Labels, uniforms, style wars and the bully mentality

I recently posted about my 13 year old son's repeated experience of "happy slapping". A subsequent conversation with the school raised the question of uniforms and labels. The school my sons attend have well over 2500 children enrolled, divided into 6 halls or sub-schools. Many of the teachers have never met each other. Some may well not even have heard of each other. Unlike other British schools, the school does not dictate a uniform. Also unlike other schools, all staff members - teachers, administration, support staff - are known by their first names. The stated reasoning behind this is respect. Respect for the individual, no matter what their role in the community.

It's a wonderful ideal. I wish it worked!

When I spoke to my son's tutor, she indicated that there was a strong likelihood that he was being victimised because of his appearance. This seems very likely. She expressed her regret at this fact, stating that the school taught respect for the individual's right to self-expression - hence the lack of uniform.

I felt compelled to disabuse her. While the school may not impose a uniform, the children have established their own dress code. It is a very clearcut means by which to categorise themselves and one another and each group has a name. It isn't far from gang mentality. The enmity between the groups occasionally escalates to violence, but usually takes the form of verbal expressions of loathing and disgust.

So what are these uniforms? I'll do the best I can (many of the links below are to flickr files - I'm not sure if you'll be able to see them without an account, but I wasn't sure about the rules regarding the reproduction of the photos in my post, so I decided to play it safe):

Chavs. This is the group with the worst reputation for violence. They dress in tracksuits, in the case of the boys, usually worn with the hoods up. The boys wear their hair cropped short, with peaked caps far back on their heads - the peaks pointing almost straight up. The girls' tracksuits are often in pastel colours with a slogan across the butt. They are likely to tie their hair in a tight pony tail - often high on their heads, with a great deal of make-up. They have a predeliction for "blingage" oversized gold jewellery. They often hail from the rougher estates. They listen to rap, hip-hop, R&B. There preference for the Burberry brand has been said to have done the brand harm.

Goths. These kids usually dress entirely in black, and have a rather eccentric taste in clothing. They have a preference for oversized boots with rubber platform heels. They are likely to dye their hair pitch black or a bright colour like red or purples. Both boys and girls are likely to wear lashings of black eyeliner - not necessarily just around their eyes, either. They are likely to listen to death metal music, and are attracted to "dark" experiences and spirituality. There can be associations with vampirism.

Emos. Think goth-meets-punk. Lots of eccentric combinations. Emo boys are likely to have long fringes that hang down over their eyes. Two-tone dye-jobs are also a distinct possibility. Emo being short for emotional, emos are said to be big on self-harming. Boys wear their jeans very low slung - usually well below their butts. Girls may wear trousers, leggings or ripped tights with short skirts over the top, fingerless gloves, thumb rings, black or mismatched nail varnish. Once again there is a tendency towards black eyeliner for both boys and girls, and a pair of ceramic hair straighteners are a must. Music of preference: rock such as My Chemical Romance

Scenes. This is a subset or breakaway group from emos. Not into self-harming (not that all - or even most - emos really are!). The dress is slightly toned down and the hats are different, although you'd probably have to be a teen to tell them apart. Both girls and boys wear their jeans slung low with underwear on display. Note - this does not mean thongs (g-strings) - that would be chavvy!

Grebos. This is apparently a contraction of "greasy b*st*rds" and applies to fans of indie rock and post punk musical styles. Grebos may opt for dreadlocks, boots and baggy clothes and funky hats. Sometimes also referred to as "grungies". These folks are roundly despised by chavs. Just seeing a grebe walk past is often enough to get their blood boiling.

Trendies. These, my sons tell me, are people who wear good quality mainstream clothes. According to them, my husband and I fall into this category. I thought this was a good thing, until I read what the urban dictionary had to say about them! I certainly don't relate to any of the stereotypes. They listen to mainstream pop, read magazines and watch popular television programmes.

And these are the uniforms in evidence in my sons' school - so much for the no-uniform approach. My older son's style of dress is muted enough not to attract undue attention. He tends to be grebo/scene. My younger son, however, achieves some fairly outlandish looks some days. This obviously riles some kids. On four occasions he has had some minor violence inflicted on him by boys he has referred to as chavs. Take any teenager and stand them on a street corner. Ask them to identify the kids that walk past, and they'll tell you without pausing: grebe, goth, chav, emo... Never mind what the kids might have worn yesterday or might wear tomorrow. It's what they're wearing today, right now that, if the "right" combination of factors comes into play, could result in abuse or injury.

I never expected the day that I would think with longing of uniforms, but they are great levellers. Kids from the poorest homes can look as smart as kids from the richest and the punishment inflicted on the parents' bank balances is less severe! Policemen, soldiers, nurses, pilots, firemen, store assistants and countless others wear uniforms as they go about their duties - they seem to manage to express their individuality in other ways.

I'm not really sure that I've had a complete change of heart on this - the proof of the pudding would be my reaction if they decided to introduce a uniform at the school. But for now, because his chosen dress code is making my son a target, I'm wavering...

Their space

It's about time someone produced something like this! To quote from the blurb "Their Space: Education for a digital generation draws on qualitative research with children and polling of parents to counter the myths obscuring the true value of digital media."

Online safety - whose responsibility is it?

Interesting post on Linda's blog (nod to Vicki Davis for the link) about online safety. Linda takes issue with the ruling of judge who declared that it is the parents' responsibility to teach their children online safety. At this point, I think I agree more with the judge.

Linda lists five groups of stakeholders who she says need to take ownership of and be held accountable for Internet safety:

• Industry companies & organizations
  
• Governments & regulators
  
• Law enforcement & oversight boards
  
• Individuals & families
  
• Schools & other educational resources.
  

I agree that all these parties carry a responsibility. However, my view of the balance of responsibility is a little different. Linda likens the judge's ruling in this case as being on a par with holding parents responsible for the traffic deaths of their children, saying: "If someone hands a 14-year-old keys to a faulty car and says “go have fun” down a poorly maintained freeway that doesn’t warn of steep curves would society blame the parents for the ensuing crash?"

If the child had been properly educated by his parents and to a lesser extent, his community and his teachers, he would not take those keys, any more than he would have taken candy from a stranger as a pre-schooler. He would know it was both wrong and dangerous. He would have too much respect for his own safety, and for the safety of others to take such a risk.

While I support the concept of due care on the part of manufacturers, let's bear in mind that they are simply producing a product. The manufacturers of the car in the analogy above are not expected to shoulder responsibility when a child takes the wheel.

There is a worrying increase in reliance on regulations to protect our children and an abdication of parental responsibility. I have no desire to live in a society that is completely regulated "for my own good". Too Orwell, too Equilibrium.

One of the primary needs of every human being is safety/shelter. Sadly, we have lost much of the notion of community that existed in previous generations. However, a community of sorts still exists in the extended family and the school. Until I am convinced otherwise, I maintain that it is this community, most especially the parents, upon whom the onus rests to meet all a child's primary needs.

Linda makes the point that consumers have the right to be informed of the risks associated with any new product or feature. I agree. However, I would like to point out that many parents (and sadly many teachers) can't be bothered to make the effort to access the information that is available to them. For many of us, as long as the children are being quiet and aren't demanding our attention, we are content to let them get on with it. It is all too often only when the wheels fall off that parents sit up, take notice and look for someone to blame.

People like Vicki Davis expend an enormous amount of energy teaching children about netiquette and safety online. It is a tragedy that her efforts are so notable - they should be the norm.

XplanaZine: Math and Mentos: How E-Learning Can Learn from Numb3rs and YouTube

A worthwhile read from XplanaZine today.

Happy slapping ISN'T happy!

Note: this is a rant!

This morning I was on my way to the office when my phone rang. It was my 13 year old son. He should have been at school. He had been on his way to school. In fact he was almost there when two boys on a bicycle emptied a 6 pint bottle of milk over his head as they passed. Of course, there was no way he could go to school in that state, so he turned around and headed home, and he had phoned me to inform me of this fact.

This is the third time that this child has been targeted in one of these random acts that all seem to form part of the culture known as "happy slapping". Originally, the idea was to walk up to some random stranger and slap them, while friends recorded the event on their mobile phones. Hilarious, I don't think! Whatever endorphins that act released obviously became very attractive, because it has now become de rigeur to commit acts of minor violence upon random strangers even when there is nobody there to record the event. Somehow this seems worse to me.

This is the third time my son has been the victim of one of these "attacks". The first one took place when he was on his way to a guitar lesson. A kid punched him in the face as he cycled past, leaving him with a swollen, bruised cheekbone. The second time was on his way to school, when a child smacked him upside the head.

On the first occasion, we reported the matter to the police, who were very kind and very efficient but of course, nothing transpired - they have bigger fish to fry! The second occasion was different. My son recognised the child from school, so we escalated the matter through school channels and the perpetrator was given community service. He was puzzled, since, as he put it, he was only "having a bit of fun", and thought it unresaonable of my son to take exception to that.

With his eyes full of milk, my son was unable to tell whether he knew the perpetrators today, and among close to 3000 children in 6 separate halls (sort of sub-schools), there is little chance that the staff will have any luck. At a school this size, staff members don't even know all the other staff members, let alone the students!

After today's incident, my son was forced to go home and change his clothes, shower and wash his (long, very thick) hair. He felt violated and humiliated, and he refused to return to school for the day. I have set him some research tasks to do around the work he is currently doing at school, but he will miss an end of module science assessment today. He has never enjoyed school and I am concerned that this incident will make it difficult to presuade him to return to school on Monday. I am not in a position to home-school him, and I lack the skills to do an effective job even if I made the necessary changes to my life.

I feel impotent, which is not helped by the fact that there seems to be nothing anyone can do!

Scott Adams hits the nail on the head

Scott Adams writes the Dilbert cartoon, but he also keeps a blog. In this post he turns is astute eye on the education system and curriculum. I don't think I need to add anything to it other than to suggest you read it!

Peacemaker game

One of my lecturers posted this link to the Peacemaker Game on our module discussion board this morning. A colleague of his is planning to use it for a project for an undergraduate module about the values of gaming. The premise of Peacemaker is that the player takes the role of the Israeli Prime Minister or the the Palestinian President, reacts to events happening in the war and attempts to resolve the conflict.

The game was piloted in 2005 in a university project in which two Carnegie Mellon classrooms (one in Pittsburgh, the other in Qatar), linked via video conferencing, played the game simultaneously. This was treated as a user test opportunity. The producers interviewed students playing the game and asked them to relate their thoughts and feelings as they made decisions in the game.

The producers are very frank about their expectations regarding Peacemaker - they have no delusions about resolving the middle east conflict through their game - but they have observed an increased depth of understanding of the issues in the students involved in the project.

Very touchingly, Asi Burak, one of the producers of Peacemaker says that in between the many games about violence, war and destruction, "we say a simple thing: there is certainly a place for one, little game about peace."

Sadly, there is a cost associated with the game itself. At US$20, it isn't going to break the bank, and I'm sure the producers could defend that cost most credibly. But my own view is that a game intended to get people talking and thinking about peace should surely be free...?

Fractals

I confess I know nothing about the mathematics behind fractals. All I know is how fascinating, how beautiful fractal images are. These images (from TechRepublic - nod to my non-blogging husband for the link) of chaos are indeed beautiful, but looking at them, my first reaction is that they are so, well, unchaotic. I won't even try to unpack the deep philosophical issues that underlie this observation. Instead, I will simply invite you to go and admire the view.

If you like, you can even download your apps to generate your own fractals...

The Big Question about the big question

Tony Karrer has provided an explanation as to why March's big question has not been forthcoming. Apparently, the LCB (Learning Circuits Blog) site has been wheelclamped by Google as being a spam blog. Interesting. Web 2.0 is (in large part) about conversation. LCB is about conversation. But it appears to have fallen victim to its own success - the volume of traffic in and out has attracted the notice of the Google policebots.

Dave Lee, communicating through the sidebar, jokingly suggests that the big question for March should be "Do you really exist if Google says you don't?"

This is a conspiracy theorist's dream come true. Supposedly, no-one is in control of the web, supposedly it is driven by the world wide community, and yet, in a case of mistaken identity, LCB has been cut off and now has to fight to clear its name and be "released". It's all too "Enemy of the State"

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?

Mobile learning

A colleague gave me a leaflet recently relating to an initiative called Learning2Go. This is a project launched by the Wolverhampton Local Education Authority. It looks wonderfull exciting and challenging and seems to have been well received by the children. However, I can't help wondering about the viability of the project from a cost perspective. Teachers keep reminding me that many British children have no computer at home. It seems even less likely, then, that they would have a PDA. So is the school, the LEA, the government going to supply these? Hmm.

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!

W H Auden

Wednesday was WH Auden's birthday. I know this because it says so on the poetry calendar my husband gave me for Christmas. I have been out of the office since Monday, so I only turned that page over today. Much of my poetry of choice is American in origin (Frost, Auden, Dickinson, Whitman, Pound and my all time favourites cummings and Jeffers), and I would reproduce the Auden poem used on the calendar, only it would seem to be against copyright, so instead I will link to it on someone else's site, and let them worry about copright!

The little shpiel commemorating the day relates the following story:

Dorothy Day was the founder of the Catholic Worker Movement in New York and did much to soldier against poverty with slim resources. Unfortunately, her compassion for others didn't win any sympathy from the government. She was once fined $250 because one of her hostels was "not up to code." Leaving the courthouse disheartened - for she had no ready means to cover the fine - she passed a sorry group of men looking for handouts. One man, as scruffy as the rest, emerged from amid the group and pressed a piece of paper into her hand. Explaining that he heard what had happened, he said, "I want to help out a little. Here's two-fifty." Day beamed as she thanked him, much cheered by this small act of selflessness. It wasn't until she was on the subway home that she looked at the check. It was a check for two hundred and fifty dollars, not two dollars and fifty cents - and it was signed by WH Auden. The poet once quipped, "We are here on earth to good for others. What the others are here for, I don't know."

I have related this today for no other reason than that it touched a chord with me. I didn't need a reason to like Auden's poetry, but this story certainly did the man no harm in my eyes.

Obscure musings: cats and learning

So here I am, sitting at my dining room table (I'm working from home today), grinding my teeth in frustration. "Why?" I hear you ask (well, not really, but I'm going to tell you anyway!)

I have two cats: Molly and Daisy. They are litter sisters who have never been apart one day in their lives. Molly is the athlete, Daisy is the poser. Molly is independent and a take control girl. Daisy is a helpless whinger.

Since we are fresh air addicts, even in the depths of winter, the fanlights in the upper storey are open. Molly uses these to get in and out of the house, and she spends a great deal of time outdoors in any weather. Daisy is convinced that "outdoors" is a place that appears when the weather is good and the downstairs windows are open.

Molly negotiates her way behind the heavy wooden louvre blind in our bedroom, hauls herself up and through the fanlight, makes her way along the slatted wooden platform thing (said she articulately. I wish my camera battery wasn't flat!), down onto the garage, the shed, the fence and then to the ground. She comes back the same way. If the downstairs windows are open, even better. Out through the lounge windows and back the same way. Great. She figured all of that out all by herself.

Then there's Daisy. She has not ever ventured behind the wooden blind - I'm not even sure she is aware that the upstairs windows exist. Even if she figured that out, there is little chance that she would be able to follow her sister's example. Daisy doesn't "do" jumping or clambering - so unladylike, you understand. When the weather is fine (like today) and the downstairs windows are open, she heaves her (somewhat overweight) body up and out, and that's when the trouble starts. Within moments, she is yelling on the top of her voice, informing me (and the whole neighbourhood) that there is no way back into the house. That she's lost. Abandoned. Forlorn. Destitute. Alone. So I get up and open the front door for her. Haranguing me roundly, she comes back indoors, only to head straight back to the window and out again. I have tried ignoring her. I have tried sticking my head through the window and calling her, so that she can see how to get back in. I have tried making her favourite sound with the food container to entice her to find a way in. No dice. Occasionally, instead of yowling, she will "knock" on the front door. This involves hooking and releasing the rubber insulation, which genuinely makes a knocking sound... and totally destroys the rubber.

They make me think of the two extremes of learners. One gets on with it, figures it out for herself and makes independent progress. The other whines and whinges until someone does it for them out of pity or the quest for a moment's peace.

She's out there, right now, yelling her head off again. Last time I let her in (about 2 minutes ago), I groaned, "Why can't you learn how to let yourself in, you stupid moggy?" And then I thought about it. She has. Her method works just as well as her sister's. Better maybe.

There's a lesson in there somewhere, but I'm trying hard not to learn it!

Visiting? About this blog...

From time to time, posts appear that encourage us (bloggers, that is) to provide newcomers with an introduction to our blogs. I have tended not to do this, because my view was that the handful of readers already knew their way around.

Then recently, I received a message from someone via via via, to the effect that they were unsure how to go about subscribing to my blog. So I decided to rethink things.

First off, I have added a widget just below the blog title for easy subscription via a selection of aggregators. Since I have a Bloglines account, I have a "Sub with Bloglines" button on my browser toolbar, and this is the way I subscribe to any blog that sustains my interest. I recognise that not everyone (a) uses Bloglines as their aggregator and (b) knows how to do this! Apologies for a lack of inclusiveness in my approach.

I tend to be a bit of an end user blogger. I don't know how to add a widget to my blog that tells you how many readers I have had, nor would I know where to start to customise my template. I had to have help from Mark Berthelemy in adding that widget, for example. Mark is a total whizzkid, who fortunately belongs to the same team as I do for his day job. I wouldn't ever have believed that I would meet anyone more passionate about learning than me... and then I met Mark!

Another invaluable source of help has been Vicki Davis, who occasionally posts on "how to" do this, that or the other thing associated with blogging. I think that Vicki is slightly newer to blogging than I am (I started on 13 July 2005), but she has taken the bull by the horns and become a blogger of note in a very short space of time. She is also a very unselfish person and a born teacher who is willing to share what she knows with anyone who's interested.

My blog posts tend to centre around issues associated with learning: learning in general, my own learning experience and my reflections on the experiences of others (often my two sons). My field is the corporate environment, so my focus is on the workplace learner. This is my passion - post-compulsory learning under circumstance which are usually a long way from conducive.

Obviously there is some overlap with the fields of formal education, and my own current journey through a master's degree, coupled with my sons' adventures in a high school system that is alien to me (since I was educated in a different country), mean that I have an interest in this sector as well.

Since we are human and not very easily compartmentalised, I don't stick purely to my own fields of endeavour, but have been known to post about unrelated matters which have touched my life in some way.

Since blogging is in large part a conversation, I am a fairly prolific commenter, and you are likely to come across my name in the comments of many of the blogs listed in my Bloglines. I keep track of these conversation using CoComment, which has been proving increasingly unreliable of late - several conversations going completely unrecorded. I also welcome comments on my own posts, although I recognise that I seldom produce content that is of sufficiently stirring significance to attract a lot of traffic. This doesn't lose me any sleep. Like many other bloggers, my posts are a way of thinking out loud, of getting things of my chest, of committing my thoughts to a space where I can come back to them. If a post serves all these purposes and still strikes a chord for a reader, then that is a double bonus!

If you are new to this blog, I hope that this has been of help to you in some way.

Calling all learning designers: what do you do?

Here is a thought-provoking post from Patrick Dunn of Networked Learning Design about our mysterious job! I recognise myself and my colleagues in some sections, find myself rejecting parts, congratulating myself occasionally and emphatically saying "I wish!" now and again. How about you?

The flat world... NOT!

Thanks to George Siemens for this link (via his newsletter) - as he says:

"While "the world is flat" is a wonderful ideal, it's not reality. It's not reality globally...and it's not reality within Canada (or US, Europe, Middle East, Africa, or where ever). Consider this animation of global economic activity (via Creativity Exchange)"

'Swhat I've been saying all along. Look at all those spikes! And just take a look at my home continent (Africa) and play spot-the-spike for a moment. It breaks my heart!

Introducing the new technology

Thanks to Ewan McIntosh for the pointer to this funny-but-true look at coming to grips with new technologies (via YouTube). Some of us have been in the position of both the helper and the helpee before, and this scenario will ring a few bells!

Where is your mind?

During the recent Connectivism Conference, Bill Kerr posed the following question:

“What is the mind, where is it and how does it work?”

This question formed part of his challenge to connectivism as a learning theory. However, it struck a chord with me last night when my husband read me a report called The Power of Hope in Time magazine of 12 February.

The report is largely based on an anecdote from the author, Scott Haig, MD. He was treating a patient with terminal lung cancer that had metasticised. The patient's brain tissue had been completely replaced by brain tumours, and he had entered the final moments of his life. He had been unconscious and completely incapacitated for some time. Then, suddenly, in the last moments of his life, this man regained consciousness and made very lucid farewells to his family.

As Dr Haig says:

"it wasn't David's brain that woke him up to say goodbye that Friday. His brain had already been destroyed. Tumor metastases don't simply occupy space and press on things, leaving a whole brain. The metastases actually replace tissue. Where that gray stuff grows, the brain is just not there. What woke my patient that Friday was simply his mind, forcing its way through a broken brain"

All our advanced, sophisticated understanding of the brain has still left us a long way short of finding, let alone understanding the mind. If a man with effectively no brain still has a mind, still has a will, where does that leave us? Will our on-going study of the physical brain really tell us what we need to know about that which makes us essentially who we are?

There are so many sciences associated with the brain. Haig summarises:

"Neuroanatomy is largely concerned with which spots in the brain do what; which chemicals have which effects at those spots is neurophysiology. Plan on feeding those chemicals to a real person's brain, and you're doing neuropharmacology. Although they are concerned with myriad, complex, amazing things, none of these disciplines seem to find the mind. Somehow it's "smaller" than the tracts, ganglia and nuclei of the brain's gross anatomy--but "bigger" than the cells and molecules of the brain's physiology. We really should have bumped into it on the way down. Yet we have not. Like our own image in still water, however sharp, when we reach to grasp it, it just dissolves."

Haig is not the first doctor to be amazed at the power of the mind over the brain. Extensive research identifies that a specific part of the brain deals with such-and-such a skill, then along comes a girl with half a brain or a young man with no brain to speak of ("Is Your Brain Really Necessary," Science Dec. 12, 1980, p. 1232.) and defies all that we think we know. People constantly learn new skills and/or rehabilitate from the loss of physical and neurological functions - the mind forcing the brain into new pathways by dint of will. As Haig says elsewhere in the article, "a mind or will, clearly separate, hovers under the machinery, forcing it toward a goal."

I know it sounds cheesy, but Haig's article made my heart sing - we truly are wonderfully made, and we are a long way from unravelling the mysteries of how it all works! I will quote his final paragrph in its entirety to end this post:

"But many think the mind is only in there--existing somehow in the physical relationship of the brain's physical elements. The physical, say these materialists, is all there is. I fix bones with hardware. As physical as this might be, I cannot be a materialist. I cannot ignore the internal evidence of my own mind. It would be hypocritical. And worse, it would be cowardly to ignore those occasional appearances of the spirits of others--of minds uncloaked, in naked virtue, like David's goodbye."

Mark Berthelemy on Will Richardson on "unlearning"

Mark usually uses his blog to point at a resource/asset/post and say: this is interesting, this is new, this is something to watch. He doesn't often share his world view at any length. This post, however, is an exception. He has unpacked Will's post on the steep "unlearning curve" and added his own perspective on some of the issue raised.

In a bizarre reversal of roles, today it is my turn to point at a post and say: this is interesting, this is something to watch. It will be interesting to follow any further exchange of views that grows out of this.

February's big question

The big question for February is "What questions should we be asking". Of course the responses to this will vary widely depending on each individual's field of interest and endeavour. As usual, I will make no pretence at having an objective, global view, but will seek only to speak from my own persepctive.

As a learning designer, I find that the people who requisition learning are often out of touch with the ultimate user audience: namely the learner. In fact, on a current project, I had to explain to one of the client reps what a learner was. This is the person I care most about. I wish the only question ever needed on a learning solutions project was: What will work best for the learner? In the absence of this idyll, I would like to ask:

• How do we bridge the divide between he-who-signs-the-cheques and he-who-will-use-the-resource?
  

How do we overcome the fact that he-who-signs-the-cheques (hwstc) often couldn't care a fig for all this newfangled learning theory stuff: just build me something that I am familiar with, but make sure that it is 100% effective (what do you mean the two things are mutually exclusive?).

I'm sure I'm going to kick myself as I later think of a far more relevant question, but this is where my head is at today.

Elluminate rocks!

I've been attending the Online Connectivism Conference. This has been the first time that I have encountered Elluminate and I'm smitten. The real time presentations (audio plus slides), the concurrent chat, the option for an open mike, the opportunity to occupy on a synchronous basis the same virtual space as people I have only encountered asynchrnously before. It's all too cool for words.

Tagged: how do I blog?

I've been tagged by Vicki Davis who wants to know how I blog. Vicki herself has published a very insightful and articulate post on the matter. She is a woman with her ducks very much in a row. Mine (ducks, that is) are somewhat less disciplined. So how do I blog?

1. First thing every morning, I check my emails. Next thing, I catch up on my bloglines. Next, I check my CoComment. In one of those places, I am likely to come across something that sets off sparks in my brain. If they are small sparks, I will answer the email or comment on the blog post. If there is a major electrical short, I will write a post of my own. My thoughts often take shape as I write. These posts may be a bit rambling, and are likely to include a soapboax moment.
   
2. Life is full of learning experiences, and I often think in allegories. If something has happened that has made a strong impression on me, or taught me a valuable life lesson. I will record the experience and what I learnt from it. In these cases, I tend to record the story chronologically and let it unfold for the reader as it did for me.
3. If I have attended a lecture, a seminar, a conference. I will record my reflections on the event. Drawing out the highlights and lowlights. This style of posting is more common in my Ardent Student blog, where I am journalling my way through my MA course.
4. My husband and two sons are all the family I have in the UK. Everyone else is ranged from Wellington, New Zealand in the east to Portland, Oregon in the west and Stockholm in the north, to Perth in the south. These people are not interested in my musings about the various aspects of my job, or what I think about learning, thinking, knowledge, etc. They care about me. About my boys. About my husband. They want to know that we're happy and healthy, and they want to share in our lives as much as the enormous distances allow. For these people, I have a family blog, where I record humorous anecdotes, achievements, events, milestones, news updates. Inconsequentialities to the rest of the world, but life blood to us and of vital interest to grannies and aunties who haven't seen us for years. These are usually related in such a way as to have maximum impact - building up to the punchline, or emphasising the ridiculous. Inform and entertain.
5. Like Vicki, I seek to be honest in my blog. To be me. I have no patience with or stomach for subterfuge. Some people are quite critical of blogs that draw heavily on personal experience. I guess that's why they don't read mine. I can only provide my own perspective with any accuracy, which is what I do. That perspective may change tomorrow, but what you read in my blog today is a picture of me as I am today.
   

Tags:

• Vicki
• Davis
• bloglines
• cocomment

Where does real end and virtual begin?

This is very much a thinking-out-loud post, and I welcome any thoughts, rebuttals and contributions you might have!

A colleague and I were having this conversation yesterday on the train after Learning Technologies 2007. The conversation was sparked off when my colleague asked if I had ever ventured into the world of Second Life (I hadn't). I mentioned that fact that Sweden was opening an SL embassy. I also touched on some of the other matters I covered in my post on that topic.

I discovered that this is a point that has been exercising him for some time, too. If you can buy properties in SL on eBay, are they virtual? If a thing has sufficient value to a person to warrant them spending hard currency on it, doesn't that make it "real"? And from there, a natural segue to money itself. Even hard currency isn't real. Notes are in fact promisory notes - they aren't money, at all. They're a phyiscal manifestation of a virtual commodity. As I understand it, there is even an exchange rate between SL money (I really must find out what it's called!) and $ or £ or € or whatever. If this is the case, does that not lend weight to the argument that realness and virtuality are no more true of one than the other?

Then we moved on to the things we pay hard currency for. For example, you pay to go to the movies, to a rock concert, to the theatre, to ride a scrambler, drive a tank, ride a roller coaster, adopt a monkey in the zoo, to stay overnight in a 5 star hotel. What are you actually getting for your money? You don't actually own anything afterwards that you didn't own before, and you're broker in fiscal terms. So what is it? An experience? Entertainment? Well, is this real or virtual? How is it any more real than the experience you have online? Than the plot of land you buy in SL? Than the house/family you create in the Sims? Than interacting with your tamagotchi? And on that point, since a tamagotchi is a physical object that you must keep with you, that you must interact with by means of direct touch to meet its many and varied needs, that has a lifespan, how is that a "virtual" pet? Electronic, yes. Virtual, no.

And simulations have been used as valid learning environments for ages. Especially when real world mistakes could lead to loss of assets, money and lives. So is that learning "virtual" or "real"? I would have to say that the learning was real, even if the environment was virtual. But hang on a minute! How virtual is the environment? The learner pilot (for argument's sake) is really a learner pilot. The cockpit is really a cockpit, even though it isn't attached to an aeroplane. The controls really are controls and the pilot will use them exactly as he/she would if there were a plane attached to the cockpit several thousand metres above the earth. The scenario is virtual. True, but the pilot must respond to them exactly as if it were real or his flying career will end before it has gotten off the ground.

Ooh, it's a proper can of worms this! Once you get the lid off, there's no way of knowing where those little blighters might end up!

Tags:

• Virtual
• Real
• Simulations
• Second
• Life
• eBay

Reflections on Learning Technologies 2007

Yesterday I spent the day at the Learing Technologies 2007 exhibition. I would have loved to attend the conference, but at close to £900, my line manager was unconvinced of the ROI to the team (to be honest, at that price, I wasn't so sure myself!), and I certainly didn't have the readies to sponsor myself. So if you're looking for info about that aspect of the event, I apologise.

The exhibition aspect was interesting, with all the usual suspects present and correct.

I have to devote a brief moment to the take-aways and freebies that were on offer, since these always fascinate me. Some people seem to go to conferences and come away with carrier bags of souvenirs. I, on the other hand, usually come away empty-handed. Perhaps I don't the right "look". One exhibitor was dishing out cameras, another was handing out radios (astonishingly, I was given two of these - neither of which works). There was the usual supply of chocolate and pens of varying qualities. One stand had sticks of rock with their company logo in them - ingenious, I thought. One had large, brightly coloured fabric flowers, but these weren't strictly free - one had to sign up for their IT courses to qualify.

Inherent in the exhibition format is the open seminar. These run for half an hour with a 15 minute break between them. I had highlighted a selection of these that I wanted to attend. As is increasingly the case, I was disappointed by most of the presentations. The speakers were usually suffciently engaging, with slick visual aids, but they mostly didn't tell me anything new. I know for a fact that I'm not at the leading edge of knowledge and understanding about learning, so it bothers me that providers seem to be lagging behind even me.

One speaker, whose product impressed me more than most, did himself no favours in my eyes by stating early on (and reiterating at regular intervals) that learning was the process of getting information into your head. The implication being that, unless you had committed a piece of information to memory, you hadn't learnt it. I am very worried about the integrity of a product developed by people who miss the point of the nature of learning in the early 21st century.

I was fortunate to be able to attend the "great balloon debate". The premise was that there were 9 people in a hot air balloon on their way to the mythical kingdom of Elernia. Sadly, I can't name all 9 from memory, but I have a handy list: analyst; learning designer; change management expert; hardware specialist; software specialist; evaluation specialist graphic/interface designer; marketing consultant; project manager. The balloon is sinking fast and three people must be thrown overboard to save the rest. Each person got three minutes to explain to the audience (inlcuding the king and queen of Elernia) why they deserved to keep their place, and the audience voted. The first people to go were: hardware specialist; evaluation expert; graphic/interface designer.

Alas, the balloon continued to sink. Each person got a further two minutes. The next three out were: analyst; change management expert; marketing consultant, leaving the learning designer; software specialist and project manager. Of these, the learning designer scored the highest. Clive Shepherd suspected (as did I, to be honest) that the room was well stocked with learning designers who had voted nepotistically. However, a show of hands revealed just two or three of us.

Immediately after that came the final open seminar of the day which, contrary to expectations, was pretty packed. The subject was m-learning and it proved to the most interesting session of the day. The presenting company, LINE Communications talked us through a case study of a recent project of theirs: they had created an m-learning solution for a driving academy catering largely to young adults. I was pretty impressed to learn that, even before this, the driving academy had equipment to record a learner driver's performance during the lesson and upload it to the LMS back at base. If I tried to describe all the bits and bobs of the solution, I would do it an injustice, so, if you are interested, I suggest a visit to this page on their website. They get my vote for best solution. Usually, when I am getting stressed about deadlines etc., project managers will try to restore perspective by pointing out that this learning: no-one is going to lose their job or their life if we miss a deadline. However, in teaching people to drive safely, in identifying the hot issues for young drivers and addressing them head on (urk - uncomfortable phrase), if it is effective, this learning is in fact going to save lives. What a thing to be able to put on your resume!

My other (purely subjective) impressions are that:

Adobe probably had the highest attendance figures to the demos that they did at their stand on a rolling basis - and people seemed pretty impressed with their offering.
Atlantic Link is the company I would most like to own, being small, passionate, fleet of foot and accommodating of client needs.
Happy Computers Ltd wins the award for sheer gung-ho out there-ness (they were the distributors of the flowers I mentioned). They seem to be the kind of IT trainers that I aimed to be myself, and their stand was a happy, chaotic contrast to all the sleek, muted conformity around them.
Saffron Interactive takes the award for the most original attention grabbing methods with their barman-and-waitress mimes.
The best freebies must be the camera, but I can't give the company a plug, since I don't know who they were.

Tags:

• Learning
• Technologies
• 2007
• Clive
• Shepherd
• LINE
• Communications
• Adobe
• Atlantic
• Link
• Happy
• Computers
• Ltd
• Saffron
• Interactive

Defining learning design

I have often felt that defining a learning designer's role is like trying to nail jelly to a wall. Especially when I am trying to explain to an "outsider" what it is that I do. However, I think I might have just found a new favourite blogger in the shape of Patrick Dunn of Networked Learning Design, who goes a long way towards giving the role some shape. I am just disappointed that I couldn't find an RSS feed to the blog so that I could subscribe (happy to be proved wrong, by the way).

Thanks to Mark Berthelemy who emailed me the link to this post about the learning designer as an architect. The fact that the link came from Mark is no coincidence: we work together on the same team: he as a solutions architect, while I am a learning designer. The boundary between his role and mine has never really been clear. There are things that I think I should so and things I will need Mark to do. These are unlikely to mirror exactly the things he thinks he should do and the things he needs me to do. I confess I am probably the more precious of the two when there is overlap.

However, I have a tendency to approach each project with a sense of panic that I have no idea how to do this. In my more objective moments, I see this as a good thing. Each new project is a whole voyage of discovery. A new adventure with a new destination. What are the learner's needs? What do we want the learner's experience to be? What tools are there out there that will help us achieve that? Which of those tools will work within the client company's constraints? How are we going to engage the learner? And a host of other questions. I have no interest in duplicating the last project for the new client. As Patrick Dunn suggests, we can use patterns and prompts to get the creative juices flowing, but who wants to get stuck in a mechanistic re-use rut? Bleagh!

Kathy Sierra: Randomness and Serendipity

There is a disadvantage to Kathy's enormously popular blog, Creating Passionate Users, and that is that the comments come in so thick and fast, there isn't really the opportunity for a genuine exchange of ideas. Blogs with readers in the hundreds still generate conversation in response to their posts. Blogs with readers in their thousands, markedly less so. When yours is comment number 32, you know that there is scant chance that the blog owner will read it, much less engage with it (Kathy is more diligent than most at this), but the chances of other readers reading and engaging with your comment are even more remote. Hence any comment you make is likely to become a unidirectional salvo.

As a consequence, while Kathy's posts very often strike a chord with me, I seldom comment on them. Kathy is one of those bloggers you really feel you get to know as a person, since she writes passionately (well duh! with a blog name like that), and she shares personal experiences and insights. In spite of not commenting very often, I remain a passionate reader of since we have a shared passion for the ultimate client, the end-user. Although our user audiences differ, the principle remains the same.

After all that preamble, I would like to draw attention to this post: Add a little more random to your product. As a designer of learning resources, I increasingly find that it is necessary to "add more random". The learner is less patient with linear navigation and increasingly wants to explore. Providing the means for a learner-driven adventure in information is tougher, but more rewarding. I am especially keen to create resources that can be used after the initial learning/familiarisation exercise as a random reference resource.

The allegory isn't perfect, but think of a dictionary - and I don't care whether that dictionary is online or taking up six inches of shelf space. Very few people actually sit and read a dictionary (some do, and I say: whatever floats your boat, friend!), however, most homes and offices have one. When a person wants to check the spelling of a word, they reach for the dictionary, check it out, type/write the word and move on. When a kid has just learned to swear and wants to see if the f-word is listed in so august and respectable a publication, he and his mates will sit giggling over the thing for hours as they seek out ever ruder words, little realising the enormous (completely legitimate, totally un-profane) learning exercise they're undertaking. When you encounter an unfamiliar word, you reach for the dictionary, check out the meaning and move on with the thing you were reading. Reaching for the dictionary is a reflex action. Why? Because it delivers the goods so much of the time that it makes it a sensible option.

That's my goal. That's the kind of resource I want to build: Ms Manager sitting in her office faced with a situation she has never encountered before. I'd like her to be reaching for the learning resource we created for her, finding her answer and moving on with her life. Not because it bigs me up in any way, but because then the resource is fulfilling its raison d'etre.

Web 3.0

Okay - we're at the extreme reaches of my knowledge and understanding here, and the air is thin! You have been warned.

This article appeared in the Daily Yomiuri last week. It attempts to identify Web 3.0, a task about which it says, "The first thing to understand about Web 3.0 is that there is little general agreement about what it really means, even among the experts". A blogger in my blogroll recently dipped a toe in this water recently - I could have sworn it was Vicki Davis, but I now can't find the post. However, this is a topic that has had a fair amount of coverage in the blogosphere lately. Check out the following posts, some of which overloaded the wiring in my low voltage brain:

• Welcome Web 3.0
• Web 2.0 and 3.0 for dummies
• Web 2.0, Web 3.0... and Web 4.0 (just to make me feel totally behind the times!)
• Web 3.0 - You ain't seen nothing yet

Wikipedia, it seems, has different ideas - the Web 3.0 page has been "deleted, and protected to prevent re-creation." Who got to make that call, I wonder?

I might be wa-ay off beam here, but it seems to me that metatagging is going to play a huge role in 3.0. But surely metatags are applied by the people who publish the material, and who's to say that the material they publish is accurate - or event that the metatags are appropriate?

At the moment, when I want to know something, I type in keywords and get a list of publications which contain those words - even when they don't actually relate to each other in any meaningful way. Under this system, I briefly scan the most promising looking of these and decide for myself, based on a process I couldn't begin to understand, let alone describe (but which may well have something to do with George Siemens's theory of connectivism) whether the material is valid and reliable.

From what I hear, in 3.0. I should be able to type in a question, rather than a series of keywords. What I'm not quite clear on is whether 3.0 is going to present me with a shorter list of publications, each of which is an accurate match to the context of my words or, whether it will go one step further and provide me with a definitive answer gleaned from the content of the sites trawled. To my limited imagination, the latter sounds like pie in the sky. The former sounds a big enough ask!

In order to be able to achieve the former, my search engine will have to make sense of my question, and align it accurately with the metatags of the published material online in order to make the matches. The latter would seem to require an in-depth grasp of content that I can't even begin to get my head around!

What worries me a bit is what will happen to the process of assessing material for validity and reliability. Having said that, at a stretch I can handle the idea of 3.0 handling validity, but reliability?

Hoo boy - I see another steep learning curve looming on the horizon!

Tags:

• Web
• 3.0
• Vicki
• Davis
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• Siemens
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Virtual embassies

As I read the posts in my aggregator every morning certain words are guaranteed to jump out at me. Predictably, these are words that relate to aspects of my personal and/or cultural history. Perhaps I've finally identified a tendency of mine to which I can apply the word atavistic. By extension, I also prick up my eyes, so to speak, when encountering words that relate to my husband's personal and/or cultural history.

Hence my heightened interest when I encountered this post from Mark Oehlert with the word Sweden in the title. I have never ventured into the world of Second Life, but I have been interested to note how it is gaining traction with a most unlikely audience. I have heard of organisations creating SL info portals. Obviously recognising that SL provides access to a market with money to spend, not just a bunch of teenaged computer nerds (I apologise for the stereotype - but I don't think it's a million miles from most people's unconscious assumptions). It seems like a good PR exercise. After all, companies have been creating websites for years to reach the audience of people who venture out into the www.

I was fascinated when Mark attended an SL book signing, bought the book with SL money (sorry - I don't know the proper name for the official currency) and received a hard copy of it through the mail. I also read recently of the sorts of money some people were making selling SL characters, assets and accessories on eBay.

The lines are blurring. I can fully understand Sweden's thinking behing the SL embassy. Their physical embassies have a presence online via websites which serve as an information portal. Why not then a virtual embassy in SL? What I wonder is, can you apply for a visa via the SL embassy and then receive the hard copy via the post? And if so, would you pay for it with SL money or the currency of the country in which the embassy is based?

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• Mark
• Oehlert
• Second
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• Virtual

Some things don't work online!

This morning I discovered something that hasn't worked online: candlelit romance.

Tuesdays I work at home. Because my laptop has recently decided not to maintain connection to my wifi, I am compelled to do this on the family PC until such time as the problem is solved (by someone more techie than me!). This morning, I find that my efforts are somewhat hampered by the large quantities of wax all over the keyboard! It seems my younger son was attempting to romance the current object of his affections via msn-by-candleight last night. You have to give him credit for originality, but the resultant conjoining of some of the keys is a tad inconvenient, to say the least.

If anyone out there has successfully managed to foster an atmosphere of romance online, I would appreciate any tips that you might have that I can pass on to my son.

Oh, and if anyone knows how to get wax out of a keyboard...

Stranded!

So England hasn't quite finished dishing up quirky weather conditions (see my previous post about the wet drought). Today the wind is blowing so hard that all the rail services from London have been suspended. And guess where I am!

I don't normally work in London, but today I stood in for my ailing boss (who must for the first time be even just a little grateful for his condition) and ran a workshop for some colleagues. Afterwards, I took a rare opportunity to have lunch with my husband - what a civilised way to spend an hour! Then it was time to make my way home, except I arrived at Euston station to be greeted with an unbroken line of CANCELLED CANCELLED CANCELLED across the schedule. I made my way back to my husband's office, where he set me up in a corner with Internet access. From here, I was able to catch up with my emails and blog subscriptions. I love the fact that, in a completely strange environment, I can still be "in the office".

Of course, I don't love the fact that there is still no way home for the foreseeable future. Our two sons are reacting very differently to the prospect of a night without the parents in the house.

Anybody know a way I could email myself home?

Writing skills

• Connectivity

A very wet drought

England is in the grips of a drought. It's the wettest drought in recorded history. I kid you not. Many parts of the country have had hosepipe bans. Yet it has been piddling down very Englishly for days on end. Driving the 20 miles (32kms) to work last week, I passed whole pastures that were underwater.

In some parts of the country the hosepipe ban was lifted. I had a mental image of people dashing out in their wellies to stand in an inch of water and water their gardens with hosepipes. Hmm. Perhaps not. They would be more likely to use the hosepipes to syphon the water off into the drains!

In some parts of the country, the hosepipe ban remains in force. Last night on the news, some poor woman from the water company had drawn the short straw and had to try to explain to the news-watching public why this was the case. Of course it had to do with the reserves - these need to be built up so that there is enough water put by for the summer. But when the water table is so high that rivers have burst their banks left and right, it's hard to imagine that the reserves are anything other than overflowing.

The footage consisted of the woman sitting in stationary position, explaining the matter. With this approach, I don't think the authorities are going to persuade the general public to take the drought seriously, when the evidence of their eyes tells them a very different story.

So how does this relate to the world of learning, knowledge and information? The information we give to people must make sense with what they already know, or what they can see for themselves. If it doesn't, we are going to have to work really hard, not only to provide more information as to why this is the case, but to get them to accept this information and shift their paradigms as a consequence... and that's a hard sell. Those good old fashioned barriers to learning are notoriously hard to shift when they are self-erected-and-maintained.

I was thinking about how this water company representative might have communicated her message more convincingly and thought of this:

• Pictures of the flooded pastures and valleys - commentary to the effect that anyone seeing this sight could be forgiven for thinking that there was a surplus of water in England right now
• Picture of underground water reserves - commentary to the effect that the water supply that feeds our homes and our industries is drawn from here. When it is full, it looks like this (archive picture or graphical representation). Right now, it looks like this (picture of marker, or graphical representation). In order to get through the coming summer, we need at least this much (picture/graphic)
• Brief, simple chalk-and-talk type explanation of why all this above ground water doesn't automatically mean full underground reserves
• Specifics - in order to get the water we need
• it will take at least 3/2/17/whatever more days/decades/weeks of heavy rain in the right areas,
  
• these areas are x, y and z,
  
• the forecast for those areas for the next few days is good/bad/indifferent.

I could be way off beam here, but I can't help thinking that anything would have been more convincing than a lady in a pretty dress telling a waterlogged England that there is a drought on and we should all conserve water.

The big question for January: speed v quality

Tony Karrer has persuaded me that I have input to make on this month's Big Question, namely:

What are the trade offs between quality learning programs and rapid e-learning and how do you decide?

I thought I would duck it, since I have thus far not had any exposure to rapid e-learning per se, but Tony felt differently. He said:

"Karyn - the question is not as much about "Rapid eLearning" as it is about speed vs. quality. And I'm psychic, so I know you face that issue on almost every project you do. :)"

And, in a way, he is right, of course. I have been in this field in its various guises for 20 years now and although my involvement with e-learning only goes back two years or so, the challenge of quality v speed has been ever present. If I were to be flippant, I would probably say: quality every time.

Like anyone (I presume), I prefer to be given enough time and budget to produce a learning resource that will do the job, while looking good. Impress the learner while meeting his needs, why not? Of course, it's easy to say that when time is short we focus on functionality and forget form, and this is what the client usually suggests when proposing a gasp-inducing timeframe. The sad reality is that functionality takes wa-ay longer than form to produce. And I speak as one for whom form is important.

The bitter pill is that, when the schedule (or the budget for that matter) is tight, scoping has to be very tight and some things just ain't gonna happen! There is a serious risk of cutting corners in the analysis and scoping phase of the project, but I suggest that this is false economy. When I'm under time pressure I am even more in need of a tight scope in order to produce an effective resource within the limits placed upon me.

Even when the schedule is tight, the end product must WORK. It must deliver the goods, or it has been time (and therefore money) wasted.

One of the biggest frustrations when there are tight schedules is access to SMEs and stakeholders. Since they have different priorities (usually the day job), they can sometimes take their sweet time getting back to me! It is very important to have a good rapport with these folks.

So I would suggest that the following factors are required:

• A diligent, somewhat ruthless analysis
• A tight scope - signed off in blood, for preference ;-)
• A resourceful, comprehensive design that will enable a quick build...
  
• The tools to achieve a quick build (products like exe or Etomite are good for elearning materials)
• Fast turnaround times on edits and amends
  
• Easy access to and excellent rapport with SMEs (no "us and them)
  
• QA that focuses first on functionality and then on form
• A team that cares about the learner
• A team that is prepared to send out for pizza and get the job done
• A mutually accepted and respected process of change requests

In summary, I guess that while I grudgingly accept that some measure of quality will be lost when tight schedules are in place, some damage control is possible. At the end of the day it's about the user, though - intuitive access/navigation is non-negotiable, and the product must deliver the goods. If this is not possible within the constraints, I guess we need to qualify out of the running for the job. I recognise that internal providers don't have the luxury of this option, so perhaps some assertiveness training wouldn't go amiss - learning to say no without losing your job!

There's probably a lot more I should have mentioned and I'm quite likely to have omitted points that are so vital and integral as to be invisible...

Writing skills

• Tony
• Karrer
• Big
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• January
• Quality
• Speed

Priorities

So it seems Ruth Kelly, Former UK Education Secretary, is sending one of her kids (a child with substantial learning difficulties" to a private school.

Opinion is divided in the Labour Government as to whether this is a Good Thing or a Bad Thing. Tony Blair supports her right to choose the school that she feels will best meet her child's needs (Tony Blair himself has come in for criticism in the past regarding his choice of school for his own children). One Labour MP, however, told her "You should set an example as a minister and support your local school."

If he is able to be a politician first and a parent second, good luck to him. Ms Kelly is quoted as having said "Like any parent, my first thought was to do the right thing for my child." I'm with her: family first, career second. End of.

But for those whose finances don't allow them the luxury of that choice, it is sad that the state school systems are inadequate. The fact that the members of the government themselves are opting out of the education system that the rest of us must make do with is an indictment indeed.

Assessments in elearning

Tony Karrer has posted an interesting look at assessment in elearning, citing Will Thalheimer's post on the subject. Sadly, this reflects my own take on the matter, and not just in respect of elearning, but I find that fewer and fewer instructor-led courses are using anything more than happy sheets.

In my last job, I introduced level 2 - level 1 was already in place, and it was seen as being pretty "out there" to take it to the next level. They patted themselves on the back for being so progressive.

I had a go at getting level 3 in place, but this required the cooperation of line managers so it was pretty patchy. Those who cared about learning and development bought into it, but they were in the minority.

As for level 4... Every time I raised the subject, I got shot down in flames. I was assured I didn't need to produce ROI - my job was secure. There was no way I could get them to drop the knowing smiles and understand the benefits of researching the ROI of the learning I was developing - especially since it was all totally new stuff.

Ironically, within months of my leaving, my replacement was made redundant and advised that it had been a mistake to have an in-house training programme. Without evidence of ROI, she had no evidence to the contrary. All we had was the large collection of emails the staff had sent me before I left, highlighting the difference the learning had made to them, which wasn't considered valid. Secure, huh?

Writing skills

• Tony
• Karrer
• Will
• Thalheimer
• Kirkpatrick
• assessment

New year's resolution... of sorts

Okay, let me admit right up front that I'm not that hot on New Year's resolutions per se. That said, my family and I like to spend New Year's day lunch time reflecting on the highs and lows of the past year and setting some goals for the year ahead. Since I had come down with a thumping case of eyeball-aching 'flu the day before, I found it difficult to stay focused. So we postponed the discussion to this weekend. That has given me time to think...

About 18 months ago I took my current job. For 18 years I had been a classroom-based trainer. For all that time, my role had encompassed the whole gamut of the learning cycle: TNA, design, development, delivery, implementation, evaluation, mentoring, coaching, make the tea, drink the tea... I was immersed in the world of my learners. I loved it and I was good at it, very good at it (if I do say so myself - I have the unsolicited testimonials to back up my boast, scouts' honour).

But I was getting frustrated in my last job. I wanted to introduce some online learning, a portal, some short e-snippets. But he-who-signed-the-cheque wasn't having any: it wasn't the right culture or climate, apparently. So I sought for and found a job that would broaden my experience to include elearning. My current title is Blended Learning Solutions Designer. A bit of a misnomer, really, since I have somehow gotten stuck in an eddy of elearning. I design the elearning component of blended solutions and very seldom get a look in to the workshops, the mentoring, the coaching, and as for contact with the learners (aside from the SMEs)... Try as we might, we have been unable to persuade our clients to let us in beyond a rather narrow remit.

This year, I am determined to change that. I don't want out. I want in. In to designing the blended learning solution as my title suggests. In to contact with the learner - how do I evaluate the effectiveness of my designs without that? In to helping people overcome challenges in the workplace. I don't want to be a vendor, I want to be a provider. I might not work in an educational institution, but I am a teacher nonetheless, and I miss teaching.

Vicki Davis refers to teaching as a noble calling. I think it might actually be a state of being, rather than a titular thing. It might just be the Lemsip talking, but this year I think I need to find a way to re-release the teacher within.

Any suggestions???

Perspective on the wisdom of crowds

An excellent post from Kathy Sierra on this subject. It has been one that has given me the yips for some time. I have enormous problems with the idea of striving towards excellence by adopting the behaviours of swarming creatures (in spite of the fact that I admire their accomplishments). I also have problems discerning any wisdom in the behaviour of crowds at soccer matches. It's good to see someone with Kathy's credibility putting it into perspective.