Organizational Issues (Teaching and Learning)

Video and slides for this presentation can be found here. The speech is by George Siemens, Associate Director of the Learning Technologies Centre at the University of Manitoba. This plenary session is entitled, "Connectivism".

In this 58 minute podcast, we feature a session by George Siemens, Associate Director for the Learning Technologies Centre at the University of Manitoba, entitled, "Connectivism". This speech was recorded at the ELI 2008 Meeting in San Antonio, Texas.

The waves of technological and social change have eroded the effectiveness of traditional views regarding what, how, and why to educate. To effectively educate learners, fundamental assertions need to be rethought: the design of schools and curriculum, the nature of knowledge in a connected world, the relationship between educator and learner, the means and methods of authenticating information and knowledge, and, perhaps most significantly, what it means “to know” in complex, rapidly developing, and chaotic environments. This session will present connectivism as a theory of learning that can bridge the rift between traditional and new educational approaches to prepare learners for the tomorrow they will inherit.

EDUCAUSE welcomes Dan Gilbert,StanfordUniversity , who has joined Phillip D. Long, MIT, as the new member co-leader of the Learning Space Design Constituent Group. The association also extends a warm thank you to outgoing group leader Christopher G. Johnson, The University of Arizona, for his professionalism and dedication in serving as a founding leader.

Quick report on Day 2 of the Networked Learning 2006 conference, held up in Lancaster, in the north-west of England.

(Please note: the following commentary is based on rapid notes made as I attended sessions, and should be interpreted as a reflection of  my personal critical opinions and interests, rather than as a commentary on specific sessions or speakers.)

Hot Topics

• Standardisation: of user profiles / content / delivery mechanisms and technologies.
• Teaching quality and efficacy. 
• Rob Koper / Oleg Liber’s work in the area of modelling scenarios, activities, IMS Learning Design (as well as "small-l" learning design or, as the JISC crowd prefers it, "design for learning". LD is clearly gaining ground.
• Personal repositories. The language of "E-portfolios" seems to be starting to move towards that of "personal repositories". Very interesting development, and worth watching.
  

Unsurprisingly, given current institutional pressures in the leadup to the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE), no-one suggested e-learning quality mechanisms as a way to “assess” teaching staff / or to deliver CPD points or QAA assurances. (A related aside: My impression is that many academic and support staff with an investment in technology-enhanced learning tend to focus on the RAE as a negative thing – “the thing that prevents focus on good teaching practice and specifically prevents teaching staff from devoting time to investing in eskills / developing elearning materials either for themselves or their students.” Is there any way, I wonder,  to view the RAE -- and/or research-informed teaching -- as a positive thing for elearning? This issue was not at all discussed at the conference sessions I attended, but it is clearly important, especially for academics who teach in emerging, fast-moving areas such as nanotechnology).

A report on distribution of iPods in remote areas of Afghanistan, http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0318-20.htm, has not been met with universal acclaim by experts in development.

How VFH got the contract is a matter raising some skeptical eyebrows in the aid community. When the two founders needed to sell their idea to the federal government, they turned to a lobbying group run by Hunter Bates, the former chief of staff to Senator Mitch McConnell. McConnell, it turns out, chairs the senate subcommittee that controls the money allocated to USAID.

Critics say it was those connections that resulted in millions of taxpayer dollars going to an ineffective and laughable program of throwing trendy technology at serious international issues.

"It shows how foolhardy people can be when they're not thinking practically," said Patricia Omidian, an aid worker heading the American Friends Service Committee.

I was especially intrigued by this assessment of the organizers: men were stealing the pseudo-iPods from women. The solution: