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Imagine courses that take place in wikis, blogs, social networks…

Thursday, July 8th, 2010

I am this week in the WikiSym / Wikimania double conference.

Its’ another great opportunity to spend some time with the world’s brightest wiki-minds: academics, developers, community members and bureaucrats.

I am going to give a short talk on Friday in the Wikiversity session. I am going to present the EduFeedr, a small and beautiful project I am working with Hans Põldoja.

If you can’t make it to Gdańsk — it’s sunny and with nice mixture (like good wikis) of Slavic flexibility and Prussian order — you may check the following presentation. I’ll copy here also the abstract of the talk:

Designing Tools for Supporting Wikiversity Courses: the Case of EduFeedr

In spring 2008 the authors organized a course on composing free and open educational resources (in the Wikiversity). It was officially a master’s course at the University of Art and Design Helsinki. The authors decided to make the course available with an open enrollment through the Wikiversity and promoted it in their blogs. As a result about 70 people from 20 countries signed up for the course on the Wikiversity page.

The course was organized as a weekly blogging seminar. In each week the facilitators posted a weekly theme and links to related readings on the course blog. The participants reflected on the weekly theme in their personal blogs and commented their peers.

One of the challenges in a large blog-based course is to follow all the communication. Typically this communication takes place not only in blogs but also in other environments such as Delicious, Twitter, etc. Most of these environments provide RSS feeds but typical RSS readers are not very suitable for following this kind of courses. Most of the RSS readers such as Google Reader are designed for personal use. In a Wikiversity course it would be important to have a shared feed reader that all the participants could use.

EduFeedr is a web-based feed reader that is designed specifically for following and supporting learners in open blog-based courses. The design process of EduFeedr is based on the research-based design methodology. We have organized several Wikiversity courses where we have tried out various online tools to manage the course. The initial user needs for EduFeedr came out from this contextual inquiry. Interaction design methods such as scenario-based design, user stories and paper prototyping have been used in the process.

As a result of the design process we have indicated the key features for EduFeedr. These include (1) signing up for the course, (2) visualizing how the students have proceeded with the assignments, (3) visualizing the social network between the students, (4) annotating blog posts and comments, and (5) archiving the course.

EduFeedr is currently a work-in-progress. The first version is implemented as Elgg plugin and we are currently doing internal testing with real data from several Wikiversity courses. In this version we have implemented signing up for the course and some of the planned visualizations. We are planning to launch the beta version of EduFeedr service in late summer 2010. The source code and more information about EduFeedr is available at the project web site (see http://www.edufeedr.org).

Posted in Aalto University, Collaboration, Conferences, Design, Open Source, Sharing economy, Social Software, Wikimedia, Wikiversity, educational tool | 3 Comments »

Open education: if you can do it, do it

Sunday, July 4th, 2010

Some time ago the New York Times wrote about the fathers’ leave in Sweden. The articles ends with these words:

In Sweden I am on the right,” Mr. Westerberg said, “but in the United States, I’m considered a Communist.”

Some days ago David Wiley wrote that with the open content the Open Knowledge Foundation gets it wrong when claiming that share-alike licenses are open but non-commercial ones aren’t.

For those who are not that familiar with the open/free content/knowledge discussion, the share-alike (SA) license has a condition asking people who remix or build upon the content to distribute the resulting work under the same license. The license ensures that later works will be open, too — will stay in commons. Wiley wrote:

“When authors adopt a share-alike license, they are saying: we value the freedom of content over the freedom of people.”

As an author using share-alike license I see this a bit differently. I value the *freedom of mankind*, the common good, over the freedom of content or individuals.

I think that this is the way most SA people see it: When you are given, you should give back, too.

I also do not consider use of SA to be any kind of violation of individual’s rights. Individual’s rights is something I am not willing to negotiate about. In the case of content anyone is still free to release *their own stuff* under whatever license. So, as a such SA is not really communism. It is a way to contribute to the common good.

Later Wiley wrote a follow-up post with the title Openness, Radicalism, and Tolerance and asking “Why isn’t the open crowd more open-minded?”

I see here some signs of a straw man arguments.

I think we should look how the Free / Open Source Softeware movement and the Open Content movement were started. People simply started to do things. The Free software people made software and wanted to share it with their friends. Some other people started to write free encylopedia or publish University course content online. They just did it because they could.

What are people doing in the field of Open Education?

Many things. For instance, the Peer 2 Peer Univeristy and the Wikiversity are crassroot open education projects organizing self-organizing learning online. The idea is to bring people together to teach and to learn from each other. Simple.

Similar kind of initiatives are started here and there: from Indian to Brazil, From South Africa to Finland. I find these much more interesting that the discussion on content-driven “open education”. The content is there – now it is the time to use it. That is education.

Peer 2 Peer University 2010 from P2P University on Vimeo.

Posted in Open Source, Sharing economy, Social Software, Wikiversity | 3 Comments »

No PLEs, but informal learning in Real World communities

Wednesday, May 5th, 2010

Pauliina Seppälä just published a great presentation telling the story of the Refugee Hospitality Club in Punavuori, Helsinki. It’s a nice example of using digital social networking service (basically Facebook) to organize people to change their own living environment, the Real World, to be a bit more human, pleasant and civic. Check the presentation:

My second example of informal learning in a Real World is a Master Thesis work from our MA in New Media program. Linda Kronman’s Killer Fashion Revolution is a project that uses fashion hacktivism to promote human rights. Check the video:

What is common with the two projects is a strong community aspect in them. Pauliina and Linda have not build Personal Learning Environment to benefit themselves, but have started a project to build and maintain platform for community interested in important and common interest. The communities also have clear missions, shared values and commitment. The operations are transparent.

The topic of role of informal learning has been a widely discussed among online learning people. The idea of Personal Learning Environment (PLE) and Do it yourself University (DIY U) are considered to be a real game-changers in learning and education in the digital era.

I agree with this but have found the PLE and the DIY U problematic, because they emphasize individuals over communities. In them the individuals are considered to be in the center, with all the rights and the responsibilities to choose whatever he or she wants to study, when, where and with whom.

The weak social ties in pure online communities easily results as opportunistic and no or only short-term commitments.

I see that the Real World does not work like this, or should I say, that the Real World requires different kind of approach. I see that the ultimate individualism and lack of commitment may cause a lot of trouble — actually some very serious problems.

It is —I admit — a strong claim, but I see connection between the PLE and some of the most shocking accidents in Finland, in recent years: a bombing in a shopping center in 2002 and in two school shootings that took place in 2007 and in 2008.

From the Wikipedia articles you can check how the perpetrators were active online “learners” in an anonymous “home chemistry” group and in online hate groups interested in school shootings. All the perpetrators were individual learners online.

To blame “Personal Learning Environment” about the incidents would of course be silly. So, I am not doing it. I am, however, either not one of those people who think that technology and tools are neutral and can be used for good and bad.

Guns kill people. Killing someone with hammer is possible, but there is a difference.

Posted in Collaboration, Design, Social Software, Uncategorized, educational tool | 1 Comment »

Fle3 — 10 (or 20) years ahead of its time ?

Monday, February 15th, 2010

I just got an email from a graduate student in US asking would it be possible for him to take a look of the Fle3 with a visitor user name and password. Fle3 is server software for computer supported collaborative learning (CSCL) designed and developed in our research group, released in 2002 (first version in 1999).

I get this kind of requests about twice a month. My common practice with these is that I just send people the user name with the teacher’s rights.

This time — I do this maybe once in two years — I decided to check whatever our Fle3 demo server is still up and running. Tarmo has setup the server so that it is pretty much bullet proof but sometime it is good to check that everything in there is ok.

So, It was not a surprise for me that the server was up and running, but a surprise was that when clicking a bit around in Fle3 I realized that it is still very relevant collaborative learning environment.

In a way it is maybe today more relevant than 10 years ago when the first version of Fle3 (just called FLE at that time) was released in 1999. In the late 1990’s and early 2000, the Web was not very social or collaborative.

If you are interested in to have a look of Fle3, feel free to visit the demo server with the following username (it is a teacher/tutor username – the login is in the right upper corner):

http://fle3.uiah.fi/demo/courses/1297/announcements/

username: tutor
password: saapask1ssa

If you rather read about Fle3, we also have a nice colorful booklet:

Learning with Collaborative Software – A guide to Fle3.

In a way Fle3 was (and naturally still is) a social media and social networking service. For instance, it has a lot of similar features to Facebook, but with a special focus to support learning projects.

In Fle3 you always work with a group of people you trust and are willing to share your most stupid thoughts and ideas. This is because sharing your early hypothesis and theories is important in learning and you rather do it with people you trust.

For instance, Fle3 is very strict with privacy: you work and share things only with your class or group of students with whom you have build a social cohesion in a level that everyone can trust each other.

When Facebook is now claiming that privacy is no longer a social norm we may expect that closed network services will become more popular. I assume people need social online spaces (like Fle3) where one can be open with their “friends”, without a fear of someone using your early ideas and pondering against, you or your data/media to sell something to someone.

Practically speaking, there are needs for different kind of services: open and closed, socially and technologically open and closed. This is why in our research group we are also interested in to develop fully open tools that could support the idea of knowledge building in the open Internet. I will write about this another post, soon.

Posted in Collaboration, Open Source, Social Software, educational tool | No Comments »

21st Century Skills: The Virtues of Ancient Greece

Sunday, September 27th, 2009

Last week I gave a talk in a workshop organized by the Confederation of Finnish Industries EK. The theme of the workshop was to explore the future of education in Finland. The title of my talk was “digitalization, networks and the future of education” (In Finnish: Digitalisoituminen, verkottuminen ja koulutuksen tulevaisuus).

My original plan for the talk was to bring up the latest international discussion around the 21st century skills: what they are, why they are considered to be important, and how different stakeholders are planning to achieve them?

Finally, I didn’t talk about the 21st century skills at all, but about digital culture and how the social behavior online is strongly affecting on “offline” areas of human life, such as schools and educational system. I concluded that, though we live the era of digital knowledge and networks we probably should not drive “skills sets” from these external factors, but maybe look the old good virtues of ancient Greece and think what could they mean in the 21st century. The classical four Greek virtues are Practical Wisdom (sofia), Braveness (andreia), Justice (dikaiosynē), and Sophrosyne (sōfrosynē).

In Finland – cause the relatively good results from the OECD’s PISA surveys – there isn’t any huge internal pressure for major educational reforms in basic education. Children in Finnish schools all have reading/writing proficiency, can do basic math and science and know where is Burma and who is the prime minister of Italy (and if they don’t they will check it from Wikipedia in two seconds). Having a good system, leads easily to wrong kind of self-satisfaction: why we should do anything if we are doing so well? Why fix it if it is not broken?

Systems are not that simple. When you are doing well in some areas you may have huge challenges in other areas. For instance, if someone would take a look of ICT, Internet and media education in Finnish schools the results could be quite surprising. In these areas, the educational systems ability to respond to the changing world has been very poor. We do not have laptops in schools, we do not produce or use open educational resources and our “online teachers community” is, if not non-existing, very small. Also our ability to encourage our children to be active citizens who see the world as something they can change seems to be very limiting.

If we do not continuously develop the educational system it will decay. Systems are like gardens; you must take care of them. My humble interpretation of the areas in need of more attention in the Finnish educational system are: 1) use of ICT in Education: especially social software, open content and free and open source software; 2) The virtues of ancient Greece.

I feel that for the readers of this blog there isn’t need to list what the better use of ICT in education would mean. Because of this I’ll focus on the virtues and try to explain how they could be more present in schools and education.

The Practical Wisdom (sofia) maps well with the idea of critical thinking, problem solving and design thinking skills. Practical means focusing on solving problems of the real world. Wisdom is ability to look the problem from various points of views and to come-up with creative solutions. This is happening very little in schools today. We just do not ask children to have a look of the real world problems and ask them to search solutions to them, with help of the methods of different disciplines. For instance, how many math teachers are using global warming as the context or case in her teaching? Are we still working in the silos of different school subjects? I am afraid we are. Practical wisdom develops in a balanced practice of art and science.

Braveness (andreia) requires from one-side communication skills and from another side ability to take risks. It requires a lot of braveness to speak-up one’s mind, to share once opinion and to take part in public life. To do this one needs strong communication skills, ability to read and write, talk and listen – in several languages. Risk taking means ability to stand change and unknowingness. Many people see braveness also a critical factor in entrepreneurship.

Justice (dikaiosynē) naturally means skill to see the difference between right and wrong – to be fair and honest. It also means ability to do and support things that are rather constructive than distractive.

Sophrosyne (sōfrosynē) means moderation and temperance in everything. It means avoidance of excess in daily life, in public life, in business.

So, how one can “teach the virtues”? Actually it is simple. Virtues bloom and grown when you use them. Simple – just have good teachers.

Posted in Collaboration, General, Sharing economy, Social Software | No Comments »