I had the opportunity to speak to the HETTANZ annual conference today - the topic was “Online Communities of Practice“. I spoke about the ways in which the use of online applications and environments could enrich the discourse within their professional community, and enable them to continue the valuable conversations they were initiating at this event well beyond the dates of the physical conference. As a professional organisation, this group has a well defined domain within which they operate, they are identified as a community by their membership of this organisation, and they are all engaged in the practice of teaching home economics within the school system - so they amply meet the criteria for existing as a community of practice as defined by Wenger et al, and could benefit greatly by using the online environment to continue the discussions about the issues they are facing as practitioners (eg. the introduction of the New Zealand Curriculum, the status of HE teachers, assessment of HE etc)

It was clear that what I had to share, particularly about the online technologies, was new to many of those in the group, making some feel uncomfortable or anxious about expectations being made of them to become active in this area. This was highlighted in some of the questions at the end of my session and in numerous conversations afterwards in which the following three issues were repeatedly raised;

• Schools are not adequately resourced to allow much of what I was demonstrating to become a reality for them in their classrooms (referring to availability of hardware, software, internet access etc)

• There isn’t the time required to become familiar with this technology or the applications demonstrated, and
• There are serious concerns around cybersafety and security that present too big a barrier.

While I do have some empathy with these concerns, these are exactly the reasons why professional organisations such as HETTANZ should be mobilizing themselves to use the online environments for their own professional development and to enable participation in their professional community of practice. Before these issues can be sensibly addressed, we need to see more teachers developing informed views about the potential use for both good and bad of these technologies based on their personal use rather than the opinions expressed in the media. I illustrated how this is happening already with several hundreds of teachers engaged in the Curriculum Online discussions and forums, and in the Centre4 communities that have formed around the ICT PD clusters.

With many now asking, Is it OK to be a technologically illiterate teacher?, it’s time to say Enough Excuses and begin committing time and energy to exploring these technologies and what they offer - and I believe that participation in an online community of practice is an excellent way of engaging with people to achieve this. Not only does it introduce them to the potential (and possible pitfalls) of the technology in a practical way, but it does so by engaging them in authentic acts of debate and discussion about the practice they are involved in.

I am reminded as I write of a quote made by Karen Sewell in her keynote to the conference the previous day: “We must escape from the prison we trap ourselves in - too often we respond with reasons why we can’t innovate!”. Now there’s a challenge
In preparing for this talk I reflected about my own mother who trained as a home economics teacher, and who brought all of that knowledge and experience into her role as a wife and mother in the home. The video clip at the bottom of this post comes from the era that she trained, and illustrates the fact that home economics was then, as it is now, a subject that has much to contribute to the development of young people.

In preparation for my attendance at the upcoming Digital Summit in Auckland this week I’ve been re-reading Don Tapscott and Anthony William’s book Wikinomics which I reviewed earlier in the year.

I’d like to quote some parts from the introduction that have caused me to think again about a digital divide that is appearing in our education system.

Throughout our history corporations have organised themselves according to strict hierarchical lines of authority… While hierarchies are not vanishing, profound changes in the nature of technology, demographics, and the global economy are giving rise to powerful new models of production based on community, collaboration, and self-organisation, rather than on hierarchy and control.

Small companies are encouraging, rather than fighting, the heaving growth of massive online communities - many of which emerged from the fringes of the Web to attract tens of millions of participants overnight…. Indeed, as a growing number of firms see the benefits of mass collaboration, this new way of organisaing will eventually displace the traditional corporate structures as the economy’s primary engine of wealth creation.

Companies that engage with these exploding Web-enabled communities are already discovering the true dividends of collective capability and genius.”

These comments are not simply the suppositions of a couple of digital optimists. They are based on the evidence of several large scale research projects costing several millions of dollars and involving a number of the world’s most successful commercial companies.

But what has all this got to do with education? In a sense our education system is simply a large-scale corporate body, focused on outcomes, growth and wealth creation. It is also an example of bureacracy that is extremely hierarchical - like all government departments. So what is happening in our education system to embrace or adopt these new forms of online technology, and to participate in and engage with others in these Web-enabled communities?

Well, on the plus side is the example of the massive amount of collaborative effort that went into the co-construction of the new NZ Curriculum - reportedly around 15,000 teachers contributed their time, knowledge and collective wisdom to the development of this document - all within an online environment. It will be interesting now to see if the same level of collaborative effort and sharing will be facilitated to assist with the implementation of the document and the professional development of teachers to do this as the teacher unions quite rightly point out will be necessary.

Of course, this is arguably an example of an online community that has been constructed and managed within the bounds of the hierarchy itself , and while I see a real benefit in this sort of participation, it only goes so far in enabling the development of a deep understanding of the power and transformational potential of these online social networking tools and environments. Within the MoE, as with most government departments here and overseas, staff are discouraged from (according to some, not allowed to) having their own blog or wiki where they can express thoughts and ideas as a part of the broader social network. In some cases this even applies to leaving comments on other people’s blogs etc. The concern is that the opinions shared may not reflect the view of the government department, and may place the department at risk if it is read widely and interpreted as policy for instance.

At a recent Educational Leader’s Summit I was asked to speak about the impact of these technologies on our education system for just a few minutes. It became evident that among the group of around 100 educational leaders present, only a handful professed knowledge of the sorts of things I was referring to, and even less actually had a blog, flickr or del.icio.us account of their own. An online community was established where participants in the event could go to review presentations and to actively participate in the discussions following the event. To date less than 10% of those who attended have activated their account.

This is in stark contrast with the hundreds of teachers attending the ULearn conference held recently who have returned to visit the conference website, and the many dozens who have expressed their ideas and ‘new learnings’ from the conference on their personal websites or wikis.

Reflecting again on the Wikinomics quotes, I have a concern about the impact of these web-based technologies within our education system. Sure, there are dozens of new examples appearing weekly of these technologies being employed by classroom teachers to achieve some wonderful learning experiences for and with students - but all too often I also hear stories about firewalls preventing access, and students not allowed to participate in activities using these tools.

My concern really is that it appears to me that the very people in our education system who should be experiencing these technologies in an ongoing and profound way aren’t. These are the various leaders, decision makers and policy developers who work at the school and national level. Their experience of what is happening in these communities must be based on more than reading about it in the media, or briefly visiting a site - they should be immersed in the experience and involved in reflecting critically (as a part of a community) on that experience and the value they see arising from it.

Sadly I don’t see this happening. As a result, we have policy decisions made in ignorance. Safety decisions made through fear. And decisions affecting learning dominated by concerns about risk mitigation.

I fear we have a way to go yet before we see education systems as systems realise the benefits outlined in Wikinomics. Oh well, we can live in hope….

Over on the TechLearn blog Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach has made another post titled The Art Of Building Virtual Communities that has generated a lot of lively discussion and feedback. This is a follow-on from her previous post on Virtual communities as a canvas of educational reformSheryl states:

The burning question for many of us trying to establish educational CoPs is how to design a VLC that is compelling enough that it will compete successfully for the attention of busy educators? Because communities of practice are voluntary, to be successful over time they need the ability to generate enough excitement, relevance, and value to attract and engage members. This is easier said than done.

Her article contains several models that attempt to describe the nature of participation in online communities (including one of mine :-)) and ends with a thoughtful list from Sheryl of things that comprise a healthy community.

Of most interest to me, however, is the discussion that has ensued. Sheryl is criticised in an early post for missing out on the ‘angsty’ side of community development - with another writer suggesting the development of “toxic” communities. Aside from the content of these responses, the number and quality of contributions in response to the original post make this a useful example of a healthy community in my opinion!

Sheryl Nassbaum-Beach has started a new discussion over on the TechLearn blog, titled Virtual Communities as a Canvas for Educational Reform. She poses the following questions at the start of her article:

How do we promote the knowledge, skills and sense of urgency for 21st Century teaching and learning among all teachers in our schools? How do we come to the place we are willing to change ??? to risk change ??? to meet the obvious need for better alignment between “school as we know it” and the needs of 21st Century learners?

Sheryl claims a burgeoning body of opinion suggests that virtual learning communities are becoming the venue through which agents for change operate. - which is a statement that rings true for me, although I see the evidence as being more circumstantial and anecdotal than empirical at this stage. That aside, I do agree with Sheryl that the online environment is creating an enormous potential for bringing about large-scale transformative change in our schools and educational institutions.

The traditional view of communities as groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly (loosely taken from Wenger) leads to a strengthening and affirmation of these ideas and practices, forging a community identity and sense of belonging and purpose etc. BUT, as Wenger also points out, after a while , such communities can become very intro-spective and protective of their identity, leading to a resistance to change. This is where I see the virtual world, in particular the web2.0 technologies, creating some great opportunities.

At the 2004 NECC conference Malcolm Gladwell spoke about the importance of the ‘mavens‘ and ‘connectors‘ in the emerging world - noting the importance of people with the ability to make links between ideas and people, and who are good at ‘gathering’ up important pieces of the puzzle and making sense of them. Wenger refers to the idea of “boundary workers” - those who work in the boundaries between established communities - asserting that these are the people who are essentially change agents, refreshing and introducing new ideas to the communities they move between.

In the Web2.0-enabled online environments we now inhabit, those who are the mavens and connectors, many of whom are also boundary workers, are provided with a range of tools and opportunities that make it easier and more effective to carry out these roles. An RSS aggregator, for instance, enables a single person to monitor and contribute to a wide range of communities in a fraction of the time it may have taken previously.

So - I see these two distinct advantages of virtual communities:

1. linking people with common purpose and practice in a way that they can support each other and grow in depth in their understandings and practice, and

2. enabling connections and sharing ideas across and between communities, leading to transformation of ideas and understandings, and eventually practice.

If you have a moment, visit Sheryl’s post and see what other thoughts are being shared in response to what she has written.

Time4Online is an online conference for educators, posing the question “How can we prepare students for the 21st Century?”, aiming to explore examples of collaborative online learning and the application of Web 2.0 technologies in teaching and learning.

Presenters include educators and students from NZ and overseas (including Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach, international guest and keynote speaker at the recent TUANZ tour of New Zealand).

I’m pleased to be associated with this conference, and will be presenting a session titled “Educators as Professional Learners” in which we’ll be discussing the need for educators to be reflective and life-long learners, engaging in professional discourse etc. - and how technology, in particular, Web2.0 technologies, can create opportunities for this to happen.

I’ve prepared this introductory slide-show that I’ve uploaded to SlideShare:

A pre-conference preview available now at http://www.time4online.org.nz.

I’ve finally decided to begin my own community in Ning, and have chosen the theme of Virtual Schooling which is an area that I’ve had a particular interest in since the early 1990s when I worked alongside the CANTAtech cluster. I’m impressed so far with Ning’s features and usability - I’ve easily been able to include the RSS feed from Michael Barbour’s Virtual High School Meanderings for instance.

Anyone with an interest in this area is welcome to share their thoughts and experiences! Please pass it on to others who may be interested.

We’ve added a new logo on the right hand side of the CORE website -titled CORE’s Ten Trends for 2007

Clicking on this logo will take you to a list of ten trends that we’ve identified as being particularly important in 2007. The aim is to create some dialogue around some of the things that are happening in the NZ context regarding the use of ICT in education. The emphasis is on looking at the bigger picture, rather than the things absorb our time every day at the “coal face”.

I will be using these ten trends as the focus of my Spotlight at the Learning@School conference this week, and would love to see plenty of contributions being made in the comments section at the end of each “Trend”.

Each month or so the CORE staff are going to expand one of the themes with further links and references to prompt a deeper level of participation and discussion. We’re sure to have missed some that people think are important, or included some that others think aren’t - all of which should make the discussion fuller and richer!

Who’d have thought that an idea with its origins in a self-help group formed many years ago by a number of small farmers in Uruguay could have anything to do with the development of a Community of Practice for people wanting to share experiences of e-Learning and learn from one another!

The CAMEL project stands for Collaborative Approaches to the Management of E-Learning, a project funded by the HEFCE Leadership, Governance and Management programme in the UK. It set out to explore how institutions who were making good use of e-learning and who were collaborating in regional lifelong learning partnerships might be able to learn from each other in a Community of Practice based around study visits to each of the partners’ institutions.

What caught my eye is a “Do-It-Yourself guide” to setting up a Community of Practice using the CAMEL model that they’ve published. Originally available on CD ROM, HEFCE have now made it available to view online, or you can download a ZIP file and view it on your computer which is what I did. The guide contains some really useful information, and includes a series of short video clips. I was also intrigued to see an old favourite of mine - the Johari window -used in their section on “Ground rules and trust” in the guide.

There was a lot in this guide that reinforces the findings of the online PD community we calledT4T4T that we ran in NZ a couple of years ago, although the CAMEL approach is more structured and provides some really useful resources to help individuals and institutions plan their participation in the CoP.

For a perspective on how to develop a community of practice aimed at finding out more about e-learning through the sharing of ideas and experiences I’d recommend this resource.

click image for larger version

I’ve been contributing as a guest to an online course run by my friend Derek Chirnside, and today we were discussing the issue of the ways in which people participate in online communities. In particular, we were talking about the different phases people seem to go through when they begin blogging.

I shared with him a simple framework I’ve developed, based on my thinking and experience in this area - so tonight I thought I’d commit to putting it into diagramatic form and sharing it here for comment.

My diagram attempts to illustrate how many participants in the online environment move through phases as they gain understanding and confidence.

1. consumer - The first phase is where participants (often referred to as lurkers) simply read and explore the posts of others. Far from being passive as the word lurker suggests, consumers can be very active participants in an online community - just not yet visible to others.

2. commentor - as this label suggests, these people make comments on others posts (either on blogs, or in discussion forums), often seeking clarification, agreeing with a statement, or offering a suggestion or link to something similar.
3. contributor - as this label suggests, contributors are those who have started their own blogs or who initiate new threads on discussion forums. They are confident about putting forth their own ideas etc.
4. commentator - a commentator is someone who frequently takes a ‘meta’ view of what is going on, providing a level of leadership within the community. Their contributions will often draw attention to the ‘bigger picture’, making links with other work - analysing and synthesising the contributions of others.

Of course, it’s not intended to suggest that people will operate exclusively within one of these phases - there’s plenty of evidence to suggest that contributors also post comments on other people’s blogs etc. The 4 Cs are an attempt to illustrate the fact that most people appear to operate predominantly in one or other of the phases in their journey to becoming online citizens, and that there is some sort of progression that characterises this growth.

In my conversation with Derek C, we spent time discussing our observation that so many of the growing number of online courses we’ve seen require students to operate their own blog, or to become active participants in an online forum. What we observe is an inevitable spread of participation, with few people actively contributing or initiating posts etc. While some of this may be put down to differences in learning style or personality, I believe that we should also be thinking about the fact that a semester long course, for example, is simply too short a time for someone who has never seen a blog before to suddenly be expected to have one up and running as a part of their course participation.

What about making the reading of other people’s blogs a course requirement, or simply adding comments to the course tutor’s blog etc. as a legitimate learning activity. This would build into the course the opportunity to explore and understand the nature of the blogging experience and how knowledge is shared and developed through these interactions - before asking learners to jump off the deep end and create their own.

I’d be interested to hear of what others think about this model - and how it aligns with the experience that you’ve had in online groups and communities.

MIDNIGHT ASSEMBLY is a fascinating web site developed, I am informed by my colleague Derek Chirnside, by a 17 year old student living in Whangarei, NZ. The opening page reveals his motivation for developing the site:

Many nights I sat at the computer very late at night, searching for others like me. Creatively inspired, thoughtful, deep, lost in a society that had lost touch of what made it human- imagination and creativity. I looked far and wide for a forum where these people would meet and discuss. However I found none, and out of that disappointment The Midnight Assembly was born

This young man has managed to amass a following of hundreds of other young people - the site statistics at the bottom of the forums page makes for interesting reading - to join him in this quest!

This is another example of a digital native using the technology to fulfil what Don Tapscott says in his book:

??For the first time in history children are more comfortable, knowledgeable and literate than their parents about an innovation in society??
??already kids are learning, playing, communicating, working and creating communities very differently than their parents.
They are a force for social transformation!?? (Don Tapscott (1998) Growing up digital)

It’s certainly worth exploring the many and varied discussion forums within the site - it provides a useful insight into what the concerns and ideas that these young people have.