I was delighted to join Kim Wilkins (@kimxtom@TeenTechGirls) and Carrie Anne Philbin (@MissPhilbin@GeekGurlDiaries) in presenting a session in the Global Education Conference this week. The week-long online conference is an inspiring model of openness and collaboration, with presenters and participants from across the globe — mostly students and educators, but open to all.
In our session Geek Gurl Diaries: Empowering the Next Generation of Women in Tech we explored the gender gap in computing and technology and shared our experiences and best practices in promoting and changing science, engineering and computer studies to address this gap. Click the link above to view the session (then just click the purple Blackboard Collaborate icon to view). The presentation slides are below:
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Kim Wilkins and Carrie Anne Philbin are quite inspiring tech women themselves! Kim is an educator and technology activist in Virginia (USA) and creator of these excellent Tech Girl resources. You can subscribe to Kim’s Tech Girl newsletter for regular updates.
Carrie Anne is a teacher and digital heroine in London and creator of these excellent Geek Gurl resources — Carrie’s wonderful YouTube videos are well worth sharing with girls.
I joined Kim and Carrie Anne by speaking about girls and women in technology here in Ireland and highlighting some important research on gender and technology. A few key themes emerged in our session:
The underrepresentation of women in technology has been remarkably persistent over time and across countries. The current proportion of women undergraduates in computing, for example, is 15% in Ireland and the UK, under 20% in the US. Although the proportion of women studying computing and IT was higher in the 1980s and 1990s, computing and IT are now in the same category as other STEM subjects such as engineering and physics in which women are dramatically underrepresented.
Attitudes toward computing and many STEM subjects are highly gendered. Kim Wilkins cited studies from the US which show that girls form positive or negative attitudes towards technology by age 13. Thus, initiatives to break down gender barriers must be in place in primary school and early secondary school, not just at career choice time.
Computing — as well as a focus on creating not consuming technology — should be part of education from primary school onwards. But it is not just in school that such initiatives can take place. Local community initiatives such as Coder Dojo, coding clubs for young people, can be powerful opportunities for children to develop coding skills as well as breaking down traditional gender stereotypes about technology. The open, collaborative and peer learning ethos of Coder Dojo attracts many girls as well as boys, as well as many female mentors.
Long-standing research in the area of gender and technology indicates that while encouraging girls and women to consider careers in computing and technology is important, it is not enough. Initiatives to encourage girls to study STEM subjects have been in place for many years — and still just 15-20% of our undergraduates in these subjects are female. The social construction of STEM itself must be placed under scrutiny. Thus, efforts to address the underrepresentation of women in computing and STEM must include breaking down gender sterotypes held by girls and boys and creating a more inclusive STEM culture which encourages diversity of participation by age, class and race as well as gender.
Our thanks to all of the #globaled12 session participants with whom we engaged in a lively chat session both during and after our presentation. We would love to continue the conversations and develop further collaborations — please contact Kim Wilkins, Carrie Anne Philbin and/or myself (details above).
This year we are using an open course blog to share our work. Instead of preparing and posting static presentations as class notes, I prepare a blog post after class each week, summarizing what we explored and discussed. Students and others are free to comment and engage in discussion on the blog. Later this term, the course blog also will link to student blogs, as these are developed. We also have a course Twitter account @CT231 which you are invited to follow — or simply check our course hashtag #ct231.
This week’s class on Exploring Digital Identities was fascinating. Students engaged in reflection and discussion both in class and online. We were joined online (via Twitter) by Bonnie Stewart, whose excellent blog post Digital Identities: Six Key Selves of Networked Publics we analysed. The discussion continued on Twitter and on our blog with contributions from @sharonlflynn, @marloft, @tweety4bird and @fboss (so far). Many thanks to you all! Please check out our blog (link below) and feel free to join the conversation — we welcome your thoughts.
I’ve just compiled a Google doc #ITwomen with the names of nearly 60 women in IT — current and potential speakers and conference presenters. Hopefully, the list will grow; you are invited to add to or amend the list to keep it current. [November 7th update: the #ITwomen list now has the names of over 120 women.]
Here is the story behind the list…
Last night I received notice of an upcoming IT conference (on web, cloud computing and social media) to be held here in Ireland. I clicked through to see the list of speakers. Quite impressive: 20 speakers, mostly from Ireland but also the UK and the US. Startling and disappointing, however: only one of the 20 speakers is female. I’ve worked in IT for many of the past 30 years. During that time the proportion of women has fluctuated. But to host an IT conference in 2012 with only 5% representation of women on the speaker panel?
I contacted the organiser of the conference to express my dismay:
“This event looks great but am I right in seeing a line-up of 20 speakers — 19 men and 1 woman?! When organising events like this, it’s important for us to think about how powerfully that speaks to people. Are we reinforcing or challenging the stereotypes that people hold about IT? More diversity improves what we do in so many ways: the environments in which we work, what we design and make, and how many new, talented people are attracted to work in IT and tech fields.”
In ongoing correspondence since last night, the organiser told me that they “had tried” to get more women speakers and that they weren’t the only conference in Ireland that has had trouble finding women speakers. He said he’d be happy to receive recommendations and suggestions.
About a dozen names popped into my mind immediately, women in IT whom I know here in Ireland — Sharon Flynn, Mary Loftus, Heather James, Karlin Lillington, Martha Rotter — as well as women outside Ireland who speak at international conferences — Josie Fraser, Jane Hart, Jane Bozarth, Kim Wilkins, Jane Boyd and of course danah boyd. And that was just in the first two minutes! But rather than set to work coming up with my own list, I decided to ask Twitter:
Hello Twitter – I've been asked for names of women in IT as conference speakers in Ireland. Your suggestions welcome! #ITwomen Please RT.— Catherine Cronin (@catherinecronin) August 31, 2012
The response during the next few hours was terrific, but not altogether surprising. This kind of crowdsourcing of ideas is open to anyone who understands the power of networks and social media and is willing to ask openly for feedback rather than rely only on our own personal contacts.
I’ve compiled all of the suggestions into one list #ITwomen, an open Google doc. (You can also search #ITwomen on Twitter.) It contains the names of women in Ireland, the UK and further afield (labelled ‘International’ in the list). In addition to individual women, a few specific lists of women in IT and women speakers were shared; these are at the top of the document. Please feel free to add or amend the document to keep it updated.
Finally, thank you to all who responded and retweeted earlier. It’s been a pleasure to be in touch with each of you today. We created this resource together and hopefully it will make a difference. It’s about time. Thank you.
In June 1996 I attended a poetry reading by Seamus Heaney at the University of Stirling. The Principal of the University gave a short introduction, saying that we would remember the next hour for the rest of our lives. I believe he was right. There were many reasons that Seamus Heaney connected with and elevated us that evening. One was that Heaney was speaking to a community deeply shocked by the tragedy of the school shooting just 3 months earlier in neighbouring Dunblane, where I also lived. We were still shocked, still grieving, emotionally wide open. I remember thinking at the time that, somehow, Seamus Heaney met us in that space. Without addressing that pain directly, his poetry, his tone, his truth were like lifelines to us. He began and ended with his poem “Song” (from Field Work, 1979):
A rowan like a lipsticked girl.
Between the by-road and the main road
Alder trees at a wet and dripping distance
Stand off among the rushes.
There are the mud-flowers of dialect
And the immortelles of perfect pitch
And that moment when the bird sings very close
To the music of what happens.
Mary Robinson pictured at Galway Arts Festival 2012 where she was joined in conversation with Fintan O’Toole. (Photo: Reg Gordon)
I had similar feelings seeing Mary Robinson last week at the Galway Arts Festival. The event was billed as Mary Robinson in conversation with Fintan O’Toole so the atmosphere was one of an evening among friends. The sound that greeted the pair when they emerged on stage at the Town Hall Theatre told a story in itself. A huge roar arose — applause, whoops and cheers. It was a wave of gratitude, affection and admiration for a woman who many of us regard as a hero, but also an expression I think of our hunger. We yearn for leaders with ethical vision, leadership skills, and courage in the face of injustice. We have so few of these (with our President Michael D. Higgins a notable exception). Seeing Mary Robinson reminded us of the best of us, what we have and also what we lack.
During her remarkable career as a constitutional lawyer, human rights campaigner, Senator, Ireland’s first female President, and the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson developed a reputation for fearless leadership. As she said last week, she never had a problem confronting bullies. She did that “growing up with four brothers” in Mayo and throughout her student days at Trinity College, as well as in Irish public life and on the world stage. As UN High Commissioner for Human Rights she voiced forthright criticism of human rights abuses following the events of 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq — and received harsh criticism. She told us that one of her colleagues remarked at the time that she might lose her job for speaking out, to which she replied: “It’s better to do this job then to try to keep this job.” Mary Robinson stepped down from her position at the U.N. in 2002.
For the past decade, Mary Robinson has devoted her passion, her intellect and her considerable energies to educating about and addressing our most serious global problems – racism, human rights abuses, child marriage and climate change. She is a founding member of The Elders (“one of the younger ones”, she wryly remarked) and founder of the Mary Robinson Foundation — Climate Justice. Her greatly anticipated memoir Everybody Matters will be published in September 2012.
During the wide-ranging conversation with Mary Robinson in Galway, Fintan O’Toole asked her about emigration, racism, her Presidency and her more recent global work. Emigration from Ireland, across generations, has deeply affected our national psyche, she said. In ways, “emigration is our psyche”. It “hardens us” but also contributes to traits such as our humour, resilience and adaptability. Of xenophobia and racism, however, Mary Robinson was unequivocal. Racism is the human rights issue of our time, she said. During her time as President, and since, she has been aware of racism in Ireland. Mary Robinson linked emigration and racism, saying that we must reflect on the generations of Irish who emigrated to Britain, the United States and elsewhere (my own grandparents among them). How did they or would they have felt experiencing the racist treatment which some emigrants to Ireland experience?
Mary Robinson spoke most passionately about climate justice. She recounted how she has been struck over and over again, across her travels to poorer communities in Africa, Asia and South America, by the cataclysmic effects of climate change. Robinson described how her friend Constance, a small farmer in Uganda, told her that there are no longer any seasons, only cycles of drought and flash flooding. These are dramatic and recent changes which Constance emphatically described as “outside our experience”. Robinson realised that this is likely to mean 200 years of experience, as oral tradition stretches back through the generations. Mary Robinson is clear about our responsibilities in the developed world to work towards climate justice. We must reduce our reliance on oil, continue to invest in and develop renewable forms of energy, and help the developing world become climate resilient. The developing world is suffering “because of what we have done”.
Mary Robinson describes climate change and the goals of climate justice
Of all there is to admire about Mary Robinson, her warmth and humanity shine above all else. She spoke openly last week about all she has learned throughout her public life. She spoke of her dread of public speaking when she was younger, and how she decided she had to overcome that fear in order to speak what had to be said. She learned also, during her time as President, about the importance of tone and humour. Her landmark speech to the Houses of Oireachtas in Ireland in 1995 was feted globally, particularly for her potent concept of the Irish diaspora and the light in the window at Áras an Uachtaráin. The speech was not warmly welcomed by the assembly in the House, however, and she realised that her tone was too serious: “I was too important about it”. So she learned to communicate more of herself and her humour. And from the playwright Tom Murphy she said she gained a deeper understanding of tone while “telling it true”. Today, Mary Robinson is a woman who brings all of her considerable talents to her work, along with her wonderful humanity, humility, honesty and humour. For all of this, and all she has done, she is loved and cherished.
At the end of Mary Robinson’s talk with Fintan O’Toole, she offered to take questions from the audience. My thoughts were on young people including my own children, so I asked what words of advice or inspiration she might have for young people as they face economic and social challenges, both national and global, unforeseen just a few years ago. In her thoughtful response Mary Robinson spoke first about the power of connection which many young people have – mentioning Twitter and Facebook as examples – which enable them to connect with others across the country or across the globe. This can be a great force for building shared understandings. She went on to describe and to quote from Seamus Heaney’s mighty poem From the Republic of Conscience, commissioned by Amnesty International and published on Human Rights Day, 1985, and in the Irish Times in 2008. The poem, simple in style and language, but rich in metaphor, describes the narrator’s journey to the Republic of Conscience. The poem concludes:
The old man rose and gazed into my face
and said that was official recognition
that I was now a dual citizen.
He therefore desired me when I got home
to consider myself a representative
and to speak on their behalf in my own tongue.
Their embassies, he said, were everywhere
but operated independently
and no ambassador would ever be relieved.
This poem, Seamus Heaney’s gift, is Mary Robinson’s message to young people. We are all connected and each of us has dual citizenship: in our own nation(s) and in the Republic of Conscience. Owning and understanding our shared values is the key to individual fulfilment, as well as the hope for our collective global future. I carried this message home like a beautifully wrapped present, a precious gift to my own children.
Of course, it is a gift to us all. Mary Robinson’s words are still ringing inside me. Her words, her work, her example will continue to affect my work in the future. Today I am thinking about ways to connect my IT students with Mary Robinson’s ideas and the work of her foundation on Climate Justice. And I would be delighted to communicate with anyone thinking along these or similar lines.
Finally, thanks to my dear friend Mary Loftus who joined me in Galway for this wonderful event and thanks to Sally McHugh for making contact afterward. Thanks also to Fintan O’Toole and the Galway Arts Festival, and the warm and wonderful people of Galway, for hosting and welcoming Mary Robinson in fine style.
But most of all, thank you, Mary Robinson.
“You see me because I stand on the shoulders of so many.” – Mary Robinson, quoting Desmond Tutu
Image source: CC BY 2.0 Trocaire, Jennifer O’Gorman, July 2011, Dollow, Somalia
History has much to teach us about change. Time and again, social changes which begin with seemingly improbable goals bring about new realities, becoming the fabric of our lives. We each will have personal examples of this. From my childhood in New York City to my nearly 20 years living in the west of Ireland, examples abound. The remarkable becomes the accepted. Looking back from our current vantage point, many major social changes seem as if they were inevitable.
Today we are living through a time of enormous change in education. The pace of developments in open online education, in particular, has been dizzying: OER, Open Courseware, iTunesU, the Khan Academy, connnectivist MOOCs, institutional MOOCs, open badges. In the past seven months alone, we’ve seen the launch of Udacity, Coursera, MITx, EDx and TEDEd. What might higher education look like in 10, 20 or 30 years? Will our universities look the same, serve the same purposes? In all likelihood, they will not. And when we assess our education institutions at that future point, will we say: “Of course. Given the changes occurring in technology and society, the change was inevitable.”
I was asked to give one of the keynotes at the recent Galway Symposium on Higher Education (described in a previous post). The theme of the symposium, “The Written Word”, gave much scope for participants to consider not just writing but learning, teaching, literacies, assessment, openness and creativity. I welcomed the opportunity to focus on change, particularly recent developments in open education, and to consider re-imagining the future of higher education.
As with social change, our voice — our vote — in education is essential to creating the future. My heart sinks when I hear wonderful educators say, “I don’t know anything about/I don’t have time for… [fill in the blank: Twitter, blogging, even social bookmarking, etc.]“. I know that this means that their voices will likely not be part of educational futures which are being shaped now.
It’s not about age or the hopefully-dead Digital Natives/Digital Immigrants argument. (And anyway, why would it be about age, when our students are of all ages? As educators we surely are seeking to engage and include all of our students.) And it’s not about using this tool or that, or being for or against using a VLE. I think that the future is being shaped by educators who are open to change, open to continuing to learn, and open to learning from failure. These are the educators who inspire both their peers and their students.
In January 2012 Michael D. Higgins, Uachtarán na hÉireann (President of Ireland), received an Honourary Doctorate of Laws from the National University of Ireland. In his speech at that occasion he spoke of the role of the university in moving boldly into the future:
“The university is, and remains I suggest, a space from which new futures have always emerged and must do so again. The ethos of independent scholarship is what delivers a previous scholarship’s achievements into the present and challenges that scholarship for renewal and replacement… To navigate successfully through today’s troubled, uncertain, and probably uncharted, waters, now, more than ever before, we need vision, foresight and bold strategies. Now, more than ever, an original and confident education system is needed…”
We must be willing to ask the difficult questions. In moves toward open education, many long-held practices are being re-evaluated: open publishing questions (blind) peer review; the use of social media questions the “walled gardens” of classrooms and VLEs; pedagogical research questions the effectiveness of lecture as a teaching method, new educational initiatives outside higher education will continue to question the cost/benefit ratio of university degrees. What are your opinions? Which new practices are worth developing? Which current practices still hold value? Which practices do we wish to hold onto, and which should be left behind? Only those willing to engage with these new technologies and new practices will be in a position to evaluate them, and to make decisions which shape the future of education.
The Volvo Ocean Race is in town! As I write this, the boats are due into Galway (the finishing point of the race) after midnight tonight. The last time “the Volvo” was in Galway in 2009, an estimated 10,000 people crowded into Galway city to greet the boats arriving — at 3:00 in the morning — and enjoyed sunshine and a festival atmosphere for the next 10 days. Such is the spirit of Galway. [03/07/12 Update: huge crowds attended the race finish in Galway in the early hours of this morning.]
The event is about much more than the race. For the 2012 Volvo Ocean Race event, Galway has been transformed. We have a Race Village and a Global Village where you can find food stalls, musical entertainment, comedy, sports and adventure activities, crafts and fashion, as well as science, technology and education events. There is a great programme of events scheduled at the NUI Galway pavilion where I’ll be speaking in the Ideas Lab on Tuesday and Wednesday (July 3rd and 4th) at 2pm.
I’ve been asked to speak about “Online Learning for the Future” and I look forward to meeting people and engaging in discussion about social media in education, open learning, online and blended learning, and the range of opportunities for studying at NUI Galway. I’ve prepared the following short presentation as taster, but I hope that this will lead to conversations, both in person and online.
I didn’t want this presentation to be only about higher education and NUI Galway — online learning happens everywhere, formally as well as informally, and at all levels of education. So a few weeks ago I asked teachers involved in #edchatIE in Ireland if anyone would be willing to contribute a short video to show how they and their students are using technology. The results, from 10 different classrooms across Ireland, were amazing — see for yourself!
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From my vantage point in higher education, these are our future students, as well as our future citizens. We need to be sure that we are doing our best to welcome, engage with and challenge these students as they enter post-secondary education. That’s a big challenge for us. May the conversation continue…
Some wonderful examples of Pecha Kucha presentations were a highlight of the recent Galway Symposium on Higher Education (#celt12) held at NUI Galway. If you’ve attended or delivered a Pecha Kucha presentation, you’ll know that it can be both a dynamic and challenging presentation format. Over the past two years I’ve had the opportunity to prepare and deliver four different Pecha Kucha presentations. Each time is a unique learning experience! This past year I did something I’d considered for quite a while: I assigned Pecha Kucha presentations to my students. In terms of presentation quality and the skills students developed, this was a great success. In this post I’ll share a few tips about Pecha Kucha presentations, some resources which my students and I found helpful, and a few examples of PK presentations.
I. Pecha Kucha presentation tips
A Pecha Kucha or 20×20 presentation contains 20 slides, with each slide shown for 20 seconds, for a presentation of exactly 6 minutes, 40 seconds. The format is similar to an Ignite talk, which is 20×15 (i.e. 20 slides, 15 seconds per slide, 5 minutes in length), so advice for preparing and delivering Ignite and Pecha Kucha presentations is similar.
The advantages of the Pecha Kucha format for a conference or a class are clear. Within a given time slot, more presentations can be scheduled and the schedule is predictable. In addition, the atmosphere in a Pecha Kucha session is usually very engaging. Once the “clock starts ticking”, the audience is on the side of the presenter, willing them to succeed. This is a wonderful atmosphere for both new and experienced presenters.
Tips for presenters:
Images are the key to effective Pecha Kucha. Try to find images which are illustrations or metaphors of your key points and/or use words-as-image, as in the example above. This makes delivery of your presentation much easier, as you’re not trying to race through a list of points. It also makes your presentation more engaging. This is why Pecha Kucha is so successful, I think. It’s not the timing, as such, but the fact that it leads presenters to use best practice in creating presentations which are visually strong and appealing. Let’s banish the bullets!
Practice, practice and practice again. I’m not a person who tends to memorize my presentations. For a Pecha Kucha presentation, however, memorizing your key points for each slide is usually the best approach. I suggest writing down the 2 key points you want to make for each slide and trying to stick to that. Then practice delivering your presentation until it flows easily. Practice really makes the difference.
Hack the format! If you want to go into depth on one particular slide and 20 seconds just won’t be enough, repeat the slide and add text or graphics to develop your points. Your information will then be on-screen for 40 seconds, with small changes appearing midway through. This is a very graceful way to keep within the format but still go into depth.
When delivering the presentation, don’t worry if you finish making your points on one slide before the next slide advances. Pausing will break your flow. Just start speaking about your next slide; it will likely appear midway through your first sentence. This makes for a more polished presentation rather than pausing for a few seconds to wait for the next slide to appear.
In working with students, I found that it was important to spend plenty of time beforehand to help students to develop not just an understanding of good presentation skills, but also of copyright, Creative Commons, and how to find, use and assign CC-licensed images. Most students who completed Pecha Kucha presentations in my Professional Skills course assigned CC licenses to their presentations and uploaded their work to Slideshare, forming part of their e-portfolio and digital footprint (some examples below).
Tips for organisers:
If possible, schedule Pecha Kucha presentations in a room that is not too large. I’ve attended Pecha Kucha sessions in small rooms and in large lecture halls, and I’ve found the atmosphere in rooms with a higher density of people is more connected and more fun. Participants tend to feel in touch with the presenter and the presenter can feed off the positive energy of the audience.
If you are organising a Pecha Kucha conference session, make sure all presenters send you their presentations ahead of time so that you can be sure that the timings are set correctly to 20 seconds per slide. Another approach you might consider is creating one long presentation for each Pecha Kucha session, with a transition slide (or two) between each presentation. This makes for a seamless session.
In one conference I attended (#ece11) yet another element of excitement was added by putting the presentations in each session in random order. Presenters didn’t know where their presentation fell in the running order, so had to be prepared to pop up when their name appeared. This led to much hilarity and great audience engagement and support.
When organising Pecha Kucha presentations for a class, I took on less of the organising work. I asked students to bring their own laptops or share laptops. Students learned a lot from loading presentations, connecting to the projector system, adjusting the room lighting, etc. And in one or two cases where students had not set the slide timings correctly, it served as a great learning moment for everyone.
II. Pecha Kucha resources
Pecha Kucha 20×20 – This page gives the basics and a brief history of Pecha Kucha.
Why and How to Give an Ignite Talk by Scott Berkun — This terrific presentation (in Ignite format) is relevant for both Pecha Kucha and Ignite presentations. Take Scott’s advice and “hack the format” if necessary. If it’s Pecha Kucha, just be sure your presentation is 6 minute and 40 seconds long.
Creating an Ignite presentation — This article was written by presentation expert Olivia Mitchell about creating an Ignite presentation, however the guidelines apply just as easily to Pecha Kucha. This is a terrific, visual article, very helpful for careful planning of your presentation.
Great Presentations by Nancy Duarte — Nancy Duarte is the author of the excellent books Resonate and Slideology – unbeatable sources of ideas and inspiration for all presenters. This 25-minute video is worth viewing if you want a deeper understanding of what makes a presentation which truly connects with an audience.
III. Pecha Kucha examples
The first two presentations below are examples of student Pecha Kucha presentations. Each of these was the first presentation ever created by the student — wonderful work, I’m sure you’ll agree! Links to other student work in CT231 Professional Skills (including presentations, blogs and audio podcasts) can be found on the CT231 Student Showcase on Scoop.it.
The final two presentations are conference presentations. The first is by Mary Loftus, an excellent presentation from #celt12 on ‘ways of being’ in the online classroom. The second is one of my own Pecha Kucha presentations, delivered at #ece11, on learning and teaching Professional Skills.
The 10th Galway Symposium on Higher Education will be held here at NUI Galway on June 7th and 8th. The theme is The Written Word: Writing, Publishing and Communication in Higher Education. The popular annual event, organised by CELT (Centre for Excellence in Learning and Teaching), attracts people from across higher education in Ireland and beyond. This year’s keynote speakers are a diverse and fascinating group including Adam Rutherford, Mary Lea, Aileen Fyfe, William St. Clair and Adrian Frazier. Symposium sessions — including workshops, papers and Pecha Kucha presentations — cover a broad range of topics, e.g. flipped learning and teaching, writing for publication, academic integrity, active learning, social media in research, developing online learning, and “serious play” (!).
I was delighted to be invited to speak at the conference this year, on the topic of open education. I’m following Brian Hughes’s lead and publishing my abstract here in my blog; I’ll follow up with a more detailed post after the symposium. In the meantime, I welcome your comments and feedback.
#CELT12 Plenary: Exploring Open Education, Re-imagining Higher Education
We are in the early days of open education. The boundaries are blurring between real and virtual spaces, formal and informal learning, educators and learners. Open, participatory and social media are not just enabling new forms of communication; they are enabling new ways of learning, and thus are transforming education. In Joichi Ito’s (2011) words: “I don’t think education is about centralized instruction anymore; rather, it is the process [of] establishing oneself as a node in a broad network of distributed creativity.” What this means for the future of higher education is still unclear. We have a great opportunity, however, as educators, scholars and students, to engage in re-imagining and creating that future – what Keri Facer calls future building (2011).
Catherine will explore current practices of open education, both within and outside HE, based on her research and learning and teaching experiences. Open practices in education will be explored: open research, open learning and teaching, open publishing; as well as the digital literacies required to engage in open education practices, particularly using social media. A radical approach to open education is to work metaphorically and physically (inasmuch as possible) beyond the confines of the classroom and lecture hall: engaging with students as co-learners; openly sharing ideas, feedback and reflections – with students and with wider learning communities; and acknowledging the value of informal learning and personal learning networks (PLNs) as the key to integrated and continual learning. As educators, we each must consider our own approach to openness and to open education. What role will we play in building the future – as individuals and as universities?
At the ICT in Education Conference last Saturday, educators in Ireland and beyond joined together — in person in Thurles and virtually across the globe — to focus on learners, learning spaces and the future of education. The urgency of these issues cannot be understated. At #ICTEdu, we accepted the challenges we face, but focussed instead on what we can do. We were inspired by keynote speakers/sharers Ira Socol (@irasocol) and Pam Moran (@pammoran). Pam and Ira created whole-hearted, human-centred learning spaces with us (yes, it’s possible even in a fixed-seat, windowless lecture hall!) both modelling what is possible and inspiring us to do the same — beginning today.
I’ll write my overall reflections on the conference in a subsequent blog post, but the full tweetstream of the conference is available now. In addition, a special #edchatie Twitter chat focused on the conference theme of “Learning Spaces” takes place Monday, May 21st at 8:30 pm GMT. [Transcript of the chat - added 22nd May]
My session at the conference, “Social Media, Learning, Space and Time”, explored how social media helps us to break down the walls of the classroom. Connection and learning can extend beyond class time, beyond term time, and beyond the bounds of our classrooms and lecture halls. Students and educators communicating and sharing work using social media move beyond the artificial boundaries of formal and informal learning, and the rigid roles of “teacher” and “student”. I shared three examples of social media being used in these ways: my own experience using Twitter with students in higher education; the 100 Word Challenge, a creative writing blogging project for primary and secondary students, presented via video by Julia Skinner (@TheHeadsOffice); and the Madhouse of Ideas project, presented via video by Linda Castañeda (@lindacq, @MadhouseofIdeas). Both videos are included in the presentation above.
The social media activity at the conference certainly demonstrated this theme. Bernie Goldbach (@topgold) noted that although the activity at the conference was intense, “twice as many people were following the day’s events at a distance, using Twitter, YouTube, SlideShare, and the live video stream”. This was true in my own session. My sincere thanks to all participants who shared their thoughts and reflections in our room (where we created our own personalised, chaotic learning environment by moving tables and chairs!) and who amplified the session on Twitter so that others could participate. These tweets provide a vivid picture of our workshop — thank you all!
Presenting session on Social Media, Learning, Space & Time at #ictedu now... will be joined on Twitter by @lindacq & @TheHeadsOffice
— Catherine Cronin (@catherinecronin) May 19, 2012
just about to start .. Social media,learning, space&time with @catherinecronin :-) #icted
“Dialogue cannot exist, however, in an absence of a profound love for the world and for people.” – Paulo Freire
You won’t be surprised to know that “learning” was the most tweeted word at the Plymouth Enhanced Learning Conference (PELeCON) recently. But you might be surprised to know that “love” was in the Top Ten (#9) of over 14,000 #pelc12 tweets. So, yes, PELeCON was about education, the future, learners, learning technologies, pedagogies and literacies. But the outstanding feature of the conference, for me, was the sense of warmth, connection and community amongst the participants, and their “profound love for the world and for people,” to quote Freire.
Glynis Cousin, among others, has spoken about the often unreflected emotional substructure to teaching and learning. Educators who embrace the ideals of authentic, student-centred learning, and who seek to move their practice towards this goal, are engaging in a revolutionary act: giving learners more control over their own learning. Almost everything about our formal education system — from standardized curricula to grading systems to the architecture of our classrooms and lecture halls — reinforces the power of the educator over the student. Those of us who choose to swim against this tide, even in small ways, must first look within ourselves to uncover our own investment in these systems and traditions. Engaging in real dialogue with students, opening our classrooms and our practice to the world — none of this can be done without respect for and trust in our students. This was the ethos at PELeCON, and why it was such a powerful experience for many of us who attended.
In the 2+ weeks since returning from Plymouth, I’ve been reflecting on many of the ideas and themes that arose. More than that, though, I’ve been connecting furiously with many who attended the conference. I’m working with Julia Skinner and Linda Castañeda who will engage with Irish educators at the ICT in Education conference on May 19th. Helen Keegan and I have plans to connect our students at Salford and Galway with students in several other countries next autumn, using social media. And there have been countless other connections via Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, Instagram and email — a rich web of connections as Sharon Flynn describes beautifully in her PELeCON blog post.
I’ve already recorded my summary of the Student Showcase on Day 1 of the conference, in which primary and secondary students shared their work. It was one of my highlights of the conference to hear students describe how they are using YouTube, Google groups, WordPress, Livescribe pens and more to collaborate and create video tutorials, blogs and online school newspapers. I was immensely impressed by the confidence of these students, their pride in their work, and the trust their teachers showed in them to tell their own stories.
Thanks to all of the participants at PELeCON, for your openness and your friendship.
And enormous thanks to Steve Wheeler, and the hard-working PELeCON team, for throwing a 3-day party (Steve’s words!) with time to learn and to enjoy, and opportunities to nurture the seeds of future ideas, collaborations, and most importantly, relationships. My head and heart are full. Thank you all.
For more information on the conference check out the PELeCON blog, which includes links to Oliver Quinlan‘s excellent liveblogs. The following blog posts also capture the spirit of the conference especially well:
