Communities don’t just happen

There is much written about communities, especially around students. Seth Godin uses the ‘tribe’ metaphor and says ‘we need you to lead us‘. I wonder if leadership plays out differently where leader is to a greater or lesser degree, a designer or the game maker, not your hierarchical superior.  If we are seeking Godin’s view of leadership, is education trying to turn gas into a solid.

There are some tenants needed for effective community. MMOs, Virtual Worlds and Open Source more often demonstrate understanding that to work members/players must have a shared pool of knowledge. They must follow and abide by common practices. They must have a history (either self-evolved, or presented though a back-story). Members must share a vision or mission goal for the whole communities future. Members must work together on projects so that the community to creates strong bonds between groups and individuals. They must also be able to negotiate outcomes.

A strong community is desirable over a collection of people using a portal, because members are less likely to want to break the bonds made between them. Portals have users, who have no bonds. To the portal makers, when the level of community-friendlyness extends to attempt to undermine the goal – it’s a warning sign, that there is trouble. Messenger or Twitter  in schools for example undermines a weak community – but strengthens a strong one.  See Shelly’s post about Latin Tests on Twitter and Laurel Papworth on banning social media in schools. Please don’t yell ‘duty of care’ … as clearly public education policy is medieval  in comparison to private and Catholic on this – BOTH have the same legal obligations.

There are levels in which a ‘community’ must pass in order to succeed. Leadership requires a specific design, revealed to members as they pass through these levels – but is always adaptive to it’s members needs. Leaders do get lucky from time to time – but also unlucky when things fall over or fail to work as planned. In a weak community, it shatters all momentum but in a strong one members will accept a bad day on the grid, lose a game or not get that code to run … a strong community rallies where as a weak one stumbles.

Strong community cannot be built though artificial means. Unless you have a leader you want to follow and who’s design you believe in – you don’t join. No one wants to join a crap community. Consider how easily many newcomers to technology give up (the reluctance problem) when leadership is less than compelling. We don’t believe, therefore look for the exit.

In Halo, we get killed, in Second Life, we all get logged out and in Open Source, things crash – but we try again, we learn from it, and make it better next time.

These levels probably have shades of gray, but I see them like this – and I’m sure you can swap out the examples).

1. community of communication (twitter, messenger, facebook, myspace, bebo, workmail)
   
2. community of interest (nings, wikis, games, forums, second life)
   
3. community of practice (collabatoriums – sourceforge, indie games)
   
4. community of commitment (advocacy, guilds, networks)
   

Any group which gets to the last level here is a force to be reckoned with. There is an almost spiritual bond between it’s members – who both advocate, maintain and defend it. The Church is a great example. They have the community thing down to a fine art, but the Minister for Edumaction – I don’t think so. So we are left with using policy to force group creation. Policy is supposed to protect the organisation and members but does not create community. When members cannot succeed or operate without being in the group, they never become a strong community as the policy is the bubble that defines the operational limits, regardless of the groups increasing abilities and interests.

We can’t replicate what we see happening in conference lounges between networked friends or in Warcraft inside systems defined by policies designed to prevent it. Open Source for example didn’t start with a policy but and idea and people who rallied around it to form community. We can’t realistically expect a ‘revolution’ because Rudd wrote a policy. We can expect compliance and performance pressures.

A great community is one which is communicating and working intuitively on their need to strengthen and defend members and values, as well as achieve operational and strategic goals. There are thousands of these online today. People who are  not just saying they believe – but truly believing. From Car Audio to Steam Punk Photography, there’s a community for everyone and an opportunity for everyone to make a new one. It stands to reason that there is increasing opportunity to learn in places that didn’t exist a decade ago.

Seth Godin calls these people ‘true fans’. How many of them are there in your work place? … or do you have people determined to prevent it – fearing some perceived loss? Culture, ideology, philosophy and many more behavioral intelligences play a much greater role in adoption that skills in how to use a computer. Participation in groups at the higher levels is entirely voluntary, so of course will join communities of their choosing, not their employers. We simply don’t hang out in the employers portals in the same way students won’t hang out in our creepy treehouse. Level 1 and 2 you can make me do, level 3 and 4 is up to me.

Communities, like game players, need to learn to level up. Players in MMOs or communities in Second Life such as Caledon operate at the higher levels. Members have the skills, bonds and committments to continually strengthen the group performance for as long as they choose to voluneer.  Leaders in these spaces are able to design for strong community from the outset. This is the missing ingredient in many districts, administrations and patriarchies – they don’t know how to do it. Its not in the MBA, wasn’t in the Masters and probably not the subject of their PhD. Anyone who is talking about building communities can’t be in it for the money, the power or the glory in my view. They are in it because they want to be, and that they want to participate in ways that the leaders have designed. Open Source is perhaps the best example of this leadership and community. Not using it in schools, locks students out of a culture that has tremendous value for them and society.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Packing for the future

What is in the EdTech backpack? Is it a mobile phone, laptop, 3G dongle or a bag of virtual dirty tricks, magical potions and comforters – part operations, part strategy, part performance art.

With hind-sight, I’d have created a persona online from the outset. I’d be Victor Gloucester.  He’d feel confident to throw dynamite-ideas into rooms where people sit with arms folded staring into the vortex of techno-denial. He’d tell you “technology, when given to adults, presents a distinct chance that it will be used to reinforce more of the same – or it will blow their hand off and they won’t touch it again”. Vic would be far more self-confident and inordinately cooler. He’d have figured out how to have made a million from consulting by now. Vic wouldn’t create an ePorfolio … he’d serve ‘cease and desist’ notices to the Emporer Ruperts of old-lore-mediocraty – in between watching Geek Brief TV and riding his Triumph.

The great thing about ‘toons’ … we can characterise them any way we like, they are imagined. The great thing about us is we are real an can imagine adopting project based learning,  games, blogs, film making or writing a book. The characteristics of learning really are determined by our engagement with it. As simple as that. If the teacher isn’t engaged AND management doesn’t support or believe in it, then to them – your name is Vic. The tenants of eLearning have not changed in over a decade – but the opportunity has.

If you give people shovelware, all they will learn to do is shovel. God Bless Queen Victoria, and welcome the to the jugganaught of public education policy. We need stokers.

If the shoe fits #2

Get out from behind that desk … why do you need it anyway? No one should still be relying on search to find answers and filters to block content in today’s learning environment. Students should not be asked to troll the billions of pages online by teachers who are digitally illiterate. The internet is neither a baby sitter or a solution provider, yet accepted levels of professionalism in ICT classrooms often seems that way. As shocking as searching and pasting into Powerpoint is – it ticks the ICT compliance boxes.

Year 10 and 12  students are preparing for their futures at home by using sites like Bored of Studies right now. They are not cheating, they are being ‘natives’.

If the test is so predicable that they can get the answers in a forum or as coached notes from their teach-bot then let them win – don’t blame them for gaming the system.

There won’t be a HSC student in Australia that won’t consider logging onto Bored of Studies in the next few weeks in preparation for their HSC (if they can) – but very few teachers who will give them an alternative place to log-into. If the teacher isn’t motivating them to develop deeper enquiry then students have every right to take the easy option. Just like everyone else.

If the shoe fits #1

DUTY OF CARE, the age old topic that is rolled out whenever the conversation about changing a culture of learning starts to get a little uncomfortable – when something new might disrupt the status-quo once again floated to the top of the turd bowl this week.

Private education has to comply with the same legal duty. Yet public policy sees Bob the Builder banned. More seriously, this potentially creates a second class experience for public schools using technology – some 70% of our children.

Yes we are critical – we have to be because the system is in a nice safe orbit. Failure to adequately address local policy adaptation and provide local school autonomy in ICT over a long period of time, though successive governments has resulted in a lock-stepped public system that is unable to cope.

Its a cultural problem! – bureaucrats unwilling and unable to create effective public policy, waving the ‘duty of care’ banner on any occasion that feels uncomfortable. The internet brings a macro level of scrutiny that has simply got out of hand. School leaders do not check every book or resource that a teacher brings to class or get it ratified by some faceless womble in head office. Yet the internet does.

I think I might move to Sweden – where I could either choose a school that will work for my kids (not against them), or I could set up my own, with 100% government funding. Could I do that here – absolutely – would I need to talk to DET, probably not – I need to talk to DET teachers – as our school would be different and better.

Now there’s an idea – a Free Virtual School for all Australian Kids online. Jeez why didn’t I think of that and tell someone earlier this year. Oh wait … you get the point – DET is not the only scenario on offer – and there is global research and evidence to suggest that the patriarchal model we have – is not guaranteed to continue. *Puts hand up for Virtual School! A school needs community – and that does not mean locking kids in a room day in and day out for several years anymore.

Aion Video Podcast Episode 3: East Meets West

Digital Story telling is now a very valuable skill. Not just for film makers who make these kinds of clips, but because those in the clip are critical thinkers. This podcast is about the process of creating motivating games – though incremental improvement or peer offerings and new narratives. Aion has been in the wings for a long time, and over the last year there has been an opportunity not just to pre-order the game, but to be part of the development journey. This podcast (one in a series) is a great example of how story telling is evolving. Podcasting in the classroom? Perhaps the first steps to a career in film or game? “It not just the game or the action, it’s the challenge that keeps players coming back” – that would be a great thing to say about classrooms.

more about “Aion Video Podcast Episode 3: East Me…“, posted with vodpod

The whole world in our hands

This video appeared last week, vanished and has now returned. Laptops (Netbooks) in schools are a welcomed investment and if nothing else will finally driving some modern infrastructure in schools. It is unknown how many laptops, when or if there is on-going funding to reach year 12. Elections will probably have a lot to do with that. So is this a public information film or advertising. It obviously cost a lot of money, and is that where public money should be going? It presents like Huxley’s Brave New World, mixed with edgy sound track, cross-processed images and plenty of handy-cam angles, complete with Nathan Rees in a school at the end reinforcing the message of who made this happen. It reminded me more of the ‘you wouldn’t steal a car’ anti-piracy ad than information – it  offers mixed messages and assembled by a committee, not a creative vision.

Students are script-reading to their peers is pseudo ‘cool’ tones.

“No cyberbulling, no sharing of personal information, pictures or emails without permission” say the students also pointing out it has security features so the school can shut it down and take it off students who are not using it correctly. Apparently it is bye bye paper and hello music and games at lunch.

To me this kind of spin-doctoring that puts public education at a disadvantage and does not reflect reality and the viewer assumes this aligns to outcomes, pedagogy and professional development of teachers.

And then comes the hookline of assurance.

“We’ve got the whole world in our hands” and ”technical support comes from schools”

Quite clearly they are net books not laptops, students won’t be playing games at lunchtime on a DET network anytime soon as access to the new world is though the filtration system. It seems likely that most students will break the ‘rules’ in lieu of any formal ‘digital citizenship’  or educational programme (they don’t recognise the same boundaries). The technical support needed to maintain this fleet of laptops is going to be epic. Anyone who has experienced 1:1 knows just how hard it is to scale and maintain over lengthy periods. It seems much of the effort will be applied to ’securing’ them, nor exploring. Yet the ad presents as if this is all a given and Mr Rees is unleashing something really innovative. It has the potential too, but no certainty.

This is what irks me – not the machines or the opportunity but use of this media to deliver a clearly political message, which is less than the whole truth – either as an ad or public information.

I am not sure who it is aimed at, and I’d love to know how much it cost. I don’t want ‘better than nothing for my children’ and I want them to stay in quality public education and no amount of post-production is going alter the reality that this is a futurists view, not a realists. I want to love it, but I can’t – there is a long way to go and this is quite simply premature and misleading, high on rhetoric and low on evidence. I notice that comments will of course be moderated until someone re-posts it.

++update++

I just read Shelly’s post about Blizzard deciding to blow up it’s entire World of Warcraft game in order to make a new one. Well worth a read if you’ve not been to Teach Paperless before.

“For thirty+ years, we’ve treated schools like boardgames. And every few years, we’d announce that the game was changing, but we kept using the same board and the same pieces. We changed the rules, but forced the players to use the same old dice”.  He goes on to explain why fundamental change is needed “Because our kids are dying to take on new adventures. After all, they live in a world where they expect upheaval and change; they don’t understand why so many of us are so afraid of it.”

Never mind the learning, heres the policy

RESOURCES may bring people to to start line, but won’t motivate them to take part in what they often perceive to be a marathon. Most teachers consider themselves busy and time poor. They are already providing many hours free to deal with expanding workplace demands. Teaching is a complex juggling act between academic, discipline learning and activities leading to student engagement, support and community. Teacher, friend, mentor, fan, supporter, bus driver, coach etc., Parents want academic success, but they increasingly want their children to be happy, active and experience diversity though social action and interaction. We want it all, and no one wants to pay for any of it.

Education is organised by the time-table, ruling supreme over formal subjects, spaces, students and staff. Extra-curricular is now used to describe learning un-accommodated and informal. From and early age a we learned to be organised by it. But the factories are gone along with bells, sirens and production line management.

A ’student free day’ is often more about ensuring central-policy has been issued to teachers than learning, and even then it is organised for us. We however have been transformed by the informal immediacy and abundance of information today. We are less interested in structures where information is scarce and requires time to access at the discretion of a few. Banks, shops, telecommunications, politicians have all learned that we don’t want to wait, to queue up, to be offered a limited choice – because we are quite capable of seeking alternatives.

When we talk about professional development of teachers we need to explicit about what is being asked of them. Extra-curricula and informal learning has led to most teachers working one day a week unpaid. It appears the digital education revolution is based on the notion that teachers will now move into a 7th day – unpaid. There is an epic difference between how we approach formal and informal professional development – there is stagnation in one and over-reliance in the other. Equiry is still considered ‘best’ for informal problem based learning where as didactic/rote/exam learning better for formal assessment (and reporting).

It is often these extra-curricula activities that drive students and teachers to explore their passions and strengths. We have less power in formal learning or formal structures, and so are less interested in them. Extra curricula activities become significant differentiators between qualifications and attaining something more. Film, computer, drama, debating, band, radio and sports ‘clubs’ have been the informal motivators of many people’s career paths. Many parents are as interested in these as they are in formal classrooms. Choice is a driver of change – right now there are few alternatives to formal public education, but that is not to say there are none.

Honey, we got your report and … we need to talk.

talk the talk and walk the walk

THE SCHOOL REPORT has shown up, and well, frankly – its a bit of a broken record. Must try harder, doesn’t stay on task, distracts others, easily distracted, does not take responsibility for his own learning, often skips class and disrespects the teacher. Yep, I just read another government funded report on the state of 21st Century Education Revolution Matrix Cyber Robocop 2.0.

The solution to the incremental, unpredictable and epic changes that have occurred in technology, have obviously impacted vast sections of society, who don’t remember a world before broadband, let alone arguing with parents over phoning friends with a land line. If I can Google it, so can you -add to it, don’t just reference it. Australia is not leading 21st Century anything, unless you count committees and sub committees to form working parties to investigate blah.

Here’s a summary of what NOT to include in report – cause we can Google it for ourselves. – so take note bureaucrats and those who lurk at foot of government. We are onto you.

1. We know it’s the 21st Century, so stop making a reference to it as though it’s futuristic and don’t use it in the title.
2. Most of the tools teachers want are blocked and are not emerging at all, they are here.
3. Do not create another quango and acronym, but by action
4. Stop telling people what ‘they’ need to do and start training them how to do something to solve your problem – and recognise it.
5. Stop quoting the Horizon Report and others; and get your backside into a classroom and try some of your ideas out personally
6. Education is a political act that has social consequences this is why we elect them to do the job for us, not the other way around.

I went to a class recently (not where I work) and we turned off the spell check . People typed in their responses to a problem set on a common shared page wiki. It was quite obvious that the assembled students found this confronting, challenging down right weird. If they dont used to communicating, leading and solving, then this will be because the quangos and political courtesans have failed to provision sufficient scholarly challenges; choosing to remain risk adverse and gaze endlessly at what ‘we’ need to do.

Report writers and researchers (reference) are not longer the smartest people in the room anymore, because there is no room. Reports of not sufficient to justify your existence.

If a teacher works 4 hours a week learning technology and working after school on reports and resources that works out about $500,000 a year per school. We have noticed this.  Like the man said, dangerously irrelevant

Dissolving, Revolving or Evolving?

This is kind of interesting – especially if you are into the whole ‘big numbers’ stuff. I think I read way more marketing and gaming slide decks that Edu – I know what the shift is thanks – is a marketing message, and that PD only works 1:1 with simple tools – on demand and pretty happy with how things are panning out right now. Eventually this presentation gave me the impression that social networks are not really markets, but just a maelstrom of conversations; some of which is relevant, but most dissolves as fast as they appear. Seriously do I give a crap what some comic thinks via Twitter? or if some minor-tv panelist Tweets about how cool they are? – I am looking for ideas and methods, not more problems to agree with.

I’m sure that for every Tweet I see that gives me something new, I miss a thousand more – and thats a good thing probably. In fact; despite liking Twitter – it’s just there; and I’m probably not paying attention for the vast majority of the time. I do spend less time in the Brickyard and The Samba; but basically – Twitter feels better than talking to yourself – even though I probably am much of the time. It feels like being in a revolving door at times.

I really only have meaningful conversations with a limited few via Twitter – I can’t deal with the enormity of the follower thing. When it comes to learning, I think I’m much more focused on my own – readying Feedly; and although many are saying that they blog less; taking a lot of information to micr0-blogs such as Twitter and Plurk instead – I’m not sure how much impact they have for me – apart from ‘collecting’ resources that I generally just flick to Posterous with the semi-intention of reading later. I wonder if it actually ‘evolves’ my thinking.

It seems interesting that at #BLC09 that Cover It Live simply sucked Twitter into a deeper mix of media, something I noticed at #necc09, and TwitCam provides a ridiculously simple way to broadcast and get comments. Is the almighty Twitter is beginning to dissolve it’s relevance for me? So many spammers, so little point. I do like the self-styled marketing coaching guru profiles. Their photos often remind me of those that were in the local barbers as a kid – beaming their confidence at me.

I might give it a miss for a month – see what happens – and spend more time in some of the ‘back-catalogue’ of blog posts that I clearly missed – or better still – back in the Brickyard.

Why Bored of Studies PWNs the BOS

There is no shift of control of information when you bolt technology onto what you already do. This is the strategy of public education, when you look behind the facade and grand statements. This is the approach known as “spray and pray”. Research shows there is little added value from automation, and incremental improvement. (“In the Age of the Smart Machine : The Future of Work and Power” by Shoshana Zuboff). We can’t simply put a class in a Ning and call it a community; or exchange paper for a blog. In fact the current National Curriculum approach is to defer all measures of attainment to other professional bodies, just to make sure it stands a safe distance away from potential criticism (standard mode of political-operation).  Of course these bodies are politically driven and differ regionally, and Western Australia is using self-evaluation – which NSW DET’s Digital Revoltion portal (the have so many) references – via ‘evaluation’.

The good news is that students are 21st Century learners; and 97% are engaged via social gaming and friend based networks, so have access to pretty much all the answers they need to PWN the current assessment system – and they did it with no help at all.

7 million hits can’t be wrong

The illustration at the top of the screen is the Bored of Studies Wiki; go check it out – it tells students how to pass the HSC and beyond; and to me screams why the current methods of teaching are so easily ‘gamed’ by students. The website was created in 2002 by four former HSC students who had completed their HSC in the previous year: Mark Czajkowski, James King, Tim Cheng and Ian Keong. Of course the real Authority – called the Board of Studies has warned teachers against being anywhere near the thing! So is it cheating or just 21st Century Learning.

Yet, with over 250,000 subscribers and 7 million hits a month (claimed) – its safe to say that students have pwned the system. It positively road-maps how to be a strategic learner – and perhaps is our most outstanding educational achievement, along with Rate My Teacher – which now has one click links to Twitter, Facebook and Stumble Upon.

It matters nothing if we agree with these sites being there; only that they are. These are the social networks kids use – that gives them Authority. Its socially constructed knowledge; do we need to replicate it in class or inside what Clay Burrell called schooliness.

Chris Lehmann wrote “Build consensus – If only a few people are on-board with the idea, it won’t work. But consensus doesn’t mean taking something from everyone and sticking it onto the original idea until what you have is the worst of committee-based decisions. It means listening for the truths in what other people are telling you and being willing to make substantive change when it makes sense.”

So there’s the positive – students are doing what Chris suggests, long live Bored of Studies. I wonder if Mark, James, Tim and Ian are consulting?