Last week I have given a presentation (dutch) on a primary school with a group of parents/ teachers. I've learned that most parrents are worried, much more than they (in my opinion) need to.

 

I've started the presentation with some news messages of everyday in that week of which I thought were relevant to the topic. They really stated the urgency and actuality of the emergence of the online world and what we (as a society) are curently doing to keep the online world under control.

 

Most of the times when a parent expressed his/her worries I've tried to relate the same example to an ofline event. A lot of parents think 2 hours of gaming is way to much, but when you ask them about reading a book for two hours or watching a movie.... what is the difference? I think the difference lies in the unknown. Parent/ educators, as digital immigrants, mostly don't know what is happening in online worlds.

 

Children get harressed by other classmates when they are on MSN instant messaging. As a solution, schools and parents shut down MSN. The same children are being harressed on the playground, but is the solution then closing down the playground??? I bet that sound silly to you, the same is for shutting down MSN. Instead, we should be talking with our kids and just simply raise them as we used to do. It's about letting them explore the world and we as educators or parents are there to guide them on their path. Do we therefore need to know all the latest technology? Instead, I think we need NOT to be afraid and have trust in our children/ students, because most of the times they are a lot smarter than we tend to think...

Knowledge in > Patent out. According to Emile Aarts, VP of Phillips Research, that is how we should deal with innovation in the bussines world (SURF 2006).

 

Sometimes I'm struggling with the ides of knowledge distribution in corporate settings. In many small- mid size company's, knowledge workers need to act in external knowledge networks or communities of practice in order to keep up. But where do we drwa the line, what knowledge is there to share with others (in order to increase your own) and what knowledge do we need to keep to our selfs and within the walls of our company? Phillips measures their innovative succes through the amount of patents in a year by the company, research team or even a researcher. But is that the way to enhance knowledge sharing and improve innovation? I'm sure its beneficial for the business on the short term, but I doubt it to be for long term innovation.

 

Take a look at how Blackboard is acting currently on the world market. Bussinesswise its understandable to tell other companies: hey! we've thought about this stuff a lot and now we want to protect that knowledge, if you want to use it you can buy it. But is knowledge something you can own and sell???? fuzzy stuff.....maybe it has something to do with the current transistion from a production economy to a knowledge economy and we still haven't find any satisfying ways to act in such an economy in which knowledge is a "production factor".

 

 

Dear Mr. Dell,

 

I would like to thank you for making your flagship product, the famous DELL laptop, durable and always up with the latest hardware technology. It is great to see that your company is able to design product parts that needs replacement within a year so that i'm able to keep ordering new harddisks for my laptop. I would also like to thank you for the posibility that your batteries kan blow up anytime soon because I think my inhouse furniture that I bought at IKEA also needs replacement.

 

Moreover I would like to thank my company's tech support team for saving all my (research) data before the total harddisk needed replacement.

 

with love,

 

JR

 

 Yesterday I’ve had the pleasure to attend a preconference meeting with George Siemens at the SURF 2006 in Utrecht, The Netherlands. I was introduced to Siemens’ ideas for like a year ago at the SURF 2005, since then I’m following his several blogs.

 George Siemens has introduced a new learning theory (as he claims it) for learning in a networked world called “Connectivism”. This notion for learning (as I would like to call it) is especially interesting for me as a researcher in the field of the net-generation learning. Siemens main argument is that accepted theories such as behaviorism, cognitivism and constructivism were designed in a time when we didn’t have the possibility to use technology for learning and as such we need to rethink our ideas on how people learn.

 Siemens emphasizes the social aspects of learning and sees that a lot of theories on learning include social aspects of learning, but not the effects of technology on the learning processes.  Siemens states that social aspects with eg constructivism focus on internalizing instead of externalizing knowledge. Individuals learn with others, but eventually create meaning for themselves. This while, according to Siemens, humans have a natural desire to externalize. Technology can be a mediator in this process with for example tagging blog posts, or stating goals with 43 things.

 In my opinion this idea of externalization is not new. I’ve written earlier about social-constructivism and the socio-cultural perspective in my article on the social aspects of learning. Under influence of the ideas of Vygotsky emphasizes on the social aspects of learning. The two perspectives differ in their notion on where information processes lie. The social-constructivist perspective makes a distinction between the learner and the environment, but the socio-cultural perspective sees the individual as part of that environment (de Laat, 2006). Also Akkerman (2006) outlines this specific situation of the socio-cultural perspective in a comparison with the cognitive theory and notes that with the former, information processes lie within social interaction. The construction of knowledge lies within the social interaction, such as might be found in work related learning networks as networks of practice and communities of practice.

 ....so....not a new learning theory? I think we have finally a great speaker and theorist that emphasizes the importance of technology in our society and thinks about its effects on learning. I hope keep up with Siemens blog posts (he told us he has a lot of time to write beacause of his travelling). Let me share you just this link to keep on thinking about this aspect of externalization: http://www.elearnspace.org/blog/archives/002688.html I hope to respond on that later this week/month...