What makes Tasmania unique? He believes this is where our leadership will come from - not from copying what has happened elsewhere. So he asks: What are we striving for? How do we measure the idea of a world leader? Is it size, people, money?
The basic structure of the day was:
Stephen found the Tasmania Together vision a bit vague in relation to education, so he went digging a bit further for education related ones - which he found in the 24 goals . The emphasis in the two ones he found worries him because of the focus on skills and linkages to economic development. He asked the audience: ‘Is this really what education is about?’ 'Democratic and civil society' Goal - maybe this is his reason for coming back to Tasmania?
Despite technology - proportions of online learning are still not high. But this is not really an issue because of the huge numbers of people who use technology for pursuing their interests. Passion and interest are the real, enduring drivers. Economic development will grow out of this and possibly in a better form than otherwise.
Infrastructure is not really a money maker, especially in the early years of rollout due to large investment needed, but it is the key to opening up the future.
Q: We are paid to provide training, we work in an industry driven model, how can we do it?
A: I believe it is a myth that industry can direct training, where industry also tells government not to direct industry. Decisions should be made at the local level where they have their impact, because, you cannot at a central level, take into account all the parameters involved. It is simply too complex. "Industry are no more experts in learning than I am in building a 747". The decision-making should be distributed and localised. No-one person can get predictions right about skills shortages etc - proven time and time again. Relying primarily on industry for decision making input, creates risk.
Q: Government as exemplar in learning - How do we achieve that goal?
A: Not to provide good customers to local industry so why would we bother? Hard to prove value from learning (see here re ROI).
You mentioned people lacking specific knowledge or training needed to do their job - somehow workplace training seems to always focus on needs of the business. Decisions about learning are becoming more and more taken by the learner in a technology enabled world. Contradiction in motivators - focus on business specific skills and learner’s interest in learning. Government needs to get their head around the notion that you have to let control go to the learner, and that the return is not in the learning, but the employee gaining a greater personal benefit in working in that organisation. Greater skills, attitudes and capacities may be related to business' direction but some may not. And that has to be ok.
Q: Emerging term of 'client centred learning’ which refers to learner and employer who both have legitimate interests - What are your thoughts on this?
A: Client centred learning - learner and person who is paying for the learning. How does this come to be the case? Through access provision - ie without employment, learning not possible. If the artificial scarcity of this access is not maintained, then the person paying would not have this right. Access to learning should not be controlled in any way - through charging fees, restricting entry, or through employment. Especially where the money for training has come from government in the first place.
Balance is shifting to more like equity - mutual cooperation for mutual advantage.
Employers should make it clear what the requirements are to fill a particular position. It is advantageous for the employee to develop to make themselves to be more employable. Where there is an imbalance in decision-making then we will not get to this point.
Q: Implications of an ageing workforce implications?
A: Changing demographics are having an impact in Canada too. Lots of knowledge leaving the workforce. If you go to the idea of education being 'tapping into connections and networks', then the experts and mentors are available online. Maybe we should be encouraging those leaving the workforce to become the educators (experts and mentors).
Q: Role of Immigration?
A: Given free trade of goods and wealth, in a world of globalisation, people should be able to move freely also, which frees them from being restricted by the local industry conditions. People need to be able to follow the wealth that shifts around in a globalised, free trade economy.
Q: Bandwidth and content supply?
A: Content is becoming a commodity and there is an oversupply happening. If you have a commodity, which is scarce, then the price will far exceed its value. In extreme surplus, there will be no incentive to manage it (eg fishing grounds being exhausted because there were so many fish). Why do people do things? Because they want to. So much content being produced online for the same reason. The value of content (including software) declines by a 2x magnitude, what was $100 is now $1. So who is going to produce content?
Prevailing business model will be in the area of services that cannot be copied - people are buying experiences and that cannot be duplicated. This is micro distribution - eg concert tapes sold straight after the event only to those people who were there. This will create the post-digital economy - selling the things that cannot be duplicated.
‘Education becomes knowledge based empowerment’
Government-industry partnerships need to be more than government providing the funding, a true partner, 'working with'.
Website to check out for those involved in the elearning industry – http:// www.elearningforum.com - based in Silicon Valley, elearning in this case standing for ‘emergent learning’.
One of the key principles of clustering is communication, and also autonomy at the local level which allows space for competition between cluster members. Mutual exchange of value - capacity and expertise.
We should be moving to a new model focussing on:
Education's roles are to build skills and also, and more importantly, personal empowerment. When learning goes online , the learning can be everywhere, in the community and based upon or founded upon our experience. Stephen sees the Internet as giving mobility, to see further, to gather information as it is needed.
Challenge
- If institutions lost their monopoly on certification and government funding ceased to exist, what would our institutions look like?
The structure of the internet being a distributed network, with universal access for publishing, decisions occuring in an open-ended environment, should be applied to how we look at learning - one based on communication rather than publishing. A world in which learners are creating a lot of the content. Tasks need to be distributed by the teacher rather than the teacher doing it all - think of the discussion list for posing and answering questions.
Stephen drew some parallels between New Brunswick - e.g. building on current expertise,positioned to offer an alternative to monolithic elearning, network technologies, online learning content and distribution. But Tasmania does need to adapt to a distributed student centred learning network.
Q: What do we do about non-high end learners and elearning?
A: On the bus trip to Strahan, every person on that bus, except for Stephen, had an electronic device of some kind - playing games, texting, listening to music. These people are able to adapt to the Internet, and using it for learning. The question is, why don't they use it then? Because it doesn't relate to their learning needs. Gen Y have little patience for instruction and manuals. Games are incredibly complex, but the learning is embedded in the activity. The issue with current online learning is that it is not well adapted to the learners, so online learning needs to adapt, not the learners.
Q: But aren’t the underpinning skills too complex eg Frontpage or computer games
A: Start out simple - choose the technology that has demonstrated wide adoption and quick implementation, for example blogs. Questions of intent and motivation come into this as well - is the learning selected by the learners? Technology is widely adopted, but not yet elearning technology, because it is not suited to them.
Q: Aren’t there risks in being too open, too learner-directed?
A: Need to distinguish between the credentialling and the education, when considering the growth rates in university enrolments which was given as example of desire for structure.
Q: Whatabout standardisation and learning?
A: Weneed to distinguish between different types of standardisation. Semantic standardisation eg curriculum, within certain parameters everyone receives same education, but this is only really appropriate where people have standard jobs, attributes, aspirations. And life’s not like that.
Papert has said - if it's foundational then the need for it will become apparent in pursuing the non-foundational. Wherever possible, this will be best done through application of the foundational to practical problems.
Q: But, how do you know what you need to know? And what about differences in learning styles?
A: Someone with research skills can identify what is needed to be known to solve a problem. We need to structure education for maximum empowerment and ability to think, reason and learn for themselves. 'Autonomous' does not need to equate to 'unstructured'.
Compare that with IEEE Learning Object Metadata, how many people are really using IEEE LOM?
And the reasons?
Stephen argues that RSS is simple, only protocols about what people could agree on which was very little. Everything is optional in RSS, any tag could be left out, or added in. Even invalid RSS will work in the applications because the people designing those applications know the diversity and chaos.
Q: Should we drop everything and go to open source?
A: Not everything in open source is ready for the prime time. This talk is about having a direction and having a goal. Subtle, slight alterations. Each incremental step takes you closer to the end.
“If we can revise our attitudes towards the land and the earth if we can accept a role of steward and depart from the role of conqueror, if we can accept the view that man and nature are inseparable carers of the unified goal, then Tasmania can be a shining beacon in the dull, uniform and largely artificial world.
Very well summarised Kirsty. You may be interested in directing readers to Canarie as it was this project that got the CA*Net project going. I found it fascinating because the project funding was only allocated to schools/unis/colleges but they could not access funds until they had an Industry partner who/which would partcicpate jointly with the school etc with out any payment!!! Their income would come post the project as business built. Canarie resulted in all Canadian schools/unis/colleges being on broad band achieved over about a 2 year period but still expanding.
http://www.canarie.ca/about/index.html
I also love the development of the semantic web since being in Canada 2002 and now seeing Stephen's predictions of 02 coming to fruition.
Peter
Posted by: Peter Higgs at October 13, 2004 01:58 PMGreat to be able to read this summary as I was unable to attend, thanks Kirsty.