Change in Education: Taking the Red pill

In listening to a talk recently  about motivation and change I remembered the images associated with the impact on Neo's life in the Matrix movie: he took the Red pill. Once you take the Red pill, everything will change and nothing will be the same again, and in fact, you wont be able to go back to the way things were before.

I would suggest that once you start using technology in teaching and learning, once you change, once you start doing things differently, everything changes.  To continue the metaphor, change is not to be avoided, but embraced for very good reasons. These reasons are very nicely summed up by Eric Hoffer, who said:

"In times of change, the learners inherit the Earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists"

 We are focused on preparing students for an uncertain future, and we need to move with them.

Think of some of the changes that have already occurred. MIT gave away their content, and the ROI was enhanced: the sky did not fall. The creation of Open Educational Content and Creative Commons licences that allow content to be shared, and academics still got paid: the sky still didn't fall. And, software become free and open source, and businesses flourished: the sky was still up.

Embrace change: it keeps us all young at heart.

Change and mLearning

With due respect to all psychologists who deal with the complexity of human behaviour, there is an old joke about 'How many psychologists does it take to change a light bulb?'

The answer is of course, only one, but the light bulb must WANT TO CHANGE.

In Higher Education, the staff and students also need to see the value of wanting change in order for innovations to have real impact on behaviour. With apologies to those people engaging in the daunting task of changing the culture of educators and educational administrators I believe this famous statement about the environment (Pogo, 1970 - http://www.igopogo.com/we_have_met.htm) should be resurrected in the current climate of educational reform and change. 'We have met the enemy, and he is us'.

It is only occasionally that we hear of technological issues being the major problems in the use of technology with teaching and learning. The majority of the discussion is be focused on how to change the approaches to teaching and learning of teachers to be more inline with the students they teach, often with little reference to the local context, perceptions and skills of students, and staff perceptions for any need for change. We also need to ensure that students also see the value in changing practices and become part of the process of change.

While we know that students are themselves products of their past learning experiences, it is possible to underestimate how much we need to engage them fully if they are to help drive the processes and engage with new curricula and new ways of providing evidence of learning. Until recently the literature suggested that we have these homogeneous group with high levels of IT skills that can be automatically utilised for learning. A more critical view suggests that our students, while some may be technologically competent are more likely to have diverse skills and interest. Some students may be great consumers of IT, but the majority may lack practice as producers of academic content that requires the use of technology (as in ePortfolios) to support the process and the outcomes. Student development is often just as important as staff development and should be resourced accordingly.

Some observations on the use of mobile phones for learning

I jokingly refer to my iPhone as my 'auxiliary brain'. If I didn't have it, I would have to get something like it. It is used for reminding me about important things to do, calander/ diary, providing just-in-time access to documents via Dropbox, as my presenting tool (using wireless) and communication when I am away from the office.

However, this range of use is not universal for all users. For example, how many of us use the full power of MS Word? When we need something done, we learn how to do it or ask someone. If we don't perceive we need it then we don't spend time even exploring.

In the use of educational technologies, the usability, context and purpose are key factors to adoption. For example, in my current project with iPhones, if a student doesn't perceive a suitable use for their iPhones, they generally do not bother to explore, even when we as the researchers suggest that something might be useful for improving their organisation (diary) or learning (podcasts of grammar from GrammerGirl - see http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/). Familiarity and existing ways of working are key inhibitors to changing practice and should not be underestimated in any study purportedly intent on changing learning behaviours.

An Inkling of the future of books

The book, that tried, true and often loved form of media that has been with us for such a long time may have a competitor: at least in terms of academic texts that students are expected to buy for their courses. The company Inkling has come up with a very compelling model of that allows distribution of books, supports collaborative learning between students, and addresses the vexed issue of cost.

Maybe sometime soon, we will see students going to class and actually taking their text books with them because they can annotate the text, share and discuss ideas, and the iPad books have interactive content as textbook makers start to exploit the affordances of the tool (see The Elements).

Watch this space.

Cloud Computing: An IT or Educational decision?

As many institutions move towards the adoption of cloud based computing, one sees a great deal about the need to manage various types of risk. For example, in a recent article from Educause they identified a number of institutional risks:

• 'Operational risk — service or business failures
• Financial risk — surprise support or integration costs
• Compliance risk — failure leads to liability costs and reputation damage'

 From the perspective of the individual user, staff and students they noted that for the 'User view' one needed to consider:

• 'Reliability, privacy, security — similar to operational risk
• Utility — functionality
• Simplicity — which requires interoperability'.

Now I have quoted directly from the article because it highlights what seems to be a gap in the thinking/ planning process. Educational issues seemed to be lumped under utility which is loosely considered to be issues of collaboration and communication (email to alumni for example). It is only much later in the process that educational issues start to get addressed more seriously. For example, how the various cloud services integrate with the manner in which staff and students use the various technological tools for teaching, learning and engagement. Many of the articles I have been looking at seem to take a very technological approach and while that is important, surely the ultimate users (staff and students) need to be a part of the process very early on. I would be interested in hearing from anyone that has already been down this path and is willing to share their experiences, from an educational perspective.

In closing this post, we have all seen the discussions about what is wrong with the iPad, no USB, the need to sync with another computer, and no really familiar file storage system (e.g., see HERE). However, cloud computing and iPads seem to be a near perfect match, the cloud being where all of the collaborative services are available for sharing, communication, file storage, and interaction. Now all we need are really fast wireless services freely available on campus and in the city - as we have here in Hong Kong.

ICEL 2010

ICEL 2010 is an international conference that is being held (for the first time) in Penang, Malaysia with attendees from 19 countries. What is clear is the extensive interest from developing countries in the use of mobile learning. I was very interested in the presentation by the second Key Note speaker, Laura Czerniewicz, from the Centre for Educational Technology (CET) University of Cape Town, South Africa who presented on The digital native in a new era- apartheid or democracy? Her presentation may be found HERE.


One of the things that was very interesting was the finding that the development of computer literacies is virtually the reverse of the western world: with the more impoverished students coming from mobile phones, often relatively low level technology (the so called vanilla mobile phone), to the desktop or notebook computers. The demographics and data also challenge the statements from the likes of Tapscott and Prenski, in particular. The South African data indicates that it is experience with computers rather than age per sec that is the determining factor in the concept of a digital native. She also introduced the term the 'digital elite', describing those people how have had extensive access to technology and have become very confident in the use of these technologies. There didn't seem to be a correlation with age, unlike the statements of the two authors mentioned above. 


I find that this mirrors my experiences in Hong Kong. Students from the mainland come to Hong Kong with very little experience in the use of computers, and the assumption that because of their age they should be computer experts. However, they are not, reinforcing the findings that the individuals described as 'digital natives' by Prenski are in fact extremely diverse, and in higher education we need to be cognizant of  this information and address these particular student needs.  


All in all, an interesting conference with a diversity of views from developed and developing countries. ICEL 2011 will be held in Kelowna, Canada. 

Using Mahara on the iPad and iPhone

The previous post considered what kind of device the iPad actually is. However, as a number of writers have already indicated, there are some limitations on what can be done interactively in webpages displayed on screen due to Apple's rejection of certain technologies.

With considerable thanks to the Teaching and Learning Centre (TLC) technical Officer James, we now have a working version of a patch that allows students to customise their Mahara pages to create a view on an iPhone or an iPad. If you go HERE or to the URL http://mahara.org/interaction/forum/topic.php?id=1913 you can download the code to help use Mahara with small mobile devices made by Apple. I trust it is useful.

Feedback welcomed and kudos to James on a quick and easy fix to make the devices more customisable by the learners.