Current Events

Current Events

Debunking the Industrial Age School Myth

Something about the argument that our “current school system was created in an industrial era and hasn’t changed since” has always not set right with me. A lot of this has to do with the fact that my high school looked nothing like these videos of students on an assembly line with graduation dates stamped on our foreheads. A decade later, the school that I taught at in a  different city didn’t look like that, either. And even schools that I worked with recently in a different part of the state did not look like that.

But maybe that was just my experience. Maybe I was just hitting the same outlier school every time?

Or maybe it really was that the argument itself was invalid and I just didn’t know enough about history to know why.

Mike Caufield posted today about the problems he has with the current ideas of Sugata Mitra, and in doing so he also shed some light on the real problems with the “schools are industrial-age relic” arguments.

Caufield’s summary of his disagreement really tells the whole picture, but it is worth reading the whole article to look at specific historical reasons why he comes to his conclusions:

The history Mitra narrates is this. There once was a race of Victorians. They built a can opener called education, and nobody has changed that can opener since, even though we no longer eat from cans. But we no longer eat from cans! Give me a million dollars, please.

This is what we hear from so many educational reformers today.  No one would deny that our systems are not working and need to be fixed, changed, or re-built from the ground up. But how can we really know what needs to be changed if we are so ignorant of where we have come from and where we currently stand right now? To extend Caufield’s summary into the world of educational reformers, what we are basically getting is this:

But we no longer eat from cans! We eat from plastic containers. So we are going to change the can opener to a plastic container opener thingee (whatever that is – don’t ask us to explain ourselves okay?). Don’t listen to these people saying they don’t need can openers or plastic containers.  Ignore the man behind the curtain and give me a million dollars, please.

The End of the (MOOC) World is Nigh

Anyone remember Second Life? It started off as a bleeding edge tool that a few educators experimented in. Then it exploded in popularity, with proponents calling it a “game changer” and the “future of online learning.” Then people started questioning whether it was really that big of a deal. In no time you had two diametrically opposed camps set up: one that thought Second Life was a pointless waste of time, and another that started telling people that questioned it that it was here to stay and that they should get over it and move on. Then before you knew it…. Second Life completely disappeared out of the conversation – almost overnight.

Isolated incident? What about Google Wave? Same cycle (even though it was forced to be a bit under the radar at first because of the restricted access imposed by Google). Once people started dividing and taking extreme sides…. poof. It died.

That is pretty much the cycle you see with many education tools and concepts. Under-the-radar experimentation gives way to mass exposure and hype, which brings out people that question the hype, which devolves into rigid camps and opposing sides, and finally ending with the quick death of the tool or idea.

Blogs, e-books, Twitter, and all these other tools that live on seem to so do so because no one really knows if they work or not. When the proponents stay open and honest about the short comings of a tool they champion, that tools seems to stay around a lot longer.

When a tool or concept gets labeled disruptive before it actually disrupts anything…. it more often that not dies out. But not before people take extreme sides and miss out on the good points the “other” side is making. The good news is that services that still live on after the death of the hype cycle (like Second Life) still see a core of people that experiment and do interesting things.

So far this year, it seems like the same cycle has been set in motion for MOOCs. First sign was an Inside Higher Ed article that slams MOOCs for being “designed to impose, not improved learning, but a new business model on higher education, which opens the door for wide-scale profiteering.” There is a good point in that statement: the business model behind many MOOCs is questionable at best. But I would say this statement goes a bit too far in painting an extreme picture of ALL MOOCs. Which could be said about many of the points in the article – something good to think about, but possibly taken to a bit of an extreme viewpoint against MOOCs.

In response, Mark Smithers questions the Inside Higher Ed article and defends MOOCs by saying that “Much of the learning that takes place in MOOCs is of the highest quality.” Smithers gives no definition of what exactly he means by highest quality… and I have probably heard about 50 million definitions of what “highest quality” means in the past few months alone. Then add on top of that the fact that many researchers will tell you it is impossible to really rate how high the quality of learning is… I’m not sure you can really say that one way of the other.

[What I would say is that the current dominant model of MOOC skews heavily towards independent learning, multiple choice testing, talking head videos, and other passive learning techniques that social constructivist leaning people like me feel does not lead to high quality learning. That is up for debate even in the social constructivist circles…. but I think it is really hard to say definitely either way.]

I think both articles have good points that fans and critics of MOOCs should take to heart. But I also think both articles embrace hyperbole that is not helpful to the debate. I don’t know much about the authors of the Inside Higher Ed article (there are 6 of them for a 14 paragraph article), but I do follow Smithers and he consistently makes great points in his blog.

Now we have problems cropping up like a MOOC being pulled suddenly for no reason and this week a teacher leaving a MOOC possibly because students didn’t want to work to his standards (don’t sign up for a course and then whine that the instructor wants you to actually work hard). All part of the cycle that usually ends in the death of the “over-hype phase” of a tool or idea.

Not that it is bad for these over-hype phases to die. It brings out the true believers and gets rid of the posers.

I think what further exasperates the problem is that those of us in Educational Technology (myself included) forget to consider what a small fishbowl we occupy. I talk to friends and students on campus all the time about online learning. Those outside of Ed Tech circles have rarely heard of MOOCs. Many are still asking me “how on Earth can you take a class online?” Many, many more than most people reading this blog would believe. Just because MOOCs are all over our news outlets doesn’t mean that they are disrupting anything. I just don’t agree with Smithers that “MOOCs are a classic disruptive innovation that fits the model described by Christensen precisely”…. yet. It may get there. But so far, my gut is telling me it is going to die out like others. If I am wrong, no problem. Won’t be the first time this hour.

Of course, I have to stop for the obligatory detailing of the “two different MOOCs”. First there is the original flavor of MOOC that was championed by Downes, Siemens, Groom, Levine, Cormier, and others. I say “was” because many of these leaders have hinted at or secretly admitted that they are ready for the MOOC hype to die. Sorry if I exposed some of you guys… but its time to come out of the closet on your feelings about MOOCs :).  But few people actually read this blog, so probably no harm done. Then there is the current, much more dominant flavor of MOOC (that are most often featured in the news) by MIT, EdX, and Udacity. Most of the discussion about MOOCs is about this newer, more dominant model.

The bigger problem with this whole area is really with our discipline as a whole. We have slowly changed from thought leaders to thought followers. Instead of evaluating trends or tools and asking “does this work at all and if so, where, how, why, etc?” we just say “this is the way that it is happening – get on board or get out of the way!” We think we are helpless bull-riders stuck on the back of a raging bull… not realizing that it is possible to tame the bull and utilize its full potential. Because a wild, raging bull is not good for anything but gawking entertainment and goring people. A trained bull can still do all that and much, much more.

And yes, I know that education has been stuck in a dictatorial-based mindset for a long time – with administrators telling everyone what to do (even though they never stopped to find out what really works) and “sage-on-the-stage” educators boring students to sleep. I agree that model doesn’t work, either. But we don’t need to swing the other way and just say “this is the way the world is going… grab on or get left behind!”

If Steve Jobs had listened to people telling him where the world was going, there would be no iPhone, no iPad, probably not even a mouse on any computer. But Jobs had a vision for the direction he thought the world should go, and he took the world there. He didn’t let the world take him to a place where “no one wants a computer in their cellphone – Palm phone sales are dismal!”

Or think of it this way: one of the biggest complaints I hear from some teenagers once they grow-up and enter into adulthood (the two don’t always happen at the same time) is that their parents didn’t reign them in enough. For these people, their parents were so concerned with being the cool, hip parents that they didn’t stop every once in a while and say “that’s not a good idea.” Really – I hear it all the time when I talk to college students. They don’t want dictators … but they wanted more guidance than they got.

What I am saying is we seem to be missing the middle ground. We don’t need to be dictators or hype-worshipers. We need leaders that question everything but still end up liking some things. We have a few out there, but we need many, many more. We need to reject the idea of the constant negative naysayer as much as we do the overly optimistic hype proselytizers.

I guess I am just coming out of the closet myself as a pragmatist in many ways…. and hoping that others will take that path, too.

So I Guess The Future of Education Looks a Lot Like the Current and the Past

So a lot has been said about the problems that Coursera ran into with a recent MOOC “stumble.” The anti-MOOC crowd is screaming “I told you so”, while the pro-MOOC crowd is brushing it off as “just a risk that we take with experimentation.” At first I was trying to figure out what the big deal was – courses get cancelled all the time, often for no reason. I have even heard of MOOCs getting cancelled for various reasons, too. Why the fuss here?

Part of it is probably because of the way it happened, but I think the real reason is a bit larger in scope: the magic savior/disruptor of higher education, the promised one that was to come and fulfill all prophecies and lead us into a glorious new educational future – has proven to be just as fallible as any other tool or idea.

Maybe we are beginning to realize that the problem with education today is not necessarily the system or the structure or the pedagogy or the tools, but it is the people using those systems, structures, pedagogies, and tools incorrectly. Maybe we are now realizing that our awesome ideas that will destroy higher ed can themselves be misused in the wrong hands. Maybe we are beginning to realize that the people in charge of cool, new hip systems can make just as bone-headed decisions as the suit and tie guys in charge of academia if they don’t have the correct information.

Maybe it is time to realize that the road to true revolution in academia is not about disruption or trying to recreate the “mp3 of the educational world” or even about revolution at all. Maybe it is about spending the time to train people correctly in how to use the correct tools in the correct way. Maybe it is time to stop making fun of the people that are calling for research into new ideas by saying that they are “resisting the inevitable future” (sometime research reveals that new ideas are good – so its not like people calling for research are resisting new ideas).  Because I am starting to think that the only inevitable thing about the future is that we will be doomed to repeat the past if we don’t learn from it. This whole scenario with Coursera seems to just be us repeating past mistakes because we didn’t try to learn from them along the way.

Maybe it is time to stop looking at mistakes as something to be discarded and start looking at the them as something to learn from and possibly even improve upon.

Turn in Your Glasses at the Classroom Door

At one point teachers had to collect bubblegum from students before they walked into classrooms. Then it was calculators. Now we are having them take up cellphones. The next thing will probably be their glasses once Google Glasses become affordable. And when they move on to contact lenses? Implants in their heads?

At some point, we will realize that you just can’t keep technological aids out of the learning process. Some day (soon), entire countries will guarantee Internet access and a device to access it with for every person living in their borders. It probably won’t be too long before someone creates the technology to sustain a global 12G bubble around the entire planet.

So when connection is everywhere, and devices to stay connected are a part of our glasses/contacts/body – will we finally see the end of the fight to keep them out of the classroom?

Probably not. We will most likely see school leaders creating technology to block, scramble, or filter the connection.

So what is the solution? Go back to the basics. Not with technology – with teaching. We have known for decades and even longer what teaching strategies work. The kicker is that these age-old concepts will still work even if students become constantly connected to the Internet: teaching them to apply concepts, to think critically, to actively engage instead of passively soak up knowledge, etc. If we change teaching now, we will be ready for anything that technology throws at us.

(FYI – This change does not start with the teachers. They are forced to teach to the test or lose their job. We have to start with ditching the requirements and admins that force teachers to teach that way.)

All I have to say is – I should have patented my “computer in a pair of glasses” idea a long time ago. I could be rich! Oh, wait – Google Glasses aren’t for sale yet. Well, I could have the possibility of become rich someday in the future….

Predicting the Future is Still Difficult

Next week I will be presenting on “Online Learning Innovation: Community, Openness, and Turning Things Inside Out” at the 2012 NUTN conference with my colleague Sarrah Saraj. We will also be talking about the next 30 years of education at a panel discussion earlier in the conference. So here is what I have been thinking about the future.

A new web series on YouTube called H+ is set in a future timeline where transhumanism has gone very wrong (thank you to Katrina for getting me hooked on another show). They show some futuristic ideas on the show – computers on thin sheets of plastic, then embedded in our heads, etc. One line got me thinking:

“Didn’t you ever hack an iPhone when you were a kid?”

“Before my time pops”

Yep – someday the shiny new iPhone that will be introduced today will be an ancient museum relic that old fogeys reminisce about.

But, of course, I will still want one :)

In 1991, I was a recent high school graduate who took out a loan to “catch up” on technology. For around $2000, I bought a 13″ TV, an IBM PS/1, a phone for my room, and a subscription to this new thing called Prodigy.

If you think about it, the smart phone (iPhone or iPaf or Android or whatever for that matter) pretty much does everything those things did. They don’t really do anything new, they just combined several devices and did things we had already been doing… only better.

In fact, most people will tell you that the Internet is still just doing what the printed press did with information, the telephone did with communication, the radio did with broadcasting, and the movie did with entertainment… just in a vastly improved manner.

So “looking at the future” really needs to mean focusing in on concepts and not devices. And we will pretty much find out that these concepts will be very familiar. Our devices for utilizing these concepts will change and improve – and there is nothing wrong with liking these devices or exploring their usage.

But we need to quit spending time and money investigating the devices themselves and focus more on how we can best use them to improve how we accomplish the concepts of teaching and learning. How the iPhone 5 will change education is irrelevant. How the functions of smartphones will help us improve how we teach students or accomplish sound theoretical frameworks is a better question.

How many hundreds of times more do we need to read an article that ends with “It wasn’t the _____ itself, but how it was used that made the difference.”

A MOOC By Any Other Name…

So I guess it is no secret that some people don’t like the term “Massive Open Online Course” or its common abbreviation “MOOC.” Certainly, it is hard to go to Academic Deans and other administrative positions and ask to teach a MOOC – they will quickly dive for a policy manual to see if you are uttering a racial slur. It just sounds funny to say, especially in many situations.

But I think the biggest problem with the term is that “MOOC” really doesn’t accurately describe many massive, open courses (as David Wiley pointed out in the article linked to above). Now when you are talking about the flavor of MOOCs created by MIT and others, “MOOC” is a pretty accurate descriptor. They are “massive” thanks to national exposure, they are “open” to anyone who wants to take them, they are always “online,” and they are most definitely “courses” with a start point and an end point.

But when you are describing the O.M. – the Original MOOC – the term MOOC usually begins to break down. They don’t have to be “massive.”  They do have to be “open” (and we can pretty much ignore any courses that aren’t – because then it could be just like any other online course). Jim Groom and others have theorized that they don’t have to be “online” – you could set up the O.M. model in hybrid course or even a touring bus for that matter. And calling a MOOC a “course” is more than a bit limiting. Sure there are those that go through a MOOC as a course, with a start and a finish and credit earned and all of that. But some just take part. Some stay in the course even after finishing and make it a part of their life. So MOOCs are really somewhat a course and somewhat not.

So we are really left with “open” and “course.” But we need something to describe this thing – “open course” just doesn’t cut it. Since they are built on connectivism, I guess we could added “connected” in there. But, of course, “Connected Open Course” won’t work. Other than… ummm… obvious reasons… “connected” really sounds more like the way old people described the Internets in the 1990s. And “course” still just doesn’t work. I guess these things are more like experiences. “Open Connected Experience”? Or maybe more like “Open Connectivist Experiments” if you really want truth in advertising? I guess for the admin types you would still need “course” in there – so how about “Open Connectivist Course-Like Experiments”? OCCLE’s (pronounced “oak-lee”… or “oh-slee”)?

Yeah, I guess you’re going to be stuck with a lame name no matter what angle you try…

The Future of Education Doesn’t Get Announced. It Just Happens.

“The future of education is now here!” If I had a nickel for every time I have heard that, well… I would probably have more money than every company that made that declaration.

It seems that the best way to kill an educational innovation is to proclaim that it is the next big thing. Before it actually becomes the next big thing, that is. Web 2.0 was a big deal before most realized it. But then everything that was declared Web 3.0 fizzled out, followed by the term Web 3.0 itself.

With the announcement today that Harvard and MIT are creating edX, many are proclaiming the future of education is here. To me, the names behind an idea and the money they put into it are irrelevant. Are they going to do something that actually uses good learning design, or are they going to just give away the same old “multiple choice test, online video lecture, write a paper” approach that has been used forever?

Passive learning is just passive learning, no matter how free, open, or massive it is.

I don’t care how many people you get in your free class. If all they do is pick the right answer on a multiple choice test – so what? I can train a monkey to do that.

We really need to ask ourselves: “is this good for the future of education?”

The work of Jim Groom, Stephen Downes, George Siemens, Dave Cormier, and many others of their type are good for education, not because they are doing open education (which is important, but not for the point being made here), but because they are using educational designs that are engaging and beneficial to the learner. They are using community-based designs that encourage out-of-the-box thinking (for both students and instructors). They are avoiding rote memorization. They are creating classes where students actually have to pay attention to the syllabus to know what is going on (how many online classes could actually just skip having a syllabus because they are so cookie-cutter?). They are making students participate in the actual creation of the course assignments. All kinds of crazy things that you don’t see in most things labeled as “the next big thing in education.”

Or then again, maybe I just have a problem with the name “edX.” Did someone ever bother telling them that creating brands with the “x” signifier got way over-used about 10 years ago… and never recovered? Guess not…

I hope that Harvard and MIT come up with something great here. I really do. But the honest truth is,  when I hear Jim Groom talking about innovation as a communal act, I get really excited about the future of education. When I hear Harvard and MIT talk about edX, I just shrug a bit and say “hope they don’t mess it up.”

The Future of Education Doesn’t Get Announced. It Just Happens.

Blackboard’s New Message: “We Can’t Stop You From Leaving, So We’ll Buy Where Ever You Go. Resistance is Futile.”

So a lot has been said about the Blackboard move into open source. After reading several posts, I still have to consider this move a bad one overall. At least for those of us that want better diversity and choice in the Ed Tech market. Let’s face it, no matter where you go, you can’t escape the touch of Blackboard.

They buy competitors that they can – Angel, WebCT, etc, etc. If they can’t buy a company, they force changes through lawsuits and patents (Desire2Learn). Open source used to be the “safe zone” from Blackboard, but now they are working to inject their ideas and footprint into the two largest open source projects.

Most of the new start-ups we have seen in recent years still seem to be trying too hard to not be Blackboard, or to be Blackboard with an easier to understand interface (i.e. the “educational version” of Facebook). But all of these companies still bear the big, hard to miss effects of Blackboard on their product. There are a few good ideas in Blackboard (mostly assimilated from other product purchases), and avoiding those ideas “just to be different” causes more problems than it fixes.

And I just don’t get what is going on with Instructure. I am trying to like them, but can’t ignore the fact that they are saying some things that don’t match up with reality. “People don’t like it [Moodle]?” Then why is it so popular? Why does it score so high in customer satisfaction? Why does every single person I have ever talked to at conferences about Moodle rave about it? Or how about this one: “We rarely see Moodle or Sakai make it to the short list of any education institution.” I agree with Sakai – but Moodle? I get why some people don’t like Moodle, but everywhere I go I always see it on the short list. Usually a short list of two – Moodle and Blackboard. I just don’t get these wildly hyperbolic statements. Or how about this: “Moodle and Blackboard came from the same decade, which was a long time ago.” Huh? The Internet is older than both, so would that mean it is time to give up on online learning altogether? I’m just hoping these are comments taken out of context.

Blackboard has shown that they can’t stop people from leaving their product, so they are going to buy wherever the former customers go. If you can’t beat them, buy them, right? This will push more people to go the DIY route outside of all LMS providers. Why choose a competitor that might just be bought? Why go open-source when some of the ideas you didn’t like in Blackboard might get added to the project in a few years? Or the company that you use for hosting just gets bought?

So now many universities are going to start looking anew to the DIY, artist-formerly-known-as-EduPunk, cobbled together approach of the open education movement, or MOOCheads, or whatever name the cutting edge people decide to call themselves. At some point, there needs to be a cool name attached to this movement, since Jim Groom went through that ugly divorce with EduPunk and all.

But, come on EduPunk… can’t you just open your eyes and see that you were wooed away by the promise of book deals and big money and became a corporate sell-out? You were such a cool name and idea… we need you back at this crazy time in history to be a rally point for those of us that want something different.

My personal prediction is that this latest move will push more universities to just abandon the LMS altogether. Let’s face it, if you don’t like Blackboard, that seems to be your only option now.

But maybe that Jim Groom is now Mr. Money Bags, he can just fund a new system that will give organizations wanting to go DIY a good starting place.

Yet Another Sign That the LMS is Dying – Blackboard “Embraces” Open Source

I’m a huge SciFi fan, but I have to admit there some Star Trek series I never got into. Star Trek Voyager was one of them. I did catch one episode that was pretty cool – it involved the Borg running into a species that was too much for them to handle. One scene in particular that I remember was a Borg soldier trying to assimilate an organic compound on the wall – with very little success. It just couldn’t understand that this goo on the wall just wasn’t assimilate-able and just keep sticking its interface in and out, never noticing that it wasn’t working at all.

To me, this is a pretty fitting description of what would happen if Blackboard ever tried to take over Moodle. They would just be this big corporation trying to assimilate something they don’t really understand.

But that would never happen, because you can’t buy an open-source project. Right? Oh, wait….

I guess they can (and did) buy a hosting provider for Moodle services. And now according to the press release, they are going to use this connection to start invjecting their tentacles… er… “ideas” into the Moodle project. Oh, and the Sakai project while they are at it.

(That sound you now hear in the collective sound of a million EduGeeks pounding their heads on their desks)

Blackboard even met with Martin Dougiamas of Moodle to get a start “in outlining areas where Blackboard can best contribute to the Moodle project as we set out on a journey.”

Don’t get me wrong – I owe a lot to Blackboard. I probably wouldn’t have my day job if I didn’t have to spend so much time explaining to people how to figure out the confusing thing that Blackboard refers to as an “interface”. In most cases, I usually end up doing most of the technical side myself, as it is just too complex for the average educational user to have time for. If an instructor has to choose between helping students learn and spending huge amounts of time learning how to get a test in Blackboard, I think they should go for the time with the student.

And now they want to send these interface and structure ideas back into Moodle?

So, is the LMS really dying… or being slowly chocked to death by The Borg? You be the judge.

Is Apple Introducing Something New, or Just Glamming Up the Same Old Ideas?

So today Apple announced some new apps that will basically make it easier and cheaper (assuming you secure a loan to buy an iPad in the first place) to create, publish, and purchase eTextbooks. Or iTextbooks? I confess I haven’t tried the tools or watched the keynote yet – just read a few reports on it.

It also seems like there is now an Apple version of an LMS app of some kind for iTunesU.

I am sure all of this looks pretty cool and works great… but is this really change or just turning the same old model education model into a sexy Hollywood version of itself?

A walled garden is still a walled garden even if it is designed by Apple. Passively reading a textbook is still passively reading a textbook even if you add in some cool swipe motions and 3-D video.

The question still remains – do we really need textbooks and LMS’s for education? Whether you like active learning, social learning, open learning, de-schooling, or any other buzzword from the fringes of education, we all realize that sitting and staring at something for hours at a time with only the occasional move/swipe of the hand is not the best way to learn something.

Sure you can add more interaction and 3-D graphics to textbooks, but we already have a tool for that in the technology world. It’s called a game. What will be the line between interactive iTextbooks and games? At some point we might just need to get over the stigma that some educators have about games and just eliminate the “textbook” category all together. Or maybe that is the path Apple has started us on.

I guess we’ll see once people dig in and start using these apps. I’m sure it will be fun… But will it be Transformers 3 or The Matrix?