Stephen Downes
Knowledge, Learning, CommunityHola. Hello, everyone. Greetings from Canada. If you thought it was cold here this week, He should see what it's like at my home.
So it's nice to be here to be warm for a little bit. I'm going to be talking about, How to make the most of online learning. I have a clicker here, somewhere else.
I'm sure when you think of online learning, Some thoughts, come to your mind. What do you think about? You think about online learning? What does it look like to you? Well, Does it look like this?
Okay, that's an unintentional kind of
My video didn't go and my, okay, they're going to fix it up in the booth. So that is that typical of online learning for you. There we go. That's not my.
We'll just pretend that the video is playing. Or.
Okay video. But no sound.
Does it look like that? The world's most boring lecture. Oh, come on.
Okay, my clicker is not advancing my slides.
All right, we're stuck. So we're going to have to just pretend that you slides are advancing. There we go. Does it look like this? People, taking notes, where the pen and paper, Well, looking at their computer screen watching a teacher. With their back to you writing on a whiteboard.
Does that look familiar? What does it look like this? Your typical boring learning management system. With a choice of 42 courses, each course with 15 modules, each module with 15 sections to do. And you're, on course, number one module. Number one section. Number two,
Does it look like this? Put the step by step progression. For gaining attention through expressing the learning objectives. To presenting the content all the way through to an online test with multiple choice? Questions does all that look familiar to you.
I've been an online learning for 35 years now. Hard to believe. How's it is hard for me to believe? I'm still employed. I mean you see my skills. My learning looks like this. It does not look like those typical online courses. It's very different. And you might say, well, sure, it doesn't work.
Well. I'm here. I'm getting you a talk. Somebody has just said some very nice things about me in Spanish which I did not completely understand, but I did hear the word Maximo. So I'm giving lectures all over the world. I published articles. Most of what I know about online learning.
I learned myself. When I started there were no courses or programs on online learning. We invented it from scratch. So yeah, it works. So, what's different? About the way I've learned online and that horrible mess. You just saw Because everyone loves lists. I've reduced it to five major points.
Holy point of online learning but it's just a device. Being able to talk about it. Hacking. My traditional school ring. It's about what I want to do. It's about process. Not content. It's about learning from experts, really? And finally, about finding my own voice. And I'm hoping in between those five, you can see your own point.
Number 6, point number seven, whatever. So, first of all packing my traditional schooling, This may surprise you. I was not a typical student in school.
In grade five, I created my own newspaper. Get some mediocroft machine. Hand, drew the pictures. I didn't know much about for the for her photography. Hey, my early jeans. I did learn to develop my own photos in high school. I defined my own projects that were different from the ones that the teachers assigned.
Me and grade 11 a group of us over through the social sciences department in a revolution. Recalled ourselves, the movement for autocratic organization Mal. In university. Once again, I was working on student newspapers and Actually, in university, I spent most of my time working on the University of the student newspaper.
And a little bit of time attending classes. In graduate school organized protests against the government. To support school funding. Has a teacher. I would give assignment which I hated to do but I would allow students to give me their responses in any medium whatsoever. I even told her if you can put your assignment on a cube, hand me in a cube.
I didn't know what I would get. I got a little of everything. And as a researcher, which is what I've been doing for the last 20, when years I threw out the rule book on research, develop my own path. So, I've done these things. Differently. And how did that happen?
It's it worked out.
This is the second video, I'm almost afraid. So I'll just pretend we're playing it. And the, the young woman speaking there to Ted talk. Basically defined hacking and she says, hackers are people who challenge and change the system to make it work differently. To make it work better. I'm actually the mindset that I've always had.
As a student and as a teacher and as a researcher, Okay, it works but there's still no sound. And now my thingy doesn't work again, Could you advance the slides one, please? And we'll see if that happens.
Another example. Is an article, the reference is on the next slide. About the next generation of students. The Next Generation of students. The economic downturn says, the article has bread a whole generation of just try to stop me kids. Determined to get the knowledge they need for success. Even if it comes from outside, the traditional educational framework.
Well, as teachers, I want you to think about that for a second. Your students. Who you have so much difficulty, motivating to do anything in your class. As soon as they get over your class, they go home. They get on the computer, they start learning things. Think about that.
Cuz that's what's happening. Another example, something called edu pump. Dreamed up by a friend of mine called Jim Grimm and see idea of education, not as some carefully planned orchestra of pre-arranged scripts and routines and content and presentation. But four people just getting together. Can barely use the instruments.
They're playing do not actually know how to sing and yet still making music. Only in education. You might be thinking, none of this can possibly work and yet, it does. Some people say, well haven't look at you. You're special. I think you're all nice. They say you can teach yourself.
Right? You have the special ability that allows you to teach yourself but most people can't do that. Most people need directions to which I say. No. That's not true. Everybody can manage their own learning and indeed, mostly everybody does once they get outside school. They teach some sauce to drive, they teach himself how to play video games, they learn how to Oh, I don't know.
Make food in the kitchen by groceries at the grocery store. All kinds of things. I'm, they learn to speak before they even get to school. No, it's not only special people that can learn to create their own learning and that's a very important point. So, Has teachers. What do you value?
In your students. Questions to ask. Do you encourage creativity? Do you allow students to change the rules? Not just the easy rules, but the really important rules Can students find their own resources instead of the ones that you're providing in class? Do you respect? And I mean, really respect your student's opinions, no matter, which student is giving them.
Do you model or demonstrate innovation and creativity in your classroom? Do you recognize in your classroom, multiple points of view, multiple points, multiple perspectives? Even on the points on which there can be no debate, no dispute. Do your students? Want to be like you. As you can probably gather from the leaving questions that I'm asking.
Let me answer should be yes, but I think maybe it might not be. And that's part of what I'm trying to speak to you about today. Okay, I just came up with this yesterday. I don't know if this is a good slogan. You can tell me. It takes just one key to open a door.
And you can be that key if you want to All right, audience, feedback segment, is that a good slogan or should I abandon it here? Good slogan. Abandonment here. Okay, volumes of participation walked and through the room.
All right. That's the warm-up. That's just hacking the traditional education system. What about? It's about what I want to do. Imagine. Telling your students that today's last one will be whatever you want to do. And it's an interesting problem, because For many students, I don't need video games. I look back on my own experience, even in college and university.
I personally was never actually interested in learning content. I know that there were things that teachers were trying to very hard to get me to remember. And that was never important to me. For me. Maybe I'm selfish but for me learning was always about whatever I wanted to do what sort of things I wanted to do.
Let me expand on that a little bit. Are you studying trigonometry? I think it was four times. Shameless. First time was in high school. I studied trigonometry. And it went in here and out here and I forgot it. The next day, I barely passed. Then I was in a computer science program first year.
Only in college, I studied trigonometry. Ran out. Barely passed. I went to university. And they said you need remedial Mass. And one of the things you have to study is trigonometry. So, I studied chicken on the tree yet again. In out, barely passed. Get the picture. But on my own time, I had Boba computer.
I had bad copy of Fortran or sorry, Borland turbo, C. Installed it, that's for if you don't know, that's a tool that allows you to write software programs, I wanted to build the alternate Star Trek game. Just don't do. Some things never leave you. And one of the things I wanted to do.
In my ultimate Star Trek game is rotated cube. On the screen just like the board. You know what I needed in order to learn how to rotate a cube on a screen. Trigonometry. So I found my old trigonometry textbook. It was red. Open that up to the first page of trigonometry.
Sat down figured out the equations that I needed, coded the equations and successfully rotated a cube on a computer screen. It's about what I wanted to do. Not about what somebody wanted me to learn. That was an experiencing set a lot to me and it's an example of used over the years.
How's the an educational philosophy? Bye. Guy called Seymour. Papa pictures there. He's the one in the picture, not the one drawing the picture. I think that's a turtle. Constructionism is basically. The idea that you learn by creating things by making things by constructing things. Here's an example, where students are learning robotics, By learning how to program robots, made out of Legos.
Interesting. You know you take something like Legos you put it in a pile in the middle of the floor and you put your kids beside the pile of Legos and they start making things just on their own. You don't even need to motivate them. They just do it. So password said, this sort of thing that people really like to do is also really helpful for helping people learn So, there's a whole philosophy.
Behind the idea of making things in school. And I'm sure I am sure that you have seen this In other presentations. The other was someone speaking, I was speaking with her earlier. About Minecraft. And Minecraft is a tool for making things. It's sort of like reverse Legos. Digital reverse Legos.
Let's take that a step further. Elders. Talk. About applying this more broadly imagine asking. A prospective student. Not what do you want to major in? What subjects do you want to study? But rather, what would you like to do? What would you like to be able to make? Some possible answers.
This is from the paper that I quote here, I would like to make a porcelain cup. I would like to make a cure for cancer. I would like to make someone feel less anxious and alone. I would like to make a computer game. I would like to make a solution to home in the homelessness in my town.
All the different answers that people might give. And, you know, you sort of sit there and you think well the curriculum cannot possibly encompass all of us and it's true. And it's funny, isn't it? We take a traditional curriculum and impose that instead of Having people make the things that they want to make.
It's funny. What do I do about my job? As a researcher in Nancy, every job that I've ever had really is four. Kinds of making things. I make philosophy. I make computer programs. I make educational programs. I'll talk about that in a little bit. And I make make journalism.
It sounds kind of awkward. I make newspapers and articles and newsletters and things like that. My work focuses around on what I make. Not what I know. Not my knowledge and think about it. If I couldn't make a presentation to you, I probably wouldn't have been invited to speak, right?
No matter how smart I was, if I couldn't actually do something with it, it wouldn't matter how much I knew. For me. My work, my learning, my research are inseparable from my making and I think that's probably true. If you think about it for most people, What do you do in your life?
Your professional life and your personal life. Do you just sort of sit there and know things? This is me knowing things. Enough. Knowing Yesterday, I made a clock from the photographs from Madrid. Fuck, you say, it's all the same thing to me. Taking photos, making a presentation doing research writing a computer program.
It's all the same thing. Now, while I'm Talking here. I just want to give attention to and say thank you to the sign language interpreter. Whose work? I very much appreciate as part of his presentation. Thank you.
Oh, you're probably thinking, wait a second. You promised to talk about online learning. And we haven't had anything about online learning so far. And maybe you're beginning to feel a bit cheated. Exp. The organizers. I could have come in here. And started talking about artificial intelligence and blockchain. Maybe a little robotics for fun.
Perhaps some federated communication systems. Probably wouldn't have been very relevant. But it wouldn't have been the main point, anyways, All of this that I've been talking about so far is about online learning. And for me, The big change that happened when I went from traditional learning.
To online learning, is that all of these things hacking learning making things became much easier, much more possible. They became real live viable viable possibilities for me. And an online learning about what we can do online. Doesn't matter what we do. Take a picture and make a presentation, write a blog post design a game.
Sorry that was a challenge for her. It doesn't matter.
Oh, that kind of leaves us in a hard place to go, right? Specific anything, if if Anything than what is it?
Oh, that's not how that slide should look.
I have another coffee running on my computer here. Just attracting to be sure. Okay. Never mind. I also sometimes talk to myself. Sometimes in not the best situation. Okay. This is the third section of the talk. We're at 451. I've got 25 minutes to go. Unless I'm wrong if I'm wrong, tell me.
Because all I got up to a zeros. Okay. This is the most important part of the talk. The secret weapons. For the online learner are logic and language. For those of you working in language or working in bilingual schools, that should be very, welcome news. But it's true. Explain what I mean?
By logic. I mean four major areas of Endeavor. Description. Which might include talking about properties, or relations of things, or even values of things, definition, maybe definitely descriptions. Maybe ostensive, definitions the domain of a definition. Arguments. Which is convincing somebody. That something is true. Maybe inductive arguments deductive arguments or the cornerstone of explanations abductive arguments.
And finally explanation. These four things are at the core. Of all of logic. If you know how to do all these four things and do them in an advanced level, you have a secret weapon. Interesting, it's not on the curriculum. The math is on the curriculum. I'm sorry about that.
So, there are the four. Description. Definition argument and explanation. Math is there? Image proper place as part of logic.
Then language. And, you know, I mean, I could define language in various different ways. I did it this way. Syntax. Not just, you know, general principles or rules of grammar. But anything that involves patterns rules, similarities generalizations, Now, finding the structure. Samanthans not just truth, although truth matters but meaning values.
Plausibility. Relevance. Oops, too far too fast.
How we apply things? What do utility of a thing is? Cases where knowledge is used and then finally contacts the environment. In which, whatever it is, we're doing takes place. These are the secret weapons. About eight elements all together and we can organize them and combine them differently, it doesn't matter how we organize them.
These form the process. Not the contact. These are the secret weapons for the online learner, this is what helps them succeed as an online learner and this is what they learn from learning online. Which I can spend the next year talking about that. Instead, I'll point you to something I did a few years ago.
Called speaking in law cats. Because when you think about these eight things, You'll find them everywhere. Everywhere you look, If you go online, you know, you see memes online or tick tock dances, I won't dance. It's okay. These are these patterns, these secret weapons being used naturally by students naturally by people.
Without being trained, how to do them. It's funny. I mean, like a law cat, for example, is a combination of a picture. And, Some words organized in a special way and there's a link there, how to speak all cat. There's a whole system. I'm speaking of people developed on their own.
And you can learn another following that link. These are the tools, these eight things. Of learning when the content does not matter. So if it doesn't matter what you want to do, These are the things that will help you do what you want to do. They're also the tools of science and research as well.
They form the core. Human cognitive processes. I think we recognize that I think that as teachers we know how important these things are. Even though it's really hard to sit students in a room for 8 hours and teach them about logic and arguments, and mathematics, and writing and grammar and stuff like that.
Wait a sec. Did I just say the content doesn't matter?
I did. And I mean it. The content doesn't matter. Now there's no small number of people out there saying, no, no, no, no. You have to have content knowledge. You can't learn how to do anything without content knowledge. You need some content. You need to know if you're talking with a friend.
You're going to be talking about something. Nothing. It doesn't matter what you're talking about, you're still using the rules of language, through rules of logic, etc. What's important here and what we find especially in today's digital world is the content is changing all the time. You might think it's really important.
That your students learn about Borland, Turbo, C. It was key for me in learning how to program. But here I am today. How many you have you ever heard of Borland, turbo, C? 1. 3. Good for you guys. Gerald School. For the restroom. Nobody learns turbo sea anymore. Pictures on my slide.
How many of you recognize with address? That is what I was taught. Was the planet, Pluto. My favorite planet. Still a planet.
It doesn't matter which content you're using. It doesn't matter whether you're talking about this subject area that subject area, whether it's biochemistry or physics or how to cook a pot roast, it doesn't matter. The same secret, still apply the structure of the patterns, the meaning the value, Think of a pot roast, you know, usually think about pot roast to traditional Canadian dish.
Lovely dish. You follow a recipe, you know, which is a list of operations, or rules or methods. Right, so if you're good at following rules or instructions or methods, You can actually successfully cook a pot roast without ever having done it before or even been showing how to do it.
And it's also about values. Why would you want to cook a pot roast? When is it appropriate to cook a pot? Roast Him, probably on a Sunday, not on a hot summer day? The rules of logic and language, still apply. And that is key to learning online online. You can learn about anything.
Instantly. When I was preparing these slides. And I prepared them in my hotel room yesterday. Cuz I like to do things ahead of time. I learned how to like normally you see Pluto it's in space and space is black. But then I would have had a big black square on my slide and it would have looked ugly.
So, I looked up how to remove the black and convert it to white. Looked it up. Figured it out. Actually did this in about 30 seconds. No, I could have been taught in the classroom. I suppose they could have done a full class session on changing your backgrounds but I could learn it online.
30 seconds. When I came here today, I took a taxi Yeah, I know luxury. I got into the taxi. The driver asked me. Where are you going? He asked me in Spanish. I didn't understand but I figured that's what he was asking me. And I said the scalia. What was it in school escala?
Am I close?
Sorry. That's it. Sorry how I said it, and He didn't understand me. So I told him he took out his phone. He said into his phone sweetheart. Let's go out. His phone gave him directions on where to find it and where to drop me off. And that's very different from driving a taxi even, 10 years ago when you had to have a map in your head.
Of where everything was. Now, you don't need to know you just ask your phone. But, That means you don't know where everything is, and that's true. What if your phone breaks? Well, if it breaks on your first day you're in trouble, you admit that. But after you've been using your phone to find places for a while, you begin to recognize where they are and you don't need to look them up on the phone anymore.
I mean, how many times do you have to look Prado up on your phone? You're probably figure out where it is by now. You don't have to be taught.
You learn it by using the tool that helps you find out what it is in the course of doing something. And that's how we learn online. Very different. Put down all my tools. It's the again. Another one of these things I'm trying. The pragmatic fiesta resistance. That's the token in French for this session.
Nobody cares about what you know. Trust me. They care about what you can do, what you can make, and to a lesser extent what you did, but mostly it's about, what can you do now and in the future, That brings us to experts. Learning from experts. And this is one of the big advantages of learning online is that we actually can learn from experts.
That's a wonderful thing. But the problem is and I know this, Experts are terrible teachers. That's an expert teaching advanced physics. Have fun. Does that look? They don't even speak the same language you did. And I'm not talking about English, French or Spanish. I'm talking about, in this case, the advanced language of physics.
Cancers, vector spaces, etc. Language that especially is a beginner, you don't know. But the expert doesn't know, you don't know that and even if you did he wouldn't care. And worse the expert probably doesn't want to teach you anyways. A physics professor became a physics professor because they wanted to do physics.
Not because they wanted to teach So, experts are terrible teachers. Tony Bates, says what we should teach all the university professors to be better teachers. Hey, I'm not sure that's the master device. So what are experts good for? Well. Experts are models of best practice. In fact, whatever an expert does is by definition best practice, right?
Most of their knowledge though cannot be found in a book. Michael Polanya. Calls that Tyson knowledge or sometimes personal knowledge. An experts don't talk. Mostly to you and me. They talk to each other. Perform, what are called communities of practice and you can look up at your vendor. And others about the concept of the community of practice.
That's how they learn online. Yeah, on a nuclear physicist. Doesn't go learn about advanced nuclear physicist in a classroom. They talk to other nuclear physicists. In their communities. What digital technology and online learning allows us to do. Used to be a part of these community's practice. Or is they sometimes call them distributed digital communities of practice.
Experts. Our models for learning. But they're not teaching. They're doing. Think about that. That's how experts learn. They might do labs or workshops, they might. Offer apprenticeships or internships. They might design simulations and games they might take part. They generally take part in real world projects. Health. I'm trying to help the environment.
Trying to cure covet. Trying to prevent a nuclear after from melting down. Trying to find out who the fastest person was to run a race or experts everywhere, all over the place. One of the great things about table, television in my country now, is that we're learning that there are experts in every single discipline cooking.
Yes, plumbing, yes, woodworking yes experts everywhere. And This is how they teach each other. This is the model for us. To know how to teach online to teach digitally. Experts form their communities reform, a tight little community. Brighten the center. Around them is a wider, professional community. And they talk to the experts and the experts talk to them.
Outside that and then even bigger community are the students. Mostly. The students are just watching what's going on. They're watching the experts model, their practice. They're watching the famous dart player, play darts and they're thinking of themselves. If they want to be a dark player, I want to learn to play.
Or Lionel Messi or whoever. But they're following, Sorry, I had to throw a messy reference in there.
Something I made with my friend, George Seaman, what you make is if you're called connectivision or some reference is there. But you can look at, but it's all about how people learn from each other in these online. Digital communities. Not classes or courses, but communities. I also helped with the concept of personal learning environment.
I think about this as a concept, Think about yourself. Has the center of a learning network and out. There are all those experts and all those disciplines your interested in. And you're joining those communities and you follow those communities, and that's how you begin to learn. You see the expert in your profession, whoever they are And you might not know who they are at first modeling, best practice and learning.
And that's what George and I were trying to do. So, another thing we made, We made a move. Oops, I want one too far. There we go. A monk was a model of how communities make their own learning. So, what we did is we made a learning environment, a digital learning environment where people could talk to each other.
It was massive. We had lots of people, thousands of people come join us. It was open to everyone, very important. It was all online. And yeah, it was a course but we denied. It was a course. It was an experience. Okay. No we said it was a course but
Now, there are these moves, but udacity and Future learning mother is doing traditional learning online and you see the traditional focus on content and on assessment and on things like behaviorist learning cognitive is to learning. Even constructivist learning. But it's all about these formal classes formal instruction, etc. Our Mooks were completely different.
Our Mukes. For content. Used open. Educational resources. Are even better stuff that was created by the people in the course. It was flexible and distributed for assessment. We didn't do assessments. Because the idea was. To tell people. What you get out of the course? Is your assessment. If you think you got out of the course, what you wanted?
Then you passed. You ain't done. You're sitting there thinking that's a stupid way of assassin people it's not about for us. It was not about us assessing down. It was about them assessing themselves. And you might think. How can you respondibly have people assess themselves? Well, if somebody's trying to do something Assessment becomes easy.
Either, they were successful in doing it. Or they were unsuccessful for some reason, they learn from that and try again. And you can tell, did they succeed or not for a programmer. It does the programming run. And does it add 2 + 2 and get four? Not 17. Did it gets 17?
You did not. Let's see.
What sort of model? Are you offering to your students? Are you offering a bridge? Through this community to an expert. Or are you posing as well? That's a hard question to ask a group of teachers, isn't it? Maybe I shouldn't, I don't know. This is another one of these slides.
Maybe I should have run it, maybe I shouldn't run it, but I think it's an important concept. Okay, Audience feedback time, use the slide again in the future.
Don't use it ever again. Small knot on the other side, okay. Finally, five finding my own voice. The key to learning isn't about. Finding courses, or lessons or videos or whatever the key is to use all of these and anything else you can find. To create your own learning.
Your own thing online. I have a theory about learning. That's a very simple theory. I call it down. Just Theory of learning which is funny because it's not really a period. It's not invented by me to teach his to model and demonstrate that is in fact what the experts are doing.
To learn is to practice and reflect. An hour role is teachers is to somehow join these two things together. So it's not about us teaching courses. It's about us making connections and that's what digital technology lets us too. How do we find that community? Or basketball quote. Join a community.
Look for existing communities facebook, reddit, meetup stack. Overflow wherever How do you do that? Ask a question of Google via specific as possible. Like how do I fix a derailleur? Not cycling, and you will find the community. You'll find the community by the language they speak. And then participate in the community.
I need participate not by jumping in, and Being all expert on day, one. No, you participate in love getting you. A bit of a model read, share, ask, and then build Follow what the communities doing share what you're doing. Then you can start asking for questions and advice and then finally you can start building the community Instead of offering digital lessons as instructors as teachers, you should demonstrate how you learn.
About something online. This works really well. All the process model, good learning model, your use of those eight secrets. Still, not sure. Look it up on Google. It'll tell you how to do it. Fine. If your things you like, then maybe blog about it, don't know how to blog look that up on Google.
I'm Steven Downs and I thank you very much for your kind attention.
Stephen Downes, Casselman, Canada
stephen@downes.ca
Last Updated: Dec 22, 2024 06:03 a.m.
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