I guess the big difference between the two is that in that latter case, I am all too conscious of the specific learning need and simply want a solution that will meet that need from the procedural “How do I …?” or “Where do I …?” Google searches are similarly foucssed – “Where can I find information about … ?”

In the case of interaction with colleagues the learning can be a bit more fluid. “I wonder if she can give me a few insights into the best ways to use …?” That sort of thing.

In most cases, the learning objective is pretty clear and self-defined and yet the learning process is correspondingly informal and even random.

I’m about to start (today) on a learning process for which I have no specific objectives other than to see what I learn and to make the most of what comes out of it. That’s a pretty informal objective. There are many who would argue that it is not really an objective at all, (not at all SMART) – more a general aim. Informal as that aim may be, the learning process will be the most structured that I have undertaken in quite a while.

Stephen Downes and George Siemens (see blogroll) are leading a course Connectivism and Connective Knowledge which is described as massive, open and on-line which will run for the next twelve weeks with possibly a couple of thousand participants around the world.

Although I actively promote connective learning and knowledge through the use of tools such as Moodle, the prospect of such a potentially huge undertaking is a somewhat daunting. For one thing, I am not at all sure that I will be able to find the time to do the process justice. I am incredibly busy this year and have a mass of deadlines stacking up in the period leading to the end of the year. My podcast (Suffolk and Cool) is taking off and demanding more of my time to deal with increased connections with musicians and listeners. The course introduction makes it clear that I should expect the programme to be confusing and overwhelming because more material and connections will be offered than I can realistically hope to keep up with. But that is precisely the challenge of much on-line learning today. The “drinking from the fire-hose” analogy may be overused, but that is because it is very effective in describing the sheer volume of good information that is available. Learning to cope with both confusion and being overwhelmed sounds very useful.

OK, so there’s learning objective number one:

to become more capable and confident in selecting just the most valuable items and streams to work with, to become discerning and able to identify those which best suit my needs and stylistic preferences. The objective is learning, not a sense of achievement from having read all the words.

I have been following Stephen and George at varying distances for at least a couple of years and have huge admiration for their thinking and articulation of the ideas they develop. They are among my most trusted sources. That bit is easy, I know I want to engage with what they have to say, because I know it will offer an excellent return on my investment of time. But Stephen and George are “only” the leaders of this course. Interaction will primarily be with others.

But what about the other participants in the course? I don’t yet know who they are, what they have to say, how open they are to exploring issues that most of us don’t yet have our heads around. I fear that most may be from a purely academic background, concerned with learning as an end in itself, whereas my history is in applied, work-based learning where the learning is only the starting point to developing understanding, fluency and mastery of skills. So maybe there’s objective number two:

to be open to connective working with people from apparently incompatible backgrounds, to monitor the productiveness of that working and to be prepared to cut the losses if it isn’t delivering what I need. “A proper selfishness.”

I know that I will be tempted to branch off into all sorts of interesting areas and discussions because that is what the best of learning really is, taking delight in wandering off the most direct path to explore the twists and potential of the by-ways, to make the connections with fellow participants as real as possible, to develop empathy, understanding and friendship. That is where the real buzz is but it may not be totally compatible with efficient learning. Uncomfortable as it may be, I may have to make that my third objective:

to maintain focus on the content of the course rather than exploring all the fascinating branches that connecting with people offers.

I suppose that leads, via a fairly circuitous route to a final and most challenging objective which is:

to ensure that by the end of the twelve weeks, I am keeping my head above water on the course and that I am learning about the processes and mechanisms of connectivism and connective knowledge through their practical application

At this stage, I am uncertain about how well equipped I am to “stay the course” but I’m sure that if I can do so, the rewards will be significant. Now where’s that reading list …

The industries are demanding revision because the current standards are outdated and no longer fit for purpose. They require people to be trained in processes, products, services and technologies which no longer reflect practice in the sector.

The issue for me is that the current standards were agreed just three years ago. But “things” are changing faster than the industry can foretell. The shift to on-line and direct travel booking, the trend towards customers creating their own travel packages and the availability of instant on-line information about locations, availability, prices and real customer reviews is causing customers to question what they need from the industry.

To be fair, the industry is aware of the situation and is adjusting as fast as possible. However, it sometimes struggles to find people with the right skills to deliver what’s needed. Hence the revision of the standards which will inform the curriculum.

The question is, what standards should we define as the basis for training future and current staff? Do we go for current skills and knowledge requirements and know that the new standards will be out-of-date within a year or two, or do we try to predict the future needs of the industry and risk getting it wrong?

Two recent comments by other people have been sliding into juxtaposition as we wrestle with this dilemma.

The first from Annika Small, Chief Executive of Futurelab, in Vision (issue 6) describing the effect of a rapidly changing world on curriculum design,

“We are at a point where we need to teach what no one knew yesterday, and prepare our students for what no one yet knows.”

She makes the point that what is required is no less than the transition from what is, effectively a 19th century model of education to something that is fit for purpose in the 21st century.

Secondly, Dave Cormier (on the excellent EdTechWeekly #64) describes giving someone a hammer for the first time without describing what it is useful for. Yes, they may see the nice wooden handle and they may feel the weight of the forged steel head but it will be useless to them until they catch their toe on a protruding nail, make the connection back to the hammer and recognise that it is near perfectly designed for driving the nail back into the floor.

Now consider some of the tools of social and collaborative learning such as Moodle and all those little devices that make life more connective (such as Twitter, Skype and UStream). A typical reaction from many educators will be “Yes, very clever and very pretty but I don’t see that it offers me any value in my classroom.”

I recognise that change is necessarily “a good thing” if I am instigating it, however, if someone else is saying that I have to change it is, naturally, “a bad thing”.

My concerns are that the world of education is, by-and-large and for whatever reason, one of the last great conservative bastions of resistance to change. The longer change to new approaches is resisted the more entrenched that resistance becomes, because the gap between old practices and attitudes and those that are needed now gets wider and more difficult to cross every day.

The commercial imperative for the travel industry to discover new tools which enable existing services to be delivered more efficiently and for new services to be made available is readily apparent. Shareholders will demand return on investment. Less clear are the motivators for educators to make such transitions.

Which brings me back to the travel and tourism standards. Small incremental changes to keep everyone onside, or radical reform to (hopefully) keep the standards credible for a while into a very uncertain future?

Perhaps the strategy should entail both overhaul of the standards and a programme of reform of approaches to learning in this field. Maybe some innovative yet palatable resources and progressive introduction of aspects of on-line facilities and global collaboration / connectivism might help prepare the ground with enough practitioners to create a critical mass. Perhaps.

There are multiple uncertainties there (I’ll resist the Rumsvelt reference) but without movement from industry and educators, I can’t see an alternative to missing the impossible goal of coming up with standards that will simultaneously:

• resonate with current industry practitioners and employers
• be fit for purpose now and for the next five years
• contribute to sector profitability and sustainability
• allow the skills knowledge and attitudes to be taught and developed in traditional ways.

Eggs may have to be broken.

Anyone seen that hammer?

I wonder whether because we have such sophisticated tools with which to create magnificently designed, crafted and polished solutions, that we simply spend too much time on them and get side-tracked by the possible enhancements to the original solution that we effectively “lose the plot” and don’t see that the situation has changed already.

I also wonder whether we actually develop solutions too far. I know that I am afflicted by that tendency. Perhaps this is an age where younger people (generalising here) expect the media they consume to be pretty good looking we feel that we have to add that quality all the way through all our solutions too – to make them palatable to savvy media consumers.

I wonder, then, if we might be right in that consumers do like resources to give them a “Wow” moment, but perhaps we could trade off some of our all-singing / all finished mindset to create the foundation with the wow and then build in tools whereby learners themselves can pick up the ball to get involved and continue building the solution in collaboration with us as an important part of the learning process.

It may well be a hard sell to older generations and to corporate clients who generally like complete solutions but it would be interesting to explore the possibilities. Could it be that some might also be happy to operate in a Beta world?

Now, along comes WiZiQ which offers a very much simpler interface (good) but also more limited features (no app sharing that I can see), no privacy and it seems to run a lot slower. However, it is free and can cope with up to 25 simultaneous participants.

The no privacy point is an interesting one. Teachers can offer public lessons through the system and make PowerPoint presentations available by uploading to a shared library which can be browsed by all members. You can even search for teachers or students who share your interest.

I suppose it’s a question of “You pays your money and you makes your choice”.

I like the ethos of making the content open but I wonder if system performance and uploaded content will be credible enough to satisfy demanding and increasingly savvy participants.
WiZiQ

technorati tags:WiZiQ, on-line, presentation, Elluminate

I tagged along and arriving a few minutes early noticed that there was an increasing number of people standing and strolling around, just like people do – tourists, office workers, etc. Quite a few had iPods plugged into their ears. Again, this is totally normal.

More people kept arriving. At a few seconds to 6.46, a countdown was started then, at zero, almost everyone turned up their music and started dancing (OK, we did too). A great and enthusiastic time was had by all then 30 minutes later the party dissolved again.

A few tourists were left looking rather bemused by the best part of 1000 people dancing to the apparent silence.

What particularly interests me is the mashup of social networking going on here:

• the mix of electronic viral connections through the phones, Skype, MySpace, sites such as www.dontstayin.com and word of mouth,
• the fact that real people actually came together in one location for a communal activity (and the synchronisation of the start was an important element),
• the almost complete lack of direct face-to-face communication (everyone having ear-buds jammed in their heads),
• the fact that everyone was dancing, as much “together” as they would be in a club, but to their own chosen tune,
• the way that the mob evaporated away at the end
• by 11 today (16 hours later) there are 773 pictures of the event at: http://www.dontstayin.com/uk/london/st-pauls-cathedral/2007/jul/19/event-131750

I wonder what parallels and lessons it holds for us about how we might engage people in collaborative learning and how we connect with each other in the 21st century.