WIkiEducator Quality Assurance

I formally announced the first draft of the WikiEducator (WE) featured works in the google group. After a considerable amount of discussion in May 2008 WE decided upon a number of aspects for the Quality within WE. The three main themes are;

1. Featured Works
2. Contribution Levels
3. Maturity Models

Items 1 & 2 have progressed the most with some conceptual work being done by reviewing eMM from a WE perspective. I intend on reviewing the eMM again to add criteria to the featured projects and featured institution. You can see how this will fit when you review the respective featured works. I plan on providing further depth to how the eMM fits with all this in the near future.

I'd really like if people could review and provide discussion around these five featured works;

1. Featured Learning Resource
2. Featured Collaboration
3. Featured Reuse
4. Featured Project
5. Featured Institution

I also created a portal called the Quality Assurance Framework. The purpose of the portal is to provide the foundation (or framework) for all the QA initiatives within WE.

Please take the time to review and provide feedback. Please participate and participate often!!!

Should twitter based spammers be called spitters

Today I become fed up with someone I was following on twitter. I started following them and the tweets I got were great and full of nuggets every now and again. Then all of a sudden they started tweeting at an increasing amount. And they weren't the personal musings you'd expect but links to here, re-tweets to this... It was obviously no longer a single person. They became spam in my tweet stream, they filled up my tweets page, how annoying. So I no longer follow them... This did prompt the question in my mind, what is a twitter based spammer called? I figure it should be spitter!

Most EduPunks are paid by the establishment

I have been taken by this EduPunk term. I grew up in the 70's and associated with the music scene of that time. I listened to the Sex Pistols, I still look back at the depth of rebellion Sid Vicious incarnated. I have mind blowing memories of Joey Shithead and the Skulls [before they became DOA (our most famous Vancouver punk bank)] playing during my high school graduation year. No true Punk would consciously take money from the establishment they rebelled against. Yet, this current set of EduPunks mostly work for traditional established education institutions. I strongly suggest you trace most people writing about and considering themselves EduPunks back to where they derive there livelihood. They are not EduPunks! They are masquerading as Punks, and as long as people clutter up the blogosphere claiming to be EduPunks while also being paid by the establishment can only perpetuate these flawed traditional education structures. If they were true Punks they would leave their day jobs and use their mindshare to disrupt the structures they claim to be rebelling against. Hypocrites the lot of them!!!!

Do bounties work?

The "work" I am doing with WikiEducator is in trying to fill out the the multimedia resources available for OpenOffice / Ubuntu learning. We had offered a $1500 CDN bounty for each 3 -5 minute multimedia component developed. This seems like a good offer, but I wonder if the idea of OER and wiki collaboration includes the concept of money. I always believed that OER and wiki authorship was a volunteer activity. And when you throw $$$ into the mix everything becomes skewd...

ScoPE [SOF2008]

This looks to be a very good conference; Shaping our Future: Toward a Pan-Canadian E-learning Research Agenda. I look forward to meeting people online.

Nature is a CC-BY-SA

I just finished reading a classmates post which is titled "The truth according to wikipedia". Their post embeds a great video about wikipedia and the Web 2.0 and where all this free knowledge could be going. The post and the video had some very interesting points. What it really got me thinking was; I really don't believe any of the main points get to the nut of the issue, which is, the keepers (of the last 100 years or so) of the current truth got us into the current mess of consumerism, inequitable capitalism, non-sustainable consumption of the earths resources, etc... It's no wonder there is a movement in redefining the truth and taking truth away from the current ideology. IMHO the current truth is deeply flawed and needs to be rewritten. The new truth needs to build sustainability into its core, the new truth needs to build the natural environment into its core. This idea is well discussed in a podcast/video by Dr. David Orr titled "the end to education". The new truth needs to make the stand that the natural environment is a CC-BY-SA, and not to be exploited and "owned" by the few. The natural environment was created before human arrival and should not be consumed by a truth that if you innovate nature, you not only own your innovation you also have rights to the nature you based your innovation upon. Nature is a CC-BY-SA. We live in a truth that allows companies like Monsanto to "steal" nature and make it their own and then try to sue those who have treated nature as an open resource. It's time to rewrite the truth. Flatten it out, share it, have us all accountable (and attributable) to take care of it, its a matter of our survival. This is why truth needs a collaborative rewrite so it is no longer controlled by the few who want to perpetuate an ideology (or truth) that is deeply flawed. Everything that was on earth before human arrival should have a Share-Alike license.

WEEK 7: Bowen Island, BC, CANADA

For this weeks activity I took a photo from the window of my house, recorded a short description of the photo using audacity, save the audio file to an ogg format and uploaded both these digital objects to the wiki commons.

1. The photo: TheLionsVancouver.jpg
2. The audio: BowenIslandView.ogg
3. The location: Longitude: -123.347626 latitude: 47.570178

What I found most interesting about this activity was how I could only upload ogg audio files to the wiki commons and how you were forced to choose a licensing model if you wanted your content not to be deleted from the wiki commons.

WEEK 6: IMHO, Canada is beautiful!

It never stops to amaze me the number of top quality and creative photos that exist on flickr. All the licenses combined add up to over 65 million photos. WOW.

This weeks activity forced me to revisit GIMP and to take a deeper look at the features already available with flickr (in particular, picnik). I still believe that GIMP is the best photo editor available (open source or otherwise). And using it to alter and improve photos is free and easy. The number of GIMP tutorials available on YouTube is impressive.

I went for a walk with my son Lucas and took some photos of our beautiful island paradise. From the photos I chose the best ones and uploaded them to flickr than I edited (mostly cropped) them with picnik. I believe the results of our Bowen Island walk-about are pretty good.

I also managed to upload a file to MediaWiki Commons. The photo is of the Battery in winter from the families one year stay in St. John's Newfoundland.

WEEK 5: An Adult Wikimedia?

The work of the wikimedia foundation is exemplary when it comes to free culture, openness and creating free content. And the relationship among the wikimedia projects, OER and education IMHO will be a growing and deepening endeavour. Much of what other course participants have said this week points out why the wikimedia foundation has had such success;

• Anika points out that wiki contributors are learners, collaborators, producers and researchers all at the same time.
  
• I agree with susanne when she mentions that the line between student and teacher is blurring and that much of learning will be self-directed. The Wikimedia projects contribute a lot in this capacity.
  
• I'm happy that Luca pointed out the importance of having free media assets and how wikicommons is building this.
  
• And as Daudi said, the internationalization and translation of wikipedia is impressive. Particularly given it this is a volunteer effort.
  
• I really appretiated Juha's critical appraisal of different Wikimedia projects. The inclusion of the longtail was important, and if through time wikipedia articles become watered down?
  
• Kieth really got into it and I was glad he brought up the issue of context and localization. This is where I see wikipedia doing good work for it allows (even encourages) localized versions.

Where do I see the future of wikipedia, OER and education? That is a big question, that has many parts;

• First, I see wikipedia as a struggling teenager right now. It is trying to find it's adult persona; financially, and ideologically. Where it ends up in the next few years will determine how it will align with the OER movement and with Education in general.
• Second, I believe all the WikiMedia projects need to go mobile. IMHO it is the mobile user community that is the road ahead, particularly in regards to OER and Education. We have over 1.3 billion coming of age in the developing world, and easily accessed OER based education is the key.
• Third, As some of you may have read I believe that for OER to become successful it needs to include assessment and accreditation. I believe WikiMedia needs to create WikiAssess (or something similar).
  

WEEK 4: Open Access Assessment and Accreditation

I found this week postings quite amazing. I found myself very aligned with all that Nichthus said and appreciated the perspective provided in the conclusion. In my mind a free culture is about honoring everyone and all positions and perspectives; this includes the closed and proprietary. I've been a follower / fan of Lessig’s work for some time now, and i think what he has done for copyright is a significant human contribution. And the reality / changes he is offering is well overdue in terms of copyright law...

I find this weeks exploration of copyright, licensing and OER happens at the right time in the progression of this course and all the readings got me thinking deeply about the similarities and differences of Open Content (Wikipedia), Open Source and OER. In particular, I spent considerable time thinking and discussing the Bissell / Boyle article. In their article they write about the success of Wikipedia and Open Source and the slower progress of OER. They offer three items to bring OER to a closer level of success that Wikipedia and Open Source have had. I believe they have missed a couple of aspects within the openness of OER, and it is missing these aspects they have missed identifying what is required to bring OER to the same level of success as these other two.

To explore this I believe we need to look at the permission required for accessing the domains of these three open initiatives. Neither Wikipedia nor Open Source has constraints to their domain. These two have complete openness from a technical, content, social, and bureaucratic (administrative) perspective. OER has openness to the technical, content and social, but is closed to the bureaucratic. What I mean by closed to the bureaucratic is that the assessment and accreditation is still closed. People can access all the open learning content that is available as OER but they still have to go through a bureaucracy to be assessed and accredited. I believe that until we have Open Access Assessment and Open Access Accreditation (OAA) OER will be severely restrained and should be renamed Open Learning Resources (OLR), because education includes assessment and accreditation. See an associated Google group discussion for further insight into my belief on the need for OAA.

Open Access Accreditation

I want to discuss if people think it is possible to create an international accredited institution that could give me a graduate level degree based on my completion / creation of OER (and related published research)? Maybe the international institution is a social network with a top quality reputation. i.e. if your level of scholarship is recognized by this “institution / social network” then it is considered the same as a PhD from Athabasca University… lets call it Open Access Accreditation… Isn’t this the natural progression from connectionist (see siemens) approaches?

It would seem that an institution like UNESCO or ICDE is where this could start and with the writing coming from these institutions regarding OER they (I believe) should be addressing the issue. I’ve been reading papers from these institutions for a while and everything still assumes the OER are utilized within existing institutions and existing courses and existing programs and in the end you still have to pay for assessment and the credential. In particular, the roadmap from the OLCOS http://www.olcos.org/cms/upload/docs/olcos_roadmap.pdf seems to be a deep dive into all this, yet they still assume loads of affiliations and partnerships with existing Universities. Essentially you still have to pay to get assessed and credentialed even though you are using OER created by someone only loosely affiliated with the university granting the credential. Why?

You could assume a PhD is the equivalent of 2-3 years of full-time work, for easy math lets 5000 hours. Let’s say I am prepared to work 16 hrs a week for 46 weeks a year for seven years (5152 hours total). And during this time I create a solid amount (potentially a complete Masters degree amount) of OER (with accompanying collaborative research papers) on WikiEducator and Wikiversity. Shouldn’t I be able to take all this work and be given a PhD? Universities provide honorary doctorates; why not use this same structure to offer a PhD to someone who completes what I previously suggested? Or would the reputation I created on WikiEducator and Wikiversity by collaboratively creating a PhD effort equivalent in OER be the same as having a PhD? In fact could this not be the new PhD? And in the end I would have saved myself the 40k - 100k $ that I paid to an institution for a credential (not including 5152 hrs of lost salary). And I could do all this in a truly self directed manner without having to be “supervised” by a tenured academic. When I know that most of my supervision is going to come from the social network anyway…

Or maybe what I am asking is; what role does the graduate level university play in a Connectivist world filled with quality OER, hard work and an active social network?

WEEK 3: Shoulders of Giants

During this weeks task we had a look at a number of sites / references that set the philosophical foundation for OER. The sites we visited include;

• Enlightenment - The Age of Enlightenment
• Science and "standing on the shoulders of giants"
• Library Movement: Origins of the public library as a social institution
• Free Adult Education: Popular Education and Folk High School
• Free Software Movement

From my readings of these sites the following things stood out for me most.

During the age of Enlightenment people began to recognize that they had the freedom to use one's own intelligence. This really sums up this time in history. It's hard to believe that at times in our history we didn't realize we had such power. The frightening part is that in some parts of the world there are people who still haven't caught on to this or are so oppressed that they don't have the freedom.

When it comes to the Shoulders of Giants I really like the quote

If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants

This ties so many things together, it is the acknowledgment that whatever we do, we draw on the past and by drawing on the past we can see further to the future.

The Library Movement is an essential part of having an educated and literate population. Having free access to books and the support in how to use the books raises us all up. And having ways to further the library movement will increase the global populations ability to enter into the dialog required to increase our shared abilities to be good stewards of the planet.

As I read further I found this description in the Popular Education reading;

Popular Education may be defined as an educational technique designed to raise the consciousness of its participants and allow them to become more aware of how an individual's personal experiences are connected to larger societal problems. Participants are empowered to act to effect change on the problems that affect them.

I like this a lot for it really connects individuals to the larger and implies a responsibility to effect change. This is what I consider a theme behind OER and the larger open movement... Empowering people to act!

Gosh, with this definition of Folk High School I see it as the definition of a Personal Learning Environment;

The character of folk high schools differs from country to country, but usually such institutions have the following common features:
- A large variety of subjects
- No final exams
- Focus on self-development
- Pedagogical freedom

Last, and certainly not least, we had the reading of the Free Software Movement (FSM). This section can get into some heady thoughts and as I drilled down into some of the supporting links I got the feeling that this chapter is far from done. I mean when I read about the Library Movement and the Age of Enlightenment, I see these items as historically complete, they still influence our lives and the cities we live. But the Free Software Movement isn't done, it isn't historically complete, it still has some change and "maturing" to do. Nonetheless, this movement is having a big influence on much of what is going on... When I consider that Microsoft (IMHO, the farthest away from FSM) engaging a collaboration with eclipse then I realize that the FSM is having an influence and that fundamental changes to the FSM are still afoot.

Conclusion
When I consider all these writings, and I consider the trajectory they have created I really like the future that I see. It seems to me that we are heading toward a place where the world is flat and people are engaged in adding knowledge to the collective of people on the planet. And whether that addition is for self or other it doesn't matter cause the tools and approaches we use benefit us all...

WEEK 2: Introduction to Wikiversity

This week we are exploring either LeMill or Wikiversity. We need to set ourselves up to be a contributor to one of these OER sites by creating a profile. We also need to contribute to an area of interest by contacting the editors, contributing to an existing resource and create a new resource.

My Profile
My Wikiversity profile is a work in progress as I have bigger plans for my work here (and will post this later). This wikiversity profile does link to my web portfolio site. To view my MediaWiki profile go to my profile on WikiEducator.

My Notification
I began by investigating materials for how to get started in programming with PhP. I found a number of introductory programming resources. Nothing that provided OER for how to set up the development environment. The lessons I found were lessons on beginner programming with different languages, nothing how to set up the software development environment to start the actual programming. So I posted a question on a couple of talk pages. The question was;

getting a development space
I'm wanting to get into programming PhP, there seems to be a number of good open access courses for intro to PhP and further. What I am looking for is a course on how to set up the development environment. Can anyone point me to such a course? -- Prawstho 17:19, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

I posted this question to the following two talk pages;

http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Topic_talk:Computer_programming
http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Talk:Web_design

My New Resource
As eluded to in my notification, there seems to be the requirement for a course on setting up a software development environment. Now this may be only my need, but I will assume that as I develope out the course it may attract some attention. We shall see... I created a new Wikiversity page within the Computer Programming topic called "Creating a Development Environment". Let's see what interest this draws...

Conclusions
It would seem success within Wikiversity comes from engagement. I couldn't find a place to sign-up for membership or contact this particular person to become an auther for a particular school. I guess the idea is to just jump right in, keep going and wait for feedback and the engagement from others.

WEEK 2: Existing OER projects

I’ve been familiar with all these open education projects for a while;

• Open University (UK) Open Content Initiative
• Rice Connexions
• MIT OpenCourseWare
• LeMill.net
• Wikiversity.org

The OpenCourseWare project at MIT has always amazed me the most. Cause to see all their curriculum online and available for download just seems to go against the American ideology of capitalism. I’ve always been surprised that they are putting it out there for free and under a CC-BY-NC-SA license. I remember reading a while back how they aligned what they were doing with opencourseware and the universities mission. As their mission states they want to "advance knowledge and educate students ... that will best serve ... the world", there doin' it!

When I was looking at all these open education projects I was asking myself, which one I would use if I was developing a new course or program. And what was important to me is that I am familiar with the technology (publishing and course development tools) and that the project embraces a licensing scheme that I am happy with. The licensing scheme is important as it encourages or restrains the reuse of my work. I was pleasantly surprised to see that all the projects have embraced a CC license of some sort. So I felt comfortable that I could work with all sites. Being familiar with the technology pushed me toward Wikiversity. I am already familiar with using MediaWiki to publish content and find it an effective tool for developing courses online.

OER - Two important and relevant views

This 2006 stream speaks to what MAY be coming with OER.



This more recent 2008 stream that looks at the reality of the sharing we need to enjoy what the previous stream spoke of...

Download media

Models for sustaining OER

Stephen Downes wrote a good article on approaches to sustaining OER. It's a good read if you have the time. http://ijklo.org/Volume3/IJKLOv3p029-044Downes.pdf

WEEK 1: Ilkka has created a valuable contribution

I found this paper by Ilkka filled with a very good description of OER and some very important statements about OER and it influence on education. I really appreciated the historical references and how OER is tied to the Open Source movement. Tuomi (2006, page 4) makes the important observation that “When educational processes and objectives qualitatively change, new systems are needed for measuring their performance and benefits.” This stands out for me because I am seeing change in much of education and I see OER as one of the influences. I also believe this is important for it recognizes that we need new approaches to measuring performance and benefits within the use of OER.
Pedagogical Benefits
Ilkka also does well in pointing out the pedagogical benefits of the Open Source movement where he speaks of how “The informal communities of practice that develop open source systems have produced some of the leading software engineers of today. In some cases, open source projects seem to clearly outperform traditional formal educational models in their capability to create expertise and skills.” I share the constructivist belief that one of the best ways to learn something is to have to teach it. So having people develop OER and be a contributor to a global OER repository may be the best way for them to learn the subject. Being involved in a community of practice focused upon the developing OER for a subject domain may well be the best way to learn the subject.
Context Area
As I got further into the paper my appreciation for its depth increased. The introduction of the three areas (page 25) really got me thinking and I began to wonder if there was a fourth area, the context of the resource. Or does context fall into the social? It doesn’t seem to in the paper. Either way the three areas are valuable, though I believe context needs to be considered an area itself.
Levels of Openness
The three levels of openness are also very thought provoking and Openness II makes me wonder if there is the need for a new type of global institution that grants formal degrees after working through (or creating) a number of OER courses.
The fountain
I really like the visual of the open fountain and when it comes to education where knowledge can be shared and created in large numbers of learners from a single source really is a fountain. How this will be recognized within the concept of the commons and the idea of academia and commercial endeavour will be interesting to be a part of.
More on Context
As the paper came to a close with the five points of view I again began to wonder where learning context fits within these views. I believe there is room for one more view that would sit between learner view and teacher view. It would be the contextual view – context of learning (the what/where/how/language/culture/localization of the OER being utilized). I believe this idea is reinforced at the top of page 33 where Ilkka speaks to how the resources are consumed in qualitatively different markets.
My Conclusion
I found this paper a great introduction to OER and all the issues which surround this amazing topic. I did find the paper did require a level of technical understanding with regard to the subjects of frameworks, SCORM, etc.

Lawrence Lessig Free Culture Video

In my opinion this video is an accumulation of Lawrence Lessig's work. It shows his historical depth regarding the issue of freedom and copyright, it shows his outstanding presentation approach, it provides a roadmap to those who want to engage and it tells of the importance of this issue to our future and our children's lives. For all those interested in the free culture and creative commons movements it is a must watch video.

Peter welcomes everyone to composing OER

Hello all participants, I am very excited about this wikiversity course. I have had an interest in OER and all things open and free for a while now and over the last 18 months have been focusing on OER within completing a Master of Education (IT). I live on the west coast of Canada on an Island that is one hour from Vancouver. I am interested in this course for I believe that if we are going to create all the OER to meet the global and developing worlds needs for curriculum it will have to be done by a large participatory and collaborative group. I believe this course will cover most, if not all, the topics important to understanding the development of OER. I also believe that after this course I will be able to further the message of OER and speak to most questions that could be asked regarding OER. If you want to get a greater idea of who i am please visit my web site at http://www.rawsthorne.org or view my wikieducator profile at http://wikieducator.org/User:Prawstho

Buy only what you NEED

This is something that has kicked around in my head for many years and i try an practice it every day... This 20 minute flash video explains why.

Composing free and open online educational resources

I just signed up for this course about developing OER. It is very similar to what I was proposing in my paper titled "Utilizing Open Educational Resources for International Curriculum Development". I believe this will be an excellent course as I have been following the work of Teemu for a while. He also posted a comment to one of my blog posts a while ago. So it would seem the seven degrees are reducing...

The OER4D Program

So I finished another paper and put it over on my academic blog. The paper is more of a proposal for a new university level program about utilizing OER for development. Or in other words it is an Open Educational Resource (OER) about how to create, eruse and alter existing OER. I believe a course like this is overdue. So I've written this proposal and if all goes well, I hope to start building the resource in the new year.

Why a Learning Systems Architect?

So I was prodded into making a defense for my new role of Learning Systems Architect… Here is my rant of a response, enjoy.

Nobody apparently needs!?! Everybody needs! They just aren’t aware of it yet. But they should be, and will be. What sort of organization? Any organization engaged in the knowledge based economy and want to encourage their employees to self construct knowledge and thrive within their organization. See John Seely Brown; http://www.johnseelybrown.com/speeches.html#digitalage The organizations internal pain would be

1. employees seeking more interesting opportunities elsewhere, 
2. a general erosion of an organizations ability to identify and create new knowledge at an ever increasing rate… 
3. let your mind wonder…

A Learning Systems Architect works as the implementer and technical eyes / expert for the Chief Learning Officer. The Chief Learning Officer makes sure the organization has everything (politics, budget, infrastructure, knowledge, etc) in place to be a learning organization. Otherwise, the organization dies… The World 2.0 is here, knowledge doubles every 18 months, 1.3 billion youth will emerge from the developing world in the next 10 years to fill an estimated 380 million new jobs, only 130 million university seats exist today in the developed world, where will the 130 million (10% of the 1.3 billion) of the developing world students get their education? When all the seats are occupied by developed world students? Answer: the learning organization with a learning infrastructure built by a Learning Systems Architect…

Thanks again for prodding me to clarify… Please, prod me again. This is known as socio-constructivist learning. It is a core theory that a Learning Systems Architect builds a learning eco-system…

Learning Systems Architect

Learning Systems Architects perform some or all of the following duties:

• Collect and document user’s requirements and develop logical and physical specifications
• Liaise with clients, product managers and senior management regarding the feasability and design of product development
• Research, evaluate and synthesize technical information to design, develop and test computer-based learning and instructional systems
• Develop data, process and network models to optimize architecture and to evaluate the performance and reliability of designs
• Ensure that performance, scalability and extensibility requirements of the product are gathered and met
• Plan, design and co-ordinate the development, installation, integration and operation of computer-based learning and instructional systems
• Assess, test, troubleshoot, document, upgrade and develop maintenance procedures for operating systems, communications environments and applications software
• May lead and co-ordinate teams of information systems professionals, interactive media developers and instructional designers in the development of courseware and integrated information systems
• May research and evaluate a variety of learning management systems, interactive media software products and software frameworks.

Employment requirements

• A bachelor’s degree, usually in computer science, computer systems engineering, software engineering or mathematics
• Post-secondary education and experience in education and learning theory within K12, adult and life long learning.
• A master’s or doctoral degree in a related discipline(s) may be required.
• Experience as a computer programmer and software designer is usually required.

New Job Description

I am looking for a new job. I have just spent a year in St. John’s Newfoundland on a paternity leave and doing some instructional design and workshop facilitation. My family has now returned to Vancouver. I have fired up my networking engine and have begun to send out emails and contact people I know in Vancouver. One of those people; Troy Angrignon after receiving an email from me asked for me to be more specific to what I was looking for. I know what I am looking for; I’d like a job as a Learning Systems Architect. A formal job description of a Learning Systems Architect doesn’t exist, so I am going to write it myself. After some reflection and some google searches I came across a few web pages that I will use as reference to build this job description;

1. The Canadian National Occupational Classification site; http://www23.hrdc-drhc.gc.ca/2001/e/groups/2173.shtml
2. The Learning Systems Architecture Lab; http://lsal.org/
3. A Senior Architect position description I pilfered from
   desire2learn (I wish they had an office in Vancouver); http://www.rawsthorne.org/docs/SeniorArchitectDesire2Learn.pdf
4. A description of a Learning Technology Systems Architecture
   (LTSA) put together by the IEEE; http://www.edutool.com/ltsa/04/index.html

Recording a Lecture

I’ve been giving some thought to recording lectures using a voice recorder and lapel mic. Once you get past the argument of whether you believe this is a good idea or not, here are a few suggestions;

1. Number and Title your slides and refer to the title or number during the lecture - this keeps listeners on the same slide
2. Re-state all student questions before answering them.
3. Pause your recorder when a large pause occurs due to an activity.

You may want to consider getting an audio editor like audacity http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ to increase the volume of your MP3 recording and editing out the long pauses… Don’t spend too much time editing, this can become a time hole. Posting the MP3’s to odeo http://odeo.com can also be a good idea for it could attract more attention to your work.
Having lectures posted as MP3’s, slides and lecture notes provides the ability for students to review and reflect after the lecture. This provides a new way for students to deepen their learning.

I’ve chosen Ubuntu

I’ve chosen Ubuntu linux as the OS for this Moodle project. Why Ubuntu? A number of reasons;

1. There has been a lot of positive buzz about Ubuntu on slashdot and other locations
2. Getting started is really easy, I also visited the redhat, suse and BSD sites and found the Ubuntu site provided the easiest UI. (I believe a products website / UI says a lot about the product.) I will also admit it was a toss up with OpenBSD…
3. I like the idea of supporting a Linux product from the African continent
4. I like their idea of a version specifically for education
5. Their support seems to be consistent and integrated across versions and releases

The server end-point is a LAMP server. So once I have all this up and running, I’ll make another post regarding the experience.

My Journey to Moodle and Beyond

I knew this day would come. I am beginning the build up of my Moodle Server. I have been watching the LMS / CMS space for a number of years now and I knew I would be taking the leap into an FOSS solution. I’ve always been partial to Moodle for it seemed the purest FOSS available and it has always grounded itself in constructivist pedagogy. What really pushed me to commit to Moodle was this report from Idaho State University. So follow along if you like, I’m starting with the build up of a LAMP server, then I will follow up with the Moodle install… from there who knows. I do know that I have been forming some strong opinions regarding where the VLE should be going.

Memorial Workshops

I added a summary page of the workshops I facilitated while working with the Instructional Development Office of Memorial University. These workshops focused on the pedagogy of Web 2.0 (blogs, podcasts, wikis, tagging and social software).

CKMS4D

I've got through my first draft of this CKMS4D paper. But after getting some feedback it seems I need to focus for another while or so to have it be a stronger offering. I still figured I should get this first release out and see what, if any, feedback I may get.

Web 2.0 is very significant

I stumbled across this document "The Disruptive Force of Web 2.0: how the new generation will define the future". It certainly captures a view into the youthful future. When you add to this the projections of youth global population we have a very interesting and exciting road ahead. I've included here my thoughts regarding this speech;

Much of the current technology innovation was developed by people in their early 20's (Google, Linux, Skype, Microsoft, many others). It is clear that the young will continue to build the future.

The current wave of the Web 2.0 is very disruptive; online social networking is not neutral, content proliferation is un-monitored and therefore stresses the importance of media literacy, VOIP is turning telecom sideways or even upside down, IP and copyright is being questioned at many turns. All of this, of course, has two sides. A global social network with an easy flow of un-monitored content accompanied by cheap telecom and an ability to mash-up new works is exciting, and potentially very democratizing.

It is the growth of mobile services that are having the greatest impact. This 'speech' talks about what the Web 3.0 will look like. And with the growth of mobile devices I believe it will fall within this mobile space. And the globalization and 'hopefully' democratization that will occur could be a big step in the right direction.

In my mind all this builds toward a global education system. That will be very social and very self-directed. The idea of socio-constructivism at a global level.

UNESCO Podcasts

I am really looking forward to the results of this UNESCO project. The idea of participatory video (PV) is quickly growing and a highly successful form of activism and community development. As the price of ICT countinues to drop and the developing world has increased access it is only a matter of time that the transparency of the developing world issues will be impossible to deny or ignore. I hope that these PV efforts will increase the dialogue among all planetary inhabitants. Or even if it only creates a dialogue within the community to make things healthier, that is good.

Odeo Setup

I’ve created a document describing the odeo (http://www.odeo.com) set up process. I believe it to be a good read. If you want to read this document just follow the link.

A book by the same name

I've run across a book by the name 'Critical Technology'. It seems to be in the same subject area as this blog so I felt it was a good idea to make reference.

Resources can also be free

Another approach to having storage capacity is to use free Web 2.0 capacity. To do this I will use odeo to host the sound files and bloglines to aggretate all the RSS feeds set up by odeo. This setup process is described in this one page document.

Indigenous Knowledge is paramount

I've been a Canadian for over 40 years, and I have often heard, via the popular news services, of the strife and horrors occuring in Haiti. This 53 second video from YouTube is the first time I've had an insight into why Haiti suffers as it does... It certainly gets me thinking about the value of YouTube and similar services. It also makes me realize that these type of services are breaking down the intermediary of the news networks.



This video also provides a sample of indigenous knowledge. I'm assuming Louis-Henri is Haitian, and that he is working with his internal indigenous knowledge to work toward solutions.

Circles of Change

This is an example of what I would see in a CKMS. It captures a community level activity and provides a learning activity. It is grassroots and driven by the members of the community. Think of the possibilities of having a CKMS within this communtity. Those so inclined would use digital technology to create videos, capture stories, record community events and store them on the CKMS. These stories would be availabe over the communities wireless network.
Where is the computer hardware going to come from? see Computer Aid International
Where is the wireless network going to come from? see Wireless Network in the Developing World
Where is the software going to come from? see Free and Open Source Software at the United Nations

Nelson Mandela is a wise man

I came across this thread of information. It comes from the The World Congress on Communication for Development. It was a conference that just concluded on October 27th. It would seem that Nelson Mandela was a participant and he left with a quote used in a summary document from the conference.

It is people that make the difference. Communication is about people. Communication for development is essential to make the difference happen.

Resources need thought

We are in the process of setting up a virtual classroom for high school music. And the question has come up regarding storage and bandwidth. The variables we need to think about are disk space, number of students, frequency of uploading and downloading, number and size of music files created during the course. For example; lets say each student created 40 minutes of music files per week, and lets consider the school year is 44 weeks. Given each minute of music is 1 megabyte (MB) that would mean each student would create 1,760 MB or 1.7 Gigabytes (GB) of music during the school year or approximately 200 MB per month. Now consider we have 50 students, that means we will require 88 GB of disk space by the end of the year. And if all students are expected to be listening to half of the students work we will need 5 GB of monthly bandwidth. Now 5 GB is a low number for monthly bandwidth and we shouldn’t expect extra bandwidth fees for this low level of traffic. But what happens if the site becomes popular and its popularity spreads like wildfire (which happens within the social web 2.0). We get hit with 10,000 visitors (a potentially low number) downloading a full months worth of music, that would be 100,000,000 MB of bandwidth or a 100 Terrabytes. Now our bandwidth fees shoot off the scale. I think we should limit access to just the students…

Homework-casting

As far as I am concerned, Quentin D’Souza has it right. This is iLearn 2.0.

iLearn 2.0

I’ve been put back into a focus upon technology and education. I’ve been so busy blogging about my critical technology that I haven’t had much time to blog on the subject of technology and education. I have been asked to be a reseach associate for a project where we are looking at teaching music (the fiddle to be precise) online. A very interesting project where we have a very active and innovative high school teacher who loves to use technology to teach. He really doesn’t have much choice as his students are spread all around the province of Newfoundland and Labrador. I’ll be watching what he does and make suggestions to the lead researchers and they will make the call if they introduce my ideas to him, as they don’t wan’t to disrupt his processes. So here are my thoughts after leaving his talk from Wednesday 25th of November;

• It really is about community building - how do we take a group of students and turn them into a community of learners who support one another in their learning?
• ePortfolios really are under utilized. I look forward to the day where ePortfolios become a significant part of assessment.
• Building something
  together is really a great way to learn. When you play misic it is a collaborative effort, learning should be the same.
• To what extent do we use rich media as a learning tool? is it under utilized?
• Community Learning Centers (CLC) are going to be a way station for learners. Soon the business model for the CLC will be sustainable.
• I’ve heard a lot these days that students
  don’t like to read, particularly males. What I like about what I am hearing is that it isn’t that they should be expected to read. We need to change our methods to not be so dependent on reading. It should be more balanced; reading, video, audio, play, creation, painting, physical, etc, etc, etc…
• What really is participatory video? Is there such a thing as participatory audio?
• Does groove fit here? Groove networks has always been an interesting tool. Though, It’s not Open Source. And this needs to be Open Source. For many reasons, to many for this single post.
• I definately think we need a bliki. We need to build a community wiki and have all the participants blog on how they got the the completed wiki entry.
• It’s time for me to get back into working on the Mac platform. What participatory features does garage band have? Could the students collaborate on a piece of music online?
• I need to revisit the features of drupal. Could you create a mySpaces for a learning community?
• Funny thing is all this leads back to a Community Knowledge Management System (CKMS)

Community Knowledge Management

I've created a concept map for my latest research topic of; Community Knowledge Management Systems for Development (CKMS4D).

ABSTRACT: This article describes the resources and approach required to build a Community Knowledge Management System (CKMS) in rural developing communities. The increased availability of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) through telecentres, cellular telephones, rural wireless networks and community schools have increased the likelihood of partnerships successfully creating community repositories of indigenous knowledge. Through the use of free open source software (FOSS), access to the multimedia of video recorders, audio recorders and digital photography combined with the increasing knowledge of how to use these technologies makes a CKMS within reach for many developing communities. Having the methods to gather, store, retrieve and distribute community knowledge through local partnerships and emerging ICT further reduces the knowledge divide. This article reviews development efforts in India, Uganda and ?? to provide further insight into the creation of a CKMS through community partnerships and the utilization of digital resources.

Muhammad Yunus & Grameen Bank win Nobel prize

This is a great choice for the Nobel Peace Prize of 2006. I like it most because it is giving a very public view into microfinance and how every citizen can help toward the plight of poverty. As we decrease the inequity in the world, I believe, the world we become more peaceful. This is the message this choice for the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize is sending.

We need gapminder!

In my previous post I was being critical of the way some of the data was being presented in gapminders' World Income Distribution animation. I was even so bold to email my post to gapminder, and to my pleasant surprise I received a comment back from Hans Rosling. The comment spoke of how the animation used a purchasing power dollar. So, using google scholar, I went in seach of papers or some kind of reference that provided me insight how a purchasing power dollar worked. There is a lot to read, the concept goes back to the 1600's and in my quick read I would say the jury isn't out on the concept of purchasing power parity (PPP). So I didn't get the answer I was looking for but I've learned more about the world and how things are "measured". I found a really good quote from 1988 that sums it all up;

...Because of these sensitivities, one must carefully consider summary statements and policy implications derived from cross-national comparisons of poverty and/or inequality.

I am still struggling with the idea that a dollar in 1970 had the same purchasing power as a dollar in 2003 even if in the long-run the products and services have the same purchase price.
So what does this post have to do with needing gapminder? Being a flash programmer, I wanted to create my own animated graph which included two things; inflation and the dollar a day scale not presented as a logarithmic scale. Then I started to think about where would I get the data to base my animated graph upon and gathering the data would be a huge enormous hill to climb! If not impossible. So, this is why we need gapminder. Gapminder wants to make global data available, to everyone, so they can do their reseach and they can create views of the data in new and solid ways. These new views would add to the dialogue and that would make the world a better place.

Dollar a day ???

A couple of weeks ago I was watching Hans Roslings' TED talk about the gapminder technology. A very interesting talk about global data; the work they are doing is awesome! After thinking about how they presented wealth distribution and poverty I have started to have my doubts. Hans showed an amazing dynamic graphic of financial distribution since 1970. In the graphic they included the dollar a day as a measure of poverty since 1970. As years passed everything in the graphic moved to the right showing a positive progress in the fight against poverty. One thing didn't move, that was the dollar a day line. The way I calculate it (based on Canadian inflation rates) a dollar in 1970 would be five dollars in 2003. Even though the presentation is impressive, I believe it is flawed. After some reading it would also seem the whole dollar a day calculation could be flawed...

How to not measure the poor.
Poor but pedicured.
How not to measure the poor - a reply.

Don't get me wrong, I think all the work in measuring global poverty is great. I'm just being critical of how progress is being claimed and how is is measured.

Royal Holloway ICT4D Reflection

It's been over a week since the ICT4D Symposium and I have had some time to reflect on what I learned. All the learning has added to my understanding of critical technology, these are my thoughts of what I learned; (it will help if you refer to the critical technology as a graphic from a previous post)

PEDAGOGY - is very much a key to successful development initiatives. Learning needs to be built into the initiative and the learning needs to be localized.

DEVELOPMENT - is a very very important global activity ;) Development needs to be grass roots and fair, collaborative at the community level and have ways to be measured.

TECHNOLOGY - is often misunderstood in the rural developing communities. The closer the community is to large city centres or available connectivity the more technology literacy they have. They still don't understand the why of technology, or maybe it is us who don't understand why have technology? Either way, as we go down the ICT4D path it is important to have a strategic introduction of technology aligned with community initiatives (health, agriculture and education). This will encourage understandability.

CRITICAL PEDAGOGY - was confirmed; as a good number of the ICT4D presentations were critical of technology, particularly how it was implemented. A couple of comments made after my presentation got me thinking about Paulo Freire, see these two previous posts;

1. Friere's view of differential diagnosis
2. Millennium Village

It also became very apparent that a tool is required by the critical technologist (and others) to assess the readiness of a communities readiness.

CONSTRUCTIVISM - surprisingly I wasn't the only one talking about constructivist methods, meta-cognition and active learning was mentioned during the conference. It was stressed that active learning methods need to be culturally sensitive regarding learning styles.

ICT4D - ICT requires a community context for it to be successful at the community level (ie. community readiness). ICT is having a lot of success when supporting health information workers.

CRITICAL TECHNOLOGY - I felt the idea was very well received by all in attendance. This was also supported by all the critical content in other presentations. I will continue the development of Critical Technology for I feel it could provide a useful reference for those working in the field.

Transparency and Microfinance

Due to the current UN general assembly there seems to be increased talk about the effectiveness of the UN. As I reflect on all I am reading I began to think about the role of the UN from a very critical perspective. If you consider the UN to have been ineffective in helping developing countries over the last three decades. And if you consider that the UN agenda seems to be "exclusively" directed by the group of eight countries (particularly the US and UK). I begin to wonder if the UN has become a costly intermediary that is no longer required. Now this thinking isn't new.
Currently, there is a huge movement afoot to decentralize and empower the developing world at the community level, and many believe that a decentralized approach would be the most effective. So why do we have such huge amounts of our tax dollars going to support an ineffective global infrastructure?
Think even further about the changes that the internet is bringing. In particular, the concept of disintermediary and the technology tools to bring greater transparency. Why not just allow donors to target thier donations how they see best. Even have an infrastructure that allows everyone to track their donation to the recipient, and see where administrative costs are consumed.
The simple and effective microfinance site of kiva may be leading the way toward people being able to assist as they see best without the added costs of infrastructure.

Millennium Village

Sachs does not only espouse the differential diagnosis at the country level, he also utilizes it at the community level. The Millennium Village project which Sachs is the director is very inclusive of the community in decision making.

Community empowerment through participation and leadership in design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation. http://www.earthinstitute.columbia.edu/mvp/about/community_participation.html

Freire's view of differential diagnosis

During the feedback session after presenting my paper at the ICT4D symposium someone made the comment that a Freirian approach to "differential diagnosis" would be a very community based activity. I though about this and have done some reading and I would have to agree. I'll provide two quotes and then provide my rationale.

Sachs (2005) states, A Differentail Diagnosis, which identifies the policies and investments that the country needs to achieve the Millennium Development Goals.

Freire (1972) states, it is absolutely essential that the oppressed participate in the revolutionary process with an increasingly critical awareness of their role as Subjects of the transformation.

I believe that what Sachs is espousing is a national diagnosis for what "ills" a country. And what Freire is espousing is individual and / or community involvement in the process of finding a remedy for the "ills". Sachs approach is too macro, communities within any given country differ to greatly to have a country level differential diagnosis. A Freirian approach would be a community diagnosis.

Sachs, J. (2005). The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time. (The Penguin Press)
Freire, P. (1972). Pedagogy of the oppressed. Harmondsworth : Penguin.

Lenin's famous statement

I'm doing some reading today about a comment made during the ICT4D symposium and I ran across this Lenin quote, "Without a revolutionary theory there cannot be any revolutionary movement". I agree with this; without a theory behind a movement the movement will falter. It is the same spirit why I believe the theory of critical technology is so important for the success of the critical technologist.

Royal Holloway ICT4D

I'm just back from Royal Holloway University of London where I presented my paper on the Critical Technologist. The paper hit the mark from the critical theory perspective as many people who presented brought up the importance of the right technology at the right time in the right place within the right context. To view all the papers visit the following link; http://www.gg.rhul.ac.uk/ict4d/sympapers.html

Learner Centered Approach in Ghana

I came across this brief paper on Learning in the Digital World. What stood out for me were the authors experiences in the USA and their applying them to a teaching term in Ghana. In my mind the author is acting as a critical technologist in applying a constructivist learning approach and adjusting to the realities of working in a developing country. The paper also provides a good description of a learner centered approach. In particular the graphic that shows the student at the center of learning...

Critical Technologist planning papers

It would seem that most of my coursework is now focusing on Critical Technology and the role of the Critical Technologist. During my EDU539 (Technology Planning for Educational Environments) course at Cape Breton University I used this focus as the drivers for all three course papers. Here are the three papers;

1. Learning, Curriculum, Infrastructure and Support
2. Professional Development Plan
3. The Critical Technologists role in the Community Learning Center
   

I am in the process of rewriting them for a more general audience and will post them to this blogs academic companion blog when each rewrite is complete.

Critical Technologist as a Concept Map

The role of a Critical Technologist is comprehensive when it comes to working within a developing country. To bring greater understanding to the role I created a concept map of the critical technologists skills and knowledge base. Click the image if you want to see the full graphic.

Critical Technology as a Graphic

Last month I created a graphic of what critical technology is based upon. To date this is the best I have; I do like the way it brings the three sources of pedagogy, development and technology together. Click on the image if you want to see a bigger version.

The first step up the ladder

This video puts it in simple terms. Literacy and education should lead to a better life.

Clinical Economics (pdf)

This article by Jeffrey Sachs brought tears to my eyes. It is providing a positive way forward with the issue of poverty. He includes what he calls the big five development interventions;

Boosting agriculture
Improving basic health
Investing in education
Bringing power
Providing clean water and sanitation

Keep in mind that these interventions could change from place to place. I feel the prescriptive nature of his work is great. He is promoting a new economics, that he calls, "clinical economics";

Development economics needs an overhaul in order to be much more like modern medicine, a profession of rigor, insight and practicality. The sources of poverty are multidimensional. So are the solutions.

The section of Jeffrey Sachs' article that brought tears to my eyes was in regard to the education of children;

Despite disease, orphanhood and hunger, all 33 of last year's eighth-grade class passed the Kenyan national secondary-school exams. On a Sunday last July, we saw why. On their "day off" from school, this year's class of eighth-graders sat at their desks from 6:30 a.m. until 6 p.m.

If there is ever any doubt to the commitment they are making; this sunday display should put an end to such doubt. You may ask, "how does all this fit within critical technology?" I see the idea of being clinical and creating interventions that are directly targeted at the local situation is in alignment with the creation of learning and curriculum that is also "clinical". Every situation is going to be multidimensional; therefore, the learning needs to also be targeted to the situation.

One person can always make a difference

This is a good video for many reasons; I like the positive content and presenation, I like its alignment with empowering women, I like its focus on engaging the american population. Christina Chan said it very well;

Ask questions, ask probing questions.

We can overcome poverty;
We have the resources;
We have the knowledge;
We have the experience;
We have the technology;
We just need to do it;

Yes, very lofty statements. Do not discard them because they seem too lofty, embrace them. Make a difference. There is nothing more important to humanity than this.

Critical technology has two perspectives

1. The internal classroom perspective where both student and teacher must be critical of the use of all technology. They must always be asking is technology the best approach to meeting the learning outcomes and curriculum?
2. The external perspective of being critical of where the technology is coming from. Is oppression, alienation, and subordination intrinsic to the provided technology. Every technology comes with ideology, values, an agenda. The technology usage must be localized and fit within the local needs. The need must come before the technology.
   

Critical Pedagogy by Barry Kanpol

In my journey to deepen my understanding of Critical Pedagogy I have read the book Critical Pedagogy by Barry Kanpol. An excellent book with many on the ground examples of Critical Pedagogy implemented. When it comes to the development of critical technology I believe the following references really stand-out from this book; This first quote provides a description of the role of the teacher as critical pedagogue.

...then critical of the multiple forms of teaching methodologies; and the reproduction of values that oppress, alienate, and subordinate people (especially, for our concerns, students and teachers as related to race, class and gender configurations). Within this reskilling mode, critical pedagogy teachers challenge stereotyping, find ways to subvert tracking through alternative teaching methodologies, build curriculum with open and critical spirits, become involved in the policy-oriented decisions of the state and local school district, and form group solidarity over issues of value-laden importance.

This second quote provides a description of the dialectic of the Me and the I with how a child exists within their community. This section of the book was powerful for it referes to the work of Herbert Mead.

Within this personal dialectic, the critical pedagogy self seeks to understand the self construction in an ongoing dialectic with oppressive social structures. How I, me and other can work dialectically both to oppress and emancipate us becomes of increasing importance to critical pedagogists.

Kanpol continues with a description of a classroom environment where a teacher has a special ability to teach about differences and build upon these lessons with empathy for these differences. The book progresses through a number of schools and Kanpols descriptions of the teachers within these schools. Kanpol focuses his observations on teachers who, at differing levels, are critical pedagogists. Closer to the end of the book I find the third quote where Kanpol formalizes his description of the teacher as critical pedagogist;

Critical pedagogy is about teachers struggling for some semblance of control in their lives - control that has to do with achieving a qualitatively better life for students and teachers; control that has to do with finding a democratic path that begins to alleviate forms of oppression, alienation, and subordination.

What is most important from this book is how Kanpols' writings fit within what I am calling Critical Technology. Its about the balance of challenging the existing structures of oppression, alienation, and subordination with teaching to the required curriculum. This also fits within the work of Friere where action should occur within the existing structures or the history and politics of the structures. There are two final quotes that I would like as the spirit of Critical Technology;

But the kind of criticality you will find in critical pedagogy is really different from this in that it's really about what I call critical consciousness. It is about focusing our critical capacities, our questioning capacity, on the everyday world in which we find ourselves with a purpose. And that purpose is rooted in a moral vision. It has to do with looking at the world, questioning the world as to whether, in fact, it treats people with dignity and respect; whether the world is one in which certain groups of people or individuals are limited or dominated, or whether the world that we live in, in fact, lives up to its democratic and humanistic promises.

Part of creating a critical pedagogy in teacher education is to move beyond mere cyitique or cynicism to a position where action can occur, where students can joyfully respond to structural constraints in a timely manner and in ways that create opportunities for democratic hope and critical citizenry.

Critical technology being implemented (pdf)

My reading of things related to what I am calling "Critical Technology" continues. My interest in the $100 laptop also continues. So in my internet searches for readings related to Critical Pedagogy and Paulo Friere these two interests came together. This paper describes the "educational content" and how the approach to developing the educational content for the $100 laptop will be very Frieriean and modeled after the succesful projects in Brasil where technology and learning were brought together. The paper confirmed that the approach toward educational content will be very grassroots and driven by the learners. Of course this is an oversimplication of what the paper said. Just the fact that they are leaning toward a Frieriean approach bodes well in the laptops success. This paper also confirmed the importance of the critical technologist, a mentor or facilitator of critical approaches to learning within a technology rich environment.

Pedagogy of Curiosity

A discussion between Paulo Freire and Seymour Papert regarding the future of school. So much good stuff within this discussion between these two great thinkers. I believe it is best if you read the whole transcript yourself and/or watch the videos. What I have included here are what I consider the highlights of this discussion;

The pedagogy of the question, not the answer.
His (Papert) analysis seems to be metaphysical and mine (Freire) is politico-historical.

In general, the discussion is centered around three simple stages of learning;

1. learning through exploration (baby to toddler)
2. learning by being told (k12 schooling)
3. back to exploration (later university and beyond)

Both Freire and Papert agree to these three stages to learning. And they agree that the second stage needs to change, they differ in how they see it changing. Interestingly, the second stage was developed due to the other two stages. According to Freire, the perpetuation of the second stage is due to politics not ontological reasons. And Papert believes that with all the current and future enabling technology future generation will revolt against the second stage. Freire would see the change happening within the existing structures and having a critical approach to change the surrounding politics, Papert would see a change initiated by the coming generations of learners. Both agreed education should empower the learner with the "raison d'etre" -- reason for having.

Critical Technologists

In my previous post I spoke to the idea of teachers well versed in the critical technology approach. It would seem that the GIIP has already begun the development of these Critical Technologists.

Critical Technology Defined

After some reflection I am going to create my first statement defining Critical Technology as I believe it to be.

Fundamentally it will be based upon Critical Pedagogy. I believe the use of technology within education should be from the grass roots (meaning; those who are using the technology, the "students"). How the technology should be used is defined by the students and the teachers well versed with the critical technology approach.

More on all this after I have completed my research. Currently, I'm reading some books, papers and watching some videos. When significant pieces of information form I will write a post in this stream of conciousness blog.

SUMMARY PAPER

This podcast summarizes the previous 18 posts. To view the transcript of this podcast visit this sites academic companion blog.

$100 laptop, microfinance, constructivism and critical pedagogy

Offer $100.00 laptops to economically resiliant microfinanced families with children available for education and combine that with constructivist learning methods and teachers well versed in critical pedogogy. Once you have all the pieces in place you can work with the local community and identify a group of cohorts (Gow, 2001) that meet the optimal laptop profile and build on the success already within these families.

UN Millenium Goals

Two of the UN Millenium Goals have good alignment with the introduction of the $100 laptops goal of a laptop for every child in the next five to seven years. The two millenium goals are;

Goal 2. Achieve universal primary education
Goal 3. Promote gender equality and empower women

Over 30 million served

Since its inception the microfinance approach to helping people out of poverty has served between 30 and 50 million people. All these small loans amount to a total 2.5 billion dollars being loaned out by thousands of these "banks for the poor".

A closer look at the $100 laptop

Microfinance programs are available

All the places targeted to pilot the $100 laptop already have established microfinance programs. These locations would have the required financial infrastructure and families to utilize these laptops in their families education.

Community Source

How will all the software and curriculum get built? To begin with the operating system is based upon the open source offering of Linux, therefore all the open source software currently being built is freely available for the $100 laptop. A number of open source courseware (MIT & Educational Commons) initiatives have started up. The $100 laptop could take advantage of these or begin to create its own open courseware initiative. The courseware would be built by community source where groups of development teams come together and share the costs and efforts of building new curriculum and then share this curriculum back into the open courseware community...

$100 laptop isn't without critics

The $100 laptop initiative doesn't come without its critics. The criticism falls into four main areas;
1) People need to eat first
2) How are you going to dispose of them once they are done
3) Where is the curriculum going to come from
4) Wouldn't the billions of dollars to build these things be better spent on (low-tech) educational initiatives.
I believe the content of this blog answers 3 of the 4;
1) I'm proposing that Laptop recipients are engaged in some asset stabalization (like microfinance) and are already reading their family to send one of their children to school.
3) Leverage the ideas of Critical Pedagogy; where cohort programs are set up to create groups of teachers within each community. Constructivist learning methods are used.
4) Yes, maybe the Billions of dollars would be better spent somewhere else. But there not going to be, so better to engage and help it be a success and join in with helping the UN Millennium Development Goals be a success.

Microfinance works

The most passionate claims always lead back to educating their children. Fortunately, education is seen as one of the keys to ending poverty.

Ending poverty has become pop culture

With all the media exposure and all the pop stars getting involved the attainment of ending poverty may be more real now than ever before.

Based upon constructivist methods

The MIT labs have stressed the importance of using constructivist (Bender, 2006) methods when building cirriculum for the $100 laptops. Its about the world teaching its children... And it will be built from the bottom up. The recipients of the laptops will determine how they use them to learn.

http://web.mit.edu/mitir/podcasts/2006-02-21_Bender_OLPC.mp3

Enter the $100 laptop

When MIT introducted the $100 laptop and said they were going to be giving them away to the third world, I was skeptical. I believed they would be sold for food on ebay days after their arrival. basic needs become more important than a laptop when you have no food. Having basic needs already met should be a requirement for receiving a 100 dollar laptop. Programs like microfinance should be included as a part of the collaborative effort in introducing these laptops.

Technology and Critical Pedagogy

The connection of technology and the emerging pedagogy is a mute point, they are interrelated (Travers, 1999). One cannot discuss one without the other. Within the current and emerging pedagogies are contructivism and critical pedagogy. It should be noted that critical pedagogy and social constructivism are similar and the terms are sometimes used to describe the same thing (Travers, 1999). Both these pedogogical theories stress the important of the social context of the learning and that knowledge should be constructed from this social, political, cultural, ideological place. When it comes to the use of technology within learning both constructivism and critical pedagogy should be referred to when building curriculum.

My greatest joy is I can educate my children

Microfinance is focused on providing small loans to families stuck in the cycle of poverty. These loans have been hugely successful in bringing families out of poverty. Once out of poverty the families priorities often shift to educating thier children. The common expression from two women is surprising;

"My children give me great joy because they have this opportunity to study." - Woman in Nigeria
"My greatest joy is I can educate my children." - Woman in Mexico

A coordinated combination

The elimination of poverty includes focus on many fronts. The ability to have self reliance, food, water and shelter are the first steps. Building upon the self-determination afforded by microfinance includes many services.

A coordinated combination of microfinance and other development services to improve business, income and assets, health, nutrition, family planning, education of children, social support networks, and so on. (Dunford, 2002)

Education can be a great help to eliminating poverty only it needs to be introduced with the correct combination of services and family health.

Microfinance works, and is a place to start

The idea of Microfinance is simple. If we loan people small sums of money to make the first step and become self reliant. They do become self reliant and the success builds upon itself. Once their basic needs are met, then they can consider education.