Looking backward to look forward
I hadn’t really intended on a post that summarized the past 365 days or made predictions for the future, since others have done it so well already. These posts have caused me to nonetheless reflect a bit on my own ed-tech moments of 2009 and the inevitable ups and downs that come with the field.
In 2009 I felt like I became a bit of a student of Distance Education and Ed-tech history, since many of the current conversations seemed to me to be echoes of the past. These are few that stood out for me.
Open Educational Resources–ideology, movement, or simple sharing?
As excited as I am about everything related to Open Educational Resources, and how much I’d like to see my own institution think about them strategically, I was disappointed by how much of the OER conversation (in North America, at least) seemed to forget that Open Universities from their inception had a goal of increasing access to education to disadvantaged groups, a radical (dare I say edupunk) idea at the time, and shared many of the ideological concerns of current OER proponents. OpenLearn is a logical extension of this vision, facilitated by the distribution and sharing opportunities of the internet. Yet the jazzy tools and technologies that enable OER content sharing to those that have access to the internet seemed to me to dominate the discussions that I heard at the Open Education conference in Vancouver, and in the blogosphere in general. And while I’m convinced of the value of WordPress, RSS, Twitter, and social networking and their value to the OER movement and a particular interpretation of “openness”, apart from some interesting presentations at the ICDE 2009 conference in Maastricht (notably the COL’s Asha Kanwar COL talking about the VUSCC) and some journal articles, I would have liked to have learned more about broader contexts of OER use and interpretation, linguistic challenges and developments, OER sharing practices (Siyavula), and cost-benefits.
Yet, I’m increasingly aware that I have a responsibility to step outside of the ed-tech echo chamber that I participate in, and spend more time looking for a different type of conversation. This requires looking backward and beyond. By looking backward, I continue to find relevance in some of Mackey’s geolinguistic observations of the 80s and 90s; commonalities between the self-directed learning movements of the 70s and later and the desire for substantial change in teaching and learning in higher education. By looking beyond, I intend to read beyond my English language comfort zone and read more in French and Spanish. I also intend to explore other echo chambers in the twittersphere and blogosphere–this includes an interesting group of ed-tech enthusiasts in Quebec (Mario Asselin, Patrick Giroux)–and many more yet to be discovered.
Connectivism or Activity Theory?
This year I continued to be bewildered by the contribution of Connectivism to understanding learning in a networked environment. I haven’t adequately articulated this anywhere on this blog, but I can’t get past looking for differences between Connectivism and Engestrom’s notion of “knotworking” in third-generation activity theory. I’ve made this point in the past (posted on George’s blog back in 2006 under ‘tanbob’) but as noted by Bill Kerr’s critique back in ’07the point was never really addressed. I’m obviously not alone here but clearly have some homework to do in fairly and adequately discussing my view of the intersections of these two prominent ideas. The Networked Learning Conference, featuring not only Engestrom and Siemens, but Wenger as well, would have been a nice opportunity to gain some clarity, since current discussions of activity theory (in 2 recent books, one of them nicely reviewed here by Spinuzzi), in particular Engestrom’s notion of a ‘runaway object’ seem to bring connectivism and activity theory even closer.
21st Century Skills–a (sort-of) flashback to multiliteracies?
Another topic that I have yet to adequately articulate here, but I found myself going back to the work of the New London Group and looking for reasons why 21st Century skills felt like a more diluted version of Multiliteracies. How did we go from a broad, socioculturally-driven notion of literacies (framed in 1996, no less), to a more limited behavior-cognitive focussed notion of skills? I worry that 21st century skills will the be the buzzword of 2010 that will take us down the wrong path.
Digital Natives-an ed tech myth that will hopefully become history
On the topic of buzzwords Net Gen Skeptic has done a good job of demonstrating how an ed tech buzzword can become accepted and subsequently adopted as a rationale for systemic change without a whole lot of critical thought or demand for evidence. Being involved in a Skeptic project has made me aware of my own role in supporting myths-in-the-making, eg. what am I retweeting and why; who am I reading and who am I not reading. I suspect that myths find their legs in echo chambers, and I resolve to step outside of the spheres of my discipline and into those that are relevant but not totally familiar.
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Brian
A rich and informative post, I’ll be coming back to this one. Happy new year!
T Morgan
Happy New Year to you too, and thanks for the nice feedback.
George Siemens
Hi Tannis,
When Stephen and I ran our course (Connectivism and Connective Knowledge) in fall of ’09, the focus had moved somewhat from activity theory to actor network theory as a point of comparison between connectivism and the work of (pick your theorist): Latour, Vygotsky, Engestrom, Wegner, etc.
Obvious overlap exists in all three areas (ANT, Activity, Connectivism). I’d like to explore those relationships in more detail…just not sure of the best venue. Perhaps an online conference trying to bring those three domains together would help. I recognize that the attendance would likely be a bit low – after all, the topic would have limited appeal to anyone other than theorists – but given the frequency of comparisons and questions along the lines of what you’re asking, I think it could at least help to clarify what is being said within each theory.
George
T Morgan
Hi George,
Thanks for commenting. I think what you’re suggesting is a good idea, and I know I could benefit from such a discussion. Add to the mix Complexity theory and Distributed Cognition, and it’ll be a smorgasbord!
In the meantime, if I manage to find the time, I’ll try and post my thoughts on how AT and connectivism overlap in many ways.
Vivian Forssman
Hi Tannis,
If you and George cook up an online forum on the intersection of ANT, activity theory and connectivism, count me in! Heh I hear you are up to new things in your professional life!
Stian Håklev
A great post! I found it because you linked to me (thank you for that), and I am very happy that you did. I agree with so much of what you write. Yes – we need to look backwards, at the founders of the open universities, the self-study movements, and all kinds of exciting alternative education movements throughout history.
(And I’ve often argued, in terms of doing rigorous research on OER, we need to integrate more of the theories and frameworks from the scholarship on distance ed, video in teaching, etc).
Yes! We need to expand beyond a focus on North America and English. I always try to bring in many examples of what is happening around the world in my talks. We should also try to read in other languages. I very much appreciate your links to the French bloggers here. I can read a number of European languages, but given that most English bloggers only link to English-language content, I rarely discover great material in other languages, unless I actively go looking for it.
(One thing I would really like to find is aggregators, such as open ed news, or human aggregators like Stephen Downes, in other languages… one blog I could follow to see the hottest new posts on open ed in French, or Chinese… or even Japanese, I’ll brave Google Translate :))
Also very interested in your thoughts around 21st Century Skills, and connectivism etc. Need to learn/think/discuss a lot more about this. Would love for you to expand a bit more on the discussion of “a broad, socioculturally-driven notion of literacies”.
(PS: Also great that you make your presentations/articles available easily. Have downloaded a few. Feel free to post the ones that you are not allowed to as well – publishers never send take-down notices :))
T Morgan
HI Stian,
Thanks for stopping by and leaving so many great comments! I agree with the human aggregator…Mario is really that for me from a Quebec perspective–if you follow him on twitter you’ll see he ‘s very active in sharing links etc.
I’ve made the promise to expand more on the connectivism vs. AT comparison, and I probably should explain as well as I can what I meant by socioculturally driven notions of literacies. I’m not a literacy expert by any means, so this might take some time to articulate properly:)
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