Is education broken?

During the EDEN Conference in Barcelona this summer I had the pleasure to interview several keynote speakers. One was Audrey Watters, who has been in evidence recently at a number of high profile events such as ALT-C 2014 and ICDE 2015. Formerly a university academic and now a freelance writer, Audrey has courted her fair share of controversy and opposition, not least due to her forthright views on education, technology and a host of related topics. As a self styled 'expert on political pie throwing', rabble rouser and 'Ed Tech's Cassandra', Audrey Watters is not shy of making her views public on her blog Hack Education and she makes for interesting conversation. This interview was recorded for the EDEN YouTube channel, featuring questions such as: Is education broken beyond repair? Is Google the largest surveillance network in the world? Does the web constitute a new form of cultural hegemony? Is the web really open?



Video courtesy of the European Distance and E-learning Network


Is education broken? by Steve Wheeler was written in Plymouth, England and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Selfie number 6

In this series of short posts, I'm writing about my top ten selfies with people who have inspired me or have influenced my thinking. Previous selfie posts can also be viewed on this blog.

I met American teacher, artist and edupunk Amy Burvall last year. Our pathways crossed when we were attending different events in London and so we arranged met up for a few drinks. I was already familiar with Amy's work online, especially her excellent series of YouTube videos called History Teachers. If you haven't viewed them yet, you should do so - they are a must watch, even if you are not a teacher of history. Amy has taken popular songs, rewritten the lyrics about specific periods in European history, and has then created new music videos for educational purposes. Particular favourites of mine include the story of Martin Luther (to the tune of the Bangles' Manic Monday - in which she takes on three singing roles), Charlemagne ('Call Me' by Blondie), the classy Elizabeth I ('She's not there' by the Zombies) and the comical animated Henry VIII and his six wives (Money, Money, Money by Abba). The combined viewing figures for this collection of teaching videos is now in the millions. But History Teachers is just one of the many contributions Amy has made to digital learning in the past few years.

What inspires me most about Amy Burvall? She is quirky, unpredictable, creative, mischievous, and she is not afraid to take risks - all characteristics I recognise in myself. She is also a cancer survivor, which in itself should inspire all of us. She is tenacious and has boundless energy, and she never seems to stop. I believe this is because she has a burning desire is to help as many people to learn as she possibly can. She does this through her writing, videos, photography, artwork, live sketching (see Graffikon), keynote speeches and her very popular workshops on creativity, making and learning. Recently we collaborated for the first time on a project that is now known as #blimage which can be read about here (join in - it's fun!). I'm hoping that this is just the start of our collaboration, and that we will continue to bounce ideas off each other for some time to come. Watch this space!

Photo by Jeffrey Teruel


Selfie number 6 by Steve Wheeler was written in Plymouth, England and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Opening up #learning: new forms of knowledge

Opening up learning means creating opportunities for learners that were previously unattainable. Technology can do this. For those who are housebound for example, and cannot visit a library or classroom, the Web provides a storehouse of endless opportunities to learn just about any topic. The social web opens up channels to connect with other people around the world, either experts or fellow students.

But opening up learning comes with a price. Those whose livelihoods or reputations are built upon traditional forms of educational provision will suddenly find themselves redundant or sidelined.

One area under threat is the publishing industry. In the last decade, there has been a significant decline in paper based publications, and an upsurge in e-books and other forms of digital representation of knowledge. Publishers remain in business, but to be successful they now have to adapt to the new and trenchant demands of the digital economy.

In 2012, for the first time, the number of e-books sold over Amazon surpassed paper based books. The affordances of technology are many, but one of the key ones for those who work in education is the capability of the tools to represent knowledge and learning in so many new and engaging ways. Technology is opening up this kind of learning dramatically. Students or scholars who blog regularly will tell you that it clarifies their thinking, and when they decide to press the publish button, a waiting audience of readers will comment and challenge their thinking further.

Knowledge is now available in many different forms and formats, some of which are openly accessible and editable. The exponential growth of online repositories of knowledge (Wikipedia), media (Wikimedia Commons - the source of the image above), images (Flickr, Instagram) and video (YouTube, Vimeo) would not have been so dramatic if there was less demand. Yet people of all ages now avidly consume and create content on a regular basis, and the availability of social networking services such as Twitter and Facebook amplify these activities further. Arguably the most important aspect of this phenomena, however, is not the amount of content that is available, but the richness of the context within which it is available. The affordances of connecting, sharing, sorting, filtering and commenting on content are by far the most powerful attributes of the social web, and will continue to be so for the foreseeable future.

Photo by Tomomarusan on Wikimedia Commons


Opening up #learning: new forms of knowledge by Steve Wheeler was written in Plymouth, England is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Share trading

We teach our children that sharing is good. And yet as adults, we are more reluctant to share with each other. What's mine is mine. I don't give my time away for nothing. I'll trade you. You don't get something for nothing. These are the mantras of adulthood in a Western, commercialised society.

Until now. The Internet is challenging this culture. The entire social web is founded on freely shared content. Prior to the social web, public sharing wasn't that common a theme. If you wrote something, or created a visual artefact, you published it under a copyright licence to protect it from being used or claimed by others. Sharing of free content had always been there though. There were always a few philanthropists who gave their stuff away for nothing. One such benevolent soul was Sir Tim Berners-Lee. Without his generosity of spirit, the Web would not be as popular as it is, because many of us simply wouldn't be able to afford to participate. Sharing was not unknown, it just wasn't that commonplace.

Sharing content for free was amplified into popularity by the advent of the social networks. The likes of Friendster, and later MySpace, Bebo and Faceboook (some would argue that the BBS users were the first), promoted the idea that you could connect with those you knew, and you could share your thoughts with them. Later, you were able to share your photographs, and other content such as music or video with your friends and family, and see the content they shared with you. The arrival of YouTube, Flickr and Slideshare and of course Twitter, made it easier to share than ever. And to remix. And re-share. Sharing content became a reciprocal arrangement, an unspoken agreement, and it established a new kind of sharing culture that many began to understand and participate within. People began to realise that you didn't lose ownership of these thoughts or content. You simply shared them so that others could also appreciate them. Tagging made it even more personal. This wasn't like passing around a bag of sweets in the cinema, or handing out ten pound notes in a crowd. The more you shared something, the more it belonged to you, because others acknowledged that you were the originator, by liking and commenting on your content, and perhaps remixing it with attribution, thereby reinforcing your ownership. It was more like organising your own art gallery, newspaper or broadcast studio. The arrival of Creative Commons licensing made free sharing a more attractive proposition for everyone.

As van Dijk (2013) has proposed, the ready acceptance of Facebook and other social media into the every day lives of a global population of users ensured that the ethos of sharing became second nature. People now upload their pictures and videos, and share their ideas on Facebook and other popular social media platforms without thinking. They contribute to Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons (where the picture on this page was found) with no qualms about copyright, or how much of their time they are giving up. Furthermore, this culture of free sharing has an ideological influence for it is, in Castells' words, 'geared towards collective action and shared ideals, such as ... creating community' (Castells, 2012, p. 230).

The educational implications of social media culture are clear. To create an effective community of learning, people need to be able to identify with each other, share a common set of ideals, and ultimately, share their content with each other so they can learn together. So share your content for free - it just doesn't make cents.

Reference
Castells, M. (2012) Networks of Outrage and Hope: Social movements in the Internet Age. Cambridge: Polity Press.
van Dijk, J. (2013) The Culture of Connectivity: A critical history of social media. Oxford: Oxford University Press.  

Photo from Wikimedia Commons


Share trading by Steve Wheeler was written in Plymouth, England is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Making connections

One major phenomenon of the last decade has undoubtedly been the global and exponential rise of social media. Seeded at the turn of the century, the social web phase of Internet development promoted connections, participation, networked sociality. It didn't take long for the emerging social networking services to gain massive worldwide subscriptions. To be able to connect to others and to share ideas and content instantly, caught the imagination of many. Van Dijck (2013) calls this phenomenon the culture of connectivity, but it has been spoken of by many others including Jenkins (2006) who argued that the prevailing culture was convergence - where old and new media combined to create new and distinctly different social contexts. Manuel Castells (2012) remarked on the autonomous nature of social media, and how ideas and other content can be amplified across vast networks, reaching huge audiences in seconds. News of world events on Twitter and other large social media platforms have often stolen the march of the mainstream media, reaching hundreds of millions of people several hours ahead of any major media breaking news announcements. The social web truly is a powerful communication technology.

This is one reason why teachers and other professionals should get involved. We are no longer in the age of isolation. Professionals should never be isolated, and that is why, in the past, conferences and symposia were organised, professional societies and associations were established. Now, in the social media age, anyone can connect to a worldwide network of professionals with similar interests to their own. They can share their ideas, concerns and triumphs, and gain feedback. A vast array of user generated content, much of it very useful, is available for free use on numerous sites, including YouTube, Flickr, Vimeo and Slideshare. Teachers need not feel isolated any longer. Simply connecting into the appropriate community of practice is enough to assuage any feelings of loneliness. You are no longer alone, but it's a matter of choice for each of us as to whether, or how, we engage. As Carl Jung eloquently put it: 'Loneliness does not come from being alone, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important.'

References
Castells, M. (2012) Networks of Outrage and Hope: Social Movements in the Internet Age. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Jenkins, H. (2006) Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York University Press.
Van Dijck, J. (2013) The Culture of Connectivity: A Critical History of Social Media. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Graphic by Ashley Knight


Making connections by Steve Wheeler was written in Istanbul, Turkey is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.