learning, teaching and research (archive)

Dawkins has just published another book in his attempt to purge us all of religion and unscientific error. While I have some sympathy for his position I wonder if it has ever occurred to him that his ardent and single minded proselytising could be counter-productive. Max Weber pointed out at the turn of the 20th century that the development of a rational scientific world view would lead us to live in a rationally organised rule-governed ‘iron cage’ under the control of the technocrats and that, with the ‘disenchantment of the world’ we would enter, culturally speaking, a ‘polar night of icy darkness’. He was a bit of a laugh, our Max.

Cosmologically speaking, scientific rationality implies the essential meaningless of existence. Generally speaking this is not what people want to hear. Add to this the growing disillusionment with science and technology as the universal panacea capable, in principle at least, of solving all our problems, Dawkin’s advocacy of science as the one true world view (religion?) is often greeted with a fair degree of cynicism. People are beginning to realise that scientific knowledge is constantly changing, is always provisional and, in all likelihood, will never be a complete and final truth. Science is the original ‘always beta’. In addition people are increasingly becoming aware that science and technology are implicated in many of the problems we seek to understand and find answers to.  A loss of a naive faith in science, for instance some aspects of medical science, a concern with the environmental, political and health aspects of science based industries, etc., means that science is no longer such a strong contender for the role of a meta-narrative, to replace religion and other forms of discourse that offer meaning, solace, purpose, validity, identity and spirituality.  The arrogant and patronising promotion of science and the scientific world view, the not infrequent references to the deluded beliefs of ‘ordinary’ people, i.e. non-scientists, does not make Dawkin’s position particularly attractive to many.

A little while ago I suffered from a complaint called plantar fasciitis. I didn’t know it was called that to begin with, I just had a tremendous pain in my right heel when I got up in the morning and could hardly walk. It seemed to come from nowhere. It was so bad I went to the doctor a couple of days later who said I must have bruised it badly somehow despite there being no visible bruising and I could not recall any event that might have caused it. I looked the symptoms up on the web, found an exact description of the symptoms and context, followed the advice and, as predicted, about 10 days later all was well.

A very good friend of mine lost his father and brother to cancer of the oesophagus. Like them, he suffers from recurrent heartburn, or acid reflux. In researching this he found that about 10% of heartburn sufferers have Barrett’s oesophagus, a precancerous condition, and that these are between 30 and 125 times more likely to die of oesophageal cancer than the 90% that don’t have Barrett’s oesophagus. Neither his father nor brother were diagnosed with Barrett’s O. My friend arranged to have the appropriate test, which his doctor had never heard of, and sure enough he has it. The good news is that there is a great deal that can be done to reduce the likelihood of BO becoming full blown cancer – diet, weight loss, etc. – so my friend is quite upbeat about it and feels he has a measure of control.

Another close friend suffers from Torticollis, or wry neck. This developed very quickly and had the effect of forcing his head round over his left shoulder. Apart from being very embarrassing, it stopped him driving and at meetings he had to make sure he was sitting at the side of the conference table where he could look at and address the Chair. His doctor advised surgery to cut the contracting neck muscles was the only solution and he would have to wear a neck brace to stop his head lolling around. Research on the web found that increasingly the condition is being treated with regular injections of botulinum toxin. This partially paralyses the contracting muscles and relaxes them thus allowing the muscles on the other side of the neck to stabilise and control head movement. His doctor had not heard of this and took up the research. As a result my friend receives the botox treatment and leads a normal life, looking to the future rather than where he has just been, and his doctor has had a free episode of professional continuing education.

Several messages could be gleaned from these last two stories. One might be that, if you are a friend of mine, you are probably ill and definitely dying.

Another, more positive, message is the one that John Wilinsky describes so eloquently and entertainingly in his keynote presentation to the UBC Okanagan’s 2nd Annual Learning Conference ‘Learning Free of Boundaries’: A newly Open and Public Quality to Learning. This is an mp3 audio file about 62 minutes and 50 Mbytes. The whole presentation is a very rewarding listen when you have the time. The bit of the presentation relevant to this post topic starts at the 21st minute. However, I have taken the liberty of extracting the 11 minutes or so where John is talking about the internet, literacy and reading ability, and how people are increasingly using the internet to research their medical and health issues and how this is changing their relationship with doctors and the medical profession. This is gradually developing into a process of “shared decision making”. Of particular interest is John’s account of the process whereby individuals develop from not even understanding the title of some research papers to gradually developing the context that enables them get a handle on it and talk productively to their doctors about it. He draws some important and interesting general conclusions about the nature independent learning, developing critical thinking skills but in the context of a vastly expanded access to knowledge.

This is a slide I have used in a number of presentations this year. Each presentation has been different but has focussed on one or more aspect of the slide. I hope to make an Articulate version of the slides in due course. The way it is going so far I will be publishing one slide at a time! Mostly I have been asked to speak about the contents of the left-hand box, about social software and how it is being used in education. Less frequently are found discussions of the context of all this outside of the formal education system. But it is this external context that tells us why we should be considering using social software and what we should be seeking to achieve. Below the picture I have listed some items, mostly on-line presentions, that have some interesting things to say about this context. I have gleaned most of these items from educational blogs, including several from colleagues here on Elgg. I doubt whether I would have found most of them so easily, or at all, without being a member of this community and the good offices of RSS. Some of them are quite long but if you are short of time I would especially recommend the Sir Ken Robinson talk which I think is quite inspirational, and Karl Fisch’s ‘Did you know’ which is particularly thought provoking.

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Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants the seminal paper by Marc Prensky on the concepts of digital natives and immigrants. This is a pdf file.

Engage me or enrage me The presentation given by Marc Prensky at the Learning in the 21st Century conference for school leaders, Shropshire County Council Education Dept. 5th April 2006.This podcast and associated PowerPoint slides are hosted by Learning and Teaching Scotland

Integrating Tradition and Technology  A presentaion given by Diana G Oblinger (who is giving a keynote at this year’s ALT-C I believe). This video is from Cornell University’s University Computer Policy and Law Program’s (UCPL) speaker series.

“Information technology has catalyzed the creation of new forms of communication, self-expression, and collaboration. The distributed cognition enabled by social networking, podcasting, and videoblogging aligns well with the habits of today’s learners. And, with the Web as learners’ information resource, no learner is ever far from information resources. This presentation explores how well education is keeping pace with user expectations, IT capabilities, learning principles, and cultural shifts”.

A newly Open and Public Quality to Learning The keynote presentation by John Wilinsky given at UBC Okanagan’s 2nd Annual Learning Conference ‘Learning Free of Boundaries’. The presentation reviews “educational developments in the public sphere that are taking place outside of classroom settings, which include open access to scholarship, the Wikipedia cooperative knowledge movement, the democratic pursuits of the blogosphere, the open source software movement, and the health information revolution. The pedagogical implications of these movements for educators and researchers will be considered in terms of fostering new lessons on the circulation of knowledge, the intellectual properties of our work, and the prospects of a more deliberative democracy”. This is an mp3 audio file.

Liquid Modern Challenges to Education by Prof. Zygmunt Bauman. Address given to Leed’s Alumni May 26th 2006. My old professor and still going from strength to strength since retirement in the early 1990s.

The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman. Presentation to the World Bank on his book of the same title published April 2005. This sets out the global context within which Western economies and education institutions are being challenged

Did you know? Karl Fisch’s blog, The Fischbowl. The first few slides are about the IT provision in the school Karl works at but the rest of the slides illustrate extremely economically some of the key points Thomas Friedman makes.

Talk given by Sir Ken Robinson recorded February, 2006 in Monterey, CA and hosted on TEDtalks. If you have not visited TEDtalks before you will undoubtedly find some very interesting stuff there. The talks are given by world leaders in the fields of science, music, innovation and design, computing and software, business etc. Sir Ken Robinson is author of ‘Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative’, and a leading expert on innovation and human resources. His talk is specifically about the challenges to education in a rapidly changing world.

I’d be very interested in any comments or observations you have to make about any of these items, and/or suggestions of others that address similar themes. Also, if I have left anything out of the three boxes in the slide I would be grateful for suggestions.

<!–DATA[This is a slide I have used in a number of presentations this year. Each presentation has been different but has focussed on one or more aspect of the slide. I hope to make an Articulate version of the slides in due course. The way it is going so far I will be publishing one slide at a time! Mostly I have been asked to speak about the contents of the left-hand box, about social software and how it is being used in education.

I have just spent the whole weekend trying to clean a new PC of various spys,  malware, viruses etc. The worst one kept hijacking my browser home page so it went to a site selling antispy software. It also produced false Windows security messages and even changed my desktop image to one that looks like a blue screen of death. I also got advert windows popping up even when not on-line. All invited me to download software of one sort or another. Windows Defender found nothing. Spy Doctor (a PCtools product and highly rated) found 81 infections but wants a credit card number to register and clean. For obvious reasons I am not keen to enter my cared number.  Adaware found nothing, nor did Spybot, recommended on teh MS Windows security site. Windows firewall couldn’t spot a trojan if it was made of wood and was pushed in by 100 sweaty soldiers. However Prevx did find it and has cleaned sucessfully. It is free for 28 days. I think I will probably buy this in due course. I have also installed the free basic version of ZoneAlarm, recommended by my computer services people (as was Adaware). Very effective but not easy to use for a non-techy like me. I may be blocking stuff I shouldn’t.

 Any advice would be gratefully received. Any recommendations of antispyware, firewalls, security strategies etc? I think UNIX is probably not an option for me for the above reasons of non-techyness.

Heard on Radio 4 (UK) this morning: Motorists who have 4 points on their licenses for being caught by speed cameras are 50% more likely to have been involved in an accident than motorists with no points for speeding. The ‘clear message’ of this according to a road safety organisation is it is irrefutable evidence that speed causes accidents.

Wrong. This is a prior theory (or wishful thinking) imposing a preferred but illegitimate interpretation on ‘the evidence’. Given that most people that get caught by speed cameras didn’t see them it is entirely possible that getting caught by speed cameras and being involved in accidents are both related to poor observational skills. In other words, fast drivers caught by speed cameras are exactly that, a sample of all possible fast drivers self-selected by their lack of observation. It is entirely likely that many drivers who speed (maybe even the majority) do not have accidents and are not caught by speed cameras because their observational skills protect them from both.

I would like to argue that it is inappropriate speed by non-observant drivers that causes accidents, not speed per se. Or, speed kills but mostly in particular circumstances.

If correct, what are the policy implications of this? Who knows, but training in observation may be part of the answer. For instance, the training for the Advanced Motorcycling Test, conducted according to the police rider’s system, places great emphasis on observation and riding to a constantly updated ‘riding plan’. Having had the benefit of following a number of fast experienced police motorcyclists it is clear that the fastest rider from A to B is the one whose observation allows the maintenance of optimum speed at all times, not the one that reaches the higher mph (and ends up with the hottest brakes and whitest hair and possible doesn’t arrive at B at all). As a matter of interest research by insurance companies and road safety organisations shows that motorcyclists are significantly less likely to be involved in car accidents than non-motorcycling drivers, and advanced motorcyclists even less so.

Perhaps every motorist should be obliged to undertake advanced motorcycling training, although this might introduce an unacceptable Darwinian element into driving instruction.

The OU Open Content initiative could be one of the most exciting things to happen in education for a very long time. The full description of the project is at http://oci.open.ac.uk/info.html. Of particular interest is Appendix K: Learning Support Tools for the Supported Open Content Environment.

The supported open content environment will be Moodle. It will be the same as the one available to registered OU students from May 2006 but without the management information relevant to their taught modules. Users of the open content repository will be able to create both personal and community areas and resources. The purpose of the support environment is to “actively support individual learners and educators and the self-organising communities which we anticipate will emerge”.

The tools available to users will be in two broad groups, those to find and organise resources and those to enable community and collaborative activities. With these tools users will be able to search for content, create meaningful structures, engage with other users and create communities. These tools will also enable the importing and organising of resources from outside the OU open content repository. Organisations that use Moodle will be able to import OU OC materials into their systems.

For community building, communication  and collaboration the tools available will be forums, chat tools, wikis, weblogs (I don’t think Moodle has weblogs but it is being integrated with Elgg), and Moodle’s workshop tools (apparently a ‘workshop’ is, amongst other things, a structured framework within which a student can submit work for peer review).

Collectively the the tools will provide the means, individually or collaboratively, to locate and organise resources, to map knowledge and to engage in what the OU calls ‘sensemaking activities’ which I think is close to knowledge construction activity. They will also enable the development of ‘social presence’ and ‘learning identities’. This goes someway beyond the usual profile information as (depending upon what access and privacy measure you invoke) it includes a developing summary of your activity, the resources you are working with and, intriguingly, a measure of ‘reputation’ (like on e-bay perhaps!). The system allows you to find (if they don’t mind being found) peers with the interests and expertises that match yours.  But who can you trust? How do individuals gain reputation? The mechanisms by which this happens within fairly specialised areas of the blogosphere, e.g. educational blogs, is fairly well known, as is and e-bay’s system, but how does this develop in on-line learning communities? According the the  OU “Reputation is increasingly critical in everyday experiences of on-line resource gathering: who do you trust?”.

The OC initiative is closely coupled to a number of action research projects to explore and develop the use of all these technologies. A key objective is to explore and develop new pedagogies. Usefully each aspect of the OC intitiative has a clear pedagogical rationale. As the document says “Learning to think critically, argue in a scholarly manner, and collaborate to make sense of problems, are amongst the highest order skills that we we seek to instil in learners”.

This will of course another massive publicity coupe for Moodle. The OC project is not entirely supported by Moodle as the intention is to integrate and use other Web 2.0 applications, particularly for reflective learning and community building, as appropriate. The OU is piloting the use of Elgg with its tutors and perhaps may consder Elgg as one of the emerging tools they will consider for their OC project. It will be interesting to see how the OC support environment develops over the next year or so.

I have decided what to do with this blog and Elgg. I am going to develop it into a resource for me to learn about how to use blogs in teaching my modules. It will be a collection of resources and information I find or that is passed on to me by friends and colleagues. It will be annotated as I go in terms of what I think are the main points I can take from each item. Hopefully others will add comments if they disagree with my summaries or think I have missed a significant idea or implication.

I hope to gradually organise it into a form that could be used as the basis of a staff development package (presentations, seminars, a handbook and a continually up-dated dynamic on-line resource) for using blogs in teaching and supporting/enabling learning. I hope in the process to get some insights and ideas on how Elgg might be used by students on their own ‘self-education’ projects.