In 1971, Ivan Illich published Deschooling Society in which he criticized the creation of “educational funnels” through which all students do have to pass to receive universal education (universal in many ways).
While the industrialization of education has had positive effects, it is also true that its origins belong to a specific place and a specific time: the industrial society.
In the new digital economy, many of the ancient physical barriers have disappeared. Digital goods are not scarce, but can be created, copied and distributed with little cost. Also, transaction costs, coordination between agents have also fallen to negligible levels in recent years. And many institutions are faced with the dilemma of whether to adapt or become extinct. Educational institutions — schools, universities, professors, publishers of educational materials, etc. — are some of them.
While on an industrial society, knowledge was embodied in (a) books and (b) “wise men.” The first ones were scarce, as reproduction was expensive. Furthermore, accessing each and every one of them was too expensive, so it was decided that it would be more efficient to group them in places that would make travelling to consult a book worthwhile: and we got libraries.
As people that consulted the books travelled to libraries, it became obvious that it was better that people should live (and work) around them. Schools and, above all, universities were built around the books that contained all knowledge. The next logical step was the concentration of trainees (students) around the wise men who were concentrated (in turn) around books.
If we have schools and universities, among other things, it is because it is an efficient way to distribute knowledge: by physically concentrating it concentrate.
In a digital economy, neither the books are rare (because they can be copied virtually to zero cost), nor access to them is costly (because we do it by browsing the Internet from home in our slippers). And the same with access to the “wise men”: we’ve got their classes and lectures on YouTube, their presentations on Slideshare, their articles on their websites (and everywhere else), their e-mail addresses just a click away…
Is it still the concentration of the educational system in schools and universities the most efficient option in a digital society?
It is likely that educational institutions must change and not only their model, but their very same role in the society. When the role to concentrate and distribute knowledge is no longer relevant as a matter of costs, both model and role should probably change. And probably by taking a more qualitative turn.
Nowadays, it is not only feasible but easy to learn from home, from one’s workplace, anywhere. Informal learning can be so intense and effective as formal learning, the one that takes place in educational institutions: student-centred learning, peer learning, learning by doing, collaborative learning environments, personal learning environments, communities of practice…
Closing remarks — VII International Seminar of the UOC UNESCO Chair in e-Learning: Mobile Technologies for Learning and Development Julià Minguillón, UOC.
Round Table: Social and Ethical Issues in Education Technologies Jill Attewell, Steve Vosoo, Matthew Kam & John Traxler. Moderates: Manuel Castells, Professor of Sociology and Director of the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (IN3, UOC)
Social entrepreneurship?
Eva de Lera: What about social entrepreneurship?
John Trexler: there does not seem to be a lot of activity in social entrepreneurship in the field of learning. Maybe other models, like free schools in the UK would be a better option if we are talking about education.
Matthew Kam: it depends on the definition of social entrepreneurship. If entrepreneurship is doing something that benefits your community, we may find some. And some of this deliver pretty good education.
New colonialism?
Emma Kiselyova: Can we do more wrong than good?
Jill Attewell: I’d rather use technology enhanced learning, not e-learning. This way, what we are doing is not creating something new from scratch, but enhancing something that already existed.
Steve Vosloo: how carefully is too careful? Sometimes going “too” carefully may imply losing lots of opportunities.
John Trexler: It is OK to go as quick as possible. The problem is that reflections need their own pace, and we sometimes take decisions on flawed reflections.
Motivation
Mireia Fernández-Ardèvol: What are the conflicts between formal and informal education? What is the role of motivation in this apparent dichotomy? Does it have to be informal to motivate? Is that good or bad?
John Trexler: It depends on what we understand by motivation. Motivation has sometimes been “triggered” by just pouring money or free devices in the users’ hands.
Mireia Fernández-Ardèvol: Indeed, motivation should come from other channels rather than — or added to — technological ones, like organizational change, institutions, etc.
[I personally wonder whether we might be “crowding out” formal education for too much focusing in informal education].
Success and failure
César Córcoles: How do we know which projects are successful and which a failure? And which ones are more likely to succeed and which others to fail? What is the tolerance to failure?
Matthew Kam: One of the problems is that most of the projects do not count as scholarly research, which means that many resources (especially human) are automatically kept away from being applied in many projects. On the other hand, most funding goes to successful projects, even if some failures may imply interesting lessons learnt that could be applied to following projects.
What infrastructure
Carlos Fernández: What about one-cellphone-for-all (the style of OLPC)?
Manuel Castells: the matter is that almost everyone already has a mobile device, and thus is why many projects address mobile phones.
John Traxler: this is the story again of the ideology behind the technology.
Jill Attewell: people in poor areas want the same devices as everyone else and they want the same features.
Julià Minguillón: the OLPC project failed because it never was an educational project. It never had the educational community in its design, teachers were not trained, contents were not created, etc.
Matthew Kam: agreed. Nevertheless, there are many aspects of informal education, gaming, etc. that could contribute a lot to improve and bring a wind of change to institutions [which I in turn agree too].
Manuel Castells: indeed, most schools are not about education and empowering the kids, but about politics. Nevertheless, if change is to be made, institutions definitely have to be an important part of it.
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UOC UNESCO Chair in Elearning VII International Seminar: Mobile Technologies for Learning and Development (2010)
Mobiles for Learning in Africa…. Too Good to be True? John Traxler, University of Wolverhampton, UK
Technology should address three kinds of problems, in this order:
Problems that are difficult;
problems that are impossible; and
problems that are inconceivable.
This in part means that solutions may not be extrapolated because most problems aren’t (mainly because of their context-dependent nature).
We also have to be aware that all technologies have embedded ideologies, and in this specific case contain embedded pedagogies. This might put in danger pre-existing (to our technological landing) learning communities or learning systems, communities or systems that may be fragile compared to the steamroller power of technology. Bottom-up developments are here replaced or impersonated by outside-in developments.
A deeper look at the local context, institutions, needs should be taking place. We’re looking at the sewer and the seeds, and not at the soil.
John Traxler quickly highlights here several examples of m-learning, open and distance learning in Africa. One of these projects is about an SMS-enabled Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) [which reminds me of an exchange of tweets that some of us had long ago about creating “FrontlineSMS:Edu”].
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UOC UNESCO Chair in Elearning VII International Seminar: Mobile Technologies for Learning and Development (2010)
Learning technologies in mobile scenarios Magí Almirall, Office of Learning Technologies, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC), Spain
In ancient Greece, learning was a collective activity, and a pedagogue was usually a slave that walked along with you to help you in understanding the world. These are the roots of mobile learning: collective knowledge sharing with no boundaries of time or space.
A set of projects were designed to adapt mobile learning scenarios from a user-centered design (UCD) perspective
It is very important keeping the user in mind when designing a learning initiative (at the technical and also at the non-technical levels).
The project consisted in analysing how users (UOC students) were studying online and, after that, 6 projects to adapt the learning process were designed to improve their learning experience:
My Way: that adapted content to be delivered in many different supports, like audiobooks (including Daisy for visually impaired people), videobooks, ePub, MobiPocket, etc. The idea leading the project is that the best learning content format depends on the scenario.
Annotation: this project allows including Layers to your own content. Layers organize your activity, can be shared, sent to the student, etc. Learners will define uses that we may not imagine, test and observe it.
Mobile Classroom: a project to put your virtual classroom on your mobile phone, but selecting only what makes sense on a mobile phone. The idea behind the project is bringing the student the alerts they might need at the appropriate time.
Mobile widgets: content and services from the online campus are created for the iPad interface, campus mobile, campus e-book, etc. so that the most relevant campus services are accessible in these mobile devices. The idea is to bring the same information for any device… which at its turn is quite a challenge, as devices are many and new ones appearing each and every day.
Foreign languages self-assessment: Mobile scenarios need more interactive contents, that’s why language teaching has a more interactive approach (quizzes, self-assessment activities) in the mobile scenario in comparison with a stationary scenario, where other kind of more static content can be displayed.
Campusproject.org: the goal of this project is to connect the virtual campus with any kind of platform, service, content existing on the Internet and bring it into the virtual campus. Interoperability is used to connect with other institutions, to expand the own learning tools, etc.
Discussion
Steve Vosloo: How is content processed or developed to be adapted to any format? A: If content is written in DocBook, then translation to other formats is almost straightforward. On the other hand, people’d rather have video formats for their small devices, and would rather have iPads for content, as they are more friendly that other screens.
Ismael Peña-López: Most projects here presented were about content-student interaction. Are there any projects that deal with person-to-person interaction? A: There are two ongoing projects in this line. One is called Speak Apps and it is about adapting the Tandem platform to the mobile world. The Tandem platform enables students in differents parts of the world to team up and study foreing languages, the languages being respectively foreign or their native ones. Another project is adapting the Langblog platform for mobiles.
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UOC UNESCO Chair in Elearning VII International Seminar: Mobile Technologies for Learning and Development (2010)
Requirements and opportunities for the development of a mobile learning strategy in emergent countries Claudia Aparicio, Fundación Telefónica, Colombia
The situation in Colombia: 85% internet access in public education, mobile market penetration of 90%, 1 computer per 21 students, techer’s e-learning uses are still low, teachers haven’t broadband access at home, the monthly income for a teacher is US$ 600 in average. So, what could be the impact of using mobile technologies in this context? How can m-learning help in overcoming these challenges?
The other part of the context is that people already use SMS to get news and WAP to access remote tools. This has boosted a positive attitude towards Information and Communication Technologies. SMS have reduced the costs of communications and advanced services have brought communities closer.
Notwithstanding, there still is the challenge on how to apply these tools and the positive attitude into the educational arena.
A strong point is converting the teachers from consumers into producers. A combination of a web authoring platform + tutorials can enable the teacher to produce their own leaning materials, make them more personal, reduce costs. The project (the platform) will work either through SMS, WAP and a web portal.
Discussion
Ismael Peña-López: What has been the involvement of the education community in the project? A: Telefónica Foundation has been in constant contact with the community. Indeed, the Educared Colombia community is already very active and has been eager to participate in the design and testing of the project.
Iolanda García: Is it SMS/WAP an alternative to broadband? It may not, but it actually is in many places (e.g. rural areas) where broadband is not accessible. In these places, teachers download online materials on their phones to use them in their classrooms, where no-one (but the teacher) has access to the Internet.
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UOC UNESCO Chair in Elearning VII International Seminar: Mobile Technologies for Learning and Development (2010)
