Mission Complete

Despite an exploding wireless enabled modem and some angry code (where’s bewarethegeek when you need her?) I’ve done it! Assessment 1.1 for EMT1 can be found sitting as a page called “Assessment 1.1″  just below my header image.  Alternately, if you care to take a look you can use this link to take you there.

To my fellow EMT1 classmates, if you haven’t published already, best of luck.  Remember to write a normal post on your blog telling us (and AnneBB) about your triumph over assessment (ok, ok, I’m excited because I have a day off tomorrow and have gotten slightly hysterical now) so that the aggregator for our blogs can pick up on your assignment.

‘night all.

Mollybob
B-)

Social learning just makes sense

That learning is a social thing just makes sense to me. Humans have evolved as social creatures, historically we haven’t sought lonesome existences. We’ve built families, communities, and with the industrial revolution, cities too.  I heard someone raise the point once that today’s model of classroom education has its roots in needing to care for the children of the industrial revolution so their parents could work, and before that, learning was a process that occurred in families and communities. Considering our roots, it is no surprise to me that learning can be explained through modelling, feedback and practice because it appears that this type of learning existed long before our current models.

If this is the case, the classroom of chairs neatly lined up with the students only listening to their teacher and being expected to unquestioningly take in information is a flawed model… and yes, I’m talking about adult education. Think about the record numbers of us returning to “school” as adults because our ever changing enviroment demands it.  If as Wenger suggests, “we are social beings… [and] this fact is a central aspect of learning” (1999, p8), then our classrooms need to reflect our natural way of learning. We need to listen not only to the teacher, but to each other as well, and this is where social technology can help bridge geographical boundaries. Adrian Chan said it better than I could when he noted on his blog “communication in social media is talk, and social media are talk technologies”. In my view, this means social technologies, by facilitating social interaction, are an increasingly important aspect of learning design.

References

Wenger, E. 1999, Communities of Practice: Learning, meaning, and identity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Chan, A. 2009, Social Media’s Third Law: designing for communication, available:

http://www.gravity7.com/blog/media/2009/02/social-medias-third-law-designing-for.html

accessed: 25 March 2009

This is not communication

Communication is essential to the success of online communities, especially when considered from a social learning perspective. Engaging in behaviour that takes the voice of those in a community means no meaningful communication can occur as there is no regard for what meaning is ascribed to the message, whether the  meaning ascribed is what was intended, and what the response is. If no meaningful communication can occur, community cannot exist.

Vicarious Learning and Personal Learning Networks

I’ve got another post bubbling away in me somewhere about social learning and online communities in general. I tend to read things and then leave them tick over in my head for a while, and they often come back to me with a different spin. Often in random conversation with people ( I’d say sorry to my dinner companions last night, but they’re not listening).

Vicarious incentives and learning in organisations

For now, something I’m pondering is one of Bandura’ three types of incentives; vicarious incentives.  Cornford <sorry, no link as the article isn’t online>, describes vicarious incentives as “where an individual learns from observing others being rewarded or punished as a result of their behaviour” (p90) and goes on to discuss how we can see examples of vicarious incentives at work in organisations where ambitious juniour staff model themselves on those  who are “rewarded by the management hierarchy”  (p91).  I can very much agree with this perspective, having seen both this and more formal attempts at behavioural change through modelling which hinge on the same premise of emulating those more successful.

In 1977 when Bandura published this theory the web didn’t exist. Our professional peers with which we had frequent contact were most likely to be our workmates, so their influence on us professionally was less fettered by outside sources.  It’s not the same anymore, our source vicarious incentives don’t have to work with us, and vicarious learning need not come from only within an organisation.

My story of vicarious incentives and learning

From when I started working, right up until the middle of last year, my workmates were my source of motivation and inspiration. I learned from watching the actions of those I admired, and consciously and unconsciously emulated those behaviours. When I changed to a team that had a dynamic and innovative leader I saw not just my attitude change, but also my clothes, just like the article mentions. But then something else happened. My online personal learning network got stronger and I started spending more time online. There were more outside influences in my professional life. More people who I admired and wanted to learn from. Outsiders. A whole network of them! Following that, my influential manager retired, and while the team was still strong, I looked more toward my online network, and their ideas and successes were sometimes different from those within my organisation. I found myself looking at role models both outside and within my organisation, and sometimes that led me to question things within my organisation that I may not have had I been in 1977.

Vicarious learning for work need not occur physically

My conslusion from this? With the rise in online relationships and personal learning networks, our vicarious learning and incentives need not come from within our organisation, although I still steadfastly agree with the notion that we learn and are motivated from those around us, especially when we want to emulate their success. From my biased perspective, I think it’s good to have a mix. I have learned so much from my online personal learning network, and so much from my collegaues. There’s no way I’d give either up.

The Semantic Web: hiding everywhere

So the semantic web. It’s been hiding in the corners all along. Integrating itself in so nicely with my everyday websites that I missed it.  I knew there was a post brewing about my realisation that I was utterly wrong in my post about the 2009 Horizon Report saying naively “oh, yeah, I haven’t seen much of this yet” when I got a weird feeling about tagging over the weekend. Was I serious!?!! All I had to do was think of my favourite all time website, eBay to be proven wrong.

I guess I taking the title a bit literally and thinking of closed systems, and not looking around online, hence my use of the term “the semantic web”.

The semantic web is described as “presenting connections between apparently unrelated concepts, individuals, events, or things” in the Horizon Report (p23). Well. Now that it’s clicked, here are just a few places off the top of my head that I’ve seen the semantic web in just the past few days.

eBay: My obsession with mid century furniture (a strange hobby for a someone not yet 30, I admit) started with design books and inevitably spilled onto eBay. Search by key words, both eBay’s suggested search terms and seller’s titles listing what they thought were key words has served a very large part in my education about what and who I do and do not like.

Facebook: It’s always annoyingly suggesting people I may be friends with.  Apparently my other friends know them, and maybe I’d like to as well.

Amazon: suggests things you may like based on previous purchases

Delicious: the tag search function will give you a list of everyone’s related tags

an enterprise wiki being used as an intranet: lo and behold, there is was in big black and white letters on my computer screen today. Yes, search the wiki using tags and it will suggest other terms that may be useful as well.

I have been blind to the semantic web all along, and make good use of it often. So an adoption period of four to five years? I don’t think so. I think it’s already here, and only a matter of time until it goes mainstream in organisations because it means that something can be stored anywhere and not just in one place and still be easily searchable. Melville Dewey would roll over in his grave.

In response to the 2009 Horizon Report

In reading the 2009 Horizon Report, I had alot of thoughts about how alot of the technologies discussed were being used by relatively normal individuals, but only forward thinking organisations.  I think there are some tremendous opportunities to improve processes, knowledge management, communication and flexibility that aren’t being capitalised upon for whatever reason. I won’t go through my response to each technology at any great length or  this blog post will be massively long, but I will try to highlight some of the things that sprung to mind as I read through each technology.

Mobiles

For me, one of the best applications on this technology was some work I saw by Ronnie Lam and Melissa McCarthy for the Royal Institute for Deaf and Blind, where they have developed an iPhone application to help in the learning of Auslan. I’d even dare ot suggest that as I write this in March 2009, the time to adoption of one year or less seems to have very much arrived.

Cloud Computing

I’d seen this term flying about for a while before I knew what it meant.  I think colud computing has very much arrived for “the masses” as I discussed above, although the more open philosophy around the cloud may be scaring some more traditional businesses.  I also think there’s some education needed around what individuals are actually doing when they contribute to the cloud, they need to understand a bit of background about the platform they are using, and who can access and use their information.  Perhaps some discussion of Creative Commons licensing would be made here were this a longer post.

Geo-Everything

I read something about Firefox jumping on the geo-tagging bandwagon late last year.  It seems just about everyone is doing it.  I know that just on Flickr geo-tagging can be a really good way of giving insight into what a particular location is about not just looks-wise.

The Personal Web

While there seems to be a bit of focus on organisations creating personal learning spaces in an attempt to replicate behind protected and limited networks what already exists on a global scale, I am more interested in the types of networks individuals can create for themselves, and see the expansion of tools like Twitter, delicious, Diigo etc as a means for people to take control of their own development rather than relying on workplaces and institutions to provide it to them.

Semantic Aware Applications

I like the idea of the semantic web, and think that Weinberger touches on the same intelligent search concept in 2007’s Everything is Miscellaneous. I was on the Powerhouse Museum site yesterday (another time about my obsession with mid-century design) and noticed the ability to add tags to a chair I was looking at in its online catalogue. I admit I didn’t think much of it at the time, and it wasn’t until I read about it in the Horizon report that my experience connected with the theory. I guess I use it lots without thinking in places like iTunes and can see how it could help with non-linear exploration/interest based learning.  Four to five years to adoption is so far away though and I hope that estimate proves to be too long as what I have seen of it has been very helpful to my learning by creating connections between concepts.

Smart Objects

I don’t have much to say about this, other than to note that some people are scared by even having to scan in and out of work using a biometric finger scanner. I’d hate to see what they’d think of a produict tracking its life-cycle and use. Although I think the technology is amazing and has remarkable research marketing and inventory management capacities my imagination is lacking when it comes to education – perhaps it can be used as a way of recording experiences and examining them?

So that’s all from me.  I am totally blogged out and apologise for this large post if you’ve made it this far.  It probably should be six smaller ones, or more focussed… or something.