Freedom from the cloud and what we give up to get it

I’m still tossing around the question of whether it’s worth it to free yourself from dependence on the cloud.  I wonder if freedom from dependence is a free as it seems.  When I consider this idea of freedom as lack of dependence, I imagine the archetypal survivalists, the pioneers.  They grew their own food, mended their own clothes, did their own teaching, and apart from infrequent visits to town, weren’t dependent on anyone for very much.  But….

The price they paid was that they had to be able to do almost anything, from fighting off bears to tending to livestock, to repairing tools. Not only did this take a great deal of time, but learning to do all these things was no small feat, either. The trade off of civilization is becoming dependent on others so that you can spend your time doing something that you’re good at and like to do (hopefully).

So what does this have to do with Google Apps?  Many (not all, but many) of those I see encouraging independence from the cloud are educational technologists  – the kind of people for whom setting up laconica or wordpress is often something they’re good at and like to do (that’s how they ended up educational technologists).  People who are not educational technologists face more acutely the trade off of independence vs. spending your time doing what you want to do rather than all the things you need to do in order to be independent.

In the pre-industrial world, independence was replaced by interdependence. The scop needed the farmer to grow food, who needed the carpenter to fix his barn, who needed (or at least wanted) the scop to entertain him with tales in the evening.  The problem is that Google doesn’t need us, just attention.  How might we use technology to scale down so that we are once again interdependent?

If not the cloud, then what?

Yesterday, George Siemens wrote about the dangers of the cloud . This sparked an interesting discussion on Twitter between George , Pat Parslow, and Alec Couros about cloud risks, the similarities between OER’s and FLOSS, etc.  In raising the question, I think something that didn’t get addressed as well as it might have been is, “If one ought beware the cloud, what ought one do instead?”

The rush to the cloud isn’t just because it’s new and shiny. As people become more and more mobile, it gives us access (almost) anywhere and disaster security (how many of us really have the offsite backups we all know we should have?) It’s that anywhere access that I think draws people into cloud computing.  So is there a way to provide that in a more open way?  Yes there is, but I hope you’re brave.

<hyperbole-gentle sarcasm>

Instead of Blogger or WordPress.com, set up a wordpress installation on your own server.  Stop using twitter and instead set up Laconica . EyeOS instead of Google Docs, stay out of Second Life so you can set up an OpenSim grid, and so forth.  After watching D’arcy Norman and Jim Groom go back and forth troubleshooting WordPress, I think you should be prepared to spend a few hours setting up and troubleshooting.

By the way, if you use a hosted server, you’re then prisoner to the whim of your hosting provider, so you really need to get a symmetrical broadband connection at your house and host the boxes  yourself. Don’t forget the second installation at your in-law’s for offsite backup.

</hyperbole-gentle sarcasm>

Let me be clear that I am quite the fan of free software (yes, I am speaking RMSese here). I had a debian server running until a power outage while I was out of town seriously clobbered it , and I would probably try what I just described had I a server or two to play with. For the vast majority of people who are not serious geeks, such an approach is not even on the radar screen. When assessing the real risk, is the likelihood of google/twitter/etc. doing something nefarious greater than the likelihood of your single hard drive crashing and consigning your data to oblivion?  Before the Amazon remote Orwell Kindle deletion , I would have said “no” without hesitation.  Maybe the Amazon mess tells us that the risk of cloud provider bad behavior is greater than we thought.

So, what should a non-techie end user of cloud apps do to protect themselves from the dangers of the cloud?

What exactly do we want to measure?

Will Richardson links to an article about proposals to move to a mastery learning model in Plano, TX middle schools. Most of the criticisms of the proposal the article mentions relate to the notion that if homework is not graded, students wont develop a sense of responsibility.  A table at the end of the article compares current policy, under which classroom disruptions , incomplete homework, and cheating result in lowered grades, with the proposal, under which this wouldn’t happen.  A question the article touches on but doesn’t explain fully is, “What does a bad grade mean?”

Alice and Bob both get failing grades in algebra.  To someone with access to only a transcript, they look identically (un)skilled.  But, in a system which penalizes behavior with grade reductions, it’s possible that Bob failed algebra because he truly didn’t understand algebra, while Alice understands algebra perfectly well, but lost so many points for being disruptive in class and not turning in homework that she failed the course.  Thus Alice’s F and Bob’s F don’t mean the same thing.  That’s a problem.

Let me clearly state that I am among the guilty, including completion grades as a substantial portion of my course points.  I do this for two reasons.

1. For many students, doing the practice activities is a key part of mastering the material.  I haven’t found a better  way to encourage them to do the practice than assigning course points for it.  I know that, for some students, the practice is meaningless tedium that they don’t need to learn;  but I can’t tell one group from the other at the beginning of the semester, and requiring only some students to do practice activities isn’t really fair, is it?  Isn’t punishing those who “get it” quickly with lots of (for them) busy work just as unfair?

2. Grading homework allows students who don’t test well to fill in gaps via “effort points” and pass.  Since retention and successful course completion is valued….

If I were to drop graded homework, what can I do to get those who need the extra practice to do it instead of sitting on their hands, failing the exams and the course and wondering why?

Comment away.

Is Education the Next Newspaper Industry

I read a post about the (non) future of newspapers from Clay Shirky (via O’Reilly Radar)  I think Shirky’s money quote is:

It makes increasingly less sense even to talk about a publishing industry, because the core problem publishing solves — the incredible difficulty, complexity, and expense of making something available to the public — has stopped being a problem.

Replace publishing with education in that sentence and realize that newspapers may not be the only industry under threat.  Most of what educators do is predicated on the idea (now false) that information is scarce (see Michael Wesch’s recent  stuff) I remember when I took a graduate level Bib and Methods class in the mid 90’s.  The professor distributed probably a dozen annotated bibliographies listing key sources in various sub-fields of our discipline.  I still do that sort of thing, but now I use delicious and Google Reader.

That said, I think education is in fact in better shape than the newspaper since the core problem education solves, or ought to solve, is about more than information distribution.  I like Alec Couros’s “network sherpa” concept as an early effort to describe what education might look like – if we realize it in time.

A back of the envelope translation from le carnet d’Andre

Alec Couros laments his inability to read this post from Andre.  Here’s a very rapid rendering into English

Someone pointed me to a video from Professor Alec Couros. This allowed me to discover a very special teacher. He teaches in the faculty of educational sciences at the University of Regina in Saskatchewan. Viewing the trailer for his EC&I 831 course was enough to arouse my curiosity. It’s astonishing that a professor promotes his course in this way, especially since the course addresses Web 2.0.

After this viewing, I tried to learn more about this avant garde prof. Like me, you can follow his blog, see his listing on Rate My Professor, or see his university web page.

This prof who produces podcasts lives his life on the web in the open. His blog teaches us that recently, Flickr put him in the position of reviewing this politic of living in the open., at least in his personal life. That incident can serve as an example to all those who aren’t wary enough of “social” sites.

In any case, it proves that certain university teachers aren’t out of step with regards to the web.

(Note: Links omitted)

Why your LMS is not like your refrigerator

Lisa Lane calls for the desegregation of online learning.  I wonder if this is a good idea for several reasons.

1. Although I used to be a  full time faculty member, I now pay my rent and afford to eat because elearning/instructional technology specialists are considered valuable.  I like to eat and have a roof over my head. Here endeth the disclaimer.

2. Lisa mentions Don Tapscott’s Grown Up Digital and talks about technological transparency, the idea that, for those who grow up after a technology is in wide use, the technology becomes transparent.  One is not aware of the explicit act of using the technology, instead being aware of the task one is using the technology to complete.   She compares current students’ use of computers to her transparent use of a refrigerator.  Í wonder if this isn’t pushing the analogy a bit far. I think of something like an LMS as being more akin to a car.  It may become a transparent technology at some point, but it is complex enough that one must learn (and most often be taught) how to use it.  I’m not trying to suggest that everyone must take driver’s ed or complete a formal LMS training.  However, very few people can sit down behind the wheel of an automobile for the first time and just start driving.  The exercise is sufficiently complex that some sort of  “training” is necessary, even if that training is going around and around an empty mall parking lot on Sunday with Mom or Dad in the passenger seat. Similarly, most users need some guidance as they learn their way around an LMS.

3. There’s a difference between consumers and producers that’s relevant here.  Lisa asks “Did anyone ever offer training on how to effectively use a video in class?” My question is, “Do you know how to make a video for class?”

In the good old days, the professor in the classroom could easily use the same technology (writing) as the “content producers”. When the 20th century arrived, a technology and skills  gap opened between the teacher and those who could produce audio (and later video). The arrival of the personal computer closed the first part of that gap but not the second. While we all have on our desktops video production systems the capabilities of what a television station had twenty years ago, how many instructors know both how to “push the buttons” and how to plan and execute a good video segment , for example.  The majority who don’t have three options

A. Troll the web/your favorite LOR for something appropriate

B.  Rely on whatever your textbook publisher makes available

C. Make use of a specialist whose job it is to make the technology transparent for you by worrying about the button pushing and the conventions of the medium while you focus on content and instructional design.

To put this another way, do we want instructors to spend their time dealing with the details of video/audio/web applications?

3.  Part of the reason refigerators are tranparent is that the interface, such as it is, has remained unchanged for many years.  Computing may reach this point some day, but it’s not there yet.   Think about the number of tools we use today (microblogging)  that are new and untransparent to everyone older than a kindergartner. While natural language  processing and speech recognition will eventually get us to the point where we’ll just tell the computer (if it even still exists as a separate device) what we want, I don’t think we will run out of new tools to be evangelized and figured out anytime soon.

Technology Fees- a Response to Barry Dahl

Barry Dahl asks why we charge technology fees, arguing that a technology or online course fee makes as much sense as a restroom fee.   While his itemized bill makes a good point about subdividing and itemizing to death, I think this is a case of reality rearing its head.

Anyone in education at the moment hears the word “accountability” regularly.  One of the things it can mean is, “What is my money paying for?”  It’s long been conventional wisdom that voters are more likely to approve earmarked or directed tax increases (1/4 cent for a 911 center or a 1/2 cent for road improvements) than they are to assent to a general tax hike.  The same thing goes for college boards of regents/curators/trustees, etc.  So, students end up paying student government fees, activity fees, and technology fees. Some institutions roll those fees into general revenue.  At others, there are specific rules about what can and can’t be paid for with the money, and technology fees really do go to support technology.

As to Barry’s question, “Why aren’t computers rolled into overhead like carpet and electricity?”, there are still, at most institutions, significant subsets of the faculty and student population that avoid instructional technology.  Governing boards are also perhaps less familiar with instructional tech, tending to view it as cutting edge rather than mainstream.

At my current institution, more than 40% of students this semester took an online course, and those students were charged a separate fee.  That means that a majority of students didn’t and weren’t. Perhaps the important question is, ” What proportion of students have to make use of something in order for the cost to be absorbed into tuition?”

I think we need to make a distinction between technology fees and online course fees.  One can legitimately argue that everyone uses technology (even if it’s only the projector used in the classroom or the online system which handles grade submission).  Not everyone uses the online course tools, LMS’s, etc., at least not yet.

CCK08 – What does failure look like

Ken asks if CCK08 is failing.  Stephen(?) George  replies in The Daily that the course is succeeding in that it exists.  Lisa commented on Ken’s post.  I find myself pretty much agreeing with her.

Given the high proportion of working educators in the MOOC, pushing the more concrete topics late into the course schedule was frustrating.  Furthermore, after providing copious reading material earlier in the course, the leaders have now, just when we got to the role of the teacher (a very practical topic),  seemed  to step back, ostensibly to allow folks time to work on their second papers. This just as many are chomping at the bit to have a wide ranging discussion about something that matters ‘on the ground’.

I would also agree that The Daily, whether it was intended to or not, has become an important filter for most people. The choices of featured posts do a lot to shape the discussion.

Does this mean that CCK08 is a failure? Maybe not.

Perhaps the lack of material on how one applies connectivism with actual learners is a sign that connectivism is so new that nobody’s gotten around to seriously addressing that question yet.   So let’s start. What does a connectivist class (within the constraints of credit hours and grading that we all live with) look like? Is what’s happening with the for credit CCK08 students a working model?

Tom Whyte asks about a different kind of connectivist failure.  This reminds us that the quality of a connected learning experience depends, in large part, on whether those in your network have a clue. This ties in to the idea of information literacy, but instead of evaluating articles or web sites, one has to evaluate people. Especially in dealing with Tom’s student population, this is a thorny issue. So, what ought we tell people about how to choose their network?

CCK08 – The Limits of Power

It’s only because I read The Daily that I learned of Stephen’s exercise in power and authority this week.  Sorry, Stephen. It didn’t work.

I had subscribed to the initial forum, but was so overwhelmed by the first rush of postings that I not only stopped subscribing myself to the new ones, but also set my mail client to filter CCK08 forum posts out of my inbox.  So even when Stephen subscribed me, I wasn’t troubled until I checked that folder.

Even though technology gives additional power to central authority, it also gives power to the individual to resist that authority.  Stephen had the power to autosubscribe me, but I had the power to filter him.  My sense is that whether technology causes a shift toward or away from centralized power in society as a whole depends more on policy and regulation (think DMCA here) than on the technology itself.

I’m guessing this point was made somewhere in the 200+ page reading assigned for this week, but I haven’t read it yet. This brings up an interesting issue.  When we restrict ourselves to a learning context, what does power mean?  While you can talk about the power exercised by our IT departments to restrict access to content, real power is about influencing learner behavior, isn’t it?

As my experience points out, on that criterion, Stephen’s expression of power was a fail, probably not an epic fail, but a fail.  “Hard power’ in a learning environment seems to me to depend on the power holder’s ability to grant or withhold grades/academic credit.  Since most of us aren’t here for credit, there’s not much hard power in CCK08.

“Soft power” (persuasion and influence) seem to be much more in play here.  As the designated leaders, George and Stephen have a great deal of influence on the non-credit learners even as they have little authority.  I think it’s safe to say that G & S are allowed to a great degree to shape the agenda of the “tribe” (using Seth Godin’s terminology here). I’ve read several blog posts where learners have reacted quite strongly to something one of them wrote. I think the strength of that reaction is due in large part to who they are, the leaders of the CCK08 tribe.

In general I think a shift away from hard power to soft power is a good thing.  However persuasive you normally  consider someone to be, if they start spouting stuff that doesn’t ring true to you, you are free at any time, in an environment shaped by soft power, to stop being persuaded.  When hard power is in play, there’s always the fear that one might be marked down if one disagrees with the professor.

CCK08 – Groups / Networks / Collectives and Tribes?

Seth Godin has a new book, Tribes.  There are slides and audio available on the web for a presentation about it he gave on Tuesday.

So, what does this have to do with CCK08 and learning?  Godin defines tribe as a self-selected , bounded group that people join for a sense of connection and group identity.  The book blurb says “A tribe is any group of people, large or small, who are connected to one another, a leader, and an idea.”  This definition may dovetail into our week 5 discussion by giving us a label for associations which are more voluntary than groups as Stephen defined them.

One line from Godin’s talk I particularly liked:

“We don’t need another widget. We don’t need another thing. We need a connection.”

Maybe George should put it on T-shirts.