Alan November asks "Who owns the learning?"

In the opening keynote of the GlobalEd conference, Alan November looks at some fresh ideas (fresh from him). He states that there is little to indicate that there have been significant or measurable improvements, on the whole, after the spending of tens of billions in technology.

He asks that there must be no more of the following:

• No more Technology Planning
• No more 1:1, students should have but that is not the central issue
• No more Ed Tech - no more technology directors and less talk of technology

But have more on Learning Design - define problem as improving learning for all our children, then Learning Design is what we should be aiming for. 

PEDAGOGY TRUMPS TECHNOLOGY

(and November asks if anyone has changed their titles - well, we are now talking of T4L so as to emphasise that it is all about the Learning).

Critical questions to ask - do we have:

• Right information about learning
• Right relationships to support learning

Students - do students have the right information and the right relationships? "Our teachers know too much, but student tutorials are pitched at the right level", depending upon your friends are you probably will do better or worse at school. Build capacity of students to help students - less emphasis on teacher technology training.

So change in the relationships is vital: mentions Eric Mazur - designing an online community of his students (November says Facebook might be based upon this since Zuckerberg was in Mazur's class!), brings out an amazing treasure trove of information on how learning is happening.

(Mazur's presentation at BLC11 is a "must watch", 20% of learning achieved with the best lecture; figures out that students need immediate feedback with a lot of peer conversation, and that Sochratic approach is better; hence the flip classroom).

As far as professional development is concerned, November says that it is much more rewarding to be global, for your personal learning network to be beyond campus.

($1,000 pencils: students taking notes from teacher in class - a nice way of stating that 1 to 1 means nothing unless the pedagogy changes).

The knowledge of the teacher is in the way of the learning, says November, it is not about knowledge transfer.

November talks about the flipped classroom - here is the video from Clintondale High School which has gone through a complete transformation of pedagogy:

Learning design is the key, not the technology.

Question to ask is who owns the learning? And not how many computers do you have. 

November talks about new student roles for developing empowered learners:

• Tutorial designers
• Official scribes
• Collaboration coordinators
• Researchers
• Contributors to society
• Curriculum reviewers
• and specifically:
• Videographer
• Photographer
• Data entry
• Live blogging
• Interviewers
• Skype connections
• Backchannel

So, November asks:

• Who owns the learning?
• Are your students producing a legacy?
• Who works harder in the classroom?
• Are students publishing to a global audience?

But he says that TEACHERS ARE MORE IMPORTANT THAN EVER to emphasis the need for learning designers.

An excellent thought provoking session.

BYOD does not necessarily mean only mobile phones

Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) is a shorthand for the idea of having each student with a computing device - their own. The assumption of many writing about this is that the device will be a mobile phone. In 7 Myths About BYOD Debunked, Lisa Nielsen gives a pretty good account of why mobile phones can be the "D" in BYOD.
She phrases the two "myths" that I question in this way, but I think misses the point:

• Myth No. 2: BYOD will result in lessons geared toward the weakest device.
• Myth No. 6: Cell phones are not that powerful, so we should not waste our time with them.

Firstly, mobile phones ARE the weakest device. This is not to say that they always will be, or that they are not powerful, but in comparison with other "Ds" they are the weakest device. Two factors make them difficult to work with - the size of the display and the multitasking limitations. The first will not change until we have virtual displays appearning in front of our eyes. The second may be improved but it is related to the first problem.
So, if the option is ONLY mobile phone, then they can be the device. But if it is realistic to consider other options, from netbooks through i-Pads to laptops, then these other "Ds" win hands down.
For digital scholarship, involving extensive writing, researching and reading, the mobile phone does not hack it.
(For messaging, light e-mail, Twitter, G+, FB, everyday camera, recording audio, and even reading from i-Books in the dentist's waiting room, the smart phone is great)

Models - usefulness and otherwise

Well, my last piece on Rhizomatic Learning.
In today's #change11 MOOC live session a series of questions allowed Dave Cormier to expand on the ideas and again it was an interesting hour.
At one point Stephen Downes started to sketch to explain traditional learning and rhizomatic learning (it was me typing in the labels - it may not have been exactly what Stephen meant).
All of a sudden it started to make sense, the idea that nothing new is created with traditional transmition of knowledge, that rhizomatic learning created something new, and then STOP! On the wrong track, Dave dragged us back underground to draw the rhizomatic approach (top right).

For me, a model has to be simple to follow and we should not need to read French philosophy to "get it". Stephen's alternative started to make sense, Dave's rhizomes clouded it for me. So, for me (and I stress that others may well find the concept useful) it goes no-where and as a model fails.
However, let me add something more concrete to the question raised about "assessment" or at least the badging or verification of such learning.
I can see that for teacher professional development, an open non-curriculum self-directed connected learning approach works (have I just described rhizomatic learning?). In my school, those at the cutting edge of technology for learning are learning in exactly this way. The ideas that permeate from them are proof that the learning is taking place. They are badged by their subsequent actions, and this is a perfectly acceptable verification.

Rhizomes - back to basics

If the metaphors don't work for me, what can I suggest?
Well, let me write it in other terms without using the rhizome, worker, soldier, nomad metaphors:
The first dichotomy is formal and informal learning.
Formal, of course, is everything conventional, perhaps existing already, based on courses, structure, teaching, VLEs, etc.
Informal is that learning which is achieved outside of the official formal learning structures but includes online, PLEs, MOOCS, in fact, anything driven by the learner and including books, experience, and other interactions which are not necessarily technological.
Another dichotomy: under informal we can include the learning which is facilitated by a person or persons bringing resources, ideas and people together (the social artist?) as well as the learning achieved by those who truly direct (or wander) through their own selected learning experiences (the nomad in rhizomatic learning?).
What is missing here that should be here - is this too simplistic? What ideas are in rhizomatic learning which can't be derived from here?

Metaphors that don't work for me - Social Artists, Rhizomes, Nomads

We are categorisers. It is how our brains work. We can't help placing labels on concepts and this helps us refer to huge ideas in a simple way.
We use metaphors as particularly apt labels. The mind-ideas generated by the metaphor helps us remember and work with the concepts.
I have found both the Social Artist metaphor and now the Rhizomatic Learning (including Workers, Soldiers and Nomads) particularly difficult to work with.
Dave Cormier's facilitation on #change11 MOOC's session yesterday was excellent. A fairly large number of participants interacted on chat and on the screen. But it took me the session to understand each of the metaphors for Rhizomatic Learning and none of them, for me at least, "clicked". In fact, they seemed distracting. The "Workers", "Soldiers" and "Nomads" metaphors brought many other not entirely relevant ideas to mind. They simply did not work for me. As for Rhizomatic Learning, I was left with the feeling of "so what?".
Clearly the work on the Rhizomatic Learning concept has gone a long way. Have I been left behind in a developing thought process where the original labels worked but the ideas have matured?
The only benefit of such a loose or inappropriate coupling of metaphor to concept is that it needs such deep explanation and understanding - perhaps that is a good thing.
Oh, it did seem to me that there were too many flippant comments in the interactive session. You come to expect it on chat but I was disapointed with the negative and lightweight responses on the interactive board. Purpose of education? Why did my fellow participants have such limited and cynical views?

Time for a Learning Revolution

It takes a 16 year old to say it so clearly:
Policy-wise, we need a national curriculum, based on lean standards, so that teachers have the full autonomy to shape and mold the curriculum.
Nikhil Goyal writes about project based learning in the Huffington Post under the title "It's Time for a Learning Revolution".
I propose that we institute a 21st century model of education, rooted in 21st century learning skills and creativity, imagination, discovery, and project-based learning. 
He gives as an example of this idea in action, the High Tech High in San Diego, California, which has this as its descriptor for its eleven schools:
All of these schools serve a diverse, lottery-selected student population; all embody the High Tech High design principles of personalization, adult world connection, common intellectual mission, and teacher as designer.
[the example comes from his post within Andrew Revkin's article here]. 
What would it take to make this happen?
#change11
Learning by Breaking - a project approach:
  

Social Artist doubts - process and "feel-good"

This week's MOOC #change11 has not held my interest.
Without doubt, Nancy White is a charismatic facilitator, using graphical tools to have participants express themselves and develop a particular view. I think this approach (using such graphical tools) is excellent for the participants.
I learned long ago that my wonderfully produced mathematical notes were excellent - for me. The iterrative process of producing these and improving them was valuable to me, the writer. My students needed to produce their own versions (yes, to construct their own knowledge), for this to be valuable for them.
So the outcome of the process did not mean much without being a participant.
Also, there seemed to be an inordinate amount of "feel-good" commentating. Why? Could there be a cultural difference?
Hence my Tweet: the Queen has got no clothes on. There, I said it.