S. Downes

Philosophical implications

• Need for recognition of role in knowledge creation by social networking (knowledge networking/) Emerging theories of ‘connectivism’

• Changing nature of information & knowledge creation-what constitutes authoritative ‘knowledge’(does chat?/ other forms of socially constructed knowledge)

• Critique of the value chain-data/information/to knowledge (which is more useful)

• Content is subservient to the communities (prime driver)

• Recognition of changing nature of knowledge creation (formal vs informal /VLEs /PLEs)

• Speed of knowledge creation, can’t be matched by traditional publishing methodologies (QA/Mdata/standrds/copyright etc)

• Learning can’t be relegated to the classroom-Global (more tech in bag)

• Students, peers are valid knowledge creators (publishing is a democratic activity-decentralised creativity)

Need to recognise changing profile of learners

• Digital natives • Culture of collaboration and sharing• Natural engagement with social networking tools• Immediacy/currency• Traditional media is increasingly irrelevant• Motivation• Personalisation• Need to create and explore• New cool (opensource)tools

For any education system obligations in terms of:

• Authority• Autonomy• Access• Accountability• Attribution/Acknowledgement• Affordances

Practical implications

• Duty of care: Guaranteeing ‘safety’ (identity /filtering) Guaranteeing validity

• Reassessing education systems as ‘gateways’ of knowledge

• Teachers are no longer the centre of knowledge dissemination

• Revisit notions of learning• Value of socially constructed knowledge (or is it just ‘chat’?)• VLE’s to PLE’s

• Licensing implications

What we need to do (Urgently): • Recognise learning is a community enterprise (with all responsible-

obligations)• Students as meta learners (skills for C21st learning)• Platforms such as TaLe to bridge the formal and informal

knowledge economies• Teacher & community prof. development (teach social

responsibility/information skills/new pedagogies)• More flexible licensing and copyright (what is sharing?)• Have capacity to exercise judgement & responsibility in matters of

morality, ethics and social justice and accept responsibility for their own actions (The Adelaide declaration 1.3).

• Radical trust