Larry Johnson, Chief Executive Officer. New Media Consortium (USA) Case Study 1. Second Life as an educational space
Larry Johnson speaks about the experience of the NMC at Second Life for educational purposes.
NMC Virtual Worlds to help build Second Life, to build things in Second Life. For instance, Second Health, to explore new ways for health systems, and shifting from hospitals for ill people to hospitals for healthy people. Second Life was useful to create different stories by filming series of videos — machinima — and then deliver them outside Second Life. The stories were also created as teaching materials simulating heart attacks, limps, etc.
Second Health: Polyclinic Tour
Second Health: Emergency and Specialist Care
Traffic data about Second Life use in NMC islands show that people spend most of their SL time not inside classrooms but on the “open air”. So, besides the formal or official purpose that gets people inside SL, a conclusion is clear: it is a social space, it is social software.
Another powerful thing to state about Second Life is that people can express themselves, and can do it in a lot of ways, in a very compelling visual way.
And SL is 100% user built. And SL world changes constantly.
The type of interaction that takes place in SL is really different from anything previous. The fact that you have to go to a common place, to meet through the glass, makes the experience more immersive.
Comments
Graham Attwell states that these are good technologies because of their multiuser aspect, but most probably are transitional technologies — such as Facebook — until we come with open, standardized technologies. Larry Johnson answers that early pioneers — and his example is America On Line — are just for that, to disclose new spaces: Who cares now about AOL? But they were great!
Juan Freire, Universidade de A Coruña (Spain) Web 2.0: institutional challenges
Promises and reality
Change in learning paradigms: from the teacher centered to the creation of networks. Strong focus in learning by doing and collaborative and active learning.
Problem: web 2.0 explorers exist, but not backed up institutionally, creating a digital divide inside universities, between individuals and the institutions.
Beyond technology
Web 2.0 more than a technology: social change.
Many different tools, open and linked one to each other, connected, easy to use… thus creating a whole ecosystem.
Important question: the crossover between people and content that takes place in the Web 2.0, hence bringing in the capability for social creation of content.
If learning is (increasingly) taking place outside the classroom, how can universities adapt?
Open knowledge: independent, low cost, modular, generative.
From consumers to creators, but also curators. Their role is crucial for filtering overwhelming content you can “use” as personal filters, educated users that can help you to navigate the exuberance of information. Hence: new roles for both teachers and students. The formers should become mentors, designers, assessors; the laters, active learners, collaborators, networkers.
Bottlenecks for institutional adoption
The main problem is users (and the institutions they conform): habits, incentives, aversion to change…
Need to change a new knowledge culture. Fostered by the entrance of digital natives into the (educational) system?
Ironically, the presence of Web 1.0 tools are a threat for the adoption of Web 2.0 apps: new technologies distrust, need to pay off large investments, etc.
Institutional fears
A difficult balance to achieve: visibility vs. security and trust. Social network applications as a solution? The “Facebook approach”: the ability to manage people an content in a joint manner, along with the possibility to integrate third parties’ applications.
Elements for a strategy in Universities
Leaders should promote a cultural change… beginning with themselves.
Benefit from (inside) lead users and (outside) lead institutions to copy good practices and avoid bad ones: integrate tools along with practices.
Free content to enhance (knowledge) networks. From a closed university to an open one, enter the conversation.
Open vs. closed: lower costs (crowdsourcing), acceleration of innovation, increase creativity.
Begoña Gros asks whether we should copy the research methodology to teaching? Well, maybe, the problem is that research nowadays is not open: provided one shares results, the data sets, the processes are not open. It is highly probable that it will happen just the other way: teaching will change the way research is done.
Brian Lamb states that the problem with Web 2.0 apps is that everyone likes their favorite app (blogs, wikis…) and the favorite “brand” for that app (WordPress, Blogger…), so how to cope with this?
A key point is to show what’s the use, the benefit of technologies for the students, not just use them. And find good examples, even if the teacher is not this example.
My comments
Q: Is (un)availability of pre-web 2.0 technology (in classrooms, at home) an advantage or a problem? Leapfrogging technologies overpassing (ancient) habits or lack of digital literacy or? The ability to understand how technologies work because you could (web 1.0) “touch” them is it a capability or you just don’t need to know how to code because Web 2.0 apps are “so easy” to use/install? And not just “technological literacy”, but also issues about privacy, security, copyright, etc.
A: It is important not only to use Web 2.0 tools but to design them, build them, try them. And the reason to do so is that everyone (people, institutions) is different and thus technologies need to be adapted to their needs.
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UOC UNESCO Chair in Elearning Fourth International Seminar. Web 2.0 for Education (2007)
Keynote speech: Phil Long, Assoc. Director of the Office of Educational Innovation and Technology. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (USA) Web 2.0 and education: an overall look
Connectivity will be pervasive: everywhere everywhen we’ll be connected.
(Phil Long goes over a good bunch of Web 2.0 apps)
Web 2.0: to leverage the sociability and human characteristics of the web users.
Creation of a notion of a sixth sense: connected to your extended network, your online and offline presences tracked, etc.
Social networking sites really pervasive among youngsters, massively accessed not only through the web but also through mobile phones.
Convergence of different platforms for learning, including new tools such as digital ink, digital ink pens, scanners on mobile phones, Qr-codes for cellulars, etc.
iLab: access real labs through virtual apps, so the student can experience the feeling of interacting with the physical device, without the need of having several (expensive) distributed physical devices installed: It is not a simulation, it is real data.
MIT Lecture Browser lets you search keywords (text) over lectures (voice, video), find where the keyword was used and then listen or watch the digitized lecture. It’s got a Web 2.0 component where the user can correct sentences that were not properly written, transcribed, linked, etc.
Most learning does not happen inside the bricks and mortar classrooms, but everywhere.
Extend Real Life in Second Life: what can you do in this space that you couldn’t in the physical world?
Educational technologies are not “spectator sport” but “participative sport”.
It is ridiculous that you’ll be teaching students content that they will remember, as it is predicted that content will double every 11 hours by year 2010. You should train them to know where to find, store content, how to access it, how to remix and use it.
Authority and evaluation changing radically.
My comments — his answers
Q: What about attention and engagement? How to keep focus?
A: Are this problems of the Internet, the Web 2.0… or ancient problems? Maybe technology is just making this more visible.
Q: How not to, ironically, increase drop out rates because of more demanding technologies/educational methodologies?
A:I want to be competitive in this environment so that people choose to study my subjects instead of browsing everywhere else. But yes, we have to be aware of the time, attention we require to our students, that might feel like they are drinking from the fire hose. Engagement not at the cost of leaving aside other aspects of life.
infoDev has published the report of a survey about the state of ICTs implementation in the education sector in Africa.
Some highlights:
Growing commitment to ICT in education on the part of government leaders across the continent. Leadership, leadership, leadership.
Public-private partnerships are important mechanisms enabling the implementation of ICT in national education systems in Africa. Mark Davies also spoke about this at the Web2forDev Conference when he presented Tradenet, and it’s getting a subject on which everyone comes over again and again.
The need for digital content development relevant to local curricula is becoming more
urgent as ICT use becomes more widespread. Surprisingly, there’s few mentions to initiatives such as Creative Commons and no mentions at all about open access policies, strategies, debates and so.
Interest in open source software and operating systems is growing rapidly in Africa, but this growth is constrained by a lack of sufficient human resource capacity to support such systems and applications. Once again, the problem is not only infrastructures, but capacity building, digital literacy at all levels — and a strong local ICT sector, strong local industry. A chance for endogenous development?
Internet connectivity remains a major challenge, which is no surprise but becoming a major challenge as Web 2.0 demands more and more connectivity quality.
Wireless networks are developing rapidly throughout the continent, and of increasing relevance to the education sector, something that projects like One Laptop per Child have turned as their main asset/bet
e-Learning for Higher Education is still not widely adopted, despite efforts like the ones made by the African Virtual University, USAID’s DOT-COM, SchoolNet Africa, to mention a few. Lack of content, hardware and connectivity being some of the main barriers.
It is especially relevant to me what the preface states:
Despite widespread beliefs that ICTs can be important potential levers to introduce and sustain education reform efforts in Africa [and] much rhetoric related to the ‘digital divide’; there has been no consolidated documentation of what is actually happening in Africa in this area, nor comprehensive baseline data on the state of ICT use in education in Africa against which future developments can be compared. A lack of information impacts planning […] A need for coordination […] No consolidated information resource […]
which I honestly think could be transposed to many many other areas of the ICT4D field. Hence, the need to establish a methodological framework for ICT4D and pursue more research, analysis, indicators, raise datasets, etc.
Not surprisingly, people such as Peter Suber or Scott Leslie have already noted that there were some connections between these three conferences, some crossover interests.
I think that these three fields — or social spaces — have several things in common, and are converging as time goes by and the Knowledge Society settles and becomes more pervasive in our lives:
It’s about knowledge creation and knowledge diffusion, be it positive or normative, be it basic or applied.
It’s all about networks of knowledge creation and distribution: scientists, educators, students, nonprofits, development agencies, communities of beneficiaries, counterparts… (I don’t like some of this jargon, but is the best I could find).
They’re unbalanced networks that are becoming more balanced in account of the contribution made by individual nodes to the whole network: senior vs. junior scientists, teachers vs. students, nonprofits vs. counterparts, donors vs. receivers…
They are networks challenged by meritocracy: the challenge on scholar networks is evident; but also educational networks, where knowledge expires very quickly and younger generations are proner to learn some things better than older ones; or development networks, where “localization” of strategies, of content, brings relevance to the end user, a passive agent in former development strategies.
It’s about adding up: standing on ye shoulders of Giants to see further in science; more (and better) educational resources; synergies and best/good practices with scarce resources to achieve efficiency and efficacy in development projects.
And it’s about adding to remain, contributing to the network not to be send off the network: not just in terms of relevance (i.e. meritocracy) but of pure belonging (i.e. subsistence). What you give is what you get.
Content — data, information, knowledge — is input, capital and output in a knowledge society, and the essence of science, education and development as it is required to draw strategies, to feed knowledge production, to put findings into practice and transfer them. And because it happens in a networked society you’ll be transferring them on and through a network. And my opinion is that this will be more and more difficult to do with undisclosed procedures. Thus why open access.
Voice continues to be the key driver in OECD telecommunication markets
Mobile subscribers outnumber fixed subscribers by a
ratio of 3 to 1
Rise of importance of Voice over Internet Protocolo (VoIP), mainly due to rise of broadband adoption, and pressing down prizes on voice services
Blurring of market barriers: e.g. voice no more tied to fixed analogue lines, but can be accessed through fixed analogue lines, but also through broadband, mobile lines, etc.
Blurring of market barriers, multiplicity of offers, blurring of regulation.
Rise of local wireless networks fostered by local administrations.
Shift from paying for voice to paying for data; shift from paying for data to flat-rate pricing based on bandwidth quality instead of data traffic.
Trend to lower broadband prizes for better quality.
Shift of subscription of communication services provided outside the boundaries of a citizen’s country and delivered over the Internet: more pressure on regulation changes.
Telecommunication trade continues to grow in the OECD area
and now accounts for 2.2% of all trade.
China is one of the five emerging countries in the group known as the BRICS (Brazil, Russia,
India, China and South Africa). ICT spending in the BRICS economies increased by more than 19% a year
Summing up:
The importance of broadband — the new leading factor of the digital divide.
The pressure on sector and international regulation — the new arena of the debate to achieve harmonization, inside and outside boundaries.
