Three months in, what do we know?
Month One told us 3 things about an online learning environment: it needs to be open, autonomous, diverse and connected; it must handle all types of material; and it should keep an eye open for McLuhan’s concept that every form of media has an effect on our social psychology that is separate from form or content.
Month Two laid out a possible plan for a personal learning environment: Ning sitting on Facebook with plenty of (not yet available) AIR – for better user-interface. And we reminded ourselves that the technology is there in order to empower activities taking place between and among users; bells and whistles are useless chrome unless they provide a better way of doing something.
In Month Three, I surveyed a variety of online educational offerings: Elgg, Ecto, Dekita, TalkBean, xLingo, grockit, italki, Lessonbites, Tutoroom and there are more being added to the list all the time: Slipio, SuTree, 5Min. Elgg and Ecto are the ‘big’ offerings, targeting educational institutions with entire systems for the creation of group and individual learning environments; both are still in development and, interestingly, they seem to be going in opposite directions. Elgg is stripping out features and functions and planning to offer a powerful platform on which an educator can construct whatever he or she wants. This fits with Konrad Glowgoski’s notion that learning environments need to be built by the teacher and students, not simply plonked down on them. Meanwhile Ecto is adding features in the belief that the more arrows in the quiver, the better. The good thing is that both Elgg and Ecto are active in the real world and both are informed by real teachers and students. Next year’s developments for both companies should be fascinating.
Dekita, grockit, TalkBean, xLingo and the rest all want to provide different versions of the same thing: a place for teachers and students to connect. They believe in the power of ‘pull’ when it comes to doing things online: if users can be offered a handle in cyberspace, they will pull us toward the best way to teach and learn.
We’re fortunate to have so many smart men and women working so hard to provide the next stage of learning. If I had to bet the farm on one, I’d go with Elgg – especially if they use some of their new investment to set up a satellite development team somewhere in North America. It’s not that Europe doesn’t have the brainpower; it’s to keep creeping governmentalism out of Elgg’s thinking.
What’s sorely missing in all the current offerings is an example, a proof of concept, a demo that provides an example of teaching something better online than in a classroom. Let me give you an example.
The ‘In Plain English’ series by Common Craft explains a variety of web services and, even though they use laughably simple tech themselves, they do a much better job than anyone I have seen. Common Craft has figured out what they want to say about some area of content – say, RSS - and they’ve figured out how to use a video camera, some pieces of paper, a marker pen and pulled it all together with clever copywriting and voice-over. You watch it and you know it works because there’s a fit between the content – apparently difficult technical subjects – and the method – obviously simple ways of explaining things.
(Tomorrow starts a 4-week series on Tuesdays of Common Craft’s ‘In Plain English’ series.)
All the learning environment providers need to learn the ‘Show me!’ lesson from Common Craft. Yes, it’s good marketing but it’s a lot more than marketing. When I watch Common Craft’s ‘In plain English’ vids as they play on YouTube or wherever, I think, “I could do that.” And I think, “My students could do that.” And even better, I think, “We could use those techniques to cheaply re-do things in order to move along our understanding of some topic!”
It’s that last step that really sells me because it shows me a technique that will be capable of ‘scaffolding’ a student. I love the concept of supporting a learner with some kind of ‘scaffold’, an idea first put forward by Vygotsky, as many of you will know. The fine points of Vygotsky I’m happy to leave to others, but it seems obvious to me that any learning system is going to have to be able to present material and have some obvious way to let students change the material and to note the changes and in this way move on to the next stage of understanding. That should be part of the demo! The disturbing truth at this point in our development of learning environments is that there are so many possible systems and so few good demos of what might be ‘do-able’ with such a system.
My kingdom for a demo!
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