Emerging Technology for Emerging Scholars: Ed Media Conference and Beyond...

Please Note: This blog post is not going to be the most thoughtful or illuminating that I have ever come up with. Hence, if you are a leader in the field of educational technology or e-learning or whatever, I would not recommend reading it. Skip it and save some time. There is not much here to really chew on. I just needed to post something since it has been over a month and I had promised that I would post more during my sabbatical. Apparently, I lied.

Now on to the post...On Thursday afternoon, my very delightful friend, Jim Hensman, at the Coventry University wrote me an email. Jim said that he wanted to pick my brain for a session he is doing in a week or so at Ed Media in Victoria, BC which is June 24-27, 2013. In fact, it is the 25th anniversary of Ed Media. I wish I could go; from 1999 to about 2007, I went every year.

Jim then told that his session was one of those "Emerging Scholar" types of events. He has one hour assigned and wants to "create a discussion about the future of learning and how new researchers can orientate towards this." He wanted perhaps four or five examples of key things happening that are indicators of the future. They could be highly specific developments or "something more generic and could be really way out or down-to-earth."

I thought about it very briefly and sent him the info below. Then I expanded in it a tad.

Some Indicators of the future of learning:

   
1. Embedded and ubiquitous computing: Wearable devices like smart watches, bracelets, smartphones, Google Glass, etc., from which to access information as well as to communicate with others. Many articles on Google Glass lately, including general ones from the USA Today in April and those that are specifically related to healthcare in March.

     

2. Massive Open Online Gaming (MOOCs): Hundreds of millions of people will be exposed to K-12 and higher education as a result of MOOCs who have never had access before. And many more will change their jobs or career pursuits as a result. But accreditation, assessment, and attrition remain serious issues.

     

3. Free and Interactive Mobile Books: I think that free books on mobile devices or on the Web or your watches, etc., are a key part of the next century of learning. Cites like BookRix allow anyone to post mobile books. And Subtext allows for comments and communities to form around books.

4. Gamification of Learning: Learners want to achieve goals, overcome challenges, solve problems, interact, and ultimately win at something. More emphasis on this gamification of learning will be placed on all digital contents. I appreciate Jane McGonigal''s October 15, 2012 article in "Big Questions Online" (BQO), "How Might Video Games be Good for Us?" Speaking of which, I also appreciate the BQO website. They ask questions like "Can You Learn to Control Your Mind," and "Do We have Souls" and "Are We Alone in the Universe." Stuff like that.

5. Wall of Video for Apprenticeship: I think that expert apprenticeship is on the rise. We have video walls at IU.  It is called the IQ-Wall. I used it when my emerging learning technologies class ended in April We could bring in people from around the planet and have them appear on that wall. We now have another IQ-Wall in our Herman B. Wells Library. You can also have mini walls on a mobile phone. In each window, you can have a different expert, tutor, mentor, etc., appear. Or a different friend, colleague, family member. Increasingly, instructors will be tapping into experts on the fly in video walls or in Google Hangouts or whatever. (see attached paper #1…just published)

6. Extreme Learning and Life Change: I think that people will seek out life change online. OpenCourseWare and Open Educational Resources led to MOOCs. But it is more than MOOCs. It is also adventure learning, social change, global ed, online learning, shared online video, online language learning, etc., which all combine to offer new learning paths and experiences. People learn when at sea or on a boat, in a plane, on a train, in the mountains, etc. We are learning all the time. I am working on papers on life change from such informal learning environments. Here is one paper that I wrote on extreme learning for an open university conference in Manila, the Philippines last year.

A few hours later, I added the following items:

7. Virtual reality holodecks. Here, the user(s) can reenact scenes in history. Apparently, we already have the capabilities for audio and video, just not tactile yet. According to a February 2013 report, some company in Canada, in fact, is designing virtual holodecks. Apparently, Microsoft and the University of South California are also working on such technology. The author of the article, Matt Hartley, states,

"While 360-degree video might be the most obvious component in a holodeck-like structure, according to Ms. Su, technologies such as directional audio — think movie theatre surround sound on steroids — help to situate the user within an artificial world." He goes on to say, "Some of the technologies that would enable users to navigate the a potential holodeck — including touch computing, speech recognition, and motion sensing capabilities — are already being used in consumer technologies today, such as smartphones and video game systems." LeVar Burton, who was interviewed for this article, said that transporter rooms would be a "down-river goal."

8. On Demand Mentoring. Have a series of mentors or teachers available on your laptop, mobile device, or other as needed. When you encounter a learning difficulty, a teacher, mentor, tutor, etc., will appear. This already is in place for many years in the corporate world. Companies such as Triple Creek took the early lead in online mentoring, coaching, collaboration, and related social learning services.

9. Interactive Video Displays of Teachers and Peers. In effect, when you enter a school, there will be a video display or kiosk of some type wherein a young person (or adult) will be able to pick her classmates as well as her instructors from around the planet. Such technology will help personalize the learning process.

10. Science on the Sphere. Interactive globes that display planetary data such as climate change, ocean temperatures, hurricane movements, etc., around the world. According to one of my students, Michele Kelmer, "it is a project by NOAA (National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Assoc). IU has the 97th one in the world." Now what happens when such devices are extended to display anything happening at any place on the planet? Oh, I guess that is what the U.S. government may be already doing. 

11. New forms of CVs and Resumes. This is not necessarily a technology tool. However, it will be vital to have a way to place your informal learning experiences and accomplishments in some format. I imagine resumes and CVs will soon divide up education and training into formal educational experiences and certificates at the top; semi-formal next (with badges and still other types of certificates), and then informal learning explorations of OpenCourseWare (OCW), open educational resources (OER), and MOOCs. My research is now looking at learner motivations and goals as well as obstacles and challenges when using such content.

12. Language translation devices: Already, there are tablets, mobile, and other that will take signage you encounter and translate it. See this video on the World Lens tool for the iPhone and Android devices. Such technology allows people to function more effectively in diverse settings.

 Those were the 12 ideas that I sent to my buddy Jim. Nothing earth-shattering here.

Ok, let's add a 13th--Flexible Display Devices. Imagine reading off of buildings, buses, and bendable screens on your watch or smartphone. Cool. There are many other learning innovations. I was just trying to give Jim a few quick items.

By the way, I do hope to go to Ed Media next year in Tampere, Finland and join up with Jim for one of his sessions. I miss him and the conference. One of the best international conferences in the field that one can attend.

Ten TravelnEdMan Plans for 16 Month Sabbatical: Much to do in the Open World

Grades are posted as of last night. Today is the first full day of my 16 month sabbatical. Yes!

So what are the plans? A little bit here and a little bit there.

Ten Sabbatical Plans:
1. Blogging: I intend to blog more. Also, plan to make the posts shorter and to the point. I have some experiences from the past winter and spring to post yet (from the UK, Austin, U of Florida, Shanghai (via videoconferencing), UW Milwaukee (via Web conferencing), and elsewhere).

2. Book Completion: I need to finish my online motivation and retention book as well as my World is More Open book. Both will be free to the world when done. Too many committees and service work has been slowing me down. Draft chapters are available to those who ask.

3. Travel Plan Outlook: I will likely send one week each month in different parts of the world. Here are some initial travel stops tentatively planned after the coming summer.

          a. Tokyo (International Christian University (ICU) in September. My friend, Dr. Insung Jung, is arranging and said that I will stay in a guest house of ICU.
          b. Las Vegas for E-Learn in October (I are planning to coordinate a preconference symposium on MOOCs and Open Education with Mimi Lee, Tom Reynolds, and Tom Reeves. This event will take place Monday October 21st with a presession reflection in Red Rock Canyon the day before. The preconference symposium will be like the session on "E-Learning in Asia" that the four of us did 5 years ago at eLearn in Vegas in 2008 that resulted in a special journal issue and print-on-demand book. We hope that many of our friends and colleagues from 2008 will return to help out.).
           c. After E-Learn, I will keynote the Health & Safety Institute Conference 2013 in San Antonio, Texas and then head for Anaheim.
           d. Anaheim for AECT 2013 in the following week in early November.
           e. Taiwan (at National Sun Yat-Sen University in Kaohsiung and most likely Taipei as well) in mid to late November,
           f. The UK for BETT and other things in January.
           g. University of Hue in Vietnam (Wikipedia) to keynote a conference, "Innovation and Good Practice: Global Perspective" for various Asian university leaders March 15-16, 2014.
            h. AERA April 3-7 in Philadelphia in April, 2014.
            i. Tampere, Finland for Ed Media in June, 2014 and perhaps Helsinki and other places in Finland.

This is just a starter list of travel destinations for TravelinEdMan. There will be dozens and dozens more requests.

4. Upcoming May Travel Plans. This Month is Jamming. This week Wednesday May 8th I will be speaking at the University of Indianapolis where my daughter, Nicki, goes to graduate school in occupational therapy. Next Monday May 13th, I will be speaking at the Faculty Summer Institute at the University of Illinois (the FSI agenda). On May 15th, I will speak at the 4th Annual Stone Soup Professional Development Conference at Meredith College in Raleigh, North Carolina. And on May 21-22, I will be on a discussion panel and then keynote the 2013 UA System Scholars Institute at the University of Alabama in Huntsville.

5. Upcoming June Travel Plans: In June, I will speak on MOOCs at our Indiana University 2013 Mini University (full list of speakers). This will be the opening session on June 10th. I will also present some of my research on MOOCs and self-directed open learning at the 25th Annual Ethnographic and Qualitative Research Conference in Cedarville, Ohio on Friday June 7th.

6. Book Reading: I intend to read more books. I have been listening to many books in my car since 2006-2007 (when I had my last sabbatical).

7. New Book Projects: I have many other book writing plans. Some related to the open learning world and extreme learning and others related to emerging video technology.

8. Running: I plan to run in Bloomington and elsewhere. I get to see the cities which I visit better from a morning run. During my last sabbatical, I started a trend of running every day at least once a day until I got plantar fasciitis. Ouch! Wish it was not raining so hard. I have had my jogging clothes on all day.

9. Reflection: I plan to reflect more. I have a lovely wooded backyard with a creek at the bottom and many birds singing. Placed a bench down there overlooking the creek and park (former farm) below.

10. Rosemary: I plan to see my auntie Rosemary (my father's younger sister) and her 50 year anniversary of being a nun at an even in my hometown of Milwaukee on Saturday July 6th.

Ok, those are some plans. All for now. Remember, that I plan to blog more.

Want Some MOOC With Your TV Dinner?

Again, it has been a long time between posts. Apologies. There is much to discuss here in TravelinedEdMan in the coming weeks. There are many press releases, podcasts, and news interviews from the past two or three months that I have not posted.

In addition, I have a trip this coming week to SXSWedu in Austin and one the week after to San Diego for the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN) Conference 2013 (I am in the ending plenary). Let me start reflecting back first. My next blog post will be about SXSWedu and the Cengage Learning conference within it. My Cengage talk will be streamed free to the world. Unfortunately, my "Cage Match" with Dr. Chuck Severance of the University of Michigan on MOOCs on Thursday morning at 9 am at SXSWedu will not be streamed. See next blog post.

As I said, let me reflect back a few months in order to bring us to a recent publication of mine. Back at the end of October, I was heading to Australia for a 10 day trip to 3 cities, namely, Melbourne, Adelaide, and Sydney. In the final leg of the trip, I was meeting up with my good friend Rick Bennett at the University of New South Wales (UNSW). He was arranging a symposium on MOOCs, Rhizomes, and Ruksacs and related trends on a Friday afternoon November 9th in the College of Fine Arts (COFA) at UNSW. It ended up being a most splendid event.

Before I got there, Rick's media department asked me to write a little press release about MOOCs. What I wrote on the plane to Melbourne and titled, "Want Some MOOC with Your TV Dinner," was considered a bit too long and "not opinionated enough" to submit to the Aussie media. Instead, the Aussie media interviewed me when I was there. COFA, by the way, is known for its online programs and resources including Omnium (Rick helped build it and then research Omnium). More recently, Rick and his colleagues have built a cool social media tool for one's courses called Ruksac (ala having course resources in one's backpack). Do check it out when you get a chance.

When I got home from Oz, I revised the article and extended it. I then sent it to one of my contacts at Inside Higher Education. However, my main contact there left a few weeks later to work for the Chronicle of Higher Education and the article sat at Inside Higher Ed for 2 months. I finally got a response from Inside Higher Education that they had too many articles on MOOCs and mine was not unique enough.

Fortunately, I was able to publish it during the past two weeks in The EvoLLLution in 2 parts. The Evolllution is concerned with lifelong and online learning which are the focal points of this article. I thank my friend Amrit Ahluwalia for reviewing it and finding it to be to his liking. Part 1 of the article came out Friday February 1st in HMTL and PDF. Part 2 came out on Friday March 1st in HTML and PDF formats.

The basic premise is that TV and correspondence courses changed the lives of many people during the previous century (including mine); even those of low quality. None of them had the interaction possibilities that we have here in 2013 Today, people debate the quality of MOOCs as if there is a certain threshold that we are aiming for. Sure, we all want more engaging and interactive content; in fact, I am working on a book on online motivation and retention. However, we cannot discount the many lives that are changing from MOOCs that have limited or no interactivity. People can still learn as self-directed online learners. Perhaps such views will evolve and hence why I publish this in the EvoLLLution.

The opening paragraph to Part 1 of the article starts with the following:
             "If you grew up in the 1960s and 70s, you likely remember those TV dinner nights when your parents were out or when there was nothing else in the fridge. You just heated it up and you were done. You know the one: you get a slab of meat, some diced-up potatoes, a side tray with an assorted mix of carrots, corn and peas and, perhaps, another tray with rice or gravy. Bland, but still passable as a meal."

Anyone remember those meals? Do you now want some MOOC with your TV dinners?

The opening paragraph to Part 2 of the article starts with the following:
             "Given the possibilities presented by Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCS); instead of simply looking at achievement gains (or losses), we must begin to ask how self-directed local and global teams as well as personal visits from a MOOC instructor are helping to foster important moments of reflection and change. Not every outcome can be determined from test scores, page-hit rates or student retention data. Lives change. People change. Education is a key vehicle for fostering such life transformations. And MOOCs have the potential to change lives on a grander scale than perhaps any previous form of learning delivery."

My life changed from TV and correspondence courses. I am sure many of yours have as well.

See what you think. Part 2 has a link back to Part 1. More soon. I promise.

Expanding the Reach of the "Monster": 74 pages of Emerging Learning Technologies

In my last TravelinEdMan post 3 months ago (yes, it has been 3 months), I discussed "The Evolution of a Monster" syllabus for my R685 Emerging Learning Technologies course. Those who remember that post, will realize that my course syllabus had grown from perhaps 10 or so pages back in 1990 when I taught at West Virginia University to over 64 pages here at Indiana University (IU) this past fall. Guess what? It has now expanded to 74 pages for the spring of 2013.

How did it get so much bigger? Well, there is much new information on Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). In fact, MOOCs accounted for many new pages. I also added new information on famous distance learning experts like Charles Wedemeyer from the University of Wisconsin (he helped found the Open U in the UK and did many other phenomenal things; see his Wikipedia page). Of course, new resources were incorporated like those on oral history tools and projects. Most course topics were updated with new articles, resources, and tidbits that I had discovered during the fall semester. I also inserted pictures to act as section breaks between weekly topics as well as to introduce the new topic themes. Hence, the 74 pages.

You might check it out. With all the new pictures and content, perhaps it is becoming a more beautiful monster. Keep in mind, however, that my assistant, Seth White, and I are still checking over and replacing some of the dead limbs (or links) listed in the monster, but it is basically done. I plan to create a second smaller version of the monster syllabus (i.e., the little monster) without the most of Web resources and tidbits. But that will not happen for a few days.

If you explore the spring syllabus, you will find several free online books as well as hundreds of open access articles. You will also stumble upon dozens of shared online videos, many free Web 2.0 tools, and hundreds of online portals to explore. On page one, you will discover a unique open access multimedia glossary that one of my students, Ozgur Ozdemir, created this past fall for the course. Splendid work from Ozgur--a plethora of videos, books, news, terms, etc., in his glossary. Glancing through the 74 course syllabus pages, you will also find examples of student products including podcast shows, video blogs, prezi presentations, databases, e-books, wikibook chapters, YouTube video summaries of the course, animations, etc.

I should point out that we will have synchronous sessions every week on Adobe Connect Pro, most likely on Monday nights at 7 or 8 pm EST (anyone is welcome any time...the World is Open, don't ya know?). Last semester, these weekly sessions were at 7 pm. We had perhaps 8-10 invited guests from around the world. In the past, my guests have come from the UK, Canada, Japan, Australia, the United States, and elsewhere. I am not sure how many we will have this time around or where in the world that they will come from. But, we will have at least a few.

What do you want to learn about? Digital book research or companies? Look in the monster syllabus, there are many to explore. How about open educational ressources or OpenCourseWare projects? That is in the monster too. Oral history projects? There. Online language learning resources? There too. Adventure learning, extreme learning, mobile learning, virtual learning, e-learning, blended learning...yes, it is all in there as well. Massive gaming? Indeed. It has taken a couple of decades to build this monster. Much has been included.

And there is more...there is always more. Collaborative technologies? Sure, this topic used to the crux for the entire course. Wikis, podcasts, blogs, etc.? Yes, why not! The course, which initially was embedded in cognitive and social constructivist theory when designed back in 1990, today addresses learning theory such as participatory learning, connectivism, constructivism, the psychological underpinnings of social networking, and the development of personalized learning environments. I am an educational psychologist by training, so why not?

I should also point out that this is likely the final time that the "monster" syllabus will exist. Why? No, we have not reached the limit of the monster lifespan. However, I will go on sabbatical in early May 2013. I do not return until the end of August in 2014. Much will happen in the field of emerging learning technologies during those intervening 16 months. Suffice to say, there is really no way that I can update the monster syllabus again in any sane way. I would go "Bonkers" trying. Hence, it will be slashed and burned, but not to a crisp. Instead, come September 2014, I hope to get it under 20 or 25 pages (the real goal is about 15 pages). I will eliminate all the tidbits and perhaps most of the resources as well. Perhaps a couple of the books that I will work on during my sabbatical will have some of those resources listed in them or, at least, I hope so. But most will be purged.

Well, there you have it. Another semester of the monster. A 74 page monster. I hope some of you can use it or refer to it. But please do not step on the monster by mistake or he might bite you back and I have no insurance to cover the damages. Oh ya, I forget to mention--the next time I teach this course it will no longer be a seminar (R685) course, but, instead, it will be a real course and listed as "R678 Emerging Learning Technologies." Yes, a real monster. No more of those fake ones. That is, assuming that I teach it again in Instructional Systems Technology (IST) here at IU and am not reassigned to some other school or unit. It also assumes that I do not shave my head and move to Thailand to become a Buddhist Monk (or Buddhist Bonk) and that some monster does not chop off my hands or my head in the meantime. :-)