Sunday, February 27, 2011

Ubiquitous Learning Lifestyle

For my innovation assignment, I decided to choose the advancements in broadband access for transforming education. Not only learning, but also work and society itself will be transformed as more and more citizens of our world get access. 

Whether or not I get to make my MMORPG as described in my socio-technical plan to transform education, the evolution of the Internet itself is an inevitable innovation.





Sunday, February 13, 2011

Informal and formal learning - Time is Relative

For our futurist prediction, I chose to analyze #5 from the World Future Society's list of top 2011 predictions: the notion that class time as separate from non-class time will vanish. Acquiring the ability to self direct one's learning is of paramount importance. Self-empowerment for many people may be more important. I believe the prediction of boundaries notion to be true and happening rapidly already. Teacher and faculty roles will change to provide mentoring, guidance, validation, and most of all, inspiration.

In as little as 20 years in the US, all formal education will be online available anywhere, anytime, everywhere, all the time. Faculty or teachers who do not use learning technologies will be guilty of educational malpractice. There will still be face to face learning and the need for institutions, but they will serve more as community centers specializing in assessment. Research will also be available in blended formats of virtual and face to face activities. Universities will be cultural, community hubs.

The article asserts that one of the forces upon this prediction is the net generation's use of technology. While true, the variation and ubiquity of learning appliances combined with how those same devices are used for everything we do culturally accelerates the claim.

International accrediting agencies is an intriguing notion. Our country has quite a lot of accreditation agencies and it gets in the way of institutions that serve multiple states. UNESCO's recent open educational resources initiative may be a step in that direction. Global climate change is one force that also will encourage serious gaming to solve real-world problems requiring informal non-class time to participate. I will be one of those CTU grads producing such gaming courseware that spans formal and informal learning to save the planet. Who wants to play?

Questioning Socio-Technical Innovation

The Web 2.0 program I submit for consideration to use in promoting socio-technical innovation is Quora. It is described as an online knowledge market. Quora was publicly released in June 2010 and created by the former CTO of Facebook.

Essentially, it is a platform for subscribing to questions you or others ask. Quora also allows users to vote up and down answers enabling greater veracity of content. It appears to be similar to Wikipedia to submit and edit content in the context of answers rather than information.

When I created an account on Quora the software pulled in my associations from Twitter and Facebook. From that information, topics were suggested allowing me to subscribe to question areas that are of most interest to me.



I like how Quora uses the power of social networking to amplify questions and prognostications about the future using Affinity Theory of whom I trust.

As in all social networking programs, the benefit of use resides in the quality of engagement with others you are willing to open yourself up to in the free exchange of ideas.