Downes on change

This article by Stephen Downes in the Huffington Post is getting a lot of exposure. He explores personal learning environments, networks and knowledge (PLENK).

If you've been reading my blog for a while, you know exactly who Stephen is. The problem is, while there are pockets of people who are familiar with his work and actively engage in the debate sparked by his posts, there are great swathes of people who should be thinking along the lines that Stephen addresses, but don't... and have no idea who he is, either. As a result, they continue to churn out the same old same old.

The expression goes, if you do what you've always done, you'll get what you've always got. These days, with change and progress being as fast as it is, I think if you do what you've always done, the best you can possibly hope for is what you've always got, but even that will be a stretch.

Hopefully, articles like this will take the ideas into the mainstream.

On planning

The town I live in is currently being subjected to the most extensive disruptions imaginable. The centre of town is being revitalised or some such thing, so we have all manner of roadworks and diversions in place. At the very same time, BT or British Gas or someone is doing an upgrade of something or other, so there are holes all along the road past our part of town, each with a flimsy barrier around it.

We suffered with these holes all down one side of the road recently. Instead of digging one hole, or one section of holes at a time, all the holes had been dug at once. And you never saw anyone working in or near any of them.

Then we saw a bunch of people beginning to fill the holes in, and take away the barriers. "Wahey!" quoth we, "Have you finished, then?"

The response almost took our breath away.

It turns out that these chaps had been subcontracted to dig the holes in order for the work to be carried out. So they dug them all at once, because they are the hole-diggers, and that's what they do. BT/BG/whoever then never actually got as far as doing the work for whatever reason. But the time had come, according to the contractual agreement, for the hole-diggers to come and fill in the holes and take away their barriers.

They then proceeded to dig the holes on the other side of the road, where they now stand, surrounded by their flimsy little barriers, devoid of any workers. Perhaps, in a week or so, the hole-diggers will come and fill them in again and take away their barriers.

In a few weeks' time BT/BG/whoever, will finally be ready to do the work, and they will have to either dig the holes themselves, or hire someone else to do so.

The waste is utterly ridiculous.

And sadly, not unique.

I once knew a man who worked on what is now known as the O2 building, but used to be called the Millennium Dome. His job had to do with flooring. At some point in the project plan, the wiring and plumbing and such like was to have been done, after which, the concrete floors could be poured. When the time came in the project plan to pour the concrete for the floors, the wiring and/or plumbing had not yet been done, because this aspect of the project was running behind schedule. In full knowledge of this, the contractor poured the floor anyway, because that was what they had been contracted to do and this was when they were contracted to do it. When the teams were ready for the wiring/plumbing, all the flooring had to be broken up.

I don't even know how to frame my thoughts on this. I find myself goldfishing madly, going, "Surely....But... You mean..." and getting no further.

I can't understand (a) how the overall project manager can allow this happen, (b) how the contractors involved can be so shoulder-shruggingly unconcerned about the bigger picture (c) how the impact on time and cost (not to mention quality... ooh, my ex-boss would be proud - he always wanted to turn me into a project manager) can be tolerated by the commissioning client.

Stephen Downes often uses jumbo jets as an illustration of distributed knowledge in action: no one person knows how to design, build and fly a jumbo jet. Yet they are designed, built and flown... each aspect of the operation falling to an expert or team of experts. And this is a Good Thing. But when the knowledge has become so distributed that people are able to shrug their shoulders and deny ownership of the bigger picture, something surely needs to be done and butts need to be kicked somewhere along the line.

Only, who gets to do the butt kicking, if nobody is in overall control anymore?

Hmm.

On belonging

Like most people, I have a strong need to belong. To feel accepted. Like most people, I am also picky about where it is that I am accepted and by whom.

When I originally started blogging, I stood in awe of the likes of Kathy Sierra and Stephen Downes (among others). I hovered on the sidelines of the spaces they inhabited and then grew brave enough to contribute my twopenn'orth to the conversations they were having. For different reasons, neither of these two people are particularly strong on responding to blog comments - Kathy (who no longer blogs, to my knowledge) received so many comments that she was physically unable to respond to them all; Stephen believes that his readers' comments have validity in and of themselves, without needing his affirmation or validation (or so I seem to recall from somewhere... blowed if I can find where he said it). At one point, I posted something that took an opposing stance to something Stephen had said and almost fell off my chair when he spread a little link love and referred to my post in his OLDaily the next day.

It was this kind of acceptance that made me feel as if I belonged. And social media are great for this. They are such levellers. For example, to extend the Downes story for a moment, the nature of the relationship I have with Stephen has become increasingly relaxed over the years, as we have become connected in a wider range of social media spaces, to the point where we engage on personal issues as well as shared professional interests.

Switching tack for a moment, let's look at this belonging thing from a slightly different angle:

Because of a quirk of genetics, I always found it very difficult to find clothes that fitted me. I was the woman who hated clothes shopping, because after three stores full of nothing that fitted me, I began to feel like a freak. Things that fitted here, didn't close there, and things that closed there, hung like a sack everywhere else.

Then a wonderful woman called Sarah Tremellen established Bravissimo, an outlet for... well, check it out for yourself.

I don't know who developed her marketing plan, or whether she is naturally insightful, but she has formed a community for women who - like me - had to put up with all the strife that goes with being the shape that we are: quite apart from the struggle to find decent clothing, there are the assumptions about our morals and our intelligence levels, the ribald remarks, the failed attempts to conduct professional conversations with men who later wouldn't recognise your face if their lives depended on it.

I was an early adopter of Bravissimo and am a fan of just about everything about it: the decor in the stores, the defiant quotes on the walls, the professional fitting service. But most of all, I love that I can walk out of their stores feeling like a shapely woman, rather than a freak.

Recently, I was in one of their fitting rooms, when I overheard a woman in the next cubicle make a discovery: due to significant recent weight loss, she no longer fell within Bravissimo's target audience. The store no longer catered to her. She was utterly crestfallen as she said, "It looks like I'm just not a Bravissimo girl any more."

Why do I relate this story?

Because, in spite of the fact that the woman in question had achieved goal weight and all the attendant health and aesthetic benefits, in spite of the fact that she could now buy clothing from any high street store at a significantly lower price, she had effectively ousted herself from the community, and that was causing her genuine distress. And yet, one becomes a member of the Bravissimo community in the first place as a consequence of being excluded from all manner of other communities.

The difference is that Bravissimo deliberately fosters that sense of community, that sense of belonging.

As we build our learning environments and create our communication spaces, let's look for ways to foster that same sense of being part of something that make a person feel special. Something they will be reluctant to leave.

A fragmented conversation.

I confess, last night was my first conscious exposure to #lrnchat on Twitter. The theme was online learning myths. Jane Hart has captured the event nicely with this post.

It is quite a challenge to capture a cogent thought in just 140 characters! Fortunately a myth can usually be expressed quite succinctly.

Next week's theme is confessions of trainers and learners. That might be less conducive to brevity.

It's worth noting that I came to know about #lrnchat via Jane's Facebook status. It was updating with her contributions to the conversation and Donald Clark and I began to respond to her updates on Facebook. Jane invited us to join the conversation on Twitter. I did, briefly, between the various things and people that clamour for my attention of an evening.

This ties in with a question Wendy Wickham asked on Facebook about blogging:

"Question for the long-time edubloggers - is it just me or are we all getting quieter? How frequently are you posting these days?"

• My response was: "I don't blog as much as I used to. The conversation appears to have moved elsewhere... like here [Facebook], for instance!"
• Harold Jarche's response included: "Maybe life-streaming is replacing blogging for some people, but it's still a key part of my online professional communications and learning."
• Stephen Downes (after pointing out that he wasn't getting any quieter, which is true) observed: "a lot of the 'connector posts' (I link to you, you link to me, we form a chain of conversation) have moved to Twitter and Facebook, etc. Still a lot of good blog posts out there, a lot of good commentary, but they aren't tightly linked the way they used to be."

One thing I've noticed is that threads of the same conversation run through a variety of spaces. As happened with the whole lrnchat thing, I come across fragments of a conversation in one space and follow the trail to where the main body is taking place. Once there, I find and follow links to all manner of tendrils in a host of other places.

Sometimes the links are to contributions I would not have related to the subject at hand (in fact it is unlikely that the original contributor would have done so, either, in some cases), until the connection was identified by another participant. In those situations, it's a little like looking at one of those optical illusion images and only being able to see one perspective, until someone says, "No look. That's her cheek there, and that's a feather in her hair. And she's kind of looking away from you..." Suddenly it all becomes clear and you have an "Ooooh, yeah - I see it now" moment.

But the conversation is everywhere. In all the spaces at once. If I were to suddenly stop twittering or facebooking or reading blogs, I feel as if I would stand to lose a valuable strand. So, even though I have been quieter here than in the past, I feel no less engaged in the conversation.

What is your observation?

On handout mentality

Recently, I was looking at working on a project based in southern Africa. It was a very worthwhile project which would open doors to a great many people, and I was deeply excited about it. The project leader, too, was delighted to have found someone who had been born and bred in the region and had an insight into the culture and current events, and a love for its people.

However, my involvement was cut short when it transpired that the project leader expected me (and other consultants) to work pro bono.

His view was that Europe-based consultants working on Africa-based projects do so as an act of charity. That's just the way it is. Didn't we know this? He simply could not imagine how rich westerners could be so churlish as to expect payment from poor Africans. I suspect this was the reason he sought out consultants in Europe rather than trying to find local people to work on the project in the first place.

This dependency mentality is an unfortunate side-effect of the big-hearted work of charities and aid organisations.

Hear me out.

I know many people who have gone to do charity work in poor communities and have found the people there unabashed to ask for (even demand in some cases) items of clothing or other personal possessions. They are so accustomed to rich westerners who 'give them stuff' that it has become an expectation.

It is one way of ensuring that these communities never achieve self sufficiency. Never ascend the steep slopes of our so-called flat world.

I would suggest that, instead of simply deluging these communities with our cast-offs and hand me downs, we should be looking to the longer term. This means engaging with community leaders to draw up a progamme by means of which the community is weaned off its dependency on external assistance. This means leavening the handouts with education, with skills training, and - over a period of time - shifting the balance, so that the community becomes increasingly capable of providing for their own needs. I would expect that, over time, the demand would be for less clothing, more manufacturing skills; less food, more agricultural skills; less this is how it is done, more how do you think we could improve on this. Fewer fish. More fishing rods. (I am not blind to the fact that fundamental needs such as food and clothing are a long way from learning consultancy, but I believe the principle holds because they are informed by the same ingrained practices and expectations).

Until such time as they reach a point where even the education and training are things they are able to do for themselves... and better than any outsider not steeped in the culture and the vagaries of the landscape.

Until they reach a point where, when they identify the need for external expertise they do not yet have (a) they are able to hire such a provider at a fair rate of pay and (b) the external provider's brief includes the mentoring of local people to take up the slack when the contract is over.

This is enablement. This is sharing, rather than giving away in an act of charity, which always puts the giver in a position of superiority over the receiver. This harks back to a previous post about Stephen Downes's giving v sharing argument.

I would have gladly mentored a few southern Africans and worked myself out of a job over time, but in the meantime I expect to be paid for my work. I have bills to pay and a family to feed... and I can't bear the thought of my people being so disempowered as to be dependent on handouts.

What's your earliest memory?

During a break in yesterday's workshop, a group of us were talking about memory.

I would love to engage Dror one-to-one in discussion about the role of memory in learning, but we don't occupy any of the same spaces. My own view is that he overplays its significance in the light of the tools we now have at our disposal to do our remembering for us. I'm more persuaded of the Siemens/Downes connectivism view that learning is about making connections. Dror appears to use memory tests as an assessment of learning during his research. I'm not so sure about this.

Look at this conversation on my FB status last night and this morning.

As a quick aside, I want to highlight the lovely mix of responses and the fact that social and shared-interest friends are engaging with me and - by extension - each other.

In case it isn't clear, Sharon Clark (who is a social friend with whom I do not ordinarily discuss learning - although this might change!) says:

Knowledge is now defined as knowing where to find information not knowing information. Personally I don't think that is a bad thing. It is impossible to know everything about everything, but if you know where to find what you need to know does it really matter that the information is stored on a server somewhere rather than in your head?

The big problem with the younger generation is that they aren't being taught how to discriminate between dodgy sources of information and good sources.

I could have written those words myself. In fact I have written very similar words on more than one occasion.

But going back to the subject of early memory. Over the years, I have come to realise that my earliest memories go back far further than most. I'm sure we all remember a lot more than we realise and, as Dror would tell us, the problem is not memory, it's retrieval.

I have related some of my early memories to my mother. Situations and conversations I remember with absolute clarity, only to discover that I couldn't even have been three years old at the time.

The common thread for me is senses. One memory involves drinking orange squash out of plastic (Hart, for other South Africans of similar vintage) cups with little handles on the side. I remember that we were standing in the kitchen at the time: my Mom, my Dad and me. The layout of the kitchen is very clear in my mind, as is our relative positions. I asked my mother why her drink was a different colour from mine. I remember her explaining that it just seemed so because the light came through the different coloured cups. I have several other memories of the same period. Not just snapshots, but whole scenes. Every single one centres on a sensory experience. Sight. Sound. Touch. But above all, taste and smell. I remember the smell of creosote on my skin in one situation, the taste of raw sweet potatoes in another, the taste of condensed milk and the smell of the medicine it was disguising when I was being treated for tick-bite fever.

Have I been sub(un?)consciously meta-tagging my experiences all my life with sensory labels? If, as I suspect, I am synaesthetic, this would make perfect sense. Certain sensory experiences bring memories flooding back to me with such clarity that I might as well be back in that moment.

A certain smell always takes me back to being 15 years old and watching Jesus of Nazareth for the first time. I won't go into detail (it's quite gross), but the full intensity of my emotional response to the movie is just an inhalation away - even though my opinion of the movie and my reactions to it have changed dramatically since then.

I'm fairly confident that the role of memory in learning - and life - has laready changed and will continue to change. I wonder if this, in turn, will change the way we remember.

Another birthday tribute: Stephen Downes

Following hot on the heels of Harold Jarche, who lives in the same town, Stephen Downes scores his half century today.

Stephen writes short, sharp posts in his OLDaily blog, linking to all manner of interesting things across the web. I have often referred to him as an aggregator with skin on.

On his Half an Hour blog, he indulges his own interest in one subject with each post.

I have been reading Stephen's blogs since I first discovered the world of blogging, at the recommendation of Mark Berthelemy, and the word 'prolific' comes to mind. Even though I have been reading his material for a relatively long time, I still don't feel that I can say that I know Downes the man. I do gain occasional glimpses, and he never loses the capacity to surprise me. For example, did you know that he is a dab hand at woodwork? And, if you read his blogs, you can't fail to have noticed that he is a skilled photographer. He is also a sports fan with an appreciation of rugby union (earning him major kudos in my estimation!). He also once ran for political office.

Stephen has one of those minds that sees the interrelations between things in ways that are simply beyond me. This makes arguing with him a daunting prospect. Even on those occasions when I know with every fibre of my being that his stance on a certain point is wrong, I also know that I will simply not be able to put together a sufficiently cogent argument to explain why this is the case.

I have heard the recordings of many of his presentations, which never fail to hold my interest. On one occasion, I thought I might have the pleasure of finally meeting him face to face, when I learned that he was presenting at the Learning Technologies conference in 2008. I felt somewhat cheated to learn that he was delivering his presentation via a video link... especially since I had finally managed to win a game of Scrabulous against him, having had my butt handed to me on several previous occasions (we have stopped playing since the whole silliness with Hasbro has resulted not only in a name-change of the online version, but changes in the rules that have taken the magic out of the game for both of us).

I forget who it was who said we should try always to be the stupidest person at the table... that way you learn more. I am delighted that media such as blogging afford me the opportunity to be at the same virtual table as Stephen. I acknowledge unequivocally (and not for the first time) that he is wa-ay cleverer than I am, even though he oftens seems to reject the notion that one person is cleverer than another. Heck, Stephen is probably cleverer than most people, so I'm in excellent company!

He is currently in Australia, on a speaking tour, as far as I know. I'm not sure if this means celebrations will be postponed until he returns home, but I'm sure the occasion will not go unmarked Down Under. They may well be blowing the froth off a few tonight!

Is there room for disagreement?

In the midst of the furore that has resulted from Saul Carliner's article on the longevity of instructor-led learning (which, incidentally, I think is best addressed by Stephen Downes), I find myself being corrected by Donald Clark in respect of my understanding of informal learning. I was a little puzzled because the comment didn't read like Donald Clark's usual stuff - far too polite ;o). Turns out that this is an altogether different Donald Clark!

What I said, in a comment on Tony Karrer's post, was:

The assumption seems to be made that informal learning = social media.

This is not the case. Let me say emphatically that informal learning has constituted the bulk of workplace learning for years. According to which research you read, something between 70%-85% of what people learn, they learn by asking the bloke at the next desk. Okay, he might not really be at the next desk. He might in fact be on the other end of the phone, working for the helpdesk. He might be your husband (who is often my first port of call when I have a software question). He might be an ex-colleague. He might work two floors down. He might be the author of a helpful article you read in a magazine.

And yes, he might be a she. I used 'he' in the generic sense for ease of expression.

This all qualifies as informal learning.

In fact, reading someone's doctoral thesis also constitutes informal learning if it isn't a prescribed part of an accredited programme you are following.

Informal simply means that the learner is in charge of what, when, how, how fast, how often, how much, by which route, etc. Formal means that someone else has made those decisions and the learner has to comply.

Clark responded with:

Karyn's comment that informal learning is "something between 70%-85% of what people learn" and "Informal simply means that the learner is in charge of what, when, how, how fast, how often, how much, by which route, etc." is not really true.

The studies generally make only two distinctions when discussing learning in the workplace: 1) formal learning is directed by learning professionals and 2) informal learning is basically everything else.

Informal learning (at least in the studies) is composed of what the learner themselves choose to learn and the learning that is directed by their managers or an experienced coworker. Thus we basically have three types of learning:
1. Formal is structured by trainers, instructors, etc. and accounts for 15-30% of what people learn.

2. Non-Formal is structured by managers or coworkers and accounts for the part of the remaining 70%-85%.

3. Informal is structured by the learners themselves and is also included in the remaining 70%-85%.

I confess, I had never even heard of 'non-formal' learning. Nor do I see a reason to draw a line between it and informal learning. In fact, I contend that the whole notion of informal learning defies the drawing of firm lines at all.

I would say that my definition lines up rather more closely with what Jay Cross has to say on the subject. However, if I am wrong, I am happy to be corrected. What do you think?

Since my readership is not particularly wide, please consider directing your own readers here to contribute to the discussion. I would like to capture as wide a range of perspectives as possible, since this is an area I am writing about in my dissertation.

Choice

It's a Saturday afternoon. My husband has gone to the office to do something or other to a server - as IT types are inclined to do every now and then. My elder son is washing and vacuuming his Dad's car in keeping with a Christmas commitment. My younger son is playing World of Warcraft (he can now wield two-handed axes for those in the know). So I am pottering around online.

One of the things I did was to check out the updates on my Facebook groups. In the process, I visited the group: People for Replacing the Public Education Model, and I came across a link to this post from Stephen Downes. I'm puzzled as to how I missed it when it first appeared.

It was a reproduction of a magazine article and as such a break from the normally concise blogging style of OLDaily. It captured my interest because of its first person narrative style. I love stories.

Anyhoo, in the article, Stephen's key point in respect of education can be wrapped up in one word: 'choice'. My own choices of subject in high school were severely limited because I attended a school that prided itself on its standing as an academic institution. Drama (my great passion at the time) was unavailable as a subject. It was purely an extracurricular pursuit. Music was available only on a peripatetic basis, although I seem to remember that an exception was made just once for a phenomenally talented student through whom the school stood to gain kudos. Likewise art was not officially on the menu beyond grade 8.

My cousin, in an entirely different part of the country, had to apply for special permission to break the strict zoning policy in order to attend a school that offered the subjects she wanted. And permission was only granted because she was a straight A student.

There is a private school in the UK which boasts a body of students drawn from all over the world. These students are affored the opportunity to take their home language as a subject for their final exams... whatever it may be. A teacher will be sourced for that child. I learned this from a friend who worked at the school. In fact, it was through the school that I sourced a Swedish tutor for my family. I'm willing to bet that none of the state schools offer the myriad non-native English speaking immigrants that luxury.

A common thread here is that of high achievement and/or money. Rules were bent for those who are likely to produce top marks or those with means. Mediocre students need not apply. Students from average income families or less need not apply.

What message does this convey to our students and, by extension, to their families? Why should an average student be denied opportunities? Why should money be a deciding factor as to what a child may and may not study at school?

My husband and I have made it a policy to expose our children to as wide a range of hobbies and activities as possible. After all, how are they ever to know they have a talent for abseiling or a love of ice hockey (for example), if they never get to give it a go? The wider we cast our net, the greater the chance that each of our sons will find the thing(s) that light the spark in their eyes. Children whose lives are small and narrow, may wind up living out their days in desultory ritual, and we see altogether too many such people in our daily dealings.

Sadly, the education model has a way to go before it is able to accommodate this broad approach. I look forward to the day when education offers divergence rather than convergence: an ever increasing breadth of experience, rather than a whittling down process. There's plenty of time for whittling down once you know for certain what it is you want to focus on. I maintain that the teen years are too early to make that choice.

Did someone say 'Dream on'?

Sigh.

Stephen Downes: the monkeysphere

Stephen and I approach things from very divergent starting points, and I am simply not the polymath he is, yet we seem to share many hot buttons.

In this post, he vents his spleen about the current economic downturn.

Somewhere (I forget where) I heard that Stepehn has taught himself the art of 'one take' writing. The result of this is the odd typo and malapropism. The thing is, with his sense of humour, one can never be quite sure that the malapropisms, at least, are not intentional. For example, in this post, he refers to 'the idyll rich' which conjures up a wonderful image of people living in let-them-eat-cake-land, with absolutely no grounding in the reality of the life we lesser mortals face every day.

If I were to sum up the post, which would be to oversimplify it appallingly (so don't take my word for it), I would say that the Downes is looking at the situation and telling us: We've got to care about each other, dammit!

I concur. In fact, one of the reasons most people prefer to interact with me in small doses, is my propensity for climbing onto that soapbox at the least provocation.

The thing is that that much caring can be too much for a human mind to bear. Perhaps we have taken refuge in the monkeysphere in an act of self-preservation, in much the same way as the mind has the ability to take refuge in catatonia, or to shut off certain intolerable memories.

Perhaps.

But we ought at least to give it a shot, no?

LPOD - giving v sharing

Today's learning point arises out of a recording of a conference, but I'm blowed if I know which conference! I can't even remember who Twittered the link (I did try to find it again, honest). It seems to have been attended largely by secondary school teachers.

Update 26/02/09: Alec Couros advises that the presentation formed part of his graduate course and points to this post for further info.

Anyhoo, I picked up this link to a presentation by Stephen Downes.

He made a point that resonated completely with me, even though I had never formulated the thought quite so coherently.

He explained that communities share knowledge, they don't give it away. He explored the difference between the two. Giving something away free of charge as a philanthropic or charitable act implies a position of superiority to the giver over the recipient, whereas sharing takes place between equals. So giving is a downward/vertical action, whereas sharing is a horizontal action.

I like this.

In much the same way - as an attendee (delightfully known as 'plugusin') pointed out - to convince someone of something implies a downward action, an intimation of the superiority of one position over another.

As Harold Jarche put it during a recent Skype conversation, much of the time, when I make contraversial statements, I am looking for engagement. Nothing annoys me more than people muttering to themselves about how wrong you are. For goodness' sake, speak up. Your view carries weight, too. Let's discuss this in open forum and come to a conclusion... together. That's the whole point of social media... isn't it?

Science of learning

I have been ruminating over this for some days, and if I don't get this post done now, it's going to eat at me for the next several days, too - days which I really need to focus my attention on something else, so here goes...

I confess that I had never heard of Itiel Dror, until I read Clive's post and Stephen's rejoinder. Perhaps this is a sign of my ignorance, since Clive’s post indicates that he is a man of significant standing in the e-learning community in the UK. Be that as it may, this is an interesting conversation, and one that needs to see more of the light of day, since my view is that the field of corporate e-learning employs a worrying number of people who have no concept of the learning process or interest in the learner experience.

There seems to be a large number of immigrants from instructor-led training or formal education. Teachers who have completed a PGCE will certainly have received some teaching on the learning process (although the validity of some of that teaching may be brought into question – particularly on the subject of learning styles). Trainers, on the other hand, are drawn from a variety of backgrounds. They have often entered their field as a consequence of subject matter expertise rather than teaching skills or an understanding of the learning process.

I remember when "computing" in business (not yet called IT) was a field in its infancy. Recruiters were pillaging maths courses at university, enticing undergrads away with the promise of a good salary and the chance to "earn while you learn". They even did the rounds of some of the better performing high schools and made offers to top maths students. The connection was made that in order to programme computers in the very late 70s, you needed to understand algorithms which were a mathematical function. Ergo, maths whizzes were the answer. Seems logical – I wonder if it proved to be an accurate assumption. My point is that the demands of the industry and the lack of historical human resources meant that people were proactively sourced from supposedly related fields and thrown in at the deep end, where they embarked on a programme of informal learning that never seemed to stabilise.

I wonder if that isn't what we're seeing here. People have been brought into learning design from hypothetically related fields. They don't necessarily come with an understanding of learning or even an interest in the experience of the learner at the end of the day.

Those who have had some teaching around the learning process often come with views similar to those that Dror seems to be expressing. There would seem to me to be a generous pinch of behaviourism and teacher-centredness in Dror’s view of the world – or at least in my understanding of Clive’s understanding of it. I’m certainly not well-versed in neuroscience, but I have read that the notion that specific parts of the brain can be reliably and consistently associated with specific tasks is being challenged (Stephen makes an excellent point when he refers to the incontinence of older people). All the points that reinforce this view strike a harsh discord with me – although I confess that I have no rational basis for saying so, other than other articles I have read which I find more believable, but which may just as easily be wrong. Also, there is increasing concern that our growing understanding of the brain brings us no nearer to understanding the mind. I posted on this a while back, strangely enough.

I would echo Stephen’s assertion that there is “a distinction between knowing how something works and knowing how best to use it”

I would humbly suggest that, in addition to the two suggested “strategies to reduce the risk of learners experiencing cognitive overload” (namely: “provide less information” or “take much more care about how this information is communicated”), there might be a third: provide the learner with a means to access the information on an ad hoc JIT basis, thereby reducing the pressure to process all the information at any one time. So instead of having an e-learning course which aims to communicate in one hit everything the learner will ever need to know about a subject, you have a searchable, interactive online resource which will provide the learner with both context for the information and access to the information itself at the point of need. Even better if you can couple that together with the facility to put learners in touch with one another (and possibly even an acknowledged expert) so that they can process the information in their own time in their own way.

I am so glad that Stephen also raised the question: “is it better for the teacher to present the material already grouped?” That was my first thought, too, when reading this part of the summary. This is something that exercises me, and I am long way from having a definitive answer. When you’re in a classroom setting, you can facilitate a session where the learners group the information themselves and compare their groupings. There is bound to be a variety, and one learner may be inspired by another’s grouping - recognising a more effective framework than their own. However, when designing an online resource, there is a bit of a fine line. An online learner is usually alone at the time of accessing the material, and will often only have (at best) asynchronous contact with other learners. Many of these will need more support than a complete lack of grouping would provide – not all learners are totally independent!

What I try to do is to build in a variety of routes in to the material: via this grouping structure, via that grouping structure, or direct access (via search) to a specific piece of information. The trick is to come up with the right groupings, since you can’t possibly cover them all. On a previous project, unwisely following the client’s instructions I created a resource structured according to given criteria. We tried to explain to the client that this would be a barrier to the user, but we presented an ineffective argument and were unsuccessful. My fault. Only when it was finished and being tested did it become plain to the client what we had been trying to say all along – even better, they now thought it was their idea. Free of charge, I spent a weekend restructuring the resource along more intuitive lines. Much better.

I like the idea of a synchronous (f2f or online) session which provides context and introduces the resource, whereafter users can interrogate the resource as they see fit.

The thing is: I work in a corporate environment. I am not bound by curriculum and exams. Usually the adoption of new policies, procedures, tools, can be handled through performance management – so much more negotiable than national curriculum with a set syllabus. How this approach would translate into a school under the current system goes beyond my ability to speculate…

Academic writing blues

I am experiencing enormous frustrations with the constraints of academic writing. See my Ardent Student post on this. I would love to hear from others as to how you've coped with this. Doug? Stephen? George? You guys are so much further down the road than me, how did you get there without being stifled?

My academic heritage

Stephen Downes and Wendy Wickham have both written posts about the way in which their childhood homes influenced their attitudes to learning. I thought this would make a good meme, so I'm going to do one too, but I have to warn you - it isn't going to be a pleasant read. If you're reading this, consider yourself tagged!

I am the product of a typically dysfunctional background. My parents divorced when I was 6, and fought about money from that moment until I was an adult. I spent the next four years living in some rather unseemly places, witnessing events that I only came to understand very much later. My parents were very young when I made an unexpected (and, in my father's case, unwelcome) appearance in their lives, and had no idea how to engage with a child. I remember being very confused around the issue of days of the week. Such a simple thing, but no-one had ever taken the time to explain to me that there was a pattern to these things. I thought my parents decided each day whether they would go to work and I would go to school. I can remember everyone laughing at me in class when I asked a child (presumably on a Monday) if he had been to school the previous day and, when he said he hadn't, I replied, "Nor did I"

The sorry area we lived in after my parents' separation boasted a school with a gifted and talented stream. Fortunately, I was bright enough to be included in this, and for four years, was exposed to some of the best teaching I have ever encountered, until we moved to a happier socio-economic environment in an area with no G&T stream.

As a child, I never had any sense that I mattered to anyone. I realise now that I must have done, but adulthood is not the time to realise that your parents love/loved you. It was only when I was well into my adult years that I realised that I had had an unhappy childhood and, while it was nowhere near the order of some children, I can state categorically that misery is a corrosive force that eats into every aspect of a child's life.

The most significant periods of my childhood were spent in my maternal grandparents' home, in the company of my mother's siblings and their respective families.

Language was a recurring theme in my childhood. My maternal grandmother was an English and History teacher. She sighed over our lack of respect for grammar, and gently taught us when to say "you and me" and when to say "you and I". To this day it sets my teeth on edge when newsreaders and television/radio presenters get this one wrong. She also encouraged the use of one entirely apt word, rather than three approximations.

Most of the adults in my extended family did cryptic crossword puzzles, and clues would be discussed during the course of the day. There must have been a way to avoid being sucked in, because my sister doesn't give a fig for such things, but I didn't spot that escape hatch, and I now buy some newspapers purely for the crossword puzzle. England is a great place for a crossword addict. During the time I spent in the US, I was frustrated not to be able to find "proper" cryptic crossword puzzles.

My grandfather was a colonialist and a tyrant. During Sunday lunch, we would be forced to sit in utter silence as he listened to the BBC World newscast, which seemed an hour long - although it was probably less than a quarter of that. Should we dare to speak, he would turn on us and roar, "Ssh! Absolutely ssh!" I grew up associating current affairs with repression.

Politics were a feature, too, but a thorny one. My grandfather vocally supported a poor excuse of a party called the New Republic Party. He simply assumed that everyone else in family supported the same party, and no-one had the courage to tell him otherwise. We would listen to him fulminating, and I just felt in my heart that something was wrong with his reasoning. Since none of the adults took issue with him, I was confused. My mother was pretty liberal for a white South African in the 60s and 70s, believing in equal rights for all. Although I came to realise years later that she was personally rather racist, she didn't allow that to inform her politics, and she certainly raised us not to judge a person on the colour of their skin. In the typical last bastion attack of a groundless racist, someone once asked my mother, "What will you do when your daughter brings home a black husband one day?" to which my mother replied, "I have absolutely no idea what I will do when my daughter brings home a husband of any description." (As it turned out, the husband I eventually took home was white-but-foreign. My mother welcomed him with open arms and delighted tears.)

I was packed off to boarding school at the age of 11. This effectively meant that my mother was no longer a factor in my formal education. I had to take ownership of everything myself. No-one checked my homework, no-one nagged me to study for tests, no-one helped me establish boundaries and priorities. When the day scholars' parents were having parents' evenings, the boarders were either ignored or called in to account for themselves to the head teacher in person. Boy, oh boy, did I develop a chip on my shoulder and learn to stand up for myself! And for anyone else I thought was being subjected to injustice. On a school trip, I once saw a middle-aged white shopowner lay into a black teenaged shoplifter with a wooden pole, and my teacher had to bodily drag me away as I screamed hysterical abuse at the man. I was so affected by what I had seen that I was physically ill. Remembering the incident now, my bile rises again - all the more so, because I was the only one, the ONLY ONE who was upset by the incident. Everyone else felt that justice was being served. I was labelled as having an overdeveloped sense of justice. I assume that must have come from my mother, even though she never had the courage to reveal it to her father.

I felt abandoned in my schooling, and, looking back now, I think it was justified. I was left to fight many battles alone that should have been either fought for me, or fought as a joint effort. My mother was crippled by the load of single parenthood and had no idea how to cope with the issues that arose. So she abdicated.

My passion for learning was something that grew out of the fact that I stumbled upon the field of training way back in 1989, and discovered that I had a knack for it.

Contrasting my experience with those of Stephen and Wendy, I am ever more convinced that parents play the key role in establishing a culture for learning. Hence the abundance of National Geographics and Time magazines in our home today. Hence the open channels of communication with teachers. Hence the subscription to history channels, nature channels, science channels. Hence the visits to museums. Hence the overflowing bookshelves. The links to online resources that appear in my children's Inboxes. The hiring of movies that relate to topics being covered at school. The daily dinner times at the table, TV off. The frank and open discussions about anything and everything.

And, above all, hence the frequency with which our children are told/shown that they matter, that they are loved, that their ambitions will be taken seriously and that every effort will be made to help realise them.

I know this hasn't been a happy or a comfortable story to read, but I think it provides a suitable contrast with the very positive accounts I've linked to. If anything, the very negativity of my experience reinforces the importance of creating a home environment in which our children can flourish. It is also vital to realise that we can rise above our circumstances. We don't have to adopt a victim mentality and regard our lives as having been done to us.

So what is your story? What was your formative experience of learning?

Consciousness of knowledge

A few recent events and exchanges have got me thinking about levels of consciousness associated with knowledge (I've probably misused semantics in some places, so forgive me):

Knowing that you know - conscious knowledge
When you have gone through a specific learning experience to gain knowledge, you know you have that knowledge. I know that the orders of operation associated with algebra can be summarised in the acronym BODMAS (or any of several variations on that theme). I remember learning it. I remember arguing with my son's Year 5 maths teacher when she said "We don't use that system, here" - as if it were an optional extra. I have taught it countless times when reaching the point of formulas in spreadsheet training. I use it myself whenever I create a formula in a spreadsheet package. I know BODMAS. I know that I know it, I know why I know it, and I know when to use it.

Not knowing that you know - unconscious knowledge
I have never had one of those real eye-opening moments like Geena Davis in Long Kiss Goodnight when she discovers to her horror that she knows how to assemble a sniper rifle. But on a smaller scale, there are moments when we put our knowledge into practise, surprising ourselves that we possessed the knowledge in the first place. A friend's Dalmatian bitch recently produced 8 puppies. They were her first litter, yet she ate their faeces (I know, I know) as she would in the wild to hide their existence from predators. Although we are no longer so reliant on our instincts, we have reserves of knowledge we don't even know about until they are needed.

Knowing that you don't know - conscious ignorance, part 1 - the foundation for learning
It is when you know that you don't know that you ask questions - and hopefully pay attention to the answers. Unless of course, you "don't know, don't care" - which is another matter again. I know that I don't know enough about html. I am having vocabulary-expanding trouble trying to use the new Blogger feature to upgrade my blog template while retaining my hard-won widgets. I am pestering everyone who might be able to help with a myriad questions, but have so far made precious little progress! I know that I am still learning about connectivism, so I ask questions of people like George and Stephen and will my brain to understand their responses. I read the exchange on the Connectivism Conference Moodle and form views on the messages posted there, filtering the new information through what (I think) the experts are saying.

Don't know, don't care - conscious ignorance, part 2 - the nursery of bigotry and prejudice
Someone once told me she had won a trip to South Africa. Congratulating her, I asked her where she was going, so that I could recommend a few sights to take in. "Uganda," she replied. When I told her that Uganda was not only not in South Africa, it was a long distance away, she shrugged and said airily, "It's all Africa isn't it?" Don't know, don't care. My husband calls this "I've made up my mind, don't confuse me with facts!"

Don't know that you don't know - unconscious ignorance
I'm probably as guilty of this as anyone I might point a finger at. I don't know what I don't know. Not realising what great holes there are in my knowledge, I might make confident, categorical statements about situations/events/whatever that are patently untrue. I notice this particularly in my teenage sons - they are in that fortunate stage of their lives when they still know everything ;-) When someone points out the flaw in my statement, or draws my attention to some information that contradicts what I think, I have a choice: either I can move into knowing that I don't know, or I can go to don't know, don't care.

I'm sure there are other categories, too, and it's useful to know where your user audience is when you're designing a learning solution, since this will impact the solution on many levels.

How do I get my blog to Explode?

Thanks to Stephen Downes, I found Explode. I thought it looked like an interesting way to encounter like-minded people. So I duly created my profile, and I've made a few friends - some of whom have befriended me in return. Since then I've noticed that some people are Exploding onto their blogs - that there is either a widget or a container on the blog linking to Explode. The good folks behind Explode (and Elgg) have created the means to do this.

If you have "MySpace, Livejournal, Wordpress.com, Vox, or similar" you go for one option. If you own your own blog, use Movable Type, Wordpress, an account on an Elgg system, or run your own custom site, you go for the other. So I have a Blogger blog - which kind is that? I've tried both options, adding the code to the sidebar of my template, but nothing changes.

Aargh! The frustrations of tech-ignorance!