If you want to understand the future of education-- consider this!

James Fallows has written a fascinating article in the Atlantic How to Save the News that describes the ways in which Google has been working with news organizations and experimenting with ways to continue to have high quality news reporting.

As I read this, I keep substituting the word "education" or "university" for newspapers and keep asking myself how can be take advantage of these ideas.

Here is a quote about newspapers that has application to education and universities.

"Burdened as they are with these 'legacy' print costs, newspapers typically spend about 15 percent of their revenue on what, to the Internet world, are their only valuable assets: the people who report, analyze, and edit the news."

Fallows goes on to note that most of the cost of newspapers in for paper, printing and distribution, not the core aspect of reporting the news.

Now substitute these legacy costs for education-- classrooms, books and you begin to see where we are going.

Fallows describes the conceptual shift that newspapers are going to have to make. He says,

[in the past] "'publishing' meant printing information on sheets of paper; eventually, it will mean distributing information on a Web site or mobile device."

The conceptual shift is from viewing the work as "distributing information." In a similar way most educators have defined "education" as face-to-face lectures with some form of testing. We are going to need to begin to see our job "engaging people in learning activities" without reference to the form or location of those activities.

Education will also have to think about its business model in the online world. Fallows suggests that the the new business model for the news business is as follows:

"The three pillars of the new online business model, as I heard them invariably described, are distribution, engagement, and monetization. That is: getting news to more people, and more people to news-oriented sites; making the presentation of news more interesting, varied, and involving; and converting these larger and more strongly committed audiences into revenue, through both subscription fees and ads."

This may seem obvious, but Fallows goes on to describe tools that Google has been inventing such as "living stories," "fast flip" and "youtube direct" which seem to have interesting applications to teaching. More importantly, these innovations remind us that teachers need to be asking technologist for the tools that will help us with distribution, engagement and monetization. There are undoubtedly some betters ways to do instruction online that are currently available.

Games Can Change Behavior-- Jesse Schell

Could we use games to teach important ideas and change behaviors. See an edited clip (about 7 minutes long) from Jesse Schell about the future of games. At the end he asks "who is going to lead us to this future?" Will the answer be some educators or will we let game designers invent the future of learning?





See the complete talk on the Future of Games (30 minutes).

Nifty Little Tool for YouTube Video Editing

Tube Chop-- Here is a handy tool for editing YouTube video that could be especially helpful in putting together video for teaching. If you find a 10 minute video, but you only want about 2 minutes to illustrate your point, you just load it into Tube Chop and select the segment and chop it up into the pieces you need.

Here is an example

Youtube University?

What are the possibilities for YouTube content? We have seen some interesting entertainment emerge out of this work. What about teaching and learning?

If you are a skateboarder trying to learn a new trick, this is very hard to communicate in words. It is more possible with video. Here are some example of a fakie kickflip and frontside noseslide with fakie.

These are quite good instructional videos. The skaters provide a good explanation of the trick, how it is done and how it may fit with other skating tricks. They have also broken up the content into small, useful chunks-- one trick at a time rather than all the tricks packaged together. I can watch the one trick over and over until I think I have it, then try it out... watch again, see what I am doing wrong and keep practicing. The bad news of course is that you don't have a coach on hand to diagnosis what you are doing wrong. So could I upload video of my inability to do a trick in order to get feedback from a "skateboard coach?"

Here are some thoughts from Henry Jenkins on YouTube.

"While most people can read, very few publish in print. Hence active contribution to science, journalism and even fictional storytelling has been restricted to expert elites, while most of the general population makes do with ready-made entertainment. But the internet does not distinguish between literacy and publication. So now we are entering a new kind of digital literacy, where everyone is a publisher and whole populations have the chance to contribute as well as consume.

We can certainly use the internet for daydreaming, mischief and time-wasting, but it is equally possible to move on to other levels of functionality, and other purposes, including science, journalism and works of the imagination. You can already find all this on YouTube.....

As they say in The Matrix: `I don't know the future. I didn't come here to tell you how this is going to end. I came here to tell you how it's going to begin.'"

Web 2.0: The Web is US/ing us

The opening keynote presentation at the eXtension Communities of Practice Conference was given by Dr. Michael Wesch, Kansas State University.

Wesch's talk began with his stories of Papua New Guinea a place he worked as a cultural anthropologist. It was a place with limited "communication media (no radio, TV, electricity, etc.). Only a small portion of the population could read and write. In part, he told the story of how this is changing, but generally he used this as a contrast to our society (U.S.) in order to help us begin to think about how our "media tools" shape who we are. In his talk he returned again and again to this quote:

"We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us." Marshall McLuhan.

Wesch illustrated his main point with the follow YouTube video about Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us. This is a short wonderful example of what is happening with the web, but he also illustrates how we are becoming the web and how the web is using us. (that is, if the web is becoming "user-generated content" and that content is about us then we are becoming the "web.").

He also told the story about this video going viral and emerging as the #1 video on YouTube on Superbowl Sunday-- reminding us that even on a day when there are these powerful videos produced a big corporations with lots of financial resources that the "little guy" can still compete in this world with an engaging, entertaining and in this case, educational video.

Another part of this presentation reminded us that it is very hard for us to think about the future and prepare for the future. Again a quote from Marshall McLuhan, " We look at the present through a rear-view mirror. We march backwards into the future. "

One aspect of his talk that I disagreed with was his notion of whether or not YouTube was creating "community." He notes that there are 200,000 new 3- minute videos added to YouTube per day and that about 10,000 of these videos are about by viewers who are talking the the YouTube community. In short, people are telling personal stories about their lives directly to the "YouTube community." (Note: Lots of blogs, twitter, and social networking sites have similar material.)

Wesch argues that there is a significant loss of community in general. His hypothesis is that community is being built through the "YouTube community" and other social media platforms. As an aside he notes that these media are not replacing F2F, but these media are being used to connect people. Showed a video of a the video of "Free Hugs" that shows people connected through YouTube. Another viral video (over 27 million views) ... is this really "building community?" I think we need to know a lot more about online community building.

There were many other key parts of this presentation and when it become available online it is definitely worth watching. Here is one final quote from him that was his prediction about the future of the web, computing, etc.

"We are moving towards
a
ubiquitous,
context-aware,
semantic,
social network of
things,
people, and
information."
Michael Wesch
mediatedcultures.net

Web 2.0 Tools for Educators

In the fall I will be teaching a course to graduate students on developing programs for children, youth and families. I first taught this course 10 years ago and the emphasis was on designing effective workshops, newsletters and factsheets. It was dominated by print and face-to-face teaching activities. In more recent years it has included more ideas about using information technology, but this has always been treated as "one more delivery" option.

This fall I have decided to make make the whole course focused on Web 2.o tools as the basis for delivery and not emphasize any of the face-to-face or print types of tools. So I have been trying to figure out what Web 2.0 tools to include. This course is for graduate students who are mostly in the behavioral sciences-- family studies, human development, psychology, social work, educational psychology, and so forth. I realize that I have no idea if they use Web 2.0 tools so the first day of the course I will do a short needs assessment to see if they are familiar with these tools. I also plan to devote two class sessions to making sure that they can do basic activities. So here is the basic list:

Tools for Finding, Storing and Organizing Scientific Research

• Research abstract databases, e.g., PsychInfo, ERIC. --- this is a basic tool for finding the published scientific literature on topics that would be relevant to the content of programs. Students will not only learn to effectively search these databases, but to set up notifications on keywords, find electronic copies of the articles in journals and download the references into bibliographic tools such as RefWorks and Endnotes.
• Bibliographic tools, e.g., Endnotes, RefWorks.-- Gone are the days of notecards to keeping track of references. These tools provide an easy way for scholars to keep track of key references and build a knowledge base of the current scientific literature. Students will learn how to share references so that work teams can share information and resources.

Tools for Finding, Storing and Organizing Web-based Material

• Aggregators of Information on the Web, e.g., Google Reader, etc.--- This is a basic tool for assembling information from a variety of blogs, wiki, websites, news, etc. These tools are designed so that the student can subscribe to various information feeds, tag material, organize it in folders, etc. I think it is particularly important to learn how to create standing web search strategies that allow a person to continually track information published on the Web.
  
• Tagging tools, e.g., Del.cio.us-- Strategies for organizing information is essential to keeping track of ALL the information that is available. There are particular tools to create tags, comments, etc., but it is also essential to be able to work collaboratively with others to share information through tagging.
  

Tools for Creating Web-based Content

• Content-creations tools, e.g., blogs, websites, wikis, etc.-- There are lots of tools for creating content. My focus will be primarily on the use of blogs and wikis since these are among the simplest tools. My emphasis will be on developing new blogs and wikis, commenting on other's, creating links, and so forth. Website development tools such Frontpage and Dreamweaver are two complicated to include in this course, but students will understand the basics of these tools as well.
  

Tools for Teaching

• Learning Management Systems, e.g., Moodle, WebCT, Blackboard, Sakai, etc.-- These learning management systems (LMS) are a current necessary evil even though they are very limited and are generally awkward systems that model the "lecture-multiple choice test" instructional design. Lots of good teachers have learned how to use these tools to foster student engagement, discussion and collaboration, but there are still some big limits with some of these tools.
  

Tools I have left off the list

There are many tools I have not included on the list that I will save for the last class in which I will talk about "future" tools. This is clearly a misnomer because these are today's tools, but there is too much to cover in one course. Here is my working list of future tools--

• Social Network Instruction-- See B.J. Fogg's Facebook work
  
• Video creation-- YouTube-- Teaching on YouTube
  
• Illustration and animation creation--
• Mobile learning
• Immersive learning--Second Life
• Games, simulations
• Stories-- Roger Schank's Story-Centered Curriculum
  

Open Classroom on YouTube

In various posts I have suggested that we experiment with open classrooms. Here is a discussion about an experience teaching in an open classroom.

Alexandra Juhasz, professor of media studies at Pitzer College, developed a course about YouTube using YouTube as the platform for conducting the course. She writes,

"I decided to teach a course about YouTube to better understand this recent and massive media/cultural phenomenon, given that I had been studiously ignoring it (even as I recognized its significance) because every time I went there, I was seriously underwhelmed by what I saw: interchangeable, bite-sized, formulaic videos referring either to popular culture or personal pain/pleasure."

There were really two experiments going on simultaneously in this course. First, the course itself was translated into the YouTube format. This required the course to be converted from an environment that relies a lot on text (readings, papers, even most slides in lectures have a lot of words) to video. Additionally, the classroom was open to the public and so the students and teacher could not only be observed in the classroom, but non-class members could comment about the material in the classroom. As she reflects on this experience, she comments on the impact of the open classroom, stating,

"The elite liberal arts classroom, usually (or at least ideally) depends upon an intimate and “safe” gathering of high-paying, and carefully selected students, to create a communal pedagogy. In my typical Pitzer College classroom, once doors are closed, students are asked to publicly contribute their interpretations, and sometimes personal experience or knowledge, always knowing that they are not experts, but are certainly experts-in-training. The steady construction of a confidence of voice, particularly in relaying a complex analysis, is one of the “services” we professors hope to provide. Students, often feeling vulnerable in the eyes of their classmates and their esteemed professor, are challenged to add their voices to the building dialogue, one in which they are an active, continuing member. Ever aware of the power dynamics that structure the classroom, allowing some to speak with comfort and others not, I engage in strategies to alter the “safety” of the space. Needless to say, these lofty dynamics begin to radically shift when anyone and everyone can see and also participate. During the class, students were routinely judged by critical YouTube viewers who we would never see or know, who may or may not be aware of the history of our conversations, or the subtle dynamics in the room. While access grew, the disciplining structures in place in a closed classroom (attendance, grading, community responsibility) could not insure that our outside viewers were as committed and attentive as were we. It was interesting to me to see the strength of the students’ desires to enforce the privacy of the classroom."

The comment by Juhasz correctly identifies one of the problems with creating open classrooms, but the lesson from this experiment is important. The lesson should not be that classrooms should not be open, but when and where they should be open and for what purpose. Opening classrooms beyond the immediate classroom participants needs to be done for specific purposes, not just open to the world for whatever happens. Here are some specific ways a teacher might open a classroom:

• Students are presenting projects and what feedback about their ideas from a broader audience. (Even this might be open only to people who have a specific expertise or set of interests.)
• the class is discussing a topic that is related to a current event and invites the public into this discussion.
• There is a community of interested people who work on a topic related to a classroom topic that would provide additional insight to the students in the classroom.
• The formal classroom experience is over, but students and former students are interested in continuing the course discussions informally by creating an extended learning community.
  

The point is that creating open classrooms is not an invitation to open everything up all the time. It is encouragement to think about the times and places in which both the learning in the classroom and the learning outside of the classroom would benefit from the openness.