Bill Gates has made the news with another of his predictions – that the idea of young adults having to go to universities in order to get an education is going to go away relatively soon, according to an address he gave recently at the Techonomy conference in Lake Tahoe. Gates claims that “Five years from now on the web for free you’ll be able to find the best lectures in the world.”

He’s not the first to say this, of course. I can recall the Australian academic Dale Spender was making similar predictions (although with a longer time-frame at that stage). Back in 1997, a year after she’d published her book “Nattering on the Net“, she visited Christchurch and spoke to the staff and management at the University of Canterbury, exhorting them to consider investing in online learning instead of the major building programme they had planned. But her advice was ignored, and a year later the construction crews were busy with slabs of concrete and glass, and, like most other tertiary institutions in NZ, the university is still ‘tinkering’ with online learning on the periphery of their ‘real business’.

At the heart of what Gates, Spender and others are saying are some key drivers that simply aren’t going away:

• the cost of attending a place-based institution is rising and becoming prohibitive for many
• the advantage of learning ‘on-the-job’ is increasingly attractive – both in terms of providing an income while studying, and in terms of the direct application (and creation) of knowledge in an authentic context
• the resources associated with learning are increasingly available from anywhere, at any time and on any device – location is less important – but good teachers who can provide instructional coherence are!
• specialist knowledge and the community of learners with a common interest in specialised areas of study can now be connected virtually – they are less likely to be located in one specific place.

This is not to say that physical places of study will disappear altogether necessarily (although some will) – but we need to be thinking about the activity of those institutions as being less place-based, and more virtual. We must seriously consider the notion of the edgeless university – both in practice and in policy.

Which brings me to my key thought – why is it that so many of our institutions in NZ are finding it difficult to move into the era of virtual learning? Obvious things come to mind, including;

• a fundamental lack of belief and vision
• academic latency
• institutional tradition and pride
• etc.

None of these are show stoppers, and are all within the locus of control of the institution – and can therefore be changed if there is the will. But when I speak to many academic staff and institutional leaders, I find a bigger issue, something outside of the direct control of the institution – POLICY.

In 2002 I led a research project involving four tertiary institutions working in an online world to explore how improvements could be made to the quality of teaching in these institutions. Despite the very best efforts of those involved, and some excellent insights, the impetus of the study was continually subverted by the pressures of staff performance on the PBRF – in other words, national policy (and thus funding) prioritised research endeavour over teaching.

I spoke recently to the council member of a university who is personally very committed to the potential of online learning and the sort of future that Gates and others are promoting. He was concerned that while his university are considering increased investment in online learning, the policy drivers at a national level favour investment in buildings and facilities.

My point – it’s all very well talking about these exciting futures and visions of what our education organisations may become – but unless our national policies support such endeavour we’re committed to more of the same. Meanwhile our NZ tertiary institutions will continue to lose NZ students to overseas universities that have already entered this new world of virtual and online learning, and have developed programmes with the flexibility, support and structures that appeal to 21st Century learners.

I spent quite a bit of today working on an introductory section to a handbook that will be published shortly for New Zealand schools that are already or are interested in becoming a part of a Learning Community Online on the Virtual Learning Network. The diagram above is a summary of a section in what I’ve been writing that attempts to summarize the changes we’re experiencing in moving from traditional teaching and learning environments towards the concept of the networked school in a virtual environment. You can download a PDF version of the diagram and explanation here:  The emerging Networked School environment – I would be keen to receive feedback on the ideas before it is finalised.

Interesting what you come across in airport lounges -  reading through my RSS feeds while waiting for my plane to board I came across a recent publication from Education Week titled eLearning 2010 – assessing the agenda for change – a special report on the emerging policy debates in virtual education.

I found this of particular interest – especially after our discussions at the VLN meeting today where we were looking at how we could bring more of what the VLN members are doing into the mainstream of education.

Yesterday I shared how I had heard Sir Mason Durie assert that distance education practices are now the ‘preferred’ mode of schooling. The very first chapter in this paper describes what is called a ‘hybrid’ approach that is taking off because it offers academic classes not otherwise available to many students -  not too dissimilar to the case studies described by Prof Durie yesterday, and of the experience of the VLN teachers discussed today. In this case, the case of a group of Idaho school students is described, where they now have a choices of classes including French and Spanish, college-level study, digital photography, and criminal justice – all because principal Benjamin M. Merrill has created “Pirate Academy,” a roster of online
courses that students can take as part of their regular school day.

There are some thought provoking contributions in the paper – including a look at ‘anytime, anywhere’ learning approach vs. fixed time frames for classes; how the needs of at-risk students can be catered for; scalability and enrolment cap issues; and how to make it all sustainable. Loads of useful reading here for anyone interested in blended, virtual, online and distance learning.

I had the privilege of attending the TUANZ Telecommunications day event in Wellington yesterday, along with around 250 people from a broad range of telecommunications leaders from both the industry and public service sectors. It was a great opportunity to see and hear about what is happening at a national and international level in terms of the development of IT solutions, in particular, the roll-out of ultra-fast broadband (UFB), and how this is providing benefits to the sector groups involved and creating opportunities at both a local and national level. While the event wasn’t targeted at educators, education certainly was a focus of many people’s thinking when it came to the benefits of the strategic roll-out of UFB – including Dr Taylor Reynolds from the OECD and Steven Joyce, NZ’s minister of communications.

I’d been invited to share a perspective on what all this means for education, and my presentation and notes appear below…

I used the metaphor of a ‘cloudy’ future for education because of the way it represents the future ‘boundary-less’ nature of education, both technically and pedagogically. The physical structure and location of a school will become less important, with emphasis shifting to how that school ‘fits’ within the network of educational service provision. Students may continue to turn up at a physical school for all or part of their school day, but as far as their learning is concerned they will consider themselves a part of a learning network.

This may sound a rather outlandish vision to some, but the drivers and vision for this have been with us for more than 20 years – it’s just that now the enablers are catching up to where we can begin to see how it can be achieved.

From a technical perspective I referred to the overwhelming issues schools are facing in terms of the total cost of ownership of IT – everything from the investment in hardware, software and infrastructure, to the cost of support, updates and licensing etc. This is not to mention the ever changing nature of the investment itself – including the demand for support of internet capable mobile technologies (as opposed to location-bound desktops) and the future of a network of things, the implications of which have yet to be considered for schools.

The cloud (and I used the term very loosely to embrace everything from the concept of virtualisation, co-location and global cloud provision – anything that enables schools to move the IT off-site really) provides potential for the following solutions…

• Desktop virtualsiation
• Software as a service
• Server co-location
• Online support
• Ubiquitous access – any time, anywhere, any device
• Backup and fail-over
• Disaster recovery
• Data security

From a pedagogical perspective, schools are facing increasing pressure in terms of catering for the diverse needs of students. It is no longer acceptable to treat groups of students as a heterogeneous cohort – defined by age. Face with the demands from students to provide access to the breadth of subject choices they want, and to personalise the learning experience for each individual, the existing structures of schools are being challenged – and to try and resolve this with a traditional mindset ends up seeing demands for more staff (a scarce resource anyway), more buildings (requiring more physical space and more dollars), and more resources (at significant cost, often for a very small group of learners, and which may become out of date very quickly.) On top of this are the demands for individualised assessment through the learning process (not just at the end), and the desire to maintain a record of an individual student’s learning through their learning lifetime.

I introduced the concept of disintermediation, a concept developed in the world of economics and business, but now finding its way into education as we consider the potential benefits of separating out the various components of the educational process (planning, teaching, resources, assessment, support etc) and enabling access to source for each. (Bill St Arnaud commented on this yesterday following a post in the New York times about disintermediation in the tertiary environment.)

I referred to ‘cloud’ solutions for education – including the use of video conferencing and virtual schooling to enable access to curriculum choices and to subject matter experts, while remaining in the geographic location of choice. I referred to the NZ instance of the virtual learning network as an example of this happening already on a growing scale.

I spoke about the development of local schools “loops”, referring to the development of a National Education Network in NZ, and to the London Grid for Learning as an example of this internationally. In my view, these will provide the ‘tipping point’ for a transformation of our educational service provision in the future.

I also spoke of how a network of UFB will enable a smart use of data – something that will enable us to start thinking about futures data modelling in the education system, allowing us to be more precise in planning for new school buildings (where appropriate), anticipating staffing needs, providing a more timely response in terms of funding etc. It also has huge implications in terms of our assessment processes – causing us to rely less on end of year assessments, and focusing more on formative processes that are data-driven, informed by national means and cohort referencing, and pointing to next steps of development (instead of simply labelling the learner and leaving it to them or their teacher to think about what next).

It was a lot to squeeze into 25 minutes – but I did get there and managed to end with a reference to what I believe is the major stumbling block we face – and that isn’t the hardware or infrastructure – or even funding. It’s in our minds. We need to make sure we avoid the notion of horseless carriage thinking (thanks William Horton) as we strategically plan for and adopt these new technologies. We have to make sure that our adoption of the new doesn’t simply become a ‘tack-on’ to what we’ve known in the past. We are talking about true transformation here, not a tinkering with what we currently have – and we have to be prepared to embrace the futures that emerge before us as the implications unfold – just as they did when the first motorcars were invented!

ADDENDUM: Telecommunications Review have published their ‘top ten from telco day‘ summary of the day.

A few posts ago I noted that Clutha will now be recognised as NZ’s first fully virtual school, after a consortium of southern secondary schools and polytechnics, led by Catlins Area School at Owaka, was one of five applicants chosen to open trades academies in 2011. I thought it worth another blog post to recognise the establishment of what is claimed to be Australasia’s first “complete” virtual school, New Zealand Virtual School, due open in 2011 and cater for Year 9 to 13 children and adults from across the country and around the world.

Today’s post on the Second Life Education New Zealand (SLENZ) blog provides useful background to this exciting new initiative which will almost certainly become something of a poster-child for developments in virtual schooling and for major initiatives like the KAREN network which will make participation in second life virtual worlds more tolerable.

One observation I have to make,  however, is the depiction of what this virtual classroom will look like in Second Life. While the concept of virtual education, with its promise of anywhere, any-time and any-device participation excites me greatly, I can’t help but be bemused by the fact that the ‘virtual classroom’ is depticted as looking like the same sort of classroom I sat in through school – chairs facing the front, desks in rows and shelves of text books in the background – and presumably teacher located at the front – all suggestive of the sort of didactic, teacher-centric pedagogy that we keep being told we should be moving away from.

Tell me I’m missing something here?

I’ve recently begun working with a tertiary institution to help them work through the process of working in the online environment, translating courses previously only taught face-to-face. For those who have done this sort of thing before you’ll realise there’s a lot more to this effort than simply putting the course material up onto a learning management system and giving students access.

The trend to moving courses online isn’t confined just to the tertiary sector. After nearly two decades of working with clusters of schools in NZ, and the development of the Virtual Learning Network, I noted yesterday that Clutha will now be recognised as NZ’s first fully virtual school, after a consortium of southern secondary schools and polytechnics, led by Catlins Area School at Owaka, was one of five applicants chosen to open trades academies in 2011.

All of this activity is very exciting, and certainly moving in the direction that I strongly believe is where we need to be heading, but it is going to require significant changes in policy, programme design and teaching practice in order to succeed – and none of that happens easily, or without confronting the tensions that exist when the way we’ve done things for years are suddenly being challenged and changed, and when our relative autonomy as teachers becomes ‘exposed’ in ways we’re not used to.

So it was with great interest I read this week of the release of the National Standards for Quality Online Programmes,  published by the North American Council for Online Learning (NACOL). This publication is designed to provide states, districts, online programs, accreditation agencies and other organizations with a set of over-arching quality guidelines for online programs in several categories: leadership, instruction, content, support services and evaluation. This is the third in a series of publications from NACOL, the first being Quality Standards for Online Courses (PDF) and the second being Quality Standards for Online Teaching (PDF).

In the work I’ve been doing over the past 15 years in this area, I’ve seen lots of attention given to the development of effective online courses, and participated in discussions around what makes for effective online teaching – but in this publication we have what I regard as something that’s been missing, the emphasis on whole programme design and implementation. This is surely a sign that the whole area of online provision is maturing beyond the point where we’ve got collections of ‘pilot’ courses that are part of a larger programme. For us to truly move online learning onto centre stage we must be addressing the range of issues that are highlighted in this publication.

I now look forward to a fourth publication – Quality Standards for Government Level Policy Developers. We certainly need that in New Zealand, where the current policy framework within which initiatives such as the Clutha Virtual School and the Virtual Learning Network must struggle to become established is based on a 20th century view of schooling. For example, policies around the way funding is provided for students and staff, how assessments must be attested to, how ‘attendance’ is regarded and how resources are allocated are all based on a ‘physical school paradigm’, and will continue to be problematic until they are changed.

In browsing through some of my RSS feeds this weekend I came across a couple of sites with lists of useful online resources for educators.

The first is a list of 25 Incredible TED Talks for Educators, compiled by the team at Bachelor’s Degree Online. For those who are regular watchers of the TED Talks online videos many of these will be very familiar, but for those who aren’t this list provides a useful link to many of the videos that will be of particular interest to educators.

Some of my favourites that are on this list include:

• Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity
• Richard Baraniuk on open-source learning
• Sugata Mitra shows how kids teach themselves
• Alan Kay shares a powerful idea about ideas
• Nicholas Negroponte on One Laptop per Child

That’s not to say that these are the only interesting ones, just that they’re among those I’ve seen in the past and been inspired by. Something that is interesting about this list is the number of videos on the list that deal with education in Africa – certainly an area to keep an eye on!

The second list is from a group called Ace Online Schools titled 25 Awesome Virtual Learning Experiences Online and contains links to 25 websites that feature virtual learning experiences, exposing online visitors to everything from history to geography, astronomy to anatomy, literature to government. The majority of links are to US-based experiences, but serve to illustrate just what sorts of things can be done in the online world to provide a virtual experience for those unable to attend or participate in the real thing.

The Learning@School conference is rollicking along in Rotorua at the moment, with keynote speaker on day one, Andy Hargreaves, setting the scene with challenges to us all about the need to take account of the whole context and culture of our school when considering change and development. Pam Hook had the audience spell-bond also with her “Hooked on Thinking” ideas and strategies.

Unfortunately for me I am missing the conference, and have had to rely on my Twitter feeds, text messages and the odd call to keep me posted. Having made it to the opening of the conference I’ve had to return home for family reasons. That didn’t stop the presentation I was scheduled to do from going ahead – with my colleague from the Ministry of Education, Douglas Harre, stepping up to share thoughts, insights and ideas based on CORE’s Ten Trends for 2009. This is the annual list of trends developed by CORE staff to represent a view of some key areas of interest for NZ educators with regards to the impact of ICTs on teaching and learning.

This year’s trends are:

1. Mobile Technologies for learning
2. Netbooks
3. Cloud Computing
4. Learning spaces/environments
5. Open Education Resources
6. High Definition Video conferencing
7. Advanced Networks
8. Cyber-Citizenary
9. Green computing
10. Digital Literacy

The slideshow used at Learning@School is provided here:

For links to other research and lists of trends and predictions for 2009 check out the following:

Horizon Report, 2009

Looking forward to 2009

100 Top Sites for the year ahead

The Future of the Internet III

Horizon report – Australia/NZ edition

World Environment Day is looming – Wednesday 5 June – and to celebrate this event schools from throughout New Zealand and around the world are being invited to make a pledge and decide on some sort of eco-action to make a difference in some way. These ideas and actions can be submitted on the WED Website. Every New Zealand school, wharekura, kura, early childhood education centre, and kōhanga reo can use this website to share their plans to contribute to a sustainable future and participate in World Environment Day (WED) on 5 June 2008.

Overseas schools can also share their own sustainability thinking on a day when New Zealand’s students will be first to see the sun and to show the way today! The organisers are currently trying to get schools from as many countries as possible to participate, so that the maps that become active on 5 June will show a broad coverage of participation from across the whole world. If you know of a school that might be interested in participating please pass this message on.

I had an unexpected skype call yesterday with Joe Rigby from MellaniuM, a Toronto-based startup specialising in the development of 3D real-world virtual environments. Joe and his development team have leveraged the Unreal2 engine used in Unreal Tournament game to create this very impressive 3D virtual world – capable of having up to 32 avatars working together in a private virtual world.

MellaniuM works differently from Second Life, in that is it is a Client-Server operation – you need first to download a piece of client software and install it onto your computer, after which all of the processing happens on your desktop, and doesn’t rely on this being done across the web. The result is a very impressive, highly detailed 3D virtual environment that you can navigate around with ease, and includes some of the most impressive light-source rendering that I’ve seen in this sort of thing.

Part of the secret of the very impressive graphics in the environment is that they are rendered directly from Autocad designs to dimension the model to exactly what they are in real life – you can see some examples of this in the video clip.

The other really impressive thing for me was that Joe was able to ‘walk’ me through the demos of the software using skype – another little innovation that he and his colleagues had worked on.

Already interest is coming from engineering and real estate companies who see potential in these sort of environments for their businesses. It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to think of ways in which these environments could be used in education – for virtual field trips, virtual science labs, and virtual classrooms… as we’re already seeing happening in places like Second Life, but in this case, in a richer, more graphically detailed environment that “lives” on your own computer.