We all know how much students depend on Google to link them to information from all over the web. But what would happen if the search engine actually turned into the resource? Case in Point: the Wolfram computation knowledge engine. Sounds a bit more fancy then Google already! But Wolfram, the bringer of all things Mathematica, is shying away from media pressure to label his knowledge engine ‘the thing that killed Google’, and I can see why. Both serve different purposes.

Changing our approaches

Could this change the composition of our information streams? Could it impact upon the way we use learning objects in education and the rate at which we feel the need to keep reinventing the wheel? And how about the nature of instruction? Does it have the potential to change the way we teach and assess? For example, could you see yourself directing your students to Wolfram to help them test their understanding of the Darcy–Weisbach equation? How about a course in nutrition using Wolfram to provide students with information on the nutritional value of foods (e.g. cheeseburger). Or what about economics students using Wolfram to quickly compare the GDP of Brazil and Ecuador or astronomy students checking how far the Milky Way Galaxy is from the Earth today?

Reliability of Information

If you’re worried about the reliability of the information, why not get your students to do some research on it? One activity that comes to mind is:

Phase 1: Have students look up a collection of statistics or historical facts on your subjects of choice using Wolfram.

Phase 2: Instruct them to cross reference the results with those published in other sources to see how the information compares.

Phase 3: Ask them to discuss the implications of the discrepancies in the information generated from this and other popular search tools, and consider why they think inconsistencies exist.

It could be a great activity to develop information literacy and research skills that incorporates a mixture of the old and some of the newest ‘bleeding edge’ technologies around today.

The Challenges

The challenge here is in the way we use our minds to conceptualize the information we want to generate from this type of tool. It’s not just about finding information about ‘a topic’. It’s about the relationship of the information you’re looking for right now. And if this tool really does enable us to access information that’s only a few seconds old, maybe we have to reconsider the way we understand ‘accuracy’ of information? The relationship of information that was ‘accurate’ two hours ago may look different now.

Does this also imply a need to change the way we reference our sources? Until now, it’s been sufficient to note the date on which you accessed a specific article or webpage. Are we now going to have to note the time as well?

Media Response

Today the BBC discussed the recent alpha launch of the project. Public reaction includes comments on the engine’s ‘ability to do calculations, conversions, translations and other comparisons with linguistic data’ and on the way it has given information seekers ‘new ways to find and compute data‘. Let’s see what we can do with it in education! Consider that a challenge

I’m not sure how much longer I’ll have access to my Sprouts, and as a result, I’m not sure how much longer the Sprouts that I’ve published on this blog will be accessible. Unfortunately, I don’t have enough resources to recreate all of my Sprouts in alternative formats, but there is one in particular that I would like transfer here into this post so that the information can continue to help those interested. This way, we can also build upon it as a community and let it grow.

On 02 Jan 2009, I published a collection of links to various reusable learning object repositories that provide access to free electronic learning tools covering a broad scope of disciplines. I’ve transferred them below (listed in alphabetical order) in case that Sprout becomes inaccessible in the near future.

I wholeheartedly encourage teachers, tutors, teaching assistants, instructional designers, learning technologists, librarians, students (both formal and informal) and anyone else who’s interested to take a look at what’s out there. These are resources for all levels of learning (K-12 through to higher and continuing education) and the list even includes some resources for the mobile learner. They can help you create blended/e-learning lesson plans, stimulate discussion among peers about how to begin integrating technology into your curricula and support your students in the development of connected learning strategies. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel. There are accessible resources out there, produced by people with subject expertise and a genuine intention to share information with the world. Take advantage!

Please note, all links below will open in new windows/tabs.

For those of you who’ve read through some posts on this blog, you’ll have noticed that I am quite the advocate of a technology that affords the less tech savvy content developer with the opportunity to easily create flash content. I’ve published some of my materials here already, and I even started a “Learning Object Series” which was going to provide readers with a breakdown of all aspects of what a learning object can be. Not to mention all the other ideas I had in store…

Pick up on that fleck of the past tense in that last sentence? Well, it seems that I’ll no longer be able to use that amazing technology. ‘Why?’, you may ask. Well, because recently I received an email from the Sprout Team advising me of their new pricing scheme. A technology that was previously free and accessible to all is now going to cost US$599.50/yr! Here’s the pricing scheme for those who would like a kick in the gut along with their morning coffee!

I’m not going to dwell on the dozens and dozens of hours I’ve spent creating content using SproutBuilder. I’m not going to spend any more time feeling sorry for myself that I’ll loose all my work (because there’s no way of saving or backing up your sprout on your own machine). I won’t think a minute more about all the students who will be affected by this ‘new development’ since a number of my Sprouts are currently being used within virtual learning environments as tools for university students. I’ll even shelve all the other ideas I had for new uses of Sprouts – ideas that until a couple days ago were still cheerily sprouting in my mind. I’ll eventually move on to a new technology and probably even gain a few new skills along the way…but that’s really not the point…

What I am quite disturbed about is the relationship between accessibility and money, and even more so, about the potential for the provider of the technology to abuse its power in order to dis-empower the user. In this case, the user was just one person – me – but what are the implications when the user is a university or a college with minimal funds available in its IT budget? The accessibility of technology is vital in today’s world. Taking a look at their pricing levels, it looks like the Sprout Team is targeting their product to high-end design firms with lots and lots of mulla to dish out, and most probably who are already Sprouters themselves and who will have to think a lot longer and harder than me about the implications of the investment they’ve already made in this fabulous new technology. Is this another sign that open source is the way of the future? At least for the disappearing middle class, it seems.

Dear Sprout Team, let’s not get ahead of ourselves! Even sliced bread is affordable to the little guy!

On a side note, anyone notice the strategically planted comment that the Sprout Marketing Manager planted on my blog, coincidentally only a couple days before the news broke about their new fees? …funny…

To leave off on a more inspiring note, here’s a book forum discussion presented by the Cato Institute spotlighting a book written by Glenn Reynolds entitled, ‘An Army of Davids: How Markets and Technology Empower Ordinary People to Beat Big Media, Big Government, and Other Goliaths“. The latter part of this panel discussion gets quite politically heavy, but in addition to a brief glimpse into the history of beer (!), the panel discusses the implications of ideas presented in the book such as, “Technological developments are putting more and more power into the hands of more and more people.”

My question is, what happens if technology providers become the Goliath’s? Where’s the empowerment supposed to come from then?

As part of the “What is a Learning Object anyway??” series (I’ve just decided we’re going to have a series!), I wanted to talk about the attributes of a learning object today. We started off considering the definition of learning objects because, as in any learning process, if we don’t understand the meaning of the words being use to describe a new concept, we won’t get very far in grasping the ideas. So, assuming that you understand the definition of an admittedly abstract term yet to be definitively defined by the industry (!), let’s move on to an RLOs (Reusable Learning Object’s) attributes.

In essence, any learning tool can be a learning object – depending on how micro or macro your perspective. There is, of course, the issue of granularity, in which the more focused the material or content of the learning object, and the more independent is it (can it be used at various levels of study or within different contexts), (and certainly considering its accessibility), then, the more easily it can be slotted into a sequence of other learning objects to create a broader learning experience. That’s where the reference to ‘reusable’ becomes relevant. For example, if I wanted to create a lesson about French irregular verb conjugation,  I would want to break the concept down into digestible chunks (or modules, or blocks, or however you label ‘learning bits’). After all, if you’ve ever studied French as a foreign language, you’ll know that there seem to be more irregular verbs in the French language then regular ones! Besides the point though, I know…

So, the following is a learning object about the attributes of learning objects. In addition to including numerous references on the topic (for those interested in further reading), you are also provided with a list of examples of the various types of content that can make up a learning object. (If you have more examples, please share what’s worked for you!)

One could say that a blog also falls into the category of learning object although often spanning broader topic areas. I realize that we’re not broaching the concept of credibility of source, reliability of information, etc. with this example, but at this point, let’s just try to get our minds wrapped around the idea of what a learning object can be. With that, here’s the RLO I mention above:

And, as a lighter addition, I also wanted to provide another example of a learning object – this time, one that talks about podcasts and how they can be used as time savers:

Both of these learning bits were created using SproutBuilder – once again proving that you don’t have to be a Flash expert to create Flash content

(If any of you have created Sprouts for educational use and you’d like to share them, feel free to send me information about them so that I can publish them here too! It would also be great to hear your experiences of how well (or not) they worked in achieving your teaching goals.)

From: Virtually Scholastic

There is so much educational content freely available on the web that it can certainly seem challenging to know where to find the high quality materials from the reputable sources. Very often, when I work on the development of courses, module, programs, workshops, etc. that integrate some level of eLearning into the mix, I inevitably see teachers reach the point at which they realize how many more tools technology could enable them to provide to their students, but at the same time, how much time and energy and effort and know-how it would take to develop their learning resources. That’s my cue to start talking about reusable learning object (RLO) repositories!

Learning objects are quite tricky to define. I attempted to clarify the definition by creating my own learning object about learning objects. Have a look at it below:

In order for teachers to be able to ‘start off running’ when they initiate the development of a new eLearning initiative, I recommend browsing through the plethora of learning resources readily available online. It’s a much more empowering approach than reinventing the wheel. Besides, why don’t we focus on what we’re good at?! Why should an accounting professor be expected to learn the skills required to develop an online module teaching his or her students about the magic that is the balance sheet? Why not just tap into the global educational community and share with one another?

To help make the process of sharing a bit easier, I’ve put together a collection of learning object repositories that provide access to free materials. Have a look at the collection below and see if any of these digital libraries could help make your life a little easier!

Before I end this post, I just wanted to share the learning resource that I came across today while browsing. It’s a video entitled ‘Focus on Educational innovation‘ – part of the MIT World video library. It’s well worth watching.

Particularly Dick Yue’s presentation starting at 34 min 36 sec as he discusses the evolution and impact of MIT OpenCourseWare.

Or Shigeru Miyagawa as he talks about Star Festival – an initiative that injects support, resources and hope into urban schools in American to create the perfect tasting STEW of acceptance and integration! His talk starts at 55 min 29 sec.

And then there’s Henry Jenkins who talks to us about computer games and the extent to which their ubiquity has enabled them (or the gamers that play them!) to infiltrate into the classroom. Are video games trivial? Are they time wasters? Or, is there some pedagogic value to them? Have a look at what Henry has to say starting at 1 hr 12 min 10 sec. In particular, I found his statistics very revealing. For example, did you know that one third of MIT students surveyed admitted playing games that were not part of the instructional activities during classes!!

The question and answer session that starts at 1 hr 36 min 09 sec also broaches some interesting topics like, for example, what the difference is between the online resources for a course actually being taught to MIT students and the resources available through MIT OpenCourseWare for that same course.

Here’s the video below:

From: Virtually Scholastic