Clay Shirky would be a lot more convincing if he could get his theories straight

Posted on December 5, 2011 by admin

I don’t make a point of following Clay Shirky’s writings but every now and then they cross my path since it seems he has a sizable following on the Internet that enthusiastically makes sure that everyone else knows when he has written something new. Given his popularity on the net, I’m all the more frustrated by his tendency to suggest that his writings are grounded in well-established theory and then go on to casually mangle those theories beyond recognition with his limited understanding of them. His recent article, “Institutions, confidence, and the news crisis“, carries on his trend of rending theories almost unrecognizable, the victim this time being Coase’s economic theories about institutions and organizations.
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Opið hvernig? Hið “opna” og myndun þekkingarsamfélaga

Posted on November 25, 2011 by admin

This is a presentation that I made on Open Educational Resources and the concept of “openness” in Reykjavík, Iceland, November 2011. There is an english translation of the text in the works below the slide show.

Erindi flutt á Ráðstefnu um opið menntaefni í Reykjavík, nóvember 2011.

 

English translation of text on slides:
Title: “Open” how? “Openness” and the construction of knowledge communities.

1. What do we mean by “open”?
Three uses of “open” in OER literature:
Open = unhindered access to products of the construction process
Open = unhindered participation in construction process
Open = transparent construction process

How we define “open” is critical to understanding the purpose and aims of OER.

2. Definitions and Goals
“[OER is] ‘technology-enabled, open provision of educational resources for consultation, use and adaptation by a community of users for non-commercial purposes.” Commonwealth of Learning (2011)

“Open educational resources includes democratic development of educational resources and tools that are suitable for teaching and learning.” Sigurbjörg Jóhannesdóttir (2010)

– Increase access to educational resources
– Encourage collaboration among educators to construct educational resources

3. The Overlooked Goal
“[Those who hide their contnet] will … be increasingly excluded from opportunities to improve their teaching practice and domain-specific knowledge by sharing and collaborating with growing networks of educators around the world.” Commonwealth of Learning (2011)

“OER has potential to build capacity by providing institutions and educators access at low or no cost to the means of production to develop their competence in producing education materials …” Commonwealth of Learning (2011)

– OER supports knowledge construction and knowledge development among educators.

4. What is Knowledge?
Information ≠ Knowledge

5. What is Knowledge?

 

What is happening here?

We do not know!

6. What is Knowledge?
What is happening here?

– Personal factors
– How is participation rewarded?

Need for systemic change and long-term planning!

Posted in Education, Information Society, Knowledge development, Technology foresight | 1 Comment

What makes a “future-oriented” policy? Towards a framework for identifying and analysing policies.

Posted on November 2, 2011 by admin

I have often emphasized the need for future-oriented policies in education as a response to rapidly increasing change to the extent that if I were to be asked, “Tryggvi, what are you all about?”, that would be the gist of my response. I was recently asked what a “future-oriented policy” is, and to my dismay, realized that I didn’t really have any concrete response. I was no more enlightened after mulling over vast amounts of scholarly and policy literature. The few attempts to define future orientations in policymaking tend to focus on the decision-making process, the mindset of policy makers, or the time span that policies are intended to address, rather than specific characteristics of the policies themselves. These are not very useful for policy analysts who want to examine policies and determine whether they can be expected to adequately address future needs. For that we need to describe a set of characteristics that the policies themselves display that can help determine whether and how they apply to the long-term. Faced with the lack of such frameworks, I decided that it is about time that someone come up with one. So, I present here a rough draft of what I will call the AVENUE framework (I think acronyms are always useful) for analyzing future orientations of existing policies.
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Posted in Education, ICTs, Leapfrogging development, Technology foresight, Uncategorized | 3 Comments

Interesting research on youths’ circumvention of age restrictions on social networking sites

Posted on November 1, 2011 by admin

danah boyd, et al. have published an interesting paper on their research youths’ use of social networking. In light of evidence showing that youth routinely circumvent age restrictions for the use of social networking technologies, the researchers decided to examine parents’ views regarding their childrens’ use of Facebook in particular. They found that not only do youth routinely ignore age restrictions but they do so with the full knowledge of their parents (even though parents are aware of the restrictions). Furthermore, youth are often even assisted by their parents in circumventing restrictions.

Interestingly, a majority of parents stated that they are most likely to allow their children to circumvent age restrictions for “educational and school related purposes”. Given the reality presented in this paper and other related research, it raises questions as to whether parents currently think that being on Facebook somehow relates to their childrens’ education, and if so, how?

Posted in Education, ICTs, Information Society, Internet, Technology foresight | 2 Comments

What can we learn from Finnish education: A reaction to Diane Ravitch

Posted on October 12, 2011 by admin

This morning (Oct. 12, 2011) Diane Ravitch tweeted about an article on the “Bridging Differences” website that describes some of what she learned on her recent visit to Finland (anyone who follows Ravitch’s tweets will have known about this visit). I was pleased to see that Ravitch pointed out a distinct characteristic of Finnish education that is often overlooked, i.e. that not only do Finnish students fare well in international comparisons, but there is almost no variation between schools or regions. It’s been pointed out that although the US scores poorly on the PISA when examined at a national level, at a regional level certain parts of the US would be among the top scorers. But the case is different with the Finns – they score uniformly well.

Finnish students’ admirable achievements have sent many researchers and policymakers to the country looking for that specific ingredient in the secret sauce that, if implemented in their own countries, would produce the same results quickly. But, the fact that Finns are uniformly good suggests that there is no specific ingredient; rather that their educational outcomes are the result of systematic change that has been achieved over an extended period of time.
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Posted in Education, Information Society, Knowledge development, Technology foresight | 1 Comment

Are schools meeting tech-savvy learners’ needs: A very interesting article by an Icelandic upper-secondary student.

Posted on October 10, 2011 by admin

Ásgrímur Hermannsson, an Icelandic student in his last year of upper-secondary school (Icelandic upper-secondary school is years 10-14 – most students are aged 20 when they graduate), has written a particularly scathing critique of contemporary education (link goes to more-or-less useful Google translation – the original in Icelandic is here). Ásgrímur’s article is another indication of the growing awareness among youth that the educational systems that are meant to prepare them for the future are falling short.

In his article, titled “How school killed my ambition”, Ásgrímur describes in very direct “no-nonsense” terms his experience and disappointment of going through an educational system that he has increasingly become aware is out of touch with his generation and out of touch with the needs of 21st century society. Although Ásgrímur’s remarks are particularly directed toward education in Iceland, the points he makes can be equally applied to the Western ideal of education that informs educational policy in many countries worldwide.

Posted in Education, ICTs, Technology foresight | 1 Comment