This reading list is supposed to serve as a useful counterweight to those techno-utopian works that spend too much energy cheer-leading and no time focusing the world on the real problems and threats that the Internet has produced. I’ve included a number of authors who ruminate on the risks of mindlessly embracing powerful tools before we understand them, without raising apocalyptic fears to scrap the undertaking altogether. They are NOT the work of Luddites or technophobes. HT to Siva Vaidhyanathan for triggering this list with her review of Delete.

Reading List

• To read
• Recommended
• You have better things to do

Information Abundance originally appeared on Portable Learner on February 2nd, 2010

Many disciplines contribute to our understanding of visual literacy, most of which predate our notions of digital literacy, and all which give an eclectic tone to this reading list. I used this definition to give whatever cohesion you might notice:

Visual literacy can be defined as the “ability to construct meaning from visual images” (Giorgis, Johnson, Bonomo, Colbert, & al, 1999, p 146).

If you are new to the is topic, I found Anne Bamford’s and James Anitoo’s papers particularly relevant, brief introductions. I should divide this list into smaller categories, perhaps in the next revision. As always, suggestions are most welcome.

Reading List

• To read
• Recommended
• You have better things to do

Visual Literacy originally appeared on Portable Learner on March 18th, 2009

Establishing the historical breakpoint … is only half the game of writing alternate history. The other half, and to me the more interesting one, is imagining what would spring from the proposed change. It is in that second half of the game that science fiction and alternate history come together. Both seek to extrapolate logically a change in the world as we know it. Most forms of science fiction posit a change in the present or nearer future and imagine its effect on the more distant future. Alternate history, on the other hand, imagines a change in the more distant past and examines its consequences for the nearer past and the present. The technique is the same in both cases; the difference lies in where in time it is applied.

A teacher once wrote in a forum that she was disappointed how much Second Life mirrored real life. She had been listening to presenters talk about alternative pedagogies in virtual worlds. Except for the fact that she had teleported to the lecture hall, the lecture itself was all too much like its real life counter part. What draws me to the alternate history genre is that its authors constantly intersect possible paths with real history, often through science fiction mechanisms like time travel, such that it is impossible not to consider what might well be. I am waiting for Harry Turtledove to tackle teaching and lecturing.

I’m fairly new to alternate history, so how does this reading list look?

Reading List

• To read
• Recommended
• You have better things to do

Alternate History and Time Travel originally appeared on Portable Learner on February 15th, 2008

This week I am presenting strategies for web-based learning at this year’s CSTM conference. And, as often happens in these things, I want to define “learning” for a lay audience who (quite understandably) don’t want to be subjected to extended and nuanced discussions about the philosophical under pinnings of learning. And of course, for my part, I want to convey with great earnestness that web-based learning differs from the traditional methods they are more familiar with. I always struggle with this communication, and unfortunately, I won’t be offering a resolution in this Notebook post.

Instead, I thought I would try something more fundamental, and that is, define learning for education practitioners. I thought I would start here because, for all our talk of learning, we pay little attention to what it actually involves, and because how we define learning influences how we practice our craft. Perhaps, thus equipped, I can look at bringing these definitions to communities of practice beyond our own discipline.

All definitions of learning are linked to various philosophies and theories of learning. What you believe about the mind and about the nature of knowledge affects how you think about we should be learning. The Theory Into Practice (TIP) database presents brief summaries of fifty major theories of learning and instruction. One reason for the plethora of learning definitions is that learning is both a product–an outcome, a tangible knowing–as well as a process. This is a point made in what has become the standard text on the subject, Merriam and Caffarella’s Learning in Adulthood (1998), and is nicely summarized by Mark K. Smith at Infed (the Four orientations to learning–behaviourist, cognitivist, humanist and social/situational–is a particularly worth reviewing).

Still, textbooks always divide things up so neatly, and the messier alternatives that are not as easily classified are often left out. Learning is afterall a complex phenomenon. Further, interpreting these orientations into prescriptive notions about should be learned leads to yet more complexity. So, with an effrontery only possible in a online notebook, I am offer this work in progress collection of learning definitions for my Notebook:

• Learning is the acquisition of facts, skills, and methods through study (19th century approach).
• Learning is a permanent change in behaviour brought about by experience (Haggard, 1963, p.20; clearly a behaviourist orientation to learning).
• Learning is the changes in the ways in which people “understand, or experience, or conceptualize the world around them” (Ramsden, 1992, p. 4; a cognitivist orientation to learning).
• Learning is the process of gaining knowledge and expertise (Malcolm Knowles, 1998, p.17)
• Learning is “individually constructed and socially co-constructed by learners based on their interpretations of experiences in the world” (Jonassen 1999, p. 217; a constructivist orientation).
• Learning is “properly conceived as being located in communities of practice” (Tennant, 1997, p.77). That is, learning is inseparable from doing.

References

• Jonassen, D. (1999). Designing constructivist learning environments. In C. M. Reigeluth (Ed.), Instructional design theories and models: A new paradigm of instructional theory (Vol. 2), pp. 215–239.
• Knowles, M. S., Holton III, E. F., Swanson, R. A. (1998). The adult learner: The definitive classic in adult education and human resource development.
• Ramsden, P. (1992). Learning to Teach in Higher Education.
• Merriam, S. and Caffarella (1991, 1998). Learning in adulthood. A comprehensive guide.
• Tennant, M. (1988, 1997). Psychology and adult learning.

Definitions of Learning originally appeared on Portable Learner on April 30th, 2007

Many of the ways we conceive of learning is based on the assumption that it is something that individuals do to acquire some form of knowledge. The significance of communities of practice is that it is based on a social view of learning, process of acculturation into a network of social relationships. In this view of learning, there is no distinction between learning and social participation (Wenger, 1998).

Trenton (2002) conveniently summarizes the assumptions taken by a communities of practice approach:

• Learning is fundamentally a social phenomenon.
• Knowledge is integrated in the life of communities that share values, beliefs, languages, and ways of doing things.
• The process of learning and the process of membership in a community of practice are inseparable.
• Knowledge is inseparable from practice.
• Empowerment — the ability to contribute to a community — creates the potential for learning.

Despite the common assumptions, the term, communities of practice, is used inconsistently. Wenger, who with Lave originally coined the term, defines a CoP as a special type of community where practice is a source of the coherence of a community:

a community of practice is not just a Web site, a database, or a collection of best practices. It is a group of people who interact, learn together, build relationships, and in the process develop a sense of belonging and mutual commitment. Having others who share your overall view of the domain and yet bring their individual perspectives on any given problem creates a social learning system that goes beyond the sum of its parts.

Wenger (1998) says a community of practice defines itself along three dimensions:

• What it is about?–It’s a joint enterprise, continuously negotiated by its members, which defines significance, shapes practices, and develops into community standards of practice. This process creates more than “just a stated goal, but creates among participants relations of mutual accountability that become an integral part of the practice” (Wenger, 1998, p. 78).
• How does it function?–Mutual engagement binds members together. By sharing ideas and stories as they work, have lunch, or socialize outside of work, they also share and enact knowledge. Mutual engagement describes relationships grounded in mutual interest, not just in information exchange, networking, or interaction.
• What capability has it produced?–Members develop a shared repertoire of communal resources (for example, routines, sensibilities, artefacts, vocabulary, styles) over time.

Since Wenger, other researchers have offered similar definitions communities of practice. For example:

Communities-of-practice are informal networks that support professional practitioners to develop a shared meaning and engage in knowledge building among the members.

Barab and Duffy (2000) suggest that CoPs have three main characteristics:

• a common cultural and historical heritage, including shared goals, negotiated meanings, and practices;
• individuals becoming a part of something larger; and
• the ability to reproduce as new members work alongside more competent others.

See also: cognitive apprenticeship; situated learning; anchored instruction

Reading List

• To read
• Recommended
• You have better things to do

Communities of Practice originally appeared on Portable Learner on January 12th, 2007

Three ideas emerge when you acknowledge, as situated learning does, that the experiences and situations in which learners finds themselves and the tools they use are integral to the learning process:

First, in recognizing that learning is situated, perceptions and how those perceptions are made–not memory or how information is processed–become the key aspects of the learning process. And context–not any internal information processing variable–is the prime influence on how those perceptions are made. Second, acknowledging that learning is primarily a cultural phenomenon, moves cognition into the social and political sphere, and makes relevant issues of knowledge and power, and the perspectives of critical, feminist and postmodern thinkers. And third, the importance of authentic experiences means that it is much easier to talk about situated learning than to design learning environments that support it. As James Greeno has noted, When we recognize that all learning involves socially organized activity, the question is not whether to give instruction in a ‘complex, social environment’ but what kinds of complex, social activities to arrange, for which aspects of participation, and in what sequence to use them (p. 10).

See also: cognitive apprenticeships, anchored instruction, two ways in which educators have put the idea of authentic experiences into formal practice.

Cf. reflective practice, which also involves learning from experience, but differs in how the experiences are interpreted.

Reading List

• To read
• Recommended
• You have better things to do

Situated Learning originally appeared on Portable Learner on January 10th, 2007

Links that support my professional pursuits: teaching methods, knowledge translation, assessment techniques and other issues in continuing health sciences education.

[sniplet LINKScme]

Links: Continuing Health Sciences Education originally appeared on Portable Learner on December 8th, 2006

In 1990, Peter Senge’s book The Fifth Discipline and its description of learning organizations offered a means to increase organizational capacity and creativity. The idea of a learning organization

…where people can continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning how to learn together.…

began to wield influence in the boardrooms of corporate America (and education circles). In it, learning assumes a central role in expanding our capacity to react in the world and make decisions:

Real learning gets to the heart of what it means to be human. Through learning we re-create ourselves. Through learning we become able to do something we never were able to do. Through learning we reperceive the world and our relationship to it. Through learning we extend our capacity to create, to be part of the generative process of life. There is within each of us the deep hunger for this type of learning. This, then, is the basic meaning of a “learning organization” — an organization that is continually expanding its capacity to create its future “generative learning”, learning that enhances our capacity to create.

Senge’s (1999, p. 32) ensemble of five disciplines of organizational learning offer a means to share our perceptions of the world:

1. Personal Mastery. The essence of personal mastery is “continually clarifying and deepening our personal vision, of focusing our energies, of developing patience, and of seeing reality objectively” (p. 7). It is the tension between personal vision and assessed reality expands our ability to make better choices.
2. Shared Vision: Shared vision is a force of “impressive power” that emerges when people share a common purpose.
3. Mental Models. These are the deeply held images we hold about the world around us, which in shape how we act. Developing an awareness of these perceptions changes the way we think and create new ideas.
4. Team Learning. Senge notes that “teams, not individuals, are the fundamental learning unit in modern organizations” (p. 10). It is the dialogue among the members of the team which results in stretching the ability of the organization to grow and develop. Team learning is the process of aligning and developing the capacity of a team.
5. Systems Thinking: Systems thinking is oriented to looking at the interrelatedness of forces, and seeing them as part of a common process of a system. Better understanding of interdepencies and help us better understand the forces that lead to more effective changes to the system.

There is an underlying assumption in all this: For learning team collaboration and personal reflection to take place, there must be some degree of personal mastery to attain an awareness of both vision and reality, and the thinking skills to mediate the differences in these views.

Reading List

• To read
• Recommended
• You have better things to do

Learning Organizations originally appeared on Portable Learner on November 26th, 2006

The common definition for design patterns one that is potentially incomprehensible unless one is already familiar with patterns is that they are solutions to recurring problems that can be used repeatedly in many contexts (Alexander, Ishikawa, & Silverstein, 1977; Guidelines for E-LEN Centres, 2004). However, the solutions are intentionally incomplete. Within their structure, patterns combine analysis and solutions to problems that are responsive to context, informed by theory and best practices. They focus and advise but do not constrain creativity. Thus, patterns guide rather than prescribe: a characteristic that makes them potentially valuable tools for designing complex learner managed systems.

The use of design patterns and pattern languages originates with architect Christopher Alexander, who sought to reconceptualise approaches to building design and town planning. Driven by the conviction that many forces that shape modern life damage our wellbeing, he sought deeper, recurring patterns in human activities that intuitively improve our environment. He articulated these patterns into a set of conceptual tools such that ordinary people as well as architects could shape the environment in which they live (Alexander, Ishikawa, & Silverstein, 1977).

Since its development in the 1970s, Alexander’s thinking on design has received warm reception in surprisingly varied professions and disciplines. In software engineering, patterns have been used to represent successful models of information systems (see HillsideNet Patterns Library) and human computer interaction (for example, Tidwell, 1999). More recently, education technologists have looked to patterns to solve problems such as collaborative activities in Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) systems (Hernández Leo, Asenio Pacrez, & Dimitriadis, 2004; Baggetun, Rusman, & Poggi, 2004) and learning management standards (Avgeriou, Papasalouros, Retalis, & Skordalakis, 2003), and to capture teaching practices in their respective disciplines (for example, from the Pedagogical Patterns project, Esckstein, Marquardt, Manns, & Wallingford, 2001, and also Bergin, 2002; Frizell & Hubscher, 2002).

Structure and Elements of Design Patterns

‘Go Berrypicking’ is one example of the lifelong learning patterns we have identified (There are a few more). Based on Bates’s (1989) Berrypicking model of information retrieval, it identifies a typical problem encountered in the information-rich world of the Internet: finding appropriate resources online. Pattern structure is fundamental to its value, and this pattern uses a variation of the Alexandrian pattern structure (other variations include Goodyear, Avgeriou, Baggetun, Bartouluzzi, Retalis, Ronteltap & Rusman, 2004, and Bergin, 2002). Like all such patterns, it is written in second person, and in this case is directed to the learner, has a name, and these key elements separated by asterisks (***):

• The context for the problem that prevents an over-generalised solution.
• The forces that describe in what contexts users apply the pattern, followed by the key
  problem (in bold). The forces of the problem clash, constrain, and communicate the nature of both problem and solution.
• ‘Therefore …’ (Also in bold) introduces the archetypal solution. It describes how to apply the pattern correctly and includes consequences, limitations and disadvantages of the solution.
• Further information and examples (in italics) about its use, including references to related work and contraindications to support the pattern’s use.

[title] GO BERRYPICKING**
[context] You want to search online about a topic that is unfamiliar to you.
***
[forces] The sheer volume and variability of sources on the internet make search complex. If you are unfamiliar with the domain, you may not know what sources exist, how to frame the research question, or what search terms to use. Unfortunately, search engines typically require that you present an structured, precise query that can be matched to the database contents to produces a single set of results (note: there are exceptions).
[problem] An underdeveloped research question produces less meaningful search results.
***
[solution] Therefore, use the results to refine and redefine your research question until the results are meaningful.
Search is iterative: the search question and result co-evolve. Start with just one feature of the broader topic and move through a wide variety of sources. Retrieve information a bit at a time, not all at once. Look for potential ideas and new directions and repeat with a refined query. Bates (1989) calls this strategy berrypicking and the shifting nature of queries an evolving search. You may be tempted to restrict your search among a small set of familiar sites. (Tauscher & Greenberg, 1997 in Candy, 2004). However, a broadly scoped search will offer more
opportunities. ‘Berries are scattered on the bushes; they do not come in bunches’ (Bates, 1998, p. 4). Don’t get lost. After pursuing a string of new directions, you may find yourself far a field from where you started, and unable to assimilate this new information into the original context. Fortunately, there are patterns for that too.
***
[further information] Bates (1989) suggests six ways to search for bits and pieces: footnote chasing, citation searching, journal run, area scanning, subject searches in bibliographies and abstracts, and author searching. These could be explicated as subpatterns. The online bookshop, Amazon.com, lets you find books by linking to other books by the same author, on the same topic, with the same reviewer or even other purchasers. CiteSeer, a database of computer and engineering documents that uses autonomous citation indexing, lets you query through a chain of documents.
Note: See family of patterns associated with assimilating information and insights.

Taken together, the ‘Go Berrypicking’ pattern captures an essential aspect of the online search experience. However, it is not full featured enough to create a working blueprint for a complete online search. Rather, like all design patterns, this one makes sense when it is seen in context of its neighbouring patterns. Patterns are nested with other smaller, related patterns and within even larger patterns that describe supersets and whole structures such as a class, a community or an e-learning program. A pattern language is a structure for nested design patterns.

For example, ‘Go Berrypicking’ is part of a cluster of patterns for ‘locating information sources and assistance’ that includes ‘Choose a well marked trail’ and ‘Trust a secondary source’ among others (It’s easier to see this in a hyperlinked version of the pattern cluster).

‘Locating information sources and assistance’ itself is a component of an online learning pattern language, for which we have used Candy’s online learning model (2004) to lend structure to and represent the power of nested patterns. Our goal was not to structure a pattern language for lifelong learning, a rather large undertaking, but rather to explore its value for designing technology-supported lifelong learning spaces.

Some of the information in this post was published in a paper, Design Patterns for Complex Learning

Design Patterns, Pattern Language originally appeared on Portable Learner on November 21st, 2006

Syndication has made a significant impact on how information on the web is produced and consumed. I read more articles via RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds than from the source web pages. My feed reader is part of my daily routine.

The elements in the RSS vocabulary provide metadata about the content, such as the title, the author, description and originating site, in such a way that it can be shared through what is called an RSS feed. These feeds can be used to display content from one web site onto another, or be organized and read through RSS-aware software called feed readers (or news readers).

The development of RSS is complicated political drama, and most instructive on the difficulties of developing standards. The result is that RSS developers divided into two factions : the RDF or RSS 1.0 group and the RSS 2.0 group. This fork has been well documented from political, generalist, and insider perspectives. While they conflict with each other, later versions of each fork are backward-compatible with earlier versions (except for the non-conformant RDF syntax in 0.90), and both forks include properly documented extension mechanisms using XML Namespaces. These issues spurred the development of a third new syndication specification, Atom in June 2003, which has also been accepted as a proposed standard.

Fortunately, most feed readers support all branches.

Really Simple Syndication originally appeared on Portable Learner on October 30th, 2006