The "Big" Shifts in Learning

[Learning 2.008 Conference]

By Will Richardson

Much about the world is changing, but the big challenges are not coming from the technologies as much as
what the technologies allow us to do. We'll have a conversation of what living and learning in a
hyperconnected, hypertransparent world is like and how the definitions of things like privacy, presence, and
authority are shifting around us.
Room: C-126/7
Session 3
Education 2.0

[Will Richardson]

Some of the "Big Shifts" we'll talk about.

* Content is no longer scarce nor closed: MIT OpenCourseWare
* Content is constantly changing: Wikipedia
* We don't just read texts...we write them.
* Many teachers, 24/7/365 learning: ClustrMap
* Learning is social: FanFiction
* Learning is networked: Twitter
* Our kids understand social, networked technologies more than we do. National School Boards Report
* Our notions of privacy, plagiarism, copyright are all changing

Please feel free to join in the conversation by adding some of your own "shifts" and thoughts below.

[Carolyn Foote]

Do "microtrends" have more sway when they are able to be posted online and shared worldwide? Do trends snowball faster? just a question I'm pondering after hearing the author of Microtrends on Npr.

[Robert Hulse]

One only needs to review the "viral video" phenomenon to see the impact (whether intended or not) of micro-events. Like it or not, having something widely available on YouTube, etc. removes just about every barrier to the initiation and propagation of one-time or isolated events.

[Robert Hulse]

Context: dissatisfaction with cultural shift in public schools, 6+ years blogging, positive, personal classroom experience

Content is not only "open" and changing, it is being measured and valued based on relevance (ie., do we need to know trapezoids or do we need to know how to get it)

Which raises the question as to whether or not ANY particular content needs to be learned in school? Why not just teach kids how to use research tools to find information? (rhetorical)

Traditional coursework/content is being "unpacked" and "re-presented" in forms and ways that are foreign to adults (e.g. MIT OpenCourseWare )

iPodU - podcasted college course work

[Robert Hulse]

This all seems great for seeking and finding information - but is the finding of information (how to hack Twitter) the same as "learning". Are we missing a key point here?

Learning implies the ability to apply and manipulate information that I have acquired.

[Kate Thornburn]

http:/www.fanfiction.net –opportunity to post an alternative ending or another chapter. Authors and respondents based on network (without us)
- how can harness this? What bothers me is the type of responses- superficially, the spelling mistakes etc, but more importantly, the type of feedback, which tends to be a bit one dimensional. How can we as educators, help facilitate better types of online dialogue, so that the responses are deeper and a synthesis of the ideas presented?

[Robert Hulse]

What are the components of knowing/learning that are best served by shifting and growing tech tools and what are the components of knowing that are better served by "old school" tools?

[Robert Hulse]

How do we measure the influence of social networks?

With "everybody" talking (through blogs, websites, etc) is anyone listening or does anyone care?

[David Harris]

Moving away from content
(46645 - answers to q's through text messaging)
knowing how to access information when and as you need it.
Content is not scarce anymore - it is available when and where you need/want it.
Response: Does not the simple process of 'learning' information stimulate brain development in children? What development studies on the brain have been done to support Ed. 2.0?

Teaching students how to evaluate their sources is an important component.

[Ross Polson]

Will Richardson's session on Shifts of Learning:
The BIG challenges for schools:
Our schooling systems are built on the concept that content is scarce. it's not true - today, content is everywhere. We need to know how to access it - that's all. MITOpenCourseware is an example of content online (are they free?) (1700 courses) ... videos of classes(!) ... YES, all for free. Not all fully enabled yet.
Changing content - E.G Pluto is no longer a planet. Wikipedia - 1/4 million changes every day.
We write our own texts. - we have our own real audiences -
Our teachers are everywhere. - we don't just learn between 8am and 3pm - classroom is global.
(Will's blog: How does teaching and learning channge over time?)
Learning is becoming more social - E.G. Fanfiction.com - users can write their own chapters - review, kids are already building these things - without us. Twitter is example.
96% of kids do some sort of social activity - 75% of college kids have Facebook accounts -
Copyright & Intellectual rights - what happens when all human knowledge is online?

Open discussion:
First speaker: Ian - what do we teachers have to "put in" to ensure kids learn to read and write, multiply and divide.
2nd speaker: How to find info is great ... working in hospitals taught him he has to have some things in his head - no time to look it up.
3rd speaker: The real richness of learning is when we know we know!
4th: Teaching maths to the "Calculator cripples" - making a graph by hand helps to understand graphs & graphing.
5th: What would you change (in your kids school)?: kids should see teachers model the kind of good use of technology, (no publishing, using, searching, of information).
6th: Frustrated parent vs frustrated teacher - parents not getting where we're trying to head for; what's blogging, where's the paper projects, need parent education, about why we're blogging.

We (teachers) have to be good learners/users of technology - and pass it on to parents - passion, following interests.

7th: Get parents in and teach them about MSN Chat - get parents hooked - how kids are learning - show the parents why kids are passionate about messaging. IM language vs blogs in English. Twitter has 140 characters - so IM language is important.
8th: Jim - head teacher of Concordia - "if it's written it must be right" - a danger if it's taken as true - how do we teach them how to be critical - how to be good crap detectors. Textbooks - not always correct - learners need to constantly "edit" the information they receive.
8th: Kids really need to know how to investigate, and apply evaluation techniques.
9th: We should be teaching kids to question authority, media, alternate press vs official press, etc...
10th: Google "Martin Luther King" - first sites are very biased -KKK and such !!!
11th: Tell the kids your life experience esp. about the bits where you have learned to be selective.
12th: Take a class together to some of the game sites or social networks and learn together how to be critical.
Gary Stager: The King example is very complex, with truth on the KKK sites ...
Great session! Thanks, WIll.

[Susan Sedro]

The "Big" Shifts in Learning


Our model of education is based on the assumption that information is scarce. However, information is no longer scarce.
- MIT OpenCourseWare: ungraduate and graduate courses: syllubus, assignments, readings, assessments (with answers), videos of the lectures, etc. All this for free. Doesn't include the labs and other things, and doesn't include the credit, but you can get a pretty good level of information. (Not all the courses are complete yet; they are at 25-30% of courses are fleshed out)

So, we no longer need to to in a traditional classroom to gain this information.

Content is Constantly Changing
- In Wikipedia you can track 500 most recent changes to the content at the site.
- Much of the content we are teaching kids has a shorter and shorter half life. Much of what we are teaching them will be irrelevant or wrong by the time they need to use it.


We Don't Just Read Texts... We Write Them
- Classes creating their own textbooks (Darren Kuropatwa's class scribes)
- kids podcasting and blog to outside audiences. Radio Willoweb kids aren't writing reports for their teacher; they are sharing their learning with the world.

Our Teachers are Everywhere
- We now have many teachers and our learning is not limited to 9am -5 pm.
- Personal learning communities allow us to have teachers everywhere (visitors to his blog from around the planet, all sharing his passion. The long tail at work!
- Fanfiction.net Write your own sequels.

Learning is Social. Learning is Networked
We need the face to face.

Our Kids Understand Social, Networked technologies more than we do

Our notions of privacy, plagarism, copyright are all changing
- What happens when the sum of human learning is online? How does th is play out? Who owns ideas? What happens to originality?


How are these technologies shifting you? What are the challenges?

When you start to build a snowman you start with a small snowball that gets bigger as you roll it. What are the basics that we as educators need to put in (e.g. reading, writing) What is the math facts video game?


Where and how do we draw the line? What can be left out and what needs to be left in. Related to that, how do we know when we understand things versus having found an answer? Part of the richness of learning is knowing when you really know something. When we are barraged by info, we need to hold precious the knowledge of what we truly know.

What changes would we like to make in schools tomorrow? Will would change almost everything. He’d help their teachers model the types of practices that they themselves will need to have when they are ready to access, vet, produce and publish information. He would try to help teachers see the opportunities that those technologies afford them. Help them see education as an ongoing conversation, that some truths are negotiated around the facts. He wants the school to take advantage of the opportunities more than they currently are. Right now the children are very dependent on their teachers, very limited in the avenues for demonstrating their learning and exploring their passions.

Some schools with oodles of technology are struggling because of the pushback from parents, the scare. What does parent education need to look like? We need to give ground level info. We need to bring them in and give them access.

A related issue here in Asia is that if we change too quickly, we lose our customers because our international kids need to fit back into their home cultures and school systems.

There are so many “Yeah, but…” in the US, but the question is, are you doing it on your own? Is your own personal learning system in place? Are you using the tools yourself?

We need to know our stakeholders so we can get them in to start talking/learning.

There is still the ethos of “If something is written, it must be true.” However, someone publishing their personal opinion doesn’t make it fact. How do we learn a process of vetting information? We have to understand how we personally vet information before we can teach it to students. It is not a unit, it is a way we do business.

Teachers may be used to relying on information in a textbook. They were comfortable that the text was reliable so they aren’t used to questioning the source, even though the textbook publishers themselves are listing the inaccuracies on their website.

This brings us back to the need to teach students to think, to research, to analyze, to evaluate. We keep coming back to this. If only it weren’t so difficult in a NCLB world. Time to return to questioning authority. Question the bias and motives that generate information. (Great comments from Ken Paynter. I didn’t do him justice in my retelling here.)

Life experience plays a big part of how we vet information. Explain that to kids. How do we help them build those experiences? Need to start the discussion. We can model it so they are ready to use it when they have the life experiences to actually use it.

Take them on a field trip to a virtual place, such as Runescape. Then we can model appropriate and inappropriate use.

First hit on the MLK Google search is a KKK website. Much of the info on it is true, but it is spinning the info to discredit MLK.

[Dennis Harter]

A question was posed through a story about how sometimes you do have to have the knowledge in your head instead of knowing how to look it up.

How do you draw this line?

My thoughts: that line is drawn by NEED. Just like we learn technology when we need it and just like we learn to do ANYTHING when we need it, this situation is framed the same way.

When you are provided with situations that allow for time to access and the ability to look up information, then you will and should use that. But SITUATION will also determine that you will need to know stuff. Like every time I drive a car...i need to know how to do this. Like working in a hospital and needing to know what drugs do what and what adverse reactions there are. If you are in that situation, you will/must spend the time it takes to KNOW YOUR STUFF. But when that situation is different, like the Pharmacy example, then this kind of knowledge is less important than knowing how to find it.

You cannot prepare kids by telling them THIS is knowledge they must have on hand all the time and THAT is knowledge that they have to know to look up. What you have to provide them with is the understanding that their lives and their choices will determine when and how this will happen.

My one cent.