This morning I spent a few minutes examining my LinkedIn profile to see if it still accurately reflects my “professional online identity,” as they say in their Customer Service Center. LinkedIn is business-oriented social networking site. It offers a set of tools that lets you share advice, resources and business opportunities among your colleagues, prospective clients and employers and build trust across your networks. One of these tools is the profile, which is like a business card in many ways, except that you must choose the industry in which you work from a limited list. And, as is often the case, constraints make you consider the circumstances more thoroughly.

Almost all my colleagues who do similar work have chosen the e-learning industry option, an industry that can be defined as “education and training provided in computer networks.” This would be fine, except that in my networks, e-learning is too often collapsed into the view that classroom content can be digitized, sent to great masses of people with little involvement of trainers or teachers, and at no cost for facilities or transportation. This is a narrow, flawed view of learning that I do not want to perpetuate for a number of reasons:

First, it is not true that posting content such as presentations, articles and videos makes good instruction. These are important resources to be sure, just as textbooks were and are important resources, but they are effective only in a learning environment that includes motivation and interaction.

Second, networks and computers that access networks, and developing the digital literacies to use those networks have costs associated with them.

Third, online teaching and training needs at least as much human effort as does classroom teaching and training. Instructors not only prepare and post content; they guide and motivate learners through interaction and social presence.

Fourth, learning also happens through interactions among learners. They pose questions, articulate ideas, construct concepts and investigate hypotheses together, teaching one another, and observing how others respond and learn. Technical support for such interactions is more difficult to achieve that posting content. It requires an interdisciplinary set of skills that looks to psychology, anthropology, brain science, computer science, design practices, among others.

And, fifth, e-learning inexplicably excludes face-to-face interactions from the learning experience. Not only can digital technologies support interactions at a distance through online communication tools, they can also support interactions in the classroom (for example, building a model or exploring a simulation together), and that support can be both synchronous or asynchronous.

My concern with using e-learning industry option is that it bypasses entirely what many of us are trying to do; that is, design effective learning environments in a networked world. So what are the other options? LinkedIn’s Customer Service Center recommends choosing from Primary/Secondary Education, Higher Education or Education Management for teaching. There is no Workplace Learning option, which I would happily select. (Education Management deserves a post of its own.) LinkedIn does offer a way to submit a missing industry, which suggests that others in different fields feel as constrained as I do. A colleague suggested I submit e-learning 2.0, but I’m not sure my fledgling professional online identity could survive that bastard neologism offspring of Web 2.0.

So which industry did I settle on? For now, it’s Internet.

Am I Part of the E-Learning Industry? originally appeared on Portable Learner on March 29th, 2010

Ada Lovelace Day is an international day of blogging to celebrate the achievements of women in technology and science. In my contribution to this year’s blogging festivities, I want to highlight the contributions of the late-Victorian women who changed how we use the telephone today. In her book, Hello Central? Gender, Technology, and Culture in the Formation of Telephone Systems, Michèle Martin examines the development of the telephone system in central Canada from its invention to the system’s automation (1876 to 1920) with a feminist perspective that new technologies tend to be closely linked to prevailing power structures, and that this influences their diffusion and utilization. Martin claims that women profoundly influenced the telephone’s ultimate uses, both in their roles as telephone operators and as telephone users. It’s a fascinating look into the unintended consequences of women’s use of a specific technology. She points out that if women had restricted their use of the telephone usage to the business-oriented imperatives of Bell Telephone, this technology that we take for granted today would not be as ubiquitous as it has become.

In 1880, Bell Telephone was a newly incorporated company that, in the next few decades, leveraged its strong corporate position with dubious business strategies in pursuit of swift domination of the urban and long-distance phone business in central Canada. Delving into Bell Canada’s archives, Martin argues that Bell’s marketing and financial strategies, its notion of telephone etiquette and usage, supported the male business elites exclusively. The phone was marketed as an expensive business tool, the connection between the businessman’s home and his office; it’s purpose, the accumulation of profit. The communication needs of the late-Victorian urban working-class and most rural residents were met with indifference and even veiled hostility. However, through women’s extensive, everyday use of the telephone to socialize with family and friends, Bell Telephone was eventually forced the to revise some of its plans:

Telephony for daily activities appeared in cities and towns towards the end of the 1890s. Very specific telephone practices were prescribed by the companies: the use of the telephone for shopping and making appointments during daytime, for personal conversations during the evening and for protection during the night (BCHC, Quebec Daily Telegram 1911). By the early 1900s, however, bourgeois and petty bourgeois women were already using the telephone extensively for social purposes, at all times of the day (BCHC, Saturday Evening Post 1907). Telephone activities became part of some women’s social practices in urban areas, not only changing the notion of “acceptable” uses developed by Bell Company, but also affecting the development of the system. Women’s extensive use of the telephone obliged Bell to take domestic development into account. Urban residential sectors began to look attractive to the company, and houses were later equipped with extensions or supplementary lines in order to allow both the husband’s business calls and the wife’s social calls. Most of these changes were due to practices unforseen by Bell’s management. The “social” aspect of telephone technology had not been anticipated by the early capitalist developers of the telephone system.

In rural areas, women saw the telephone as an antidote to their isolation. “Meeting on the line” was an important activity on party lines for women who wanted to stay connected to the community. It enhanced the perceived value of their residential phone.

Together such practices constituted a telephone culture. In the 1920s, Bell came to accept that social calls were a legitimate use of the phone. Still, the story serves as a reminder that as with the telephone, today’s technologies also have a range of alternative uses. The twitters and Facebooks are neither neutral instruments that can be used any which way, nor simply deterministic technologies. As Martin points out in Hello Central?, “technologies have a valence: a limited range of uses are possible, and conflicts between developers and consumers determine which use or uses will predominate” (p. 4). Ada Lovelace Day offers an opportunity to remember that some of those developers and consumers are women.

This post is part of Ada Lovelace Day international day of blogging. For more posts honouring women in technology, visit the list.

Women and the Telephone originally appeared on Portable Learner on March 24th, 2010

Stephen Harper has unleashed a whirl of protest in response to his decision to prorogue parliament. Some 27,000 people across Canada rallied in communities large and small, their activities and personal values captured on social media like Facebook and Twitter. Murray Dobbins suggests that it has rejuvenated the movement for Canadian democracy that stalled in the 1990s. He argues that movements are significant because they create the political landscape against which formal party politics are shaped:

Political parties do not develop policies and strategy in a vacuum — they assess the conditions, the parameters of what people will tolerate, the values that people hold, and develop their policies and strategies accordingly. From a progressive perspective the best outcomes prevail when both sides of this formula are working at their peak — when movements are strong and one or more political parties are smart enough, and share the same values, to take advantage of the political space that movements create. It is no coincidence that the most productive period for good social policy, the 1960s and early 1970s, paralleled the time when movements — student, anti-poverty, anti-war, labour, women and aboriginal — were at their strongest.

The last political movement to capture the hearts and minds of Canadians happened in response to free trade negotiations in 1987–88. That movement was initiated and funded by social justice organizations, labour and various civil society groups. As Judy Rebick points out, this one involved “none of the usual suspects.” Instead, it evolved spontaneously, unexpectedly from a dissatisfied student who set up a Facebook group.

It seems a trivial act to join a Facebook group, at least I used to think so. Can clicking really translate to commitment or action? Yet, everyone I talked to at the Parliament Hill rally was part of or knew someone who had joined the Facebook group. “You know when I’m at a rally,” said Trevor Strong of the Arrogant Worms before he started singing, “something has gone really wrong.” The power of networks is a subtle, yet powerful force. The act of sharing with our networks that something has gone really wrong reinforces our ties with them. For the longest time, our options for activism were limited to joining labour, church and social justice organizations. Yet, “in most places,” Judy Rebick emphasizes, “it was individuals rather than organizations who organized events.” The message is pretty clear: building and mobilizing our own networks are the new well-spring of political power.

Bridging online and offline life. Roy Mitchell invites his friends to an anti-proroguing skating party on Facebook. via Rea McNamara.

There is already a Facebook group on next steps. But the point of autonomy is we can all do something in our own way. “Don’t just join the Facebook group,” says Jesse Hirsh, “create your own secret group of friends and followers, and go out and surprise us with your shenanigans and savoir-faire!” But just how do you mesh hashtags, retweets, blog posts and comments with offline acts? That, he says, is the “challenge for the creative class.” He explains further in an interview with Rea McNamara:

The point is to make it part of our lives rather than a separate thing we can neglect and ignore. We take time to tend to our personal health and we make that practice habitual. Politics needs to be regarded in the same light.

Deciding what we are going to do with the power of our personal networks, and developing new skills and tactics that bridge online and offline activities is one of the most vital digital literacy skills.

Prorogue, Activism and the Power of Personal Networks originally appeared on Portable Learner on January 25th, 2010

In the last several years we have watched mobiles become ever more capable and commonplace, to a point where many are now suggesting that mobile learning has reached its tipping point for mainstream adoption, both on campuses and within learning organizations. Most of these predictions define mobile learning purely in terms of its technology; that is, they emphasize the new interfaces, the capabilities to connect with wifi and GPS as well as cellular networks, the third party applications that go beyond making phone calls, and the location awareness that make mobiles an ever more flexible tool for learning, productivity and social networking tasks.

It’s a technocentric view, not a pedagogical view. But it is worth remembering that mobile technologies are designed primarily for business, retail and recreational uses, and only secondarily (if at all) for learning uses. If educators do not adopt a pedagogical conception of mobile learning unconstrained from current technologies, who will?

I was thinking along pedagogical lines, and in particular about how learners experience mobility, while waiting in the back-to-school line up at our neighbourhood office supply store. I was distracted by the large neon-coloured signs hovering over the bins near the check-out promising extraordinary bargains when I spotted a student rummaging around one of the bins. He was wearing a blue sweater that bore a bold print of the Periodic Table of Elements. I could just make out the alkaline earth metals group behind the stack of school supplies he struggled to hold under his arm. Here, I thought, must be the purest form of mobile learning, unconstrained by technological dependencies and physical space, personalized, authentic and situated: a page from a textbook on the shirt on his back. Could there be any pedagogical insight I wondered from such a seemingly small gesture?

Periodic Table Sweater knitted and photographed by apinnick. A list of fungi adorn the one sleeve, bacteria the other. This is a much nicer sweater than the one I spotted on the student at the office supply store.

There is no doubt that mobile devices are changing the way we think about communication and knowledge. They are inspiring new forms of expression, commerce, governance and learning. But what exactly does it mean to be truly mobile? Does it mean learning while driving, walking, sleeping and shopping for office supplies? Is it just-in-time, just-enough, just-for-me, just-for-my networks? Is it hands-free, eyes-free, distraction-free, battery-free, institution-free, and just plain free? Is it formal, informal, or subliminal? Is it as John Traxler writes, that “mobile is not merely a new adjective qualifying the timeless concept of learning – mobile learning is emerging as an entirely new and distinct concept alongside the mobile workforce and the connected society”? As learning professionals we need to let our notions of knowledge and learning also go mobile. It’s a modest start, and I’ll just toss the idea into my networked space, but once you start paying attention, you can find wearable textbooks everywhere. See more examples on my Design Tumble Log.

Kevin Van Aelst, Summer Constellations on a sweater.

Kevin Van Aelst’s Summer Constellations is ephemeral lint and thread. But a few glow beads, and I would wear this at every time I’m watching the night sky.

Circulatory system tights, available at UpFactory. Discovered via Lily of the Valley.

Human anatomy seems to inspire clothing designers. I’ve seen stunning livers, hearts and large intestines. The skeletal and circulatory system strike me as a perfect life-sized learning objects to port effortlessly through a learning experience.

Skeletal system, drawn on a friend’s cast by Heather Tompkins. HT Boing Boing.

Wearable Textbooks originally appeared on Portable Learner on September 8th, 2009

Not surprisingly, there is an interesting story behind The Secret Bench of Knowledge, a sculpture created by Lea Vivot, one casting of which is located at the entrance the the Library and National Archives Canada in Ottawa. I say not surprisingly because this sculpture has never been quite what it seems.

I

A closeup of the Secret Knowledge Garden. Photo also by Konrad Glogowski.

At first glance, it is a pair of children sitting on a bench; he is eating a bright red apple and whispering something in her ear; she is squirming, ever so slightly, perhaps at his words, perhaps because he is too close, or perhaps she just doesn’t like to sit still. The tourist brochures will tell you that the sculpture bears a message of the joy and value of reading. But there is more going on here. Her face shows she is intrigued, they’re, um, not reading anything, and there’s that bite missing from the apple.

The story told to me on the morning bus commute, on route to the Library and Archives, is this: Under the cloak of darkness, about one hour after sunset in early May 1989, Lea Vivot drove a truck with huge winch and deposited her 315 kilogram work, then called Secret Bench, Lost Paradise, in front of the building. The next morning, staff arriving for work were delighted to see the new addition adorn their front entrance. Naturally, they assumed it had been put there by another government department and the memo would be forthcoming.

In fact Lea Vivot had decided to lend the sculpture to the Library and Archives, unbidden. The Canadian Conference of the Arts cites this explanation from the Ottawa Citizen:

The building needed something and I don’t feel that artists have the time to go through the bureaucratic approach. In the same amount of time that it would take to go through all this (bureaucracy) I can cast another sculpture and enhance another space.

About a year later, Vivot removed the sculpture. However, it had become so popular that philanthropist Eugene Boccia donated a casting for permanent installation. In 1994, this time during daylight, the new Secret Bench of Knowledge was unveiled. According to the Library and National Archives, the new sculpture also included engravings about the pleasure and importance of reading chosen from the contest entries submitted by school children and writers across Canada. This time, clearly, a government memo had been issued.

II

This anecdote offers a useful reminder in sales and marketing 101, showing as it does the tight relationship among the cost, price and value of a work or service. Cost is the amount you spend to produce the work or service, price is the financial reward for providing it, and value is what your customer believes the work is worth to them. To maximize profitability, wherever possible, you should set prices that reflect the value you provide, not just the cost.

III

The Secret Bench of Knowledge in Bonita Springs, Florida. Photo by Cary Edmondson, Bonita Daily News.

More castings of the Secret Bench can be found in Toronto, Sarnia, Montreal, Fort Lauderdale, New York, London and Prague. In Bonita Springs, Florida, the work sits in front of Community Hall off Old 41 and became the community’s first outdoor piece of art in 2003 when according to the Naples Daily News, it was moved from the neighbouring city of Naples after complaints about its suggestive imagery. In 2005, Lea Vivot requested Bonita Springs purchase the work for $150,000 USD. With no single philanthropist is site, the city began a year long campaign to raise the funds privately. It was a long time coming, and it was worth every minute, said Amy Arend, chairwoman of The Committee to Save the Bench. You have to sell a lot of pancakes and T-shirts to raise that kind of money. Eventually, though, Lea Vivot accepted $57,000. After what I have seen, what effort they put into it, I decided I couldn’t take it away, she said. Any art object will make the city look nice, Councilman Alex Grantt noted. It fits here very nicely. The city also established an Art in Public Places ordinance, which means that future artworks for the city will not need to be purchased through private fundraising. The author of the article points out that while The Bench off Old 41 remains the same, the difference is that now it belongs to the city and is no longer on loan from the artist. It is also, of course, the difference between value, cost and price.

Dispatch: On Value, Cost and Price (no math) originally appeared on Portable Learner on March 21st, 2009

Twitter’s clouds are an interesting branding choice for a service that asks us to squeeze our thoughts into tiny 140-character installments. Clouds, like tweets, are so much more than they appear to be. They are open to interpretation. We see things in clouds, in their shapes, in their movements, that have nothing at all to do with their physical embodiment as water drops. I’ve never seen a cloud that didn’t look like something else:

Hamlet: Do you see yonder cloud, that’s almost in shape of a camel?
Polonius: By th’ mass, and ’tis like a camel, indeed.
Hamlet: Methinks, it is like a weasel.
Polonius: It is backed like a weasel.
Hamlet: Or like a whale.
Polonius: Very like a whale.

Now, some of us may see more than others, but we are all relentless meaning makers. The world around us is not a given, as they say, but rather it is constructed. In Twitter that construction relies on 140-character building blocks. Tweets, like clouds, are suggestions, intimations, that drift by, and sometimes they project the deeper concerns of the follower who reads them. I’ve never seen a tweet that didn’t look like something else. For example:

Observe the signs: the lone tweet, the extended time lapsed since posting, no followup, the default avatar. The tone is confident and crotchety, methinks. It suggests that, against their better judgment, the author fell victim to the peak of inflated expectations, then, at mid-tweet, with better judgment restored, fell into the trough of disillusionment. The ballistic progression through the stages of the hype cycle hints at long-time expertise, long enough for evolved cynicism, brief enough to have sustained hope. Could this be an abandoned eduTwitter account? If tweets are like clouds, this one says there is rain is in the forecast. Stay out of the rain it warns. If you are serious about technology-supported learning environments (and I am! Iam!), then Twitter is all wet.

Of course, I grant you, some of us may see more in these tweets than others.

TheMime’s twitter style is more detached, but equally jaded. The author tweets a single ellipse, and only an ellipse, every couple of days. They have been doing this since November, and have attracted over 5,000 followers.* The tone is whimsical, the delivery reliable. You may hope for more, they suggest, and you will get more … of the same. More of the same? Oh yes, I know this pattern. It is the one that seems to emerge whenever educators start to use digital technologies in their practice. The pattern looks something like this:

Most digital technologies are originally developed for or adapted by researchers or commercial interests. But it is fair to say that teachers and trainers are among the most enthusiastic and innovative adopters. We all want to embrace the promise to enhance the experiences of our students or improve learning outcomes. Many of us share our experiences. The online literature about the use of digital technologies in education is bursting with enthusiastic accounts of what was done, why it was done, how it worked, what impact it had on students, and what challenges it posed for teachers. In fact, this generosity formed my expectations about Twitter long before I set up an account. But read more closely, and you will see that much of the discussion is not about anything new or transformational; rather it is about the recurrent, persistent issues in education. There are notable exceptions, but most of these experiments with digital technologies feel as if they are just that—simple experiments with technology. These are our ellipses. Some important aspects remain mostly unchanged: the underlying design of the curriculum, the purposes and means of assessing, and the imbalance of power between teacher/trainer/facilitator and student/trainee/learner. There are reasons, of course, why we do not capitalize on the potential of digital technologies to change the relationship between students and learning. Still, I can’t help but feel somewhat disheartened that potentially transformational technologies are often used in somewhat predictable ways.

If tweets are clouds, is the long term forecast is overcast and unchanged? I turned to the twittersphere for fellowship and forecast. Is there anything new under the sun?, I tweeted. Apparently yes, says Dave Ferguson:

What appeals to me about digital technologies is that they throw into contrast any differences of opinion we may hold about their use. Variations in the pattern become immediately evident. For example, I don’t think I’ve ever been inclined to compare technologies and clouds before Twitter. Doing so reveals my underlying constructivist assumptions about education and I how go about achieving them. Tweets are like clouds. In 140 characters or less, I can see established paradigms and am free to interpret alternative views. That’s a lot of transformational power packed into an edutweet, and that’s where I see sun peaking behind the clouds.

* And more now that TheMime has been featured on Boing Boing. If you still have doubts that tweets are ideal fodder for meaning making, check out the comments.

140 Characters Or Less originally appeared on Portable Learner on March 12th, 2009

Chocolate Chip Cookies

Makes about 4 ½ dozen cookies

• 250 mL unsalted butter, melted and cooled until warm
• 1 cup brown sugar, packed
• ½ cup granulated sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 eggs
• 1¼ cup all-purpose flour
• 1¼ cup whole-wheat flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup walnuts
• 250 g semisweet chocolate chips

1. Preheat oven to 375°F (190°C). In large bowl, beat melted butter, packed brown sugar and granulated sugar with electric mixer until creamy. Beat in eggs, one at a time, and vanilla until well incorporated.
2. Beat in flour, baking soda, and salt. Stir in chopped nuts and chocolate chips.
3. Drop slightly rounded tablespoons (15 ml) about 2-inches (5 cm) apart onto baking sheets lined with parchment paper. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes, or until golden brown around the edges. Cool on baking sheets for 2 minutes; remove to wire racks to cool completely.

Weekend Food Blogging: Chocolate Chip Cookies originally appeared on Portable Learner on January 11th, 2009

Pot Roast with Root Vegetables

Serves 6 to 8

• ¼ cup all-purpose flour
• salt and black pepper
• 3 to 4-lb (1.5 to 2 kg) beef cross rib or rump roast
• 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
• 2 onions, quartered
• 4 carrots, peeled and sliced
• 4 to 6 potatoes, peeled and quartered
• 1 cup beef stock
• 1 small can (7.5 oz or 221 mL) tomato sauce
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• ½ teaspoon dried thyme
• 1 bay leaf

1. In a bowl season flour to taste with salt and pepper. Pat meat dry and coat on all sides with seasoned flour. I never do this. Sometimes I toss a bit of flour into the crock pot to compensate.
2. In a large skillet, heat oil over medium-high heat. Add meat and cook, turning with a wooden spoon. Transfer meat to slow cooker. I never do this either, although I probably should. There are some things you do for convenience, and some things you do for cuisine. A crock pot is about convenience. I usually start at step 3.
3. Add onions to slow cooker, along with carrots, potatoes, stock, tomato sauce, garlic, thyme, and bay leaf. I also added some parsnips. Cover and cook on Low for 10 to 12 hours or on High for 6 to 8 hours, until vegetables are tender. Choose low. High does not tenderize the meat as well. Also, next time I do this, I am going to add a little wine and tomato paste with the broth. One of the trade-offs to skipping step 2, I think, is to miss out on all the flavours browning the roast imparts to the pot.
4. Remove roast, onions, carrots and potatoes, cover and set aside. Discard bay leaf. Tip slow cooker and skim off any excess fat from surface of gravy; season to taste with salt and pepper. Pour gravy into sauce boat. Slice roast, arrange on a serving platter and surround with vegetables. Serve with gravy, which didn’t taste that good. My biggest beef (pun alert!) with crock pots is that the au jus is often bland and thin: this is not a roast; it is a runny stew. I added a little wine and tomato paste to the broth, and reduce it by half, before seasoning. Now it is good. Cuisine wins over convenience at dinner time.

Weekend Food Blogging: Crock Pot Roast originally appeared on Portable Learner on December 28th, 2008

Oatcakes for Sunday brunch, ready to be paired with a little maple syrup. I slipped a few walnuts left over from Christmas and a very ripe banana into the batter.

Oatcakes

Serves 3 to 4

• ¾ cup quick-cooking oats
• 1 ½ cups buttermilk
• ½ cup whole-wheat flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• ½ teaspoon cinnamon
• pinch grated nutmeg
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 1 large egg, lightly beaten
• 1 tablespoon brown sugar, packed

1. Soak oats in buttermilk for 10 minutes. In another bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, spices and salt. Then add the egg, brown sugar, and oat mixture into the dry ingredients. The tricky part is getting the consistency right, which you don’t really figure out until the next step, when it is too late.
2. I use a large non-stick pan, lightly brushed with oil, and heated over medium heat until hot. Working in batches, pour 1/4 cup batter per pancake into the pan. In about minute, bubbles appear on the surface and the undersides are golden brown. If the surface starts looking dry, you’ve waited too long. Flip the pancake and cook the other side for another minute. Brush your pan lightly with oil between batches.
3. Serve with, what else, maple syrup.

Weekend Food Blogging: Oatcakes originally appeared on Portable Learner on April 27th, 2008

Stories from Beechwood Cemetery originally appeared on Portable Learner on October 8th, 2006