2012 AHISA & ISCA National Education Forum

Nicholas Gruen E ngruen@gmail.com

T @ngruen1

Not Drowning Waving:

Education and Web 2.0

Caveats

Possibilities

Based on my experience

– From outside the sector

You’re already doing it

Outline

3

What is Web 2.0 and why should we care?

Public and private goods

Web 2.0 and the curriculum

Web 2.0 the wider world and education

Why isn’t it happening faster?

– The Innovator’s dilemma

Revolutionary possibilities => evolutionary actions

Web 2.0 and

Metcalfe’s Law 2 => 1

5 => 10

12 => 66

From a network to web 2.0

#

Public goods –

goods that no-one

will supply if the

government

doesn’t

Public goods Public goods . . . present serious

problems in human organisation.

Vincent and Elenor Ostrom - 1977

The Wealth of Nations (1776)

•Private Goods

The Theory of

Moral Sentiments (1759)

•The social preconditions of markets (Public Goods)

Language

Adam Smith

The ecology of public and private goods

8

Public goods

• What won’t

look after itself

• Health

• Nurturing

• Education

• Suffering

• Poverty

• Religion

Private goods

We look after

ourselves

9

Public goods

• Governments

• Families

• Not-for-profit

civic association

• Within any

association

Cooperation

The ecology of public and private goods

Private goods

Individuals

Firms

Teams

Competition

Public goods:

From incipience to actuality

Web 2.0: explosion of emergent public goods

Web 2.0 platforms are public goods:

Google (1998)

Wikipedia (2001)

Blogs (early 2000s)

Facebook (2004)

Twitter (2006)

13

#

$60,000,000,000

The economics of abundance: a new birth of ‘free’dom

Public goods . . . present serious

problems in human organisation.

Vincent and Elenor Ostrom - 1977

The freedom of ideas is the liberation of our species

Public goods as a problem Public goods as an opportunity

Public Goods

Private Goods

[The public good of] Justice . . . is the main pillar that upholds the whole edifice. If it is removed, the great, the immense fabric of human society . . . must in a moment crumble into atoms.

Adam Smith

Education

16

Some initial thoughts

Remarkable how little transformation new technology

has produced

– Maths curriculum is the same as the one I did

• Is Trigonometry really still more important than stats

– Where are

• Spreadsheets as a teaching/visualisation tool

• Why aren’t computer languages taught as part of maths or

languages curricula?

– Understanding programing has many of the benefits of

language learning

• Use of mashups?

Much of this can be peer taught

Web 2.0 as a tool

18

Delivering educational ‘content’

19

20

Foldit

21

22

1. User spots machine-translation error

and clicks ‘Fix this text’.

“No stop-work,”

wharfies told

An application for a four hour stop work meet-

2. Users make text corrections as they

read.

3. Corrections are saved and instantly

shown to other users.

• The National Library Newspaper digitisation project

• Site went live without launch in 2007 and correction has been 24/7 since

• ~ 20% of correctors are overseas

• 30 mil lines of text corrected

• Julie Hempenstall from Bendigo has corrected > 500,000 lines!

• Anne Manley from Narrawena has corrected > 680,000

Using the net’s content

It can be

• Better

• Free

• More engaging

• More cosmopolitan

• More convenient

• Students can engage with content for homework

• Address confusion and develop ideas in class

24

The Revolution

26

The Khan Academy

Students watch videos

They teach themselves and each other

With teacher and class time devoted to

• facilitating

• customising

• mentoring

• matching students for mutual benefit

• etc

“Combining Khan with that kind of teaching will

produce the best kind of math. Teachers are

more effective because they have a window

into the student’s mind.”

Diane Tavenner, Chief of the Summit chain of

four charter schools said that at first she was

ambivalent about using Mr. Khan’s software.

34

Tertiary Education

35

36

37

Coursera

38

39

40

41

42

43

Learnable

46

Successful platforms on the net are the product

of meticulous

• Service design

• Prototyping

• Testing

• Endless iteration

The power of hacking

48

Microsoft Word

49

+ Genetic marker 4

Genetic marker 1

+ Genetic marker 3

+ Genetic marker 2 Which HIV patients will

be sicker next week?

Training data Test Data

52

Age Marker

1 Marker

2 Marker

3 Marker

4 HIV Load

42 √ x √ x Worse

52 √ x √ x Same

22 x √ x √ Worse

45 x x x x Worse

21 x x x √ Same

17 √ √ √ √ Same

25 x x x x Better

25 x √ x x Same

60 √ √ √ x Same

39 x x x √ Worse

36 √ x √ x Worse

17 √ x √ √ Same

16 x √ x √ Worse

Age Marker

1 Marker

2 Marker

3 Marker

4 HIV Load

42 √ x √ x ?

52 √ x √ x ?

22 x √ x √ ?

45 x x x x ?

21 x x x √ ?

17 √ √ √ √ ?

25 x x x x ?

25 x √ x x ?

60 √ √ √ x ?

39 x x x √ ?

36 √ x √ x ?

17 √ x √ √ ?

16 x √ x √ ?

Global Competitions

State of the art 70%

1½ weeks 70.8%

Competition closes 77%

Predicting HIV viral load

Accuracy of Prediction (1 – 100%)

Chris Raimondi

Baltimore

It’s not so hard . . .

54

Revolutions 2.0 Web 2.0 has revolutionised encyclopaedias

Is revolutionising news, commentary and media

It could be revolutionising

– Health

– Education

– Government

– Finance

But they are encrusted in established institutions which are integrated with government funding and/or regulation

Web 2.0 is a ‘tool to be used’ but isn’t transformative

56

Draft

59

Collaboration requires effort, and it also

requires a change of mindset. In particular it

requires a willingness to examine services from

a perspective which does not place one’s own

institution at the centre.

Warwick Cathro, National Library

Making connections

61

Improvising an info-structure

Global CrisisCommons

Within 2 hours of #eqnz

Global volunteers parse 300,000 tweets.

“Shell 58 Barrack Rd out of petrol – only diesel”.

Agencies fussed, helped and obstructed.

Revolutionary

possibilities:

evolutionary

actions

63

Revolutionary possibilities:

evolutionary actions

Decide how important these things are or might

be to your school

If they’re important, guard against

• The menu approach

• Gilbert and Sullivan management

Pick some low hanging fruit – which permits ‘business as usual’

But new approaches need nurturing

64

Revolutionary possibilities:

evolutionary actions

Even if real change is uncomfortable, it needn’t be, probably shouldn’t be revolutionary

– Insulate the new from the imperatives of the old

– Give yourself simple concrete targets

• To ensure anyone who wants to learn mashup skills and coding skills can do so

• Start school clubs

• Use prizes, interschool competitions to motivate

• Find a way to at least recognise peer teaching if not grant formal credit for it

• Focus on the exciting positives – making a difference

65

Emphasising the positive

Lots of schools have aboriginal co-learning

Could we have partnerships with developing world schools?

Could the school affiliate with Crisis Commons?

Could the school, or particular teachers at the school make exceptionally good resources

• Should some funding come from marketing?

Could schools within and beyond AHISA ‘trade’ such resources

66

Emphasising the positive

Could there be a school wide integrated Web

2.0 project eg:

• With senior students building the platform

• More junior students populating it

• Drawing in a range of subjects in the school

• Website, marketing and an app for sport, a

school play or musical?

68

We’re a eusocial species

69

Web 2.0: the third age of strangers

In civilized society [man] stands at all times in need of the co-operation and assistance of great multitudes, while his whole life is scarce sufficient to gain the friendship of a few.

Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776

#

ngruen@gmail.com @ngruen1

72

Web 2.0 is not IT

IT Web 2.0 Mechanical Social

Technological Communicative

$$$$$ $

Elaborately planned Often improvised

Governance -

Impossible

Governance

- Just difficult

Government as platform

Government Departments GLAM Sector

74

http://specials-

leader.whereilive.co

m.au/maps/Melbour

ne-swoop-hot-

spots.php

Outside the walls: Inside the

machine • Justin McMurray works 25 hours a

week for Verizon, who might be

prepared to volunteer for

organisations generating more

compelling public value?

• Universities have always excelled

at this – with emeritus

appointments

• But how much further could it be

taken?

• A long, long way . . . Justin McMurry, Keller,

Texas

The innovator’s dilemma

Incumbent firms’ routines, value and

intelligence networks prevent learning other

routines

Crowd them out

New (disruptive) technologies look irrelevant

Christiansen recommends

• Structural separation

76

http://new.edu/info/

http://unow.com/ both just got grants from Gates foundation

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/technology/series/grading_the_digital_school/index.html

American venture capitalist and analyst Mary Meeker, for instance, has estimated the total market value of global public companies that could be disrupted by digitally driven business models at a staggering US$36 trillion. She sees these as enormous market opportunities – or potential threats – in areas ranging from communications, news and entertainment through to lifestyle services, manufacturing, financial services, recruitment and more. She also argues these trends are just warming up – or in ‘spring training’

Mary Meeker, 2012 Internet Trends, http://kpcb.com/

insights/2012-internet-trends.

77

Frank Chen, Software Engineer, from

the age of 5

78

I grew up in Singapore and am now getting

my BSc and MSc in CS at Stanford. I have

always been passionate about education —

I help TA students in Stanford's CS106

classes as part of the section leaders'

program and was part of the team that

developed the platform for the first iteration

of ML class in Fall 2011.

I am incredibly privileged to have received a

world-class education throughout my life and

want to make that sort of high-quality

education accessible to everyone on the

Internet. I hope you have fun taking our

courses :).

Brittany Wenger

79

Brittany Wenger

80

“The trick is getting the science in front of kids

who don't even know they have an interest in

science.”

Began modeling soccer outomes