Minds on Fire

Reflections on the Article Minds Of Fire : Open Education, Long Tail, and Learning 2.0 By John Seely Brown and Richard P. Adler
Firstly I despise the injection of more jargon (Learning 2.0) since it tends to simplifying complex issues to aphorisms and create less discussion and does very little to elucidate . These are usually the telltale  signs of the less articulate, the media friendly spin doctors.
He objectifies all education as primarily for the purpose of procuring employment. As many more capable educators than I have stated, this is only one facet of our institutional education , not it’s raison d’être.
Starting a any serious discussion of education with quotes from Thomas Friedman, a proponent of Friedmanite Economics and global marketization of all our resources for the enrichment of the upper echelons of our societies, made me immediately think to discredit the rest of the article as neo-con claptrap. In my opinion it seriously harmed his credibility from the outset. I did however read the whole article as George and Dave cannot have must have thought it had some merit or else they would not have included it in the IET course.It does indeed promote thought and I did find some kernels of truth and insight.
The authors seem to think of post secondary institutional education as an inalienable right and a public good that is  attainable by all. But as we all know from our first-world perspective, this is increasingly unattainable for a large number of people; and given today’s global power structures an impossibility in much of the non-industrialized nations where food security and other basic Maslowian concerns are of more importance than a free and socially democratic created education.
Brown and Adler state that utopia will contain “freely contributed and distributed ( materials )with few restrictions or costs.” Yet everything has a cost, whether financial, economic, emotional, intellectual, environmental, or social every human advancement has it’s series of trade-offs. With the the commodification all human endeavours and thousands of years of control for maximization of profit and power, this new technological Zion will be a very long difficult battle if it is even achievable at all. I think the coming Net Neutrality battle will indicate the direction our world will take when it comes to educational societal and environmental issues and indeed our very existence in any kind of future.
When I read the statement that Web 2.0 is supporting multiple modes of learning, my thoughts were that most of the important issues that are being addressed on the web are highly textural in nature.Participatory, engaged contributors have to be able to read complex and  oft times very long pieces of text and indeed be adept practitioners of Deep Reading in order to attain Marc Prensky’s Digital Wisdom. Podcasts, Video, and other non text based learning objects have their messages dictated and often reduced by the very nature of the mediums.They may enhance but do not replace text based and difficult reading for the acquisition of knowledge.
I think that there is  “legitimate peripheral participation” taking place in these virtual distributed communities of practice but the question remains who decides what is legitimate? Me? Dave or George? a set of experts from a respected university? How do we know whether people are learning anything if they don’t actively participate?( reading and absorbing and making connections in ones mind is a time consuming activity). When do they become outcasts from the community? or should they ever be outcast?
Brown and Adler also take the particular cases of Open Source programming and editing in Wikipedia to make  generalizations about the whole of all collaborative efforts on the web. This I believe is a logical fallacy. The open source programmers are a specialized subset of society  just as the people who contribute to areas of Wikipedia are a specialized group , the 9% who do not lurk and the 1% that contribute continuously.To take this 1% and apply it globally to include all nations, makes the number of persons engaging very small indeed. These technological adventurous persons exist in their walled gardens and while anyone can join and participate, those that do not are in the majority. To say that more people will join in the creative efforts if we induce them or make it much easier to participate is to deny the reality of the Social Web. Creative people will join in smaller subsets with other creative people and the rest will be just passive consumers. Forced participation in blogs, wikis,or any other social web application is not tenable. Good pedagogical practices should be enhanced by technology not be replaced by it. Unfortunately I see this all too often and the secondary school level. Students are asked to do some research and whatever you hand in is acceptable. This is partially due to work loads of particular teachers and the fact that some teachers do not have the passion for the job they once had (in some cases never had)
I found it interesting that both Brown and Adler & Marc Prensky mentioned that access to free materials online is key to the success of social learning and that intellectual property rights  can coexist nicely withing this framework. It made me wonder about the great works of art by Shakespeare, Dickens, Da Vinci et cetera that were all created before copyright laws existed. I’m sure they all made money from their efforts but it was for the betterment of all societies that these works came to the common domain for all to use as they saw fit.

Cloud Computing and the Social Web

Just read about why pageflakes was offline and thought I would share
http://www.csszengarden.com/?cssfile=/213/213.css&page=0
The comment at the bottom cloud computing lead me back to thinking about my programming days and how good, talented IT persons were hard to find.This makes me think that given shortages in the workforce in general ( Trades, Clerical etc, ) it will be much harder to find the programmers and IT admins to look after these Social networking systems and do all the non-glamorous grunt work that is required to insure this systems stay up and are stable . Experience in the IT and educational fields has shown me that only a faction of the individuals that are in your institution actually are interest in IT (software, programming, hardware and the like) and even that small group do not want to pursue this IT for work (or pleasure) if it becomes anywhere near too complicated. I think this ‘black box’ use of the tools of the the Social Web has lead to its great success, but I think it will ultimately be an undemocratic oligarchy that will decide how these tools will be controlled and used
Bernando Huberman et.al also see twitter and by extension Facebook and a lot of other social networking applications as extension of the collaborations and friendships that would exist between engaged and caring individuals anyway( of course without the the geographic spatial constraints). I know that my Facebook account with 54 friends is now just a means to keep in touch very sporadically with cadre of a few very close friends and family. It could serve loftier goals but ,even as a ‘techie,’ I don’t have the time or the inclination to fight the system ( our School Division bans it ( ala Ontario Govt and others))

Managing technology and life

I have now become fully aware of my immersion in the online community. In an exercise for the Emerging technologies course I am taking we created aPersonal Learning Environment concept mapI found that I was lacking in the social aspects of the networked environment so I set up a Twitter account and Facebook account.  I had a e-blogger from Google that I had from when John Finch gave a web 2.0 in service for teachers here in Brandon a year of so ago. Add to this a De.li.ci.ous and Stumble upon and Digg accounts, as well a numerous accounts (Chapters and Amazon.ca and the like) and these email address Gmail,Yahoo, Hotmail, FirstClass ( internal Brandon School Division) MTS email and my email at my domain name .You can see how the flood of administration  might become overwhelming. Also maintenance is needed for my site on the Neelin Web and the updating of the students work in Communications Media and the Video classes. Add to this the upcoming projects: I am contemplating making of making a  site at RationalBob@rationalbob.com (which I can’t seem to get around to) and a video tribute project of my Dad and my wife’s Mom who have passed away. I am going to have to consolidate all just the passwords and usernames soon and save it in keepass just so I can keep the access data straight. A lot of work to stay in touch and keep on top of the latest educational trends. TIME!

Also being a student, a teacher, father and husband and maintaining  real-time f2f friendships in the offline world, doesn’t seem to leave a lot of time for reflection and thought , but I make time. That is  the reason I took the emerging technologies course………..to force me to think more about that which is truly important and to be skeptical, especially of technological advancements that purport to make our life easier and less complicated.

That being said, I can see why Facebook, Twitter and a host of other social networking applications are so popular.  These web 2.0 tools have taken the web to a meta-level the same as Windows did for computing and the cell phone for voice communication. They are ubiquitous, free (well not MTS or Telus……….jes! activation fees indeed) and seemless to the user so there is no wonder they are  adopted en masse.

I have noticed however a feeling of  remorse and vindictiveness when I disallow people as being a friend in Facebook. It’s as though you are slighting them as someone as inferior for communication.Even though these persons may have been only a brief aquantaince in your childhood  memories now they come begging for inclusion into your already busy life. Several I have accepted and then promptly ignored. A few I deleted as friends as we did not share anything in common.I hope they don’t get a Facebook notification saying “Robert thinks your not worthy of his time’ . That would be too much pressure to conform.

Critique of Social Networking

“I think what is important to recognize here is that when a particular use of a technology becomes the norm for a large percentage of the population, there is no way we can avoid saying that technology shapes society (or what is known as technological determinism). So despite the fact that the Internet is being used by a few people to engage in critical inquiry, at a mass level the Internet is not being utilized that way — that’s the norm.” ~~ Ulises Mejias

Brilliant, thought provoking  article on why we should question Social Networking

http://blog.ulisesmejias.com/2008/09/27/participatory-culture-and-the-internet-of-the-masses/

We don’t control the machine, it controls us

In the Emerging Technologies course I am taking from the Uof M, we have to edit a Wikipedia entry on Lifelong learning which has given students some trepidation, including ,myself.When I checked the Privacy Policy this troubling item was found:

It is the policy of Wikimedia that personally identifiable data collected in the server logs, or through records in the database via the CheckUser feature, or through other non-publicly-available methods, may be released by Wikimedia volunteers or staff, in any of the following situations:

1. In response to a valid subpoena or other compulsory request from law enforcement,
2. With permission of the affected user,
3. When necessary for investigation of abuse complaints,…………………

Therein lies the rub!! Who decides what is valid. Given the debacles in the US over privacy invasion, there is little doubt that when information about you is  needed, it will be gotten whether it is valid reason or a concocted pretense.

Where are all the civil libertarians? Where are all the protest singers? Neil Young tried (with such rich amounts of political fodder) to create  indignation in his devoted fans and society in general but  I don’t know if anyone is listening. Just as they are ignoring  Dennis kucinich, Bill Maher, Chris Hedges, Noam Chomsky, Noami Klien, John Ralston Saul  and a list of other skeptics and critical  free-thinking individuals.

These writers  keep making sense to me and a lot of individuals worldwide but seem to not gain mainstream media coverage in the soundbite-age.But,even if we were to  mobilize like the Campesinos in Bolivia and all the multitudes of all the nations were listening, we are crippled by an overarching system that dictates  to us by controlling our economic systems , our media,  our food supply and our energy. How can a level, democratic, playing field exist in a global system that favors hegemony, and growth and all costs for the power brokers and the top 2 percent who control all the world’s wealth. To deny this reality is to be like McLuhan’s fish, unconscious of the medium that surrounds,sustains and transforms him. This media-perpetuated unawareness for the fish means that when the water dries up to a mudhole and finally a mud-cracked dessert, he will no longer be able to play the tradition ‘point-the-local-finger’ game or the ‘put-your-hopes-in-science-and -echnology-to-make-it all-better-game’ or even the ‘trickle -down- adjust-the-market-to keep-everyone happy’ game, since there will be no pond, pothole or or moisten grassy glade in which to host the game.

The democractic tools and the enlightenment that I hope does come with them must  take into account the  the  the social and political state of the world. Not to do so exhibits the hubris of the web 1.0 world and indeed the North American world since the turn if the last century.

E-Learning

I must say that WordPress is a lot more complex than the e-blog provided by Google.

This is an area where I will try to add my two cents on the state of online learning and some interesting links to others who say and think much more eloquently than I

I must say that Andrew Keen does a good job of taking off the ‘rose-colored’ technology glasses and points out that that in America ( and America light ) that the semi-literate are easily lead by the new technologies, a damning indictment of our educational institutions. But he does seem to come off  as an anti-technologist of sorts. Techno realism is what I think is needed, but  as can be seen from the dating if the site, not many people buy into this. It’s seems it has to be technological evangelism or Neo-ludditism.
Knowledge is in fact what the individual makes of it and to what use society puts it. This doesn’t speak well of what use we’ve put our knowledge thus far  given the current state of the earth and the economies worldwide. I am afraid that the patchwork system (Barbour & Stewart) we have in the secondary system is not preparing people to bring the full cognitive abilities to the online learning environments. People are then getting swamped by the information and looking to be lead to the next saving technology to help them manage the deluge.
I think that the Politics of Knowledge as mentioned by Grundmann & Stehr and others as will dictate to shape what we will be allowed to know as cognizant citizens and will relegate others to information pergatory