Commodity Tools and Learning Content

Miles MetcalfeRavensbourne College of Design and Communication

Elearning Liberation Front

Manifesto 2008

Elearning is changing

Revolution?

•User-owned technology

•Web 2.0 and “the cloud”

•Easy-to-use software

IT is out of the institution

Institutional IT

• You used to need an institution for...

• Access to computers

• Access to elearning resources

• Access to the internet

Now, you have all of this at home

The institutional VLE

• Has it roots in an era when institutions enjoyed a monopoly on computing

• Is an “enterprise” service

• May not even be accessible from “off-site”

An enterprise service

• Andrew McAfee of HBS

• Enterprise, Functional, and Network IT

• Enterprise IT consists of “applications that define entire business processes”

• This is the traditional management view of elearning

Is elearning EIT?

• In most cases

• For most practitioners

• For most learners

• In most institutions

• It most certainly is not

And it never was

Learning design is not a business process

Teaching and learning is not a business process

Software Tools

Web 2.0

Learning, teaching, and Web 2.0

• Community building

• Sharing and publication

• Collaboration and working together

Tools and Web 2.0

• Easy to create compelling learning content

• Easy to collaborate and share online

• Easy to build learning activities and collaborative sites

• Easy to engage learners in familiar territory

We have issues

Because we have issues

• Shiny-shiny

• Policy

• Business: assessment, quality assurance

• Regulation: IPR, plagiarism, “cyber-bullying”

• Social: Under-age learners

The social stack

Personal tools

Group collaboration

Blogs and networks

Social signals

Feeds and flows

Organise your stuff, by tags, in a personal portal, with desktop tools (example: a desktop

blog editor, an RSS reader, an iCal client). A PLE.

Knowledge: groups/teams integrate knowledge in wikis and similar group systems. Even VLEs!

Some items shared within a personal network and discussed. Attention becomes interest.

Attention: store, share, tag and classify items of interest, links, resources.

Internal and external RSS feeds - persisted searches, sites of interest, people of interest,

from a VLE or repository.

Adapted from a model developed by Headshift Ltd

For one day only!

• Tools and techniques

• Learning designs

• Pedagogic models

• Captive academics HOT!

The policy bit

• Business: assessment, quality assurance

• Regulation: IPR, plagiarism, “cyber-bullying”

• Social: Under-age learners

• Standards and specifications:

• Coupling and interoperability

• Data portability and ownership

A reason not to?

Never say never

• The “war on plagiarism” is a battle lost

• Learners are using computers and social tools in their lives now

• They will use them at work in years to come

• They will not use them in ways we approve of if we don’t get involved

One more thing

User-owned technology

No more network monopoly…?

• The iPhone looks cool

• That it’s an always-connected network device is disruptive

• What if this works in the market?

• Faraday cages in classrooms?

• Accept we no longer control the network?

Revolution

Thanks!

Chains is by Heaven`s Gate (John)'s on FlickriMac is by Jonathan Smith (dziner) on FlickrMap of online communities is from the online comic xkcdSocial Stack is adapted from Headshift LtdiPhone is lifted from AppleRavensbourne thanks the JISC for funding under the D4L and Capital programmes

Credits