In mid-January I spent a wonderful day at American University learning about (and presenting on) the changing educational landscape, technology, and the practices and activities of learners. The slides from my presentation are below:

On February 8, I’ll be delivering a talk at TEDxEdmonton’s event Rethinking Open Source Culture. In 2003 I posted a few articles online on open source movements and learning: Open source p.I, Open Source p.II, and Why we should share learning material. I have benefitted enormously from open learning. Open online courses in particular have been among the most significant learning experiences in my life.

I’m not a programmer. But I benefit daily from open source software – my blogs are wordpress, the server that hosts my sites runs LAMP, at work I use ELGG (the Landing), for open courses we use gRSShopper, etc.

With the Society for Learning Analytics Research we recently posted a concept paper on developing an open learning analytics architecture (.pdf). My personal and professional lives are woven together with open systems and open technologies.

The theme of the TEDxEdmonton event is described as:

As the Internet came to be, we were all excited by the awesome possibilities that would be realized once this free-flowing, open network allowed musicians, artists, scientists and engineers around the world to instantly share their work. Remixing, collaboration, and new innovations would be the result. But while there have been great examples of open source projects (like Wikipedia) fuel[l]ed by the wisdom of crowds, there are many examples where open source culture has fostered nasty group dynamics and mediocre collaborations. Have we glorified open-source software, free information and collective work at the expense of individual creativity? Or is open source culture here to stay?

I’d love to hear about your experiences with open source culture. What have you gained through being open and participating in open culture (e.g. software as a programmer or user) and what have you lost through being open?

Open online courses really mess things up. The force educators/funders/learners to question the value point of traditional education. Over the past four years, many different open online courses have been offered – some through formal universities (U of Manitoba – Stephen Downes and I, BYU – David Wiley, U of Regina – Alec Couros, Stanford – Sebastian Thrun and Peter Norvig, U of Illinois -Ray Schroeder).

I have a long running question that influences my vision of education: If we were to design education today, without the legacy baggage of the existing system, what would it look like? I don’t have a clear answer, but I think it would look similar to open online courses: distributed, leveraging network effects, participative, peer/social pedagogy, large scale sensemaking, artifact creation and sharing, knowledge growth and domain expansion, etc. There is substance to massive open online courses (MOOCs) that goes well beyond the current buzz and hype. This substance, I believe, is about aligning teaching and learning with the way in which information is created, negotiated, and shared through digital and social networks. It is in direct contrast with the value proposition of the current university system.

I was still a bit surprised by this article today – Udacity and the future of universities. Sebastian Thrun, one of the facilitators of the open online course on Artificial Intelligence at Stanford (with over 130,000 students) has left the university, bailing on his tenure appointment to run a startup Udacity. Udacity will build on the open course models of teaching and learning.

Perhaps Thrun’s move shouldn’t be surprising. I’ve interacted with many learners in the open courses we’ve done, and I frequently hear the experience described as “transformative” or “life changing”. When the education system is synchronized with the interests and passions of learners, the process is invigorating and tremendously motivating. However, when learners and educators have to fight the existing education system in order to learn and teach, it’s time for dramatic change. Thrun has recognized that tomorrow’s education system will be a function of large-scale teaching and personalized, social, participative learning. Even then, it’s still surprising to hear him state that “I can’t teach at Stanford again.”

There is more activity in online learning (or, at minimum blended learning) in higher education than most universities realize. When I was at University of Manitoba, we tried to get a sense of what faculty were doing with technology in their courses, particularly with what was then called web 2.0 (doesn’t that almost feel like I’m referencing a trend in the 70′s? you know, like bell bottoms?). First, we looked at the formal university reports – annual reports of department activity. We found very little. We asked Deans to forward an email to their faculty asking about activity with participatory pedagogies/technologies. The response was significant – we found faculty and TAs using wikis, blogs, lecture capture tools, podcasts, clickers, second life, and mobiles for teaching. Activity with emerging technologies wasn’t formally recognized as it was outside of the scope of the things that the university valued.

Blindness to small-scale innovation in higher education is likely still a problem in most universities, but online learning is now recognized and researched. Athabasca University’s Deanna Douglas has produced an excellent report for Canadian Virtual University looking at: Online University Education in Canada: Challenges and Opportunities (.pdf). The report provides a succinct exploration of online learning and where Canada succeeds and where it fails. Policy groups and online learning agencies in other countries will find a broad overview of the structure of university-level online learning in Canada, enrolments, major players, and current trends. On a personal note, I was pleased to see that University of Manitoba listed the work Stephen Downes and I have done with massive open online courses (MOOCs) as an innovation (p. 31).

Overall, the report is not flattering to Canada. We are well behind other countries in online enrolments (p.17). We don’t have clear and comprehensive data on trends in this space (p. 16). For a complete list of barriers, see p. 25, p. 33, and p. 41-42 of the report. I hope, in spite of the challenges and barriers articulated, that this report will serve as a catalyst for policy, strategy, and funding considerations around online learning in Canada. But that hope is tempered with the realization that attempts at innovation and creating a national agency in the learning space doesn’t appear to be a current priority (note the discontinued funding of Canadian Council on Learning.

2012 is shaping up to be a good year for open online learning experiences (Sanford is actively promoting open courses, David Wiley is running an openness in education course, Alec Couros will likely be doing his EC&I831 again, etc.).

I’m involved in several open online learning projects this year:

1. Ongoing from 2011: Change MOOC
2. Learning Analytics Open Course (sign up here) – Starts January 23.
3. Stephen Downes and I will be offering Connectivism and Connective Knowledge 2012 starting January 23. More info soon on sign up
4. I’m helping to organize an online conference – Follow the Sun – a multi-day, 24 hour per day, online conference with keynotes addressing various aspects of how technology is influencing various knowledge domains.

In eras of dramatic change – such as militarization in ancient Rome and the French Revolution/Industrial Revolution – existing mindsets and institutions are, in Schumpeter’s words, creatively destroyed. The newspaper, recording, and TV industries have experienced this recently as digital information comes into its own and sheds legacy structures (such as the “album” or the “newspaper”). Politicians have certainly felt the inability to control narratives and restrict information flow in 2011.

An interesting case symbolizes the balance between control and the attributes of digital information: whether or not to publish the results of engineered bird flu. The short version: “Inside a Dutch medical facility is a potentially devastating weapon that could kill millions: A genetically modified version of the H5N1 bird flu, engineered to be easily transmitted among ferrets. And the researchers who figured out how to do it would like to share their work with the world.”

The challenge in this instance goes beyond ethics. Can scientists reasonably expect to keep digital information secure, especially when it is part of a scientific community and requires peer review? Wikileaks has made it difficult for the US Military to keep secrets. Digital information, held in social networks, can’t be regulated and controlled.

I just listened to a great video discussion – Khan Academy and Stanford AI Class: Reinventing Education – with Peter Norvig, Sebastian Thrun, and Sal Khan. It’s a candid discussion of what each of these educators wanted to achieve with opening up their courses and content and some of the challenges they faced in the process. Most importantly, they (particularly Sebastian) discuss where they were wrong in their previous assumptions about learning.

I’ve been a bit frustrated in the past (actually, I still am) that the history of open courses has not been fully reflected in conversation about the Stanford AI class. People like David Wiley, Alec Couros, Stephen Downes and others have been running open courses since 2007 (this insidehighered article does touch on the history). Audrey Watters captures my thinking when she states: “What does it mean — culturally, pedagogically, politically, financially — that Stanford garners so much buzz for its free online courses while other MOOCs (Massively Open Online Courses) go unheralded?”. However, I’m sure there are educators pre-2007 who are saying “hey, we’re not getting credit for our work with open courses!”.

But that’s a personal ego gripe. It’s encouraging to see educators and trainers exploring the scaling capacity of learning through the use of technology. I enjoyed listening to the reflections of Sal, Sebastian, and Peter. They are excited, as many of us teaching open online courses are, about the capacity for accessible learning opportunities to increase student control and empowerment. Many of their proclamations (decoupling assessment from teaching, the creativity of learners when they don’t face organizational barriers, the power of the online experience) will be familiar to many who have followed our open courses. Interestingly, Thrun stated that online learners did better (by a factor of 2 with those making top grades) than in class learners.

It’s good to have growing diversity in researchers and educators offering alternative course models. As more people experiment with open online course, new tools will be developed and recognition of the value of open learning will also (hopefully) increase.

Learning analytics are increasingly relevant, and prominent, in education. Startups and established software vendors are targeting learning analytics in their product offerings for the education and training and development sector. Many of the companies that serve the higher education market– including Sungard, Blackboard, and Pearson – are already heavily committed to analytics. Analytics is quickly becoming a term that gets slapped onto any existing product (remember social media from a few years ago? Suddenly, everything was “social”. In education, everything is becoming “data” and “analytics”). Fortunately, analytics can be much more than a software marketing value-added term.

To some degree, all educators are involved in analytics. It might be as basic as being the end-user of a recommender system when buying a book online or as complex as using curriculum pathways to determine the prospect of student success. And, when we’re not the ones analyzing data, our digital data trails are fodder for others who are. I don’t think I’m over speaking when I state that in five years, analytics tools and suites will be as central in higher education learning management and enterprise resource management systems are today. The reason is simple: learning analytics provide insight into what is happening in the learning process and how teaching and learning strategies impact learner success. Of course, analytics in education go beyond only learner success and can provide insight into the outcome of systemic reform initiatives as well as general resource allocation (I have a short post on my learning analytics site on the topic).

Given the importance of analytics in education, we need to have an early discussion on openness. Why not start with an open system rather than adding openness on as an afterthought once systems are already established? Why not learn from the experiences of previous system-wide software development processes (i.e. LMS) and apply those lessons right up front in the planning process?

To address the need for openness of platforms, algorithms and ensure that the learning process remains a key focus, a group of us have proposed the development of an open learning analytics architecture/platform. We’ve posted our (beta) vision online: Open Learning Analytics: an integrated & modularized platform (.pdf). We are interested in hearing from, and partnering with, others – researchers, educators, universities, schools, startups, and corporate partners (learning and development departments). We have submitted several grant applications and have a few more that will be submitted in the next six months (one early response chastised us for being “too ambitious”. I solidly reject that assertion. Why is it that corporate entities can have ambitious plans but researchers are expected to think in isolated minutiae? Researchers need to think in systems and platforms in order to have an impact).

Additionally, we (Simon Buckingham Shum, Shane Dawson, Erik Duval, Dragan Gasevic, and myself) are offering an open online course on learning analytics starting January 2012. Sign up is available here. Finally, if you’re interested, we are hosting our 2nd conference on Learning Analytics and Knowledge in Vancouver at the end of April.

I’ve embedded a presentation below I did at IADIS conference at East China Normal University in Shanghai this past week on Envisioning a System Wide Learning Analytics Platform (slide 31 details some of the principles behind the project):

I just landed in Vancouver after a short trip to Shanghai to present at the IADIS conference hosted by East China Normal University. One of the faculty members (Ren Youqun, I believe) from this university translated Knowing Knowledge into Chinese. This is my second trip in the last three weeks – I was in Guangzhou at the end of November visiting South China Normal University and Sun Yatsen University. So, other than being rather irritable and jet lagged, I have a few quick reactions to share about my experiences in Guangzhou and Shanghai.

1. I’ve never been in a country with the optimism I found in China – the students I spoke with had a strong sense of China coming into its own. We are entering Chinese century (or several). By 2020, their economy (gdp) is expected to be about $20 trillion annually. This forecast seems to vary a fair bit, depending on how much the speaker or organization is trying to scare listeners with the west to east power shift. The faculty, students, and government officials that I spoke with are well aware that they are entering their destiny as a superpower. I met a few western researchers – who have worked in China for over a decade – and they described how China is becoming more assertive with partnerships and joint ventures. China is not willing to simply have their students poached by higher education systems around the world. China is experiencing rapid growth in the numbers of international students studying for a degree (rather than only spending a year for the “Chinese experience”).

2. My hosts were exceptionally courteous. I spoke at a K-12 conference in Nanhai District (just outside of Guangzhou). The program to kick off the conference included about 1 1/2 hours of greetings from various levels of government. Dinners and lunches included a stream of dishes that I simply couldn’t keep up with. The key, apparently, is to taste, not eat everything. Chinese visitors to other countries must feel like we’re a bunch of slouches – we simply don’t honour our guests the way they do.

3. The construction is astonishing. So is the smog. I’ve seen documentaries and read articles about both, but until you experience it in person, it’s not real. The construction in particular is mind boggling. Roads, buildings, railways, and airports are being built on a scale that I don’t think has ever happened in human history.

4. Social spaces are impressive. In Guangzhou, my hosts took me down to the Pearl River late one evening. The walkway and park areas were packed – people were dancing, performing, singing, or just randomly hanging out. The energy was contagious. I felt the urge to take up Thai Chi. Or singing. Or something artistic and social.

5. The internet in China is unusable. At least for me. Diigo didn’t work. Gmail was hit and miss. Twitter didn’t work. Niether did Facebook (but that’s not a loss for me, I’m rarely there anymore). My daily information habits (google reader, tag in diigo, tweet, etc) simply didn’t work. I do a fair bit of traveling and I’ve never felt as disconnected as I did in China. However, this doesn’t mean that they don’t use twitter-like tools. I came across this presentation – Social Media In China – that provides a good overview of the tools and technologies available. I’m starting to think that China blocks services less for censorship and more for giving their software companies an opportunity to gain traction.

6. I should learn Mandarin. So should my kids.

7. As polite, courteous, and attentive as my hosts were, they work their speakers like rented mules . Their culture is very much one of learning and wanting to glean what they can from others. The passion for learning is something I haven’t experienced as intensely elsewhere as I did in China. The day would start with a breakfast meeting, followed by two hour presentations, working lunch, afternoon sessions, travel to evening presentation, social dinner, presentations until late in the evening. At least this was the pace in Guangzhou. I’m told Shanghai has a less hectic pace. I was disoriented most of the time – English road signs are common – but I really was at the mercy of my hosts. There is very little I could do on my own. In Europe, I can get by with English. In China, I very rapidly discovered I needed translators. I couldn’t order a coffee (tea) or beverage on my own. Even hand gestures were futile. It’s quite a fatiquing process.

Finally, a few quick notes from the IADIS conference, particularly Prof Gao Hong Qing: Dean of Network Center, He Nan Normal University, China. He spoke on the topic of Cloud computing in China Education

Internet Stats in China:
457 million online
34.4% penetration
Over 300 million mobile internet users
73 million new users in last year alone (2009 to 2010)
78% access internet via desktop
66.2% mobile
45.7% laptop (but fastest growing segment (2010)
Time online: 18.3 hours per week (2010). Slight decrease from 2009.
Ages 10-29 largest users of internet

Learning online:
Growing rapidly (no stats given)
Open University of China – largest online university in the world
Modern distance education project in rural primary/secondary schools (all classrooms can connect to the internet).
Currently 2429 university/colleges linked to china education and research network. 64, 797 middle/primary schools.
IT needs to help universities address their “business challenges” of doing more with less, reduced risk, etc.
Cloud computing in China: 660 million yuan ($103 million) has been allocated for cloud computing research

The prominence of US-based tech firms was significant: Microsoft has a huge footprint. As does Cisco. The language of the presentations (especially on cloud computing) was indistinguishable from what I hear at western conferences.

IRRODL continues to solidify its reputation as the leading journal in the educational technology field that balances thoughtful research with very timely and relevant journal themes, as indicated by the latest special issue – Emergent Learning, Connections, Design for Learning. IRRODL seems to capture the zeitgeist of online learning more rapidly than others. Congrats to Terry Anderson (editor) and Rod Sims & Elena Kays (editors of this special issue) for an outstanding publication.

Not sure if a disclaimer is necessary, as I’m sure readers will make up their own minds and I wasn’t involved with this IRRODL issue. However, just in case, several of the articles reference open online courses that I’ve helped to organize.

I’m in Rijeka, Croatia. It’s my first visit hear and it’s a beautiful country. The scenery is spectacular. Unfortunately, most of my time has been spent in a hotel room writing and getting caught up on email/work, etc. Wasn’t traveling fun *before* we could take our work with us?!

I’ve uploaded the slides from my presentation this morning:

Have a look at this video (a few static images kick off the video, but the fun stuff begins shortly after):

Murmuration from Sophie Windsor Clive on Vimeo.

I’m always looking for metaphors, models, and analogies that can tease out learning and knowledge, and the social connective actions that give rise to both. This week, for example, in #change11, Dave Cormier is discussing rhizomes as a metaphor or way to think about learning. Similarly, starling murmurations provide a brilliant example of how systems, comprised of individual agents, can synchronize to produce fascinating activity.

EDUCAUSE publishes short papers on 7 things you should know about… that provide an overview of emerging topics and trends. Their most recent publication is on 7 things your should know about MOOCs (.pdf). From the paper: “But perhaps the most significant contribution is the MOOC’s potential to alter the relationship between learner and instructor and between academe and the wider community by potentially providing a very large and diverse forum and meeting place for ideas. Those enrolling in a MOOC are likely to discover learning at its most open on a platform that invites the world not only to see and hear but also to participate and collaborate.” Great stuff!!

I would have liked to see the inclusion of more open courses (those offered by Alec Couros, Ray Schroeder, David Wiley, mobiMOOC, Wendy Drexler, Chis Sessums, etc) as well as the growing amount of “mooc support resources” such as Dave Cormier’s What is a MOOC video (with almost 20k views).

Anytime individuals get together to reclaim social justice and fairness or to empower themselves in the light of gross inequalities, I’m heartened and encouraged.

I’ve been following the #Occupy movement with tremendous interest. The inequalities in society are increasing. The small % control the majority.

The movement is now 6 weeks old, and with that small amount of maturity, comes new models of organization and structure. News coverage of the #occupy has critiqued its lack of central leadership. That’s actually a positive, I think. Let ideas emerge, experiment with new models of democracy, and take advantage of self-organization and the passion of connected individuals.

However, the #occupy movement will fail unless it changes how it structures and scales its message to draw in the next wave of participants. Failure is a relative term, of course. #Occupy members could say “we’re successful because we’ve raised the profile of the injustices of the banking system and inequality of society”. And, of course, they have. They might even be responsible for getting Bank of America to drop it’s $5 monthly debit fee.

But, if the intent of #occupy is to reduce inequality – particularly at a systemic level – what it mosts needs is scale. By scale, I mean a critical mass of people. And that’s not happening. There are a few bright spots (Zuccotti park), but the movement has started to specialize too soon. At this point, I would expect to see numerous Zuccotti’s. It’s becoming a clique, an “in-club” with special language and symbols. I saw a few #occupy members on Colbert Report yesterday. They may not be representative, but I was left with a sense of “wow, I don’t speak their language…I have ZERO interest in being a part of what they are talking about”.

I’m concerned about economic inequality. #occupy has collected an eclectic mix of fragmented messages and specialized languages. As such, it is concerned with, well, everything: female-bodied persons, autonomous action and identity, empowered people, rights of all sorts, economics, racism, social injustice, and so on. Each draws from its parent discipline (often in academia) with special language and special processes of communicating. Unless #occupy is able to communicate 1) in a manner, 2) about topics, and 3) in a language that resonates with broader society their ideological fragmentation will be a liability.

I see this from a learning perspective: Learning is about coherence-forming…we connect concepts into some type of structure and coherent whole that enables action and guidance in our thinking. When language isn’t clear or when concepts can’t be cognitively apprehended because of too much specialization of language and protocol, coherence is simply not possible.

#Occupy can be leaderless and diverse and still succeed. It can be distributed and networked and still succeed. However, if its message doesn’t resonate with a significant portion of society, due to lack of coherence or limited capability of individuals to form personal coherence around numerous voices, it will fail. Over the last few days, for me at least, the message has stopped to resonate.

Outside of taking courses in XML, programming logic, and Python, I am not a programmer. I understand the importance of being able to program. I can get by with HTML and CSS. There are few things more irritating, however, than having ideas that one is not capable of activating in a meaningful way. It’s like having a desire to communicate but lacking the ability to speak. This isn’t a huge liability – as long as you have access to people who can translate your ideas into code. Or apps. Or something digital. You need to be part of a team that covers your weaknesses. I don’t have access to a team like this, so I’ll whine here instead.

Here are a few tools that I would like someone, somewhere to build (startups, research labs, competent coders):

1. Geoloqi for curriculum. I love this idea and I’ve been talking about a similar concept for years. Basically, it combines your location with information layers. For example, if you activate the Wikipedia layer, you’ll receive updates when you are in a vicinity of a site based on a wikipedia article. One of the challenges with traditional classroom learners is the extreme disconnect between courses and concepts. Efforts to connect across subject silos are minimal. However, connections between ideas and concepts amplifies the value of individual elements. If I’m taking a course in political history, receiving in-context links and texts when I’m near an important historical site would be helpful in my learning. Mobile devices are critical in blurring boundaries: virtual/physical worlds, formal/informal learning.

2. Visualization and data collision tools. I need tools to help me make sense of complexity. I want to be able to activate an open data set (UNESCO, OECD, local university) and perform visualizations based on questions that I ask the system – i.e. computation meets visualization, sort of like what would happen if WolframAlpha meets Gapminder. I want to be able to manipulate random data collisions, combining (or, at least, position in relation to each other) stats and open data with qualitative data. One of the reasons many people are not very data-based in their thinking and argumentation is that the tools to interact with data are difficult to use and inaccessible. Want to debate the economic impact of the #occupy movement? Sure, let’s fire up SPSS load some economic data, compare that with sentiment analysis in both traditional and social media, and then output a visualization on our blogs. It’s much easier to say #occupy is Awesome/Sucks.

3. gRSShopper. I’ve known Stephen Downes for over a decade. What he’s doing today will be prominent in edtech in a few years (if his early work with OLE (LMS), blogging, RSS, learning 2.0 are any indication). We’ve used gRRShopper, a tool that he developed, for our open courses over the past few years. It aggregates blogs and feeds the ones with a particular course tag into a daily email. Basically, it weaves together distributed conversations (blogs, twitter, moodle). However, it’s a system built for the mind of Stephen. Which means that it will likely not receive broad adoption unless fairly tech-competent educators deploy it. And that’s the problem: many educators do not have a significant programming/technical background. And many programmers do not have a solid educational or learning sciences disposition. In order for gRSShopper and the Daily (email newsletter used in open online courses) to receive broad adoption, they must become push-button easy so any teacher can start an open course as easily as she can start a blog. edufeedr is another tool that offers similar blog aggregation in courses, but I don’t think it’s tied to an email service like the Daily.

I don’t know how my writing comes across to others. When I was a teenager, I had a few general issues with the world (I know, likely the first teenager in history with this affliction) and very specific issues with authority. This attitude produced a number of difficult situations for me. At one point, as I was engaged in paying the consequences of a particular act in the form of a solid tongue lashing from a judge, I remember this odd feeling of “I’m not like that…I’m a pretty good person”. But, in reality, people can’t evaluate us by our thoughts. Our actions, words, and artifacts determine how others interpret us.

With most of my writing on this blog and with open online courses, I’m not trying to tell others what I know. Generally, I’m trying to make my process of coming to know as transparent as possible. When we learn transparently, we teach others.

This preamble is a lead up to something that I’m hoping doesn’t come across the wrong way (i.e. self-promotional and such). I was in Madrid yesterday where I received a very generous award: the Fundación Telefónica/OEI Award for an individual who demonstrated “educational innovation through the use of ICT, thus substantially contributing to improving the quality of education” at the 6th annual International EducaRed conference. A huge, very humble, thank you to the conference organizers, the foundation, and to my hosts. I had hoped to spend more time in Madrid, but unfortunately, my daughter is ill and I had to cut the trip short.

While my time was short (20 hours from landing to take off), I did have an opportunity to meet numerous educators from Spain, Peru, Argentina, Brazil, and Columbia. A few years ago, I was chatting with Stephen Downes about the high level of interest from educators in Latin American countries in connectivism, social networked learning, and ICT use in education. I’m not sure why this is the case. Nonetheless, I had a great time meeting teachers and leaders, the fine folks at EducaRED, and representatives from Fundación Telefónica. Thanks. I’m honoured. And humbled.

Data, big data, analytics, and visualization are significant trends in education. We need to pay attention. There is much to be alarmed about with analytics, including the mechanization of teaching, learning, and assessment. Additionally, the data and analytics that are easy to collect and conduct risk becoming a simple veneer over the complexities of learning and cognition. Or, as Gardner Campbell states: “Current NGLC/NCLB paradigms create great risk of analytics-generated edu-hell.”

Analytics also hold promise for providing increased quality of learning for individuals. We experience benefits of analytics in many areas of our lives, including music, books, and social network friend recommendations. My interest in learning analytics, however, doesn’t blind me to potential risks. We should be concerned and alert as analytics discussions turn to education. Learners are not widgets to be optimized and shifted around in assembly lines. By the same account, analytics can yield value in improving learner success in the current education system, and, more critically, providing perspectives on how we should improve the system itself. The slides below are from a presentation I delivered at EDUCAUSE 2011:

At the EDUCAUSE 2011 conference today, I had the pleasure of attending a lecture by Hal Abelson – founding director of Free Software Foundation and Creative Commons. He presented on the state of openness in education. While on the surface openness is gaining traction through scholarship and publication, content providers and journal publishers are starting to push back.

During the talk, he used the image below (from this article – .pdf) to argue that journal publishers have a monopoly. The surface progress of openness belies a deeper, more dramatic period of conflict around openness that is only now beginning.

Across the full spectrum of education – primary, secondary, and higher – we are witnessing a race to develop platforms for content, learning, teaching, and evaluation. As liberating as the web is, tremendous centralization of control is occurring in numerous spaces: Google in search/advertising/Android, Amazon in books/cloud computing, Facebook in social networks, etc. I use a smaller range of tools today than I did five years ago. And the reason is simple: companies are in a landrush to create platforms that will tie together previously disconnected activities and tools. Numerous companies are eager to platform the educational sector, with Pearson being the lead runner to date. More on that in a bit.

This post/rant on life at Amazon and Google, from the perspective of an employee (programmer?) with experiences in both systems, is worth a read. It is not, however, an exercise in logic. The rant is a bit confusing as it starts off criticizing Amazon as doing everything wrong and Google as doing everything right. Then the author shifts to a discussion of how Amazon got platform and accessibility right (which he acknowledges as being the most important elements). So that kind of doesn’t add up. But a critical concept is expressed about mid-way through the post:

Google+ is a knee-jerk reaction, a study in short-term thinking, predicated on the incorrect notion that Facebook is successful because they built a great product. But that’s not why they are successful. Facebook is successful because they built an entire constellation of products by allowing other people to do the work. So Facebook is different for everyone. Some people spend all their time on Mafia Wars. Some spend all their time on Farmville. There are hundreds or maybe thousands of different high-quality time sinks available, so there’s something there for everyone.

In education, we don’t yet have that platform that enables/allows “other people to do the work”. Learning management systems, authoring tools, and personal learning environments don’t quite get the “it’s the platform, stupid” aspect of the internet. Most of the tools we have available today in education allow us to create content within a system. What a platform enables is very different; it enables the extension of a system. Amazon is brilliant at this – they’ve essentially vanquished main components in the book space. They’re basically a monopoly, one that will only increase with the Amazon Fire. For an author, all roads lead to Amazon. Facebook has mastered this in the social network space as well. Facebook is now well past being a social network. Billboards and magazine/newspaper ads for companies list “facebook.com/whatever” instead of an actual open web URL. I guess that’s why Facebook is now bigger than the web was in 2004.

When I was at the Strata conference in February, I was surprised at who wasn’t there in any substantial way – Yahoo, Google, Microsoft (they did present on Azure, but their presence was minimal). Who ruled? Amazon. AWS. Every single session. Because Amazon gets the platform concept – as they did with book selling: entrepreneurs need a platform. They have ideas, but they don’t have huge dollars for technical infrastructure. So, AWS. Plug and play. An entrepreneur doesn’t want to think about the platform. For entrepreneurs in need of big, scalable computing, all roads lead to Amazon.

Similarly, educators don’t want to think about the platform. They want something easy to use – simple, effective, and extensible – so they can get on with teaching and research.

Knewton gets this with their platform, hence their massive $33 million funding round. (note Pearson as a partner).

Pearson and Google appear to be making in-roads in this space with Open Class:

Today Pearson, the publishing and learning technology group, has joined the software giant Google to launch OpenClass, a free LMS that combines standard course-management tools with advanced social networking and community-building, and an open architecture that allows instructors to import whatever material they want, from e-books to YouTube videos.

I posted on this last year after Blackboard acquired Elluminate and Wimba:

To be effective in the long term, large LMS companies will need to pull more and more of the education experience under their umbrella. Why? Well, technology is getting complex. Very complex. Which means that decisions makers are motivated (partly out of fear of appearing ill-informed, partly out of not wanting to take risks) to adopt approaches that integrate fairly seamlessly across the education spectrum. Why buy an LMS when you can buy the educational process?

I would not be surprised, if in the next several years, educational institutions – especially those who are cash strapped – end up using a content/delivery platform the same way we use Facebook today “Visit us at Pearson.com”. Blackboard’s acquisition binge was about building an integrated infrastructure to offer one-point value for universities (and now, schools with the Edline affiliation). Pearson has been aggressively moving in this direction for over a decade. Startups like Knewton want to be your testing/adaptive content platform (either they get big fast or they will be acquired by Pearson or similar platform-aspirational company). Sure, we’ll still have edupunks and other deviant educators playing at the corners or outer edges of these platforms and systems. Whoever has the platform sets the rules and controls the game. Diversity will be pushed to the margins and Ellul’s fears will be realized in education as they have been realized in much of society.