case installations, mixed with traditionally crafted paintings, based on particular social theories) complimented by a "mini thesis" of 20 thousand words. Unfortunately I could find no information on the FAD website relating to this. http://www.canberra.edu.au/faculties/arts-design/research/ so am seeking more information on what a Creative PhD is.

I have also started a PhD page on Wikiversity in the hope of attracting a number of people who share an interest in informally pursuing a PhD through open and networked means. As I come to terms more with what the requirements are for a PhD, I and others will add information there as well as on the Wikipedia entry for PhD. Once I have a more solid grasp on what is required, I will more carefully map out my course of study, and subsequent research projects.

That crisis comes closer, as does the opportunity

2011-01-23T13:07:00.002+13:00

Its interesting to note that the US State of California is about to cut $1.4billion from its education budget, believed to be coming straight out of community colleges and the like (UoP blog) while the US federal budget will be giving $2 billion to the development of open education (CCBlog). I suppose there's a high chance other states will be thinking about similar cuts, will Michigan be next? ... this $2 billion might be just a beginning, with more to come if open education can step up to the plate. The UK seems to be in a similar boat.

There is still a way to go before the formal education sector recognises the real and potential contribution that Wikipedia, Wikiversity and Wikibooks makes to people's education. They would sooner recognise mirrors of their own form, such as Open Universities, University of the People, and even Peer to Peer University, before seriously considering more radical alternatives. It will be the formal education sector that is consulted on how and where to spend that injection of money, and that's the worry.

The Wikimedia Foundation should look to a collective statement on the issue of affording education for all. A joint response with other open education efforts, libraries and repositories, smaller networked learning initiatives, and especially include those doing even more radical things. In doing so, they should be careful not to restrict the scope of their projects, and preserve if note expand the opportunities for people to work in entirely new ways of learning and education.

As an easy example, the Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) seem to be attracting more interest now. After David Wiley's Intro to Open Ed course, Teemu Leinonen was one of the first to try this model on en.Wikiversity with Composing Free and Open Online Educational Resources, I followed with Facilitating Online (originally on Wikieducator). I think these early, and subsequent repeats of this model, offer an opportunity for developing legitimacy in the eyes of formal education. Perhaps the model's next phase is in establishing partnerships with multiple Colleges and Universities who are now more ready to consider these alternatives, and for them to play the role of recognition and certification to these courses, trusting the open and documented work of the networked educators who are offering these open courses and peer reviewed assessment (such as the process of custodianship replicating into course assessment for example). It seems to me that the Wikimedia Foundation platforms offer suitably neutral ground for such coordination.

As for post graduate level studies. Same thing. Wikiversity offers a platform and developing community, for open and networked research work, peer review and assessment, and even awarding honorary degrees that have some currency with partnering institutions. Yesterday, I started a portal for openPhDs for example.

At the University of Canberra, in the Faculty of Health, we have a number of academics primed for adopting such practices, but will need significant support to survive the coolness our institution shows these more radical innovation.

It seems to me, now might be a time to coordinate a plan, resource projects, and offer an alternative to the funding announcement and situation in the USA, the UK, and soon to be everywhere. Formal education in the West is approaching a tipping point, only a few people and a handful of initiatives are in a position to lead a way through the next 10 years.

Self host, pay host, free host - we lose

2011-01-19T13:53:00.000+13:00

I came to Brad Kozlec's post, The Puzzle of my own Personal Cyberinfrastructure via a rather down and dirty comment exchange over on the Bava. Let me switch gears, and civilly join the conversation being had under Brad's post.

I'm posting this here because Brad's blog rejects my comment as spam, rather than hold it for Brad to decide. And anyway, the content of this comment explains another reason why I should post here instead, in the true blogging tradition of building and preserving the network.

First, highlighting Brad's latest, yet all-too-brief point made in comments:

"You all are entrusting me to be a caretaker of this conversation."

To my mind, this concern out weighs the concerns about massive advertising companies care taking [over] our culture (that started happening long ago), and undermines the worthy vision that Jim wants to bring to us all (see comment 6 on Brad's post).

An all too frequent scenario:
Someone posts something remarkable on their BlueHost (or whatever hosting company), self managed blog. A slew of insightful comments follow. It didn't take off as a meme though, it just stayed in its corner, important to a few hundred people, possibly more important to some historian later. A year or two pass by and that person forgets or neglects to pay their hosting company and their domain rego - its all over. I can see this happening hundreds of times in the case of Jim's DS106 open course - where he is asking people to DIY their websites. If even 50% of those then decide to let that site's fees slip and the content go into the extinct URLs, not only will Jim's record of DS106 be compromised, but the longer term asynchronous learning will be impacted. We might as well give it all over to Blackboard and leave the deletion to the institution. The business model, that deletes content because hosting fees aren't being met, is a irresponsible model. But Jim's reasons are good.

Contrast to this with services like Blogger - under the Google mission to make sense of the Internet, and make advertising and database money doing so - its in their interests to keep the content up. So, one person moving on in life and forgetting to pay their bills, doesn't render whole swaths of content and shared experience, void.

I'm not suggesting that the Google model is ideal. Far from it - control of ones own online record remains an issue here. I am pointing out that the business model of the little hosting companies and the domain registrars who take content offline if their fees aren't met, is crappy.

Perhaps we should use established not for profit services like Ourmedia more, started by JD Lassica, author of Darknet. Its not commonly recognised that Ourmedia (and the archive that makes it possible - Archive.org) most likely started all this Web2 crazy by announcing back in 2004 that they would freely store, host, serve and manage and unlimited content forever. Soon after, Youtube stole the limelight. Even though Archive.org has been storing and serving unlimited user content since 1996, and despite the Ourmedia.org front end changing its tune a little - focusing on activist media more, non of it solves Jim's mission of showing the world the value of peer to peer DIY/conviviality.

What we need is a service like Ourmedia, not-for-profit, or running on a business model that ensures preservation of content, that enables people to access and control all levels of the production process, but doesn't put all our networked artifacts into the fickle hands of monthly fees. Essentially what the likes of BlueHost do, but taking out the precariousness of fees to keep it all up there... perhaps a fee to keep it up forever, or until the author says stop. 50c a post say... that gives me 10 posts a month, and those posts stay up... or as with Blip.tv a nice little copy distributor, where the video is sent across to Archive.org as a kind of backup. Now we just need URL forwarding in there for when the original goes offline...

Open Source Ecology and Factor E Farm making great progress

2011-01-07T13:33:00.001+13:00

I've been following the progress of Factor E Farm and Open Source Ecology for about 2 years now, they really are inspiring, and a perfect case for studying networked learning for convivial development. This 2 minute video is the best capture of their work to date, but spend the time on their blog and wiki, amazing energy. I dream of being involved in an Australian arm of this project some day. Perhaps the gang at Appropedia or the Permaculture Research Institute know of local plans?

Global Village Construction Set in 2 Minutes from Marcin Jakubowski on Vimeo

What am I doing!?

2011-01-05T18:10:00.003+13:00

This new year break, I've had time to consider my directions. For one, I'm thinking to drop my efforts to propose open educational policies and practices at the University of Canberra. It just seems to be much harder than it should be at the moment. The reception is not there, and the connections aren't happening. Instead, I think it would be more productive to return my focus on researching and understanding networked learning. This mainly has consequences for that un-PhD I'm doing btw.

A second thing to spark larger doubts has been to look at this blog's stats (since collection began mid 2010).

Normally I don't pay much attention to the stats on my blogs, I don't really see the point. But since I've started including posts on stuff I do outside education and networked learning, its interesting to see the comparison. This is mostly revealed graph 3, where my post Starting a rocket fire thermal mass heater has had 3 times the views as the next most popular post How and why I'll do a PhD.

As far as the education related posts go, it is slightly disappointing to see that so many posts I consider to be important, don't even rate on the charts. This sense of disappointment existed long before looking at the stats mind you. The almost complete lack of connection I seem to have to any Australian or New Zealand network of people who share and converse around issues of networked learning and open education has troubled me for a long time. Made worse by watching our North American and UK counterparts cut sick with dialog, development and good times. I don't know why this is...

Based on my very infrequent postings on "outside" interests, I find there is a more receptive audience, and a stronger online learning network around topics of sustainability and alternative energy. I have had excellent feedback on the Compost hot water project - including local news reporters, websites and very helpful comments on Youtube. Likewise, very surprising requests to help build rocket fires too. These responses come well before I can claim any expertise or worthwhile experience in the field, imagine what might be possible with more focused attention. To be sure, I very much enjoy working on such projects, but once again, least liking the frustrations in finding local contacts and suppliers.

If I had some capital behind me, I'd be investing in the Container house project (featured in the recent Tron movie (0:56) btw!) and combining in the rocket fire, compost heater, and I haven't mentioned the compost toilet yet...

By comparison, I don't enjoy working in education, demonstrating and proposing new practices to what amounts to being a non responsive, often hostile audience, with near zero connection to any measure of a local learning and research community, and all that after 7 years working at it too! I feel a new year's resolution coming on...

Networked learning playlist

2011-01-05T12:27:00.000+13:00

So after seeing Dave Cormier's videos on MOOCs, or networked learning, I got all inspired to update the Wikipedia entry and my Youtube playlist.

My playlist now has Dave's videos, and some great look backs to some old ones by Will Richardson, George Siemens, Michael Wesch, Jim Groom and Gardner Campbell. Topics covered include deschooling, edupunk, net neutrality, digital literacy, metaweb, social networks and connectivity.

May great videos keep coming throughout 2011, and if you know one you think ought to be included, please let me know.

Networked learning explanation made easy by Dave Cormier

2011-01-03T13:20:00.006+13:00

Dave Cormier and Neal Gillis have posted a neat video called Success in a MOOC. It explains networked learning succinctly, all be it in a "Massive Open Online Course" (MOOC). It is a third installment to the three part video series introduced on Dave's blog:

These videos would have been really handy to have around back when we were trying open networked learning courses at Otago Polytechnic. Sarah Stewart now facilitates the Facilitating Online course for example (copy also on Wikiversity), so I'm sure she'll appreciate having them to help explain networked learning to new comers.

Unfortunately, I could only find these videos on Youtube, so I installed the Youtube downloader, used SuperC to transcode them to OGG Theora (note: loading to Archive.org does this server side if installing software is a hassle), and loaded copies to Wikimedia Commons. The video is now embedded on the Wikipedia entry for Networked Learning. I'd sure appreciate anyone who knows more about MOOCs to add academic references to the new section, perhaps even start the MOOC entry.

How knowledge commercialisation and commons can be friends

2010-12-23T01:05:00.005+13:00

James and I (primary authors of the IP proposal for UC) were invited by the University of Canberra's Office of Development and Engagement, to present at the KCA Annual Conference in Canberra, 11 November 2010.

Throughout the 2 day conference, the key points of the proposal were discussed with many participants at the conference, all being IP Officers at Australian Universities, some being IP lawyers at Australian Universities. All initially responded with skepticism to the proposal, but discussion lead to the realisation of one critical benefit of this proposed policy:

By setting the over all standard copyright at the university to Creative Commons Attribution, staff, students and 3rd parties who are working on projects of commercial or other sensitivity, are compelled to opt out, thereby notifying the IP Officer and helping that office better target its services to projects most in need of close management. In other universities, the standard practice has been to claim university ownership over all work, and to restrict all work, believing it to be the best way to manage risks and capture commercialisable IP and investment opportunities. This approach compels no signal to the IP Office however, leaving them to use other, more fallible means to target and initiate their services, inefficiently spread across the vast majority of work in a university that will never need commercialisation or other IP management services.

Other critics mentioned that this proposal concerns itself primarily with copyright over patents. This may need addressing, because it is our belief that patents are addressed here as an end point, and all work leading to a patent, often involving many years of work, documentation and communications, are governed by copyright. The risk averse university will try to limit expressions of work deemed patentable, sometimes years after a project has begun, only to discover a tangle of due diligence not followed. Their restrictions often retard scientific progress by imposing non disclosure or other confidentiality agreements, and copyrights and other restrictions that are unacceptable or problematic for the scientists and their collaborators. This policy proposal does not discourage such management of IP however, rather it makes such restrictions and protections the responsibility of the people who own the IP and who first recognise the need. All work created in the lead up to such a decision point, if Creative Commons Attribution is assumed, does not compromise or limit work continuing in a restricted arrangement. Arguably it assists with IP discipline and due diligence, and possibly assists in the development of a prior art evidence base, should such a defense ever be needed.

The War You Don't See

2010-12-20T00:20:00.001+13:00

The War You Don't See (the full film on Youtube) is John Pilger's best. Stacked with high profile interviews, it exposes the sense of guilt and complacency that mainstream UK and US (and Australian and all else no doubt) television and newspaper media feel over the invasion and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Highlights include:

Admission by David Rose, journalist for British newspaper The Observer, accepting criminally negligent responsibility for coverage of the case for invading Iraq.
CBS News anchor, Dan Rather explaining cowardice in his coverage.
Steve Rendall telling of a report filed through Associated Press in January 2003, that all sites suspected of WMDs remained UN sealed after the invasion, and no major news outlet published the story.
Chief UN Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter, outlining how Iraq had no weapons capability prior to the invasion.
All too brief critique of Hollywood's role in glorifying the Iraq war, in particular that offensive propaganda film, The Hurt Locker, and our acceptance of an utterly corrupt narrative of heroism.
A campaign to hold UK military personnel criminally accountable.
Denis Halliday, former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations, resigning over the sanctions imposed on Iraq for 12 years before the invasion.
Carne Ross, a senior British diplomat in the lead up to the invasion, expressing shame for enforcing the embargo on Iraq.
Interview with Julian Assange
The harrowing account from Ethan McCord, a soldier in the video recorded massacre that Wikileaks published, who helped evacuate the children shot by Apache gunships.

This film is hard viewing, but surely compulsory for all people whose government conducts this violence in their "democratic" name.Once again, the USA has lost control of its military industrial complex, and its allies and big media are complicit, and profiteering from it as well.

Wikileaks

2010-12-19T20:48:00.004+13:00

Have you sat the Selective Attention Test yet?

As usual, distraction abounds in the Wikileaks saga, to the point I wonder if the whole thing is planted spin from the beginning. Early in the piece ProjectProject Blog posted on the number of Public Relations blunders that point to prior knowledge of the leaks, if not all together orchestrated.

To date I’ve been a staunch supporter of the wikileaks idea but recently, given my role in strategic communications, I could not help but consider seriously that what was unfolding before me was a massive integrated communications exercise – that is, a global campaign.

On a similar thread is this post on Voltairenet.org that unpacks some details about the main players, and questions their motives. Wikileaks: a Big Dangerous US Government Con Job by F. William Engdahl

The story on the surface makes for a script for a new Oliver Stone Hollywood thriller. However, a closer look at the details of what has so far been carefully leaked by the most ultra-establishment of international media such as the New York Times reveals a clear agenda. That agenda coincidentally serves to buttress the agenda of US geopolitics around the world from Iran to North Korea. The Wikileaks is a big and dangerous US intelligence Con Job which will likely be used to police the Internet.

There's a pretty good documentary about Wikileaks and the behind-the-scenes. Wikirebels.

Exclusive rough-cut of first in-depth documentary on WikiLeaks and the people behind it! From summer 2010 until now, Swedish Television has been following the secretive media network WikiLeaks and its enigmatic Editor-in-Chief Julian Assange. Reporters Jesper Huor and Bosse Lindquist have traveled to key countries where WikiLeaks operates, interviewing top members, such as Assange, new Spokesperson Kristinn Hrafnsson, as well as people like Daniel Domscheit-Berg who now is starting his own version - Openleaks.org! Where is the secretive organization heading? Stronger than ever, or broken by the US? Who is Assange: champion of freedom, spy or rapist? What are his objectives? What are the consequences for the internet?

The Real News had an interesting panel with Gareth Porter, investigative Journalist and Ray McGovern, Retired CIA Analyst discussing Wikileaks.

As an example of investigative journalism outside the square, Daphne Wysham explained WikiLeaked cables revealing a Canadian government cover up on tar sands info, as well as US covert campaign at Copenhagen.

That is the more interesting coverage I've seen on the Wikileaks to date, and I wouldn't be surprised if it was all a coordinated communications exercise. More importantly, the mainstream media's coverage has been so shabby, making themselves easy game for Public Relations agencies tasked with handling or orchestrating the scandal. It is the smaller, more independent media that is holding people to account - and their web based. Regulating the internet would be an ideal outcome for those who'd seek to silence the real media.

So planted or not, Wikileaks is effectively turning into a coordinated communications exercise. We need more investigative journalists, pouring over the Cables and situating them into the appropriate context. Perhaps only crowd sourced journalism can do this now, so long as the Internet remains free.

Social media workshop

2010-12-13T15:38:00.000+13:00

The University of Canberra Research Education Program is hosting a social media workshop, all day, I'm giving it. Here is a link to the Social Media Wikiversity page, which I'll update with links and resources for this workshop.

Uni of Canberra to host another RCC Wiki Conference

2010-12-09T15:03:00.000+13:00

The University of Canberra will host another RCC Wiki Conference 28-30 January, 2011.

UCNISS PhD candidate Laura Hale is the driving force behind the University of Canberra RCC Wiki conferences. We hosted a one dayer in August. It was such a success, we're emboldened to host a full 3 day event.

The event is free and catered, and basic accommodation can be arranged if needed. Register on the site, or send me an email and I'll register for you.

Here's what we recorded from the last RCC in Canberra. See you there!

Yesterday was a great event - the dialogue was thought provoking, interesting and inspiring. I'm looking forward to sharing it with my colleagues and the documentation from everyone really helps with that. Kirsty Sharp. Resource Development Manager Tasmanian Polytechnic
It was great to catch up with old friends and meet new ones. I'd like to see the VET, University, not-for-profit and other sectors do this sort of thing more often. There's so much to learn with and from each other. And of course, the unconference context means that we leave our occupational/professional hats at the door and collaborate, argue and opine freely and openly. A great learning environment and a worthwhile day. Thanks Leigh for organising it. Rose Grozdanic, Australian Flexible Learning Framework
A tremendously edifying experience. It's a pity it wasn't a two day event. I especially enjoyed the 'real world' tales of planning and integration that the unconference participants brought with them and shared with the rest of us. The event re-shaped my thinking about open content and its place in formal education Peter Shanks, Skills Tasmania
The day captured such wide-ranging discussion from so many viewpoints. Very refreshing! Great to see so many newcomers not only to the format but to the discussion of wikis. I'd love to see more events of this kind permeate the often 'dry' walls of our educational sites... Why not a student based forum of this kind too? Marg O'Connell, Canberra Institute of Technology
Having people from the community come to the University of Canberra is a very good thing. In many ways, here at this University, we're developing a key group of people who are very innovative in their approach to teaching and open education, and I think on a National scale we're really starting to lead the pack in regards to some of the approaches to teaching... a real kick start for UC becoming a leader in this area. Well done... Michael de Percy. Lecturer in Government-Business Relations, UC
As newcomers to the Wiki sphere, we found the unconference very helpful and informative - it was fantastic to talk with people using this platform in their work and opened our eyes to the current and future possibilities of Wiki. It's great to see Wikis being used as educational tools for social and collaborative learning in universities. We hope one day they will be as prolific in the health sector. Thank you very much for hosting such a valuable workshop. Christine Vuletich and Alice Winter-Irving, Cancer Council Australia
A great opportunity to meet all of those wiki people and to understand some of the challenges that they're facing. A lot of the people here are from the educational realm, and a lot of their challenges are the same challenges they we're facing at Wikimedia Projects... its been a really great experience. Andrew Garrett, Wikimedia Foundation

Towards the critical study of educational technology

2010-12-06T00:39:00.003+13:00

Joss Winn recently posted rich notes on his interest in a critical study of educational technology. One of the readings he recommended to this effect was N. Selwyn. Looking beyond learning: notes towards the critical study of educational technology. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, Special Issue: ‘CAL’– Past, Present and Beyond, Volume 26, Issue 1, pages 65–73, February 2010.

My quoted summary of that paper is as follows:

"The paper therefore concludes by proposing a broadening of the academic ‘technological imagination’ to include issues of democracy, social justice and empowerment."

"These ambitions are perhaps best summarized by Amin and Thrift's (2005, p. 221) four-point agenda for critical scholarship, i.e.:

First, a powerful sense of engagement with politics and the political. Second, and following on, a consistent belief that there must be better ways of doing things than are currently found in the world. Third, a necessary orientation to a critique of power and exploitation that both blight people's current lives and stop better ways of doing things from coming into existence. Fourth, a constant and unremitting critical reflexivity towards our own practices: no one is allowed to claim that they have the one and only answer or the one and only privileged vantage point. Indeed, to make such a claim is to become a part of the problem."

"What is the use of technology in educational settings actually like? Why is technology use in educational settings the way it is? What are the consequences of what happens with technologies in educational settings?"

"the critical approach attempts to examine the use of technology in educational settings from the perspectives of all of the various contexts that shape and define educational technology – from the concerns of government and industry, to the concerns of the classroom and the home."

"The critical take on educational technology is therefore often driven by a desire to redress the imbalances of power that reside within most educational uses of technology. In this sense, the act of critical research and writing strives for what Ernest House describes as ‘deliberative democratic’ outcomes, where academics ‘use procedures that incorporate the views of insiders and outsiders, give voice to the marginal and excluded, employ reasoned criteria in extended deliberation, and engage in dialogical interactions with significant audiences and stakeholders in the evaluation’ (House 1999, p. xix)."

"In this spirit, the academic study of educational technology can be used to identify spaces where opportunities exist to resist, disrupt and alter the technology-based reproduction of the ‘power differential that runs through capitalist society’ (Kirkpatrick 2004, p. 10)."

I found this paper challenging, inspiring and troubling. Challenging in that I more often than not side with the technology determinists, finding it hard to understand the arguments against such logic. Inspiring in that it introduces a conceptual framework and academic background to the sort of critiques I have attempted here over the years, helping me to perhaps go deeper with it. Troubling in that it finishes with a notion of fairness and social justice limited to a space it calls educational technology, or technology within educational settings. I'm troubled by this not only because I'm not sure what Selwyn thinks is fair or just in these settings, and I'm not even sure if such settings are fair or just at all! That all said, I'm inspired enough to go further, and have included this reference and these notes to my research wiki.

Giving a brief talk at Parliament House on implementing open education

2010-11-25T22:58:00.004+13:00

I get the grave yard shift for 10 minutes at auPSI's event tomorrow at Parliament House. I'm to talk about implementing Creative Commons licensing and open academic practices at Otago Polytechnic and University of Canberra, and how that can be used to better manage IP in the organisation.

Regarding UC, I'll recycle the presentation made to Knowledge Commons (formally Commercialisation) Australasia (KCA) a couple of weeks ago: Open Education and Research and the University of Canberra
Regarding Otago Polytechnic, I'll refer to the near finished Wikibook commissioned by the New Zealand Ministry of Education: Open Education Practice - a user guide for organisations

The main point I want to make tomorrow is:

Setting an organisation's copyright position to Creative Commons Attribution, promoting open academic practices, and retaining individual ownership, drives better management of Intellectual Property in that organisation.

A CC By and open access default requires those who wish to restrict their copyright and access to make it known to their IP Office, resulting in an early intervention and best possible management of IP at the outset. This intervention would lead to better targeted services such as education, commercialisation, or a variety of restriction management and protection help.

Setting CC By and open access as a default position ensures that the majority of academic work makes it into an open access and free-for-reuse domain, while the minority of work requiring restriction gets the best possible IP management early in a project.

IP managers in the educational organisations I have spoken to (Melbourne Uni, Sydney Uni, Uni of Wollongong, Bond Uni), all express their frustrations at being brought into a project too late, leading to complex and time consuming work unravelling years of messy IP management before they can get the project into a position to capitalise on the reason for restricting in the first place. Rather than set up conditions for an early intervention such as I propose, those organisations make a general claim of ownership over all IP being generated in the organisation, believing that will somehow result in better IP management and make the organisation more attractive to private investment.

Setting policy such as this glosses over the messy realities of education and research. New and visiting academics will bring prior work and new professional networks. Most will likely ignore IP complications day to day, preferring to get on with the primary work instead. Most importantly, draconian policy risks driving bad will through the organisation, often resulting in disputes when academics leaving believe it their right to take their work with them, often claiming they did it at home, outside the jurisdiction of their organisations. An organisation claiming over all ownership fixes none of these realities. Retaining individual ownership promotes good will and a farer relationship between academics and their host university, and can improve motivation and a sense of ownership and responsibility on projects.

Setting CC By and open access as the default position helps the university to capitalise on the majority of work being generated. Relying on individuals to opt out of the CC By/open access default initiates early interventions with the IP Office, and help that Office to efficiently focus on that minority of work, and offer services for IP education and management.

We're having difficulty clearly articulating this argument in the Proposed IP Policy at UC, but if and when given the time to carefully lay out the points, all critics I've spoken to see the logic and virtues of the approach. Any assistance in getting the argument as concise and accurate as possible would be greatly appreciated!

Leigh Blackall

Edit Wikipedia - win a trip to London

Wikipedia and tourist information

The speech of the Great Dictator

Packing up, moving on

Waste water management guidelines at the Mornington Peninsula

BPS2011 Webstats

Maarten De Laat - networked learning

Translated to Spanish

I need a job

OERU vs Pearsons vs OEU

Teaching nearly over, back to the PhD

The Climate Change scare machine

Another day of inhumanity

Lost Innocents of Kashmir

Opening up Science. ABC Radio National

Guests

Further Information

Publications

Music

Presenter

Producer

Global sized

LORN - ITYS

Adult and Community Education - CIT Solutions style

Greater Access Choice and Flexibility: Learning at University of Canberra

Proposal for TINA's Critical Animals panel

Q&A

Notes on Philippa Levy's methodological framework for practice-based research in networked learning

Progress on ubiquitous learning paper

Where does it end?

Open Definition

Technopoly

What is a definition of networked learning?

Review and feedback needed on: Networked learning a biomass heat transfer system

Our epistemology, and entrepreneurial learning

McLuhan - designer or prophet?

Global Learning - what a name

A summary of Chet Bowers, The false promises of constructivist theories of learning: a global and ecological critique

Contents

[edit]Chapter 1 - Introduction

[edit]Chapter 2 - Misconceptions Underlying Individually Centered Constructivism and Critical Inquiry

[edit]On John Dewey

[edit]Regarding Dewey's preference for scientific mode of inquiry

[edit]Regarding Dewey's view of democracy

[edit]Regarding Dewey's view on cultural diversity

[edit]On Jean Piaget

[edit]Regarding Piaget's Darwinian views of intelligence

[edit]Regarding Piaget's error on language

[edit]Regarding Piaget's stages of development

[edit]Regarding a contradiction to constructivist theory

[edit]On Paulo Freire

[edit]Regarding Freire and democracy

[edit]Chapter 3: Toward a Culturally Grounded Theory of Learning

[edit]The Cultural Construction of Knowledge and Personal Identity

[edit]Chapter 4: How Constructivism Undermines the Commons

[edit]The Commons of Indigenous Cultures and Non Western Cultures

[edit]How Constructivism Undermines the Commons in North America

[edit]Chapter 5 Constructivism The Trojan Horse of Western Imperialism

[edit]Chapter 6: Toward a Culturally Informed Eco-Justice Pedagogy

[edit]The Teacher as Cultural Mediator: Guiding Principles

[edit]Themes and Issues that Need to be Addressed in a Western Curriculum

Researching with my bare hands

Getting by: our cost of living in Canberra

Notes on Herzog's film: Where Green Ants Dream

Situated art, situated learning - En Route by One Step At A Time Like This

Global warming

Emergency trip to Leyte, Philippines

The False Promises of Constructivist Theories of Learning: A Global and Ecological Critique

The Loudspeaker on the Tower

Ubiquity

Who owns schools - ubiquitous learning

How might we teach and learn social media?

Proposal to use Wikibooks for The History of Paralympics

Joseph Beuys

Florian Schneider's (Extended) Footnotes On Education

An introduction to Foucault. Where's Illich? And why our research is so safe these days

The Age of Professions

Recent Changes Camp take 2

Lucrative teaching? A quick look at Josh Kaufman's The Personal MBA, and Jim Groom's potential to rule the world