I have always enjoyed LinkedIn in that you can really tap into the resources of your network. (Though to be honest I don’t think I really use it to the fullest potential)
Now they have made it even easier with LinkedIn Answers. You can ask a question and anyone in your network can give you an answer or, even better they can refer someone to you. You can also see who has answered the most questions and of course you can check out their profiles to see if they really know what they are talking about.
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There was always the view that innovation can come about by people not knowing that their solution can’t be right.
There is the classic (true) story of the man who walked into a lecture late and copying down the problem on the board, solving it at home that night and dropping it on his lecturers desk in the morning only to be called later by his excited lecturer telling him he had solved an “impossible” equation. He just didn’t know the problem was unsolvable so he gave it a go and solved it.
I was recently in a meeting with a few older people who I was consulting for and they asked me for some things that I knew couldn’t be done with the software available. I duly told them that and there it ended. Now I sit and think, wait, maybe they weren’t wrong, maybe it CAN be done… We shouldn’t discount someones opinion just because we think they don’t have any idea how a program works. They might be able to offer an insight that we haven’t thought of because we haven’t taken time to step away from the problem and view it from the ‘outside’.
It often takes a change of perspective to really come up with a solution.
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We have just found out that our very own Dave Duarte has been appointed the Project Lead for Creative Commons SA!
He will be teaming up with Legal Lead Andrew Rens to promote awareness of Creative Commons in South Africa and to grow our CC community. Congratulations Dave!
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If you have a few spare minutes in your hectic schedules you should check out http://wikieducator.org Just be warned it might take up more of your time than you might expect…
What is Wikieducator? It is a collaborative space for the planning of education projects linked with the development of free content. A space to develop free content on Wikieducator for e-learning and to work on building open education resources (OERs) and a space to network funding proposals developed as free content.
It was voted by Stephen Downes as the best educational wiki last year and if the developments that have happened are anything to go by, watch this space.
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The 2008 Conference on Microlearning and Capacity-building is taking place in Innsbruck, Austria from June 25th - 27th at the University or Innsbruck.
This year the conference will be focusing on 5 main points.
What will happen to teaching and the way people are taught when there are fewer structural barriers to collaboration in learning institutions and enterprises.
- Microcontent Technologies and Infrastructures
What will feeds, interfaces, management systems be like to accomadate micro-content?
- Changes in Workplaces and Enterprises
How is the movement towards micro-information changing the way people do business and how we are measured?
- Mobile Learning and The Mobile Web
How will the shift towards the use of mobile technology affected content and how it is offered and viewed.
- Evaluation of Digital Learning.
How successful is e-learning under the conditions of mircocontent and how is this measurable? What is the role of social context, content and the media experience?
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While looking for new and innovative ways to educate I happened to check out Second Life and saw they they were providing a platform to create virtual learning environments…
A student can work from anywhere in the world as part of a connected virtual classroom network which would open up collaboration in a marvelous way.
There is already a long list of Institutions and Organisations this second life platform and the list of learning groups ranges from Realty to Spanish (and almost everything in-between).
If anyone has used this platform we would love to hear about it and if you’ve had any successes with it.
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When looking at innovation in education there is a lot of scope in what you focus on. Some recent developments posted on Open Culture about the collaboration between mobile connectivity and education have caught my attention.
Next Fall, Abilene Christian University (ACU) is issuing their freshmen with either an Iphone or an Itouch. These devices will then feature in the students learning and general campus life.
The students can use the Iphone (or Itouch) to perform essential functions around campus. To check balances, see courses, find classes and even answer quizzes.
By using converged mobile devices ACU will be one of the first institutions to embrace this new technology.
Dr. Dwayne VanRheenen, ACU provost, said, “This is exciting to me, not only because we’re giving students new tools, but because we are transforming the learning environment. The extensive research that’s been done on campus in the past 10 months has prepared us to launch with freshmen this fall, and research will be ongoing as we expand the program in the future.”
The uses of this technology are almost endless as all students will have round-the-clock access to the internet. It could (and probably will) transform the learning environment at ACU into a far more collaborative experience.
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The world is growing fast and the need for information, knowledge that you need to know, is increasing exponentially. Where can you get this information? Where or how can you be educated continually, on a higher level.
We are quickly outstripping the knowledge we have learnt or the experience we have gained through traditional education. In this new, dynamic world there needs to be new, dynamic education. This no longer stops at university at the age of 25. Soon there will be not enough universities to cope with the demand for learning without a finish line.
With the world becoming more dynamic there is a growing demand for education. The world is changing at such a rate there are very few people who will stay in one profession all through their careers. With this quest for knowledge there is a lot that we can’t be thought now as we don’t know what we will need later on in life as our careers change.
This is going to lead to an increase in higher education for an older generation. This is currently not being addressed in today’s education sphere. There will not be resources available to build new campuses as the demand will far outstrip the supply.
Thankfully this is where tools such as the internet and collaborative learning can come into play. The Open educational resource movement (OER) which started in 2001 with MIT’s OpenCourseWare initiative is a prime example of this. Today it provides open access to both undergraduate and graduate-level information and modules covering virtually all of MIT’s curriculum.
Now with the advent of Web 2.0 there is potential for not only sharing and linking of information, but there is sharing and linking of people. There is scope for distribution of information in a way never dreamt of before.
“Compelling evidence for the importance of social interaction to learning comes from the landmark study by Richard J. Light, of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, of students’ college/university experience. Light discovered that one of the strongest determinants of students’ success in higher education—more important than the details of their instructors’ teaching styles—was their ability to form or participate in small study groups.”
The focus is now no longer on what we are learning but how we are learning it and whom we are learning it with.
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