learning environment

first post from Korea

Ecto isn’t shy; they make the claim that they are “the first true online networked personal learning environment.” The better question, of course, is, ‘Who’s the best?’ - and that will be determined by who keeps up with the rapid change of technology and who keeps adding ways to deliver the capabilities that users want and need. Ecto has two things in their favour.

First, they have a clarity about online learning that is unique. The Ecto Whitepaper, written by Ecto CEO Truls Henriksen and Stephen Becker, offers the best practical overview of the current educational situation and the requirements of online learning; it’s 9 pages that are worth reading.

Second, they are creating their system based on a fine undertsanding of the process of learning. I know of no other learning environment developers who would say this:

Ecto is grounded in constructivist learning theory. If instructors wish to empower their students to take control of their learning experience through exploration and discovery, Ecto is an ideal environment. Although Ecto can easily support a more traditional approach, what emerges with Ecto is a collaborative learning environment. The context in which the user is accessing the content determines if they are instructing or learning. In Ecto, anyone can explore, create, and share learning activities.

That’s a good start but it is a bit facile. If Ecto is constructivist, what will it offer in the way of tools to help mediate, what ways will it help teachers understand a student’s ‘zone of proximal development’? For instance, I’d like to see a capability in the Ecto blog to create in-line tags so that various language structures could be easily located and connected for evaluation and analysis by both student and teacher. I’m happy Ecto is ‘grounded in constructivist learning theory’, now, how are they going to realize that?

Ecto sees the educational environment at a critical point: new learning methods that are student-centred and project-based will be just more hot air without effective technical support and teachers will be left behind by students carrying cellphones and iPods and plugged into MySpace and Facebook. Some schools have turned in desperation to the closed fortress of computer-aided applications such as Blackboard but old-fashioned IT simply can’t keep up with the many integrated offerings from the open world of social network software. So the time is right and, in the Whitepaper, Ecto humorously asks, “Is there a networked learning environment in the house? Anyone…anyone?”

They answer the question with their own system, which anyone can join for free. Apparently Ecto will charge on a monthly basis for ‘premium services’ and they are already promising more features such as “unlimited voice, web, and desktop video conferencing fully integrated into your group so that your members can connect, communicate and collaborate synchronously and asynchronously.” One wonders if the new features will come at a price.

Like Elgg and others, Ecto remains closed to advertising, which I believe is a mistake because it limits the ‘free’ option to the first tier of system capability and it forces interested teachers to start on the long and arduous journey of trying to get more money for technology from the school budget.

Nevertheless Ecto has interesting capabilities. You can join and establish a digital identity, similar to all social networking systems; you can start a group, which can be open or closed; blogging is a snap and picture handling is intuitive; there are practical features such as attendance and lesson management. I loved the idea that everything can be tagged for easy retrieval, although when I tested the tagging of various items in the Library, it didn’t work.

Ecto is taking a stand, making claims and, more importantly, making interesting technology based on clear ideas of the environment and current software capabilities. I imagine they are out looking for investment and I would encourage them to open up their system to some type of Google-like ads so that non-institutional learning content developers can plan to use Ecto.

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When I started this blog, I wondered if I should call it a personal learning environment or a social learning environment. To me, ‘personal’ sounds a bit isolated but ‘social’ seems too obvious so I left out both and trimmed it back to ‘a learning environment’. However there remains an interesting tension between the personal and social aspects of any learning technology we might use or be planning to build.

Crysta Metcalf, an anthropologist working for Motorola, has talked about how we tend to focus on the relationship of the user to the technology when, in fact, the goal of any social tech is to assist the link between users; the technology should be transparent so the people can see each other and connect. She puts it very well:

…designing for sociability means thinking about how people experience each other through the technological medium, not just thinking about how they experience the technology. The emphasis is on the human-to-human relationship, not the human-to-technology relationship. This is a crucial difference in design focus. It means designing for an experience between people.

It was on Joshua Porter’s excellent design site, Bokardo, that I first read Metcalf. Porter understands the tug between personal and social and he regularly reminds his readers that “personal value precedes network value”. If the technology doesn’t provide some obvious and immediate benefit to the user – the single user – then he or she won’t use it. A comment to one of Joshua’s posts makes the useful point that there’s a temporal aspect to the relationship. Personal use is the fuse that must get lit in order for there to be the subsequent social fireworks.

The example Joshua uses is del.icio.us. People started using the site because it was a better place to store bookmarks, especially if you were working on several computers. The social value grew from the fact that if you and I share some similar interests and can see each other’s favorites, it’s quite possible that we can learn some links from each other. My bookmark is a way to improve my memory process, my personal record of sites I’ve been to and want to remember. Your bookmark stored for all to see on del.icio.us is a social link to what I might discover by knowing your links, and, perhaps, knowing you. With delicious, the rule is, no storage, no glory.

Metcalf’s point, however, still stands: How does the structure and performance of del.icio.us foster the link between me and you? Or does it simply suggest a possible social connection without doing anything to make that bond dynamic and productive? Whatever we can do to improve the dynamism will help but the evaluation of the personal and the social will be different. A system to store bookmarks will be judged for its use value and pretty well the only issue is control. A system to store and display links to other people’s favourite sites will face a more complicated assessment. First, it must work and be useful; second, it should enhance your presence and my presence - awareness will be as important as control.

For those of us interested in online learning, designing awareness is going to be critically important. The teacher in a learning environemnt - if there is one - needs to be aware of the learners and what they doing, how they are interacting. But much more important is the motivation of learners that can be generated if we can see each other through all the technological mumbo-jumbo that is necessarily between us. For this reason, I think the new user-interface environments such as Adobe’s AIR and Microsoft’s Silverlight are going to be essential to the kind of environments we want to build.

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This is part 2 of a discussion of a possible learning environment based on Facebook. Part 1 is here. A larger diagram is available in a separate browser window here.

• Does such a system exist?

Kinda. The University of Wales has put their components into a Facebook app. I’m not sure what’s there. No Ning. Obviously no AIR, which has only just been released; I have no idea what plans FB and Ning have for the use of AIR. That’s a big issue because we want a better user-interface and AIR can supply it. If you have a FB account, you can check out MyNewport here.

The state of content development for any such learning environment depends on the subject but I think it’s safe to say that content is undeveloped. My interest is in ESL/EFL and there’s a ton of some kind of content on the web: Dave’s ESL, the language publishing companies, hundreds of individual language teachers with blogs and sites and interesting new outfits focused on online learning of language such as Ecto and TalkBean and Dekita. But there’s a lot of work to be done to make better content fit into better delivery systems. (More on this in following weeks and months, of course.)

• What’s the timing for such a system?

It’ll take a year for AIR-type user-interface to appear in Ning and FB. Maybe longer.
It’ll take at least a year for content to be developed or re-developed. Maybe longer.
Let’s say 3 years in total, assuming some of us are on this right away.

• The Lobster Trap:

This is nasty. You can get your content into Facebook but can’t get it out. Not acceptable.

Solution?

» Get FB to change. Unlikely.
» Keep most content material in module format for use outside FB. Reasonable.
» Get Ning to help. Possible.
» Analyse what’s attractive about FB and develop it independently.

• What’s attractive about Facebook?

It’s really the awareness factor that Facebook brings to the table - the idea that if you do something on FB, your friends and colleagues can easily find out because they are already there or can get there in a jiffy.

The way that gets reported is in FB’s big numbers because a large number of subscribers means big business for FB and millions of Facebookers also appear to mean big business for whoever sets up shop on FB. Maybe.

The always interesting Bokardo has developed the social awareness theme for social networks and recently quoted Crysta Metcalf, an anthropologist working for Motorola. She stressed that social network development needs to focus on the way the technology facilitates the connection between people.

“…designing for sociability means thinking about how people experience each other through the technological medium, not just thinking about how they experience the technology. The emphasis is on the human-to-human relationship, not the human-to-technology relationship. This is a crucial difference in design focus. It means designing for an experience between people.”

So an alternative to FB would be a social network with superior awareness tools. Yes, the Learning Environment Application would start out with much smaller public awareness but it would grow faster if - a big if - it had some way to give users a better awareness of each other.

• The reliability of Facebook:

Is there a problem with FB getting swamped and having too much down time? Users will not necessarily blame FB but, instead, blame the application they are using. Meaning, us.

• The Money Issue:

We are content developers who believe that the next stage of web expansion will be based on a much larger and more consistent group of people around the planet wanting to do more stuff on the web than watching videos and telling their friends who their favourite new band is. Stuff like learning English.

Content will bring new users and it will keep them coming back. And when they are online, they will click ads which generate revenue for the site.

So far, so good. If we are part of Facebook, how do content generators get a share? How exactly does that work? Is there some kind of broker to facilitate it? Being a part of a social network in which we CANNOT get a share means that we have to charge for our service, which drastically restricts interest and uptake. Learning should be free. And if we get a share of the ad revenue that we help generate, it can be.

• What about the other social nets aimed at education?

» Elgg
» Ecto
» Dekita
» TalkBean

More on all of these interesting outfits in the coming weeks and months.

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What follows are notes that correspond to each layer of the diagram. (To see a full-size diagram in a separate browser window, please click here.)

• Layer 1: Facebook - Discussed above.

• Layer 2: Ning:

Why do we need another layer on top of Facebook? Generally, Ning seems to me to have a lot of valuable experience. Marc Andreessen is one of the Ning founders and also a co-founder of the seminal Netscape. Recently Ning receive another round of big funding. You could argue that the best thing for Ning would be to focus on some sectors of the vast social networking world - like education - and own them.

• » Working in Ning means that their servers absorb the hit of a lot of learners hitting the system at the same time. Seems like the kind of problem you’d want to have - until it actually happens and your credibility goes out the window.
• » The strong tech capability at Ning should help with the future development of other layers such as AIR.

• Layer 3: This is the content.

We have to write it, find it, change it, develop it from scratch, test it, rewrite it… This may be the best reason to immediately use Facebook: so we start to learn what works and what doesn’t; so we start to profit in knowledge terms.
Content needs to be able to include user-generated content, of course. This is where the ‘lobster trap’ problem becomes critical. Users can write blogs, for instance, and because the blogs are open, the content can easily go in to FB. But because Facebook is a closed, proprietary system, any changes made while in FB may be unrecoverable from ‘outside’ - outside in this case is, you know, like the rest of the known world. Which may lead us to the next point…

We need to explore the modularity of any content.

• Layer 4: Ning-controlled internal data sources:

Any viable system requires all media and, as much as possible, material should be Creative Commons.

• » text: blogs such as WordPress as well as cool new onlin wordprocessors like Buzzword and inline comment tools like LineBuzz.
• » sound: Skype, Audacity, PodPress, etc.
• » pics: Flickr, etc.
• » video: the ubiquitous YouTube, Live Video Chat, etc.
• » cool collaborative tools such as interactive whiteboards like Vyew

• Layer 5: Content Management System: probably done by Ning

Everything should be taggable! What about sub-tags (inline)? From a teaching language perspective, it would be very cool to be able to tag parts of sentences or parts of podcasts in order to engage with just those aspects of learning. LineBuzz seems to do this but it’s pretty clumsy at this stage.

As mentioned above, we need a way to have better del.icio.us-style tag control for better awraeness. It is to be hoped that someone at Adobe or del.icio.us is working on an AIR-powered, del.icio.us style tag system that will enhance a user’s undertsanding of who is where doing what. Understanding that covers about 90% of what any teacher is going to demonstrate. A ‘teacher’ at the wheel of such a system would be a giant step toward a dynamic learning environment.

• Layer 6: UI

We need a better, more interactive user-interface. I would describe the Facebook UI as ‘preppy-grim’, only slightly better than the ‘trailer park’ feel of most MySpace pages. We need AIR.

• Layer 7: People: finally…

Learners:

• » They’re on FB, of course.
• » What language do they speak? In some countries they are on another system entirely: i.e. Naver in Korea.
• » Will Europe be gov’t-dominated?

Parents:

Hmmm…dunno what to say about parents except in many situations they are important. However, they become much less important on systems that are free. In these cases, students that would otherwise be asking for permission just happily charge ahead. Free is faster.

Teachers:

• » …are way behind
• » teachers of teachers are proudly ignorant of technology and, believe it not, encouage dis-interest.
• » at first, the teachers will come from outside institutions.
• » the interested teachers and professors within institutions need to be very careful they don’t get, what my mother would have called “too clever by half” - meaning, insisting that no system is valid except perfect systems. As politically left professors have proved for the past 50 years, once you’re on the payroll it’s easy to get lost.

• Layers 8, 9, 10, 11: Various Learning Events

Much more on these aspects of the system later. This is what actually happens and it will determine the success of any venture.

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I love my diagram! And it was a lot of fun to think it through; I hope you’ll take a moment to follow me through the layers, so to speak. But first a few quick remarks:

As the title of this post suggests, this is a wildly preliminary notion of how we might organize a learning emvironment. But ‘preliminary’ can happen very quickly on the web. In fact, educators are already doing this kind of thing with Facebook as the base: see MyNewport (requires a Facebook account to see it in action). Just as quickly, other educators are asking valid questions about the approach: see Graham Atwell. One of the sharpest tech blogger, Richard McManus, evaluates Facebook and sees value in using it but concludes:

But how open is Facebook, really? Turns out, not that much.

What we can say for sure at this stage is that Facebook-based learning environments will get done…and undone…and redone (if that’s a word.) The best practice along the way will be to carefully harvest the knowledge so when we do it over we can also do it better. Maybe on some other platform like Elgg.

Here’s a guide to what the layers mean:

1. Facebook Platform: programmable core / familiar location / automatically linked to many users
2. Ning: established social network / more user-interface control / server protection / organization of text, wikis, podcasts,videos,etc.
3. Links of external databases: the content of the system / includes user-generated content (e.g. Layer 11)
4. Internal data sources: text/sound/video stored within system (e.g. Layer 10) / probably controlled by Ning user interface
5. some kind of Content Management System: resource organizer / possibly done by Ning or a specialized resource organizer like Second Brain
6. User-interface: Adobe’s AIR advanced UI / not yet available in a system like this but…
7. People: learners/ instructors / site visitors / extraterrestrials
8. example Learning Event: incorporates all the above
9. example Assessment Event: allows Learner/Instructor to evaluate using all the above
10. example Learning Content Module: stored, accessible Learning Event / available from inside or outside system
11. User-generate/selected material: full range of text/sound/video developed by users/suppliers

Next week, in this Monday slot, I’ll go into more of my understanding of the issues and ask what we need to get that we don’t have from the various players involved.

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