Ten theses for the future of learning - The first day of EUEL06
5.7.2006 @ 9:05 · Signals Käveleminen
First day of EU eLearning 2006 conference is now over. Most most of the day's official programme was quite unremarkable. I must say though that I was positively suprised that the growth of informal learning networks and facilitating technologies was noticed and mentioned in many presentations. Still, I didn't notice anyone making conclusions on how this should affect formal policy making and educational practices.
Ilkka Tuomi's ten theses for the conference's first learning cafe made the day worth it. Too bad I missed the actual participative phase trying to catch Euan Semple's presentation on social software. Missed that one too, luckily Teemu Arina recorded it.
Anyway, here are the Tuomi's theses in short. The actual presentation should appear to the conference wiki soon. (Update: The slides are here, in PDF)
1. Education goes global
According to my count Thomas L. Friedman's The World is Flat was the most referenced book this day. Tuomi made many intresting subtheses on this one, I'll have to check them in more detail later.
2. New disabilities become problems for pedagogy
Tuomi's example of this was how colour blindness may not be can become a seriouds hadicap in increasinly computerised environment if the user interface relies on ability to differntiate between red and green. In the future we will see new socially and technologilclly created disabilities like this.
3. Blogs (have) become more important than formal certificates
Yes! This is a strong statement, but an important one even if it were only very partially true. The academic world is just not accepting this, which I admit is not completely wrongheaded, as the status of formal certificates is of course strongest in the universities. Still, that should not make us blind for new informal forms of intellectual interaction and creditation.
4. Demographic change leads to slowdown of job growth in Europe
I forgot why would this be, as the the official mantra is that there will be new jobs as the baby boomers retire.
5. Home becomes the classroom
Nothing new here, really. This is what distance learning is all about. Point is, real distance learning is now possible. From a university perspective I'd like to continue the idea by stating that people can increasingly build their own "campuses", in a sense of social space and connections with their informal peer learning network.
6. Immersive social games replace the textbook
Ok, social games will play an increasing role for sure, but should they be compared to text books? This is maybe a more likely scenario in primary and secondary education, less in universities. I would say that textbooks will perhaps become more interactive and collectively authored, but will not be replaced by games.
7. Audio makes education portable.
This is true for sure. The podcasting revolution was just the first step.
8. Products will become pedagogic
This I think was the most interesting point Tuomi made, especially as it reminded me of the concept of spimes introduced by Bruce Sterling. Tuomi's idea was perhaps not quite as radical as he refered to merely complex tools containing user instructions in their design. Interesting idea anyway, paedagogy meets usability design.
9. Informal social learning becomes the key to competence development
Why would you buy a textbook or sit in a lecture listening to outdated information, when you can learn the skills by actively researching the latest stuff, testing and discussing it with your peers in Internet?
10. Educational programmes become integrated with real social change
Oh, I do hope so. With a masters in sociology I can't help but say I'm just a little disappointed how little my formal education dealt with the issues of the social scientists' role as a social actor, not just an observer of social phenomena.
For more blog posts and photos on the confernce you check the conference aggregator.
The thesis 4 on job growth probably refers to a general economic slowdown effect of an aging population. In terms of total jobs the European economy may shrink (or experience near zero growth), but the labor force will shrink faster, so the effect should be more jobs per individual.
Yep, that was it.
The idea was that when the post-war demographic bubble, which had much more education than previous generations, moves through the educational system, the educational averages grow fast. When the amount of newcomers declines (in some cases quite radically, e.g. Estonia, etc.), the human capital growth slows down, and in some cases turns negative.
For the time being, there is now a working paper on the theses available at http://www.meaningprocessing.com/personalPages/tuomi/articles/LearningInTheAgeOfNetworkedIntelligence.pdf A somewhat shorter piece will be out in European Journal of Education later in 2007.
Thanks for clearing that up, and for the link, as well. Seems like a very interesting article.