… we’ll always have informal learning networks…

[CC licensed image by KraetzschePhotography] 

Brad Ovenell-Carter (aka @Braddo) was kind enough to bring his 2010 Prediction for K-12 Education to my attention. While they’re labeled "K-12" they are also relevant, in different ways, to higher education, and each stimulated some thinking on my part.

Prediction #1: "School administrators will enter the conversation."

This is precisely apt for higher education: administrators are having a conversation… but it’s not the conversation they need to be involved in. The current conversation administrators are taking part in is instead happening mostly in parallel with that of the practitioners and innovators within the space(s) they administer. Of course I worry about the effect administrative realities have on innovative activities– Christensen’s work on disruptive innovation is frighteningly relevant– but at some point what is learned and practiced on the edge needs to make its way into the fabric of the institution. Or maybe it doesn’t have to, but I’d like it to since I plan to remain working within one of those institutions.

Bringing ReadWriteWeb.com’s Top 5 Web Trends: 2009 into play (Structured Data, Real-Time Web, Personalization, Mobile Web / Augmented Reality, Internet of Things) as part of this prediction interests me. How many educators would list ReadWriteWeb’s five as the most important web trends of 2009 w/r/t their work? If we’re talking about a top 5 in terms of importance to education, then I propose:

• real-time web – setting aside subtleties and arguments about these roles, this is more important for educators and their professional communities than their students’ educational world(s)

• "cloud computing" – I use the term haphazardly to include both educational institutions increasing move toward enterprise-level cloud computing services as well as the march of end-user applications and activities from specific desktop to Internet applications such as Google Office

• distributed, synchronous conferences – perhaps organizers for events in other areas can afford to attempt to corner their audience into over-priced and under-valued face-to-face offerings, but education isn’t one of them

• personalization – this will be important, but mostly in its effects on privacy and identity…it will be two or three years before we seem integration of scattered, siloed information to a point that the grander ideas of personalized learning is possible (if it happens at all)

• tablets, netbooks and iPhones (oh my) – most of the activity in this area will continue to focus on simplistic content provision and access to "materials," but I suspect the Apple tablet will result in a tectonic shift in the fundamental landscape just as the iPod and iPhone have. Netbooks will be the next Trapper Keeper.

If I’m not limited to explicit technologies, then I add:

• open education/openness – this is fundamental to the visions of many innovative educators, sometimes without those same educators knowing it. The traditional models of content-centric OER creation and provision will continue to die-off and become less relevant. But there’s significant danger here if we aren’t successful in refocusing and reshaping the energy of open teaching and learning as a fundamental way of working.

• new literacies and information fluency – yes, there’s more information and means of expression, but digital literacy just doesn’t cut it. I may be early on predicting serious, practical movement in this area, but it will be a top-flight concern nonetheless.

• intellectual property and copyright – alternative licensing will continue to grow in importance, but media convergence and mobile growth is going to act as a serious counterbalance. I expect significant legislation and wrangling in this area… and net neutrality!

Prediction #2: "Everyone will wake up to the idea that students are not digital natives."

I’ll quibble with the absolute nature of this prediction. I’ve shifted a bit on my position regarding use of the phrase "digital natives" but not at all on the reality that the label (as typically used) refers to characteristics accurately representing an important– if small– set of learners that I encounter in every class I teach.

Who are myriad prognosticators thinking about when they roll out their predictions about personalized, individual education, if not those who are outside the fat belly of the bell curve? “Digital natives" are, to me, similar to what other gifted groups are: a small set of students with outstanding skills and experience that are not being served by middle-of-the-road educational experiences.

We can dispense with the phrase, but those students exist, just as do many other "outliers" in any community of learners, and I, for one, am really tired of the immense leveling effect that comes as a byproduct of terminology crusades.

Prediction #3: "We’ll put philosophy back on the table."

I sure hope so! The "participation and presentation" circle of my information fluency Venn diagram is predicated on the idea that we are recognizing and teaching the practical ethics and evolving morality and mores of the webby, netty world.

With no experience in K-12 education beyond experiences with my own children, I can’t speak to the needs there, but in higher education this means taking into account creeping relativism (and I am, by most standards, a relativist– or more specifically an ironist) and at least being aware of the constant conflation of ideology and philosophy.

The recent "openness debates" provides a stark illustration of the difficulty of 1) engaging the philosophical in an edtech world heavily biased towards traditionally pragmatic concerns, and 2) finding productive means of doing so.

[1/27/10 - edited for grammar]

[beware, barely baked thoughts below]

Umberto Eco’s book The Infinity of Lists (a great read, btw, basically being an extended essay on the idea of lists in art and literature accompanied by a fantastic collection of examples both written and visual) is based on a foundational theme reminds me of the swelling openness debates (see my last post for thoughts and links).

The “infinity” Eco is writing about is a function of the framing devices used for different kinds of art and, by extension, lists in art. One basic model is to create a work that doesn’t encourage us to look beyond the frame. Eco uses examples such as the larger universe of the story told by the engravings on Achilles’ shield in the Iliad or the landscape behind the Mona Lisa. Though there is a world that continues beyond the frame, it’s irrelevant to the work at hand and the artist has no interest in piquing our own interest in that world. The point of the work– and a key to enjoying and understanding it– comes from the finiteness, the staking of a particular set of claims in the face of potential infinitude.

The second model is one of infinity, or art that purposefully invokes, as Eco puts it, an “actual infinity made up of objects that can perhaps be numbered but that we cannot number.” Consider Homer’s list of ships and captains in the Iliad in which his list cannot be complete, by his own admission, but exists in part to allude to the practically infinite strength of the Greek army, or Kant’s apprehension of the sublime triggered by gazing upon the starry sky…

It would be fool’s work to argue that either of these basic modes of creation is inherently superior to the other. They are each different. They are each necessary. Much of the recent open debate– including my minor contribution– has focused on philosophy vs pragmatics. When the heat of the engagement passes, and if we separate some of the personalities from the claims, almost everyone recognizes the need for both, often within the same person.

So I wonder if Eco’s breakdown isn’t more apt for the situation faced by the philosophical and pragmatic open-nauts. Perhaps the argument is, in most cases, less about taking a philosophical or pragmatic approach than it is about whether the work we want to engage in is meant to operate– and be understood– largely within a particular frame of action (pragmatics) or is intended to invoke– and is thus misunderstood outside– the theoretical constructs of openness (the philosophical).

Eco uses an example:

In literature, when reading in Stendahl’s The Red and the Black that Julian Sorel’s first shot at Madame de Rênal in the church of Verrière misses, we could fantasize (as some have done) about where that first shot struck, but in reality the question is irrelevant: from the standpoint of Stendahl’s narrative strategy that detail is insignificant. Those who wonder about the first shot are wasting their time and are giving up on understanding and enjoying the novel.

There is philosophy (ideas) and pragmatics (narrative) in Stendahl’s work… as there is in any novel. Both naturally occur in the work of open education as well. But if you are– or see yourself– engaged in primarily the pragmatic work, in which the infinite outside is essentially irrelevant, then all the yammering about the philosophy is misdirection… not to mention potentially threatening in the way it diverts attention and energy from what matters. And if your intent is to engage in the open sphere in a way that invites– and depends upon– that infinite outside, then the pragmatic frame is unnecessarily limiting… if not threatening in that it can easily circumscribe the engagement, robbing it (in a very different way) of its power.

In this manner I find sympathy with– and truth in– both “sides” of the current debate. Jim Groom’s pioneering work with UMW Blogs is a powerful activity that puts a philosophy to work. Assailing it from the outside with appeals to making it a nexus of radical philosophy is to wonder at Stendahl’s unelaborated first-shot. George Siemens’ call to philosophical arms is, as I see it, one to create and work outside that frame, in the theoretical infinite, even though it’s an impossible task, just as Homer notes in the Iliad before his own engagement in just such allusive work:

I shall not call the host by name, not even had I ten tongues and ten mouths.

We need more da Vinci and more Stendahl in open education, not to mention the rare Homer and Joyce who can manage to work and manipulate both inside and outside the frame.

Reading through the original post by George Siemens (“Open isn’t so open anymore”), the long comment thread that has ensued, and the many fine follow-ups (see: David Wiley’s response and response to responses, Martin Weller, Brian Lamb, Pontydysgu, Always Cool Alan, Jim Groom’s response and a response to the response to his response, Graham Atwell, etc) and I’m left wondering what’s really going on here?

Is there more than just a little bit of mixing the message and the messenger? I like George. He’s a friendly (and dare I say open?) guy who has continually done hard, influential, thinking in areas important to everyone participating in these discussions. But I also recognize that George is, in a genial way, a provocateur and a self-promoter. George demands attention and isn’t afraid to be the contrarian. I find his manner of doing so mostly productive though—quite unlike some others (paging Gary Stager).

I find it hard to believe—interpreting George’s original post through my own selfish lens—that there’d be quite such an uproar if just about anyone else who’s been involved in the conversation had essentially made the same claims:

• We need more sharp, radical thinking about a concept that clearly (and I submit as evidence this discussion itself) isn’t simple or characterized by mutual understanding of terms that those who promote open education.
• Open teaching & learning, and openness as a posture, and etc etc etc are in danger of seeing what is most important to us co-opted and ultimately retarded by commercial entities for whom openness isn’t a way of acting, teaching or living, but a means for increasing profits.

The implicit binary conception of philosophy and pragmatism in some of the responses is questionable—even disturbing. I’ve come to accept the healthy position of being disinterested in one or the other—Alan Levine’s usual take for example—but that’s very different from maintaining that either philosophical investigation or pragmatic work are unnecessary. Aren’t many of the most influential agents in the area of open education people who consistently engage in both? Who has done more to advance both the philosophy and practical work of Open Education than people like David Wiley, Stephen Downes, Jim Groom, Brian Lamb, Scott Leslie, and so many others? Even if you are one who isn’t (or is less) interested in the abstracted aspects of the discussion– variously characterized as philosophical, ideological, or academic, depending on if one intends to support or disparage them—that work is important because its product filters through the network/ecosystem/rhizome, into your work in open education. One way or another, whether you like and want it to or not. There are many jobs, roles and activities I find uninteresting, distasteful, or frustrating while recognizing their importance to my life and livelihood… why the need here to pummel those who wish to engage in them? Why the need to stamp our feet and cry “just do it!” when, in fact, they are in most cases crying out to/at those who are already doing it?

The issue of co-option and institutionalization is complicated and confusing. If we were gambling with one-sided coins in a zero-sum game, I’d go with pragmatics and simply let the philosophy evolve as a byproduct (what a meager way to live!). But I agree with what I take to be George’s position here: if we don’t advance the thinking in our own field, then we unnecessarily leave our fate to the will of others. I’m not suggesting that institutions—be they Blackboard or Facebook or Universities—are spending time cornering the market on the philosophy and ideology of openness and thus we better get rolling before they use up all the paper and bits we need to do so ourselves. But ignoring those activities and hoping that pragmatism will rule the day, that openness will prevail solely through each admirable educator lighting their own little open candle and letting it shine, and that this is sufficient for a productive and lasting conception to emerge isn’t supported by the history of education nor the history of the culture in which it’s embedded (in the West anyway). Driven by profit and a desire for increased reach, institutions will fill up the empty spaces, influence the minds of the important mass of those who engage with the concepts casually and/or incidentally, and smother what could well be seen a decade from now as just one of dozens of other fads that will have passed their expiration dates and disappeared. I can think of no better way to help make that happen than to ignore either the theoretical investigation or the practical engagement. And I fail to see how more thinking about openness must somehow result in less being done as part of it. Why is a call for deeper exploration into a relatively young—and potentially revolutionary—kind of cultural engagement perceived as a slight against—or a theft from—those who prefer to prioritize praxis?

And make no mistake: there are no guarantees that open education and open teaching & learning will take significant root. It’s mindboggling to me that—assuming one has taken a cursory glance at the history of revolution and reform in education—there are people maintaining that the important work is done, that openness has “happened” or that it is on an inevitable path to becoming an intrinsic part of educational practice. Open education is a tiny niche activity and body of practice residing within an only slightly bigger group of enthusiastic educators. It’s barely a blip on the horizon outside our tiny communities, and where it is noticed that notice tends to come for the wrong reasons.

Even if academicization (oh baby) and institutionalization of “openness” involves a large group of people not really getting it the way we, the real open education people do, it’s better that they have a shallow understanding and misguided sense of purpose that stems from—or involves—our deepening conception of what open education and open culture means than leaving it to the forces of the marketplace. Most of the administrators in my own institution have little idea what open education is about… but the same could (and in many cases still can) be said about their understanding of social media and networks, to name just one important area of educational theory and practice. But the work that so many have done to both think through the theory of—and practice within—these complex areas has had a generally positive effect, allowing for a trust that even if they don’t delve deeply themselves, there’s something useful and worthwhile there that goes beyond the profit-motives of the companies that are (or claim to be) engaged in the same area. The result? I (and my colleagues) are in more cases able to move forward in our practical, everyday work and in more positive ways.