Racing into the Digital Classroom

Jesse Hirsh - Nov 27th 2011Higher Education Summit

Would you jump if everyone else does so?

Understand the context

Analyze the power dynamics

Share the new literacy

Engage the excluded

Always prepare for what's next

"Nothing is inevitable provided we are prepared to pay attention"- Marshall McLuhan

McLuhan's Rear View Mirror Effect:Our culture is accelerating

Our society moves fasterthan we can comprehend

What we see as the present,is really the past.

What we see as the future,is really the present.

So then where are we now?

Neo Feudal SocietyCelebrity as aristocracy

Scarcity of attention

Neo Feudal Society: Economics

Concentration of ownership

Myth of meritocracy

Reality of Lords and Barons

"Reality TV" is the new Bread and Circuses

Privacy as Commodity

 

Neo Feudal Society: Social Structure

Tribes, Serfs, Mobs, and Magicians

Influence and peer pressure

Tools for popularity and attention

Surveillance society fueled by marketing and advertising

 

Subjectivity and Insularity: Narcissus as Narcosis

Everyone's computer experience is unique and subjective

Computer environments must be experienced to be understood

The default tendency online is to seek similarity and reinforcement

Without proper governance communities organize around similarities and often alienate, marginalize, or ignore differences

The dominant culture is one of insularity most often articulated as tribalism

Real/Virtual and Public/Private

Distinctions between these concepts continue to dissolve

Creates confusion as to what is appropriate, when, and where.

Shared reality becomes a scarcity

Insularity as the basis of the neo-feudal tribe

 

Bullying and Drama

Legitimate problem due toamplification and archives

Youth react to theirsociety and environment

Language as symptom

Culture of Lawlessnesssuggests might is right?

See danah boyd's work

Are we getting smarter or dumber?    

Both!

With the key emphasis on the "we" rather than the smarter or the dumber.

Are machines becoming more like humans or are humans becoming more like machines?

Multi-tasking or just asynchronous work flows?

Seduced by Smart Phones& Mobile Computers

Mobile device as status symbol

Increasing computational power

Increasing power of the web

Open application development

GPS and tower triangulation

The need for Socialization

Technology needs culture for success

The power of peer pressure

The return of recommendations

The rise of micro-advertisingand micro-celebrities

The seduction of social contextsand the erosion of privacy

TwitterOver 200 million usersGrowing by 500,000 new users / dayGenerating 150 million tweets / day

Intention is to have each tweet associated with a location

Real-time search engineIncludes searching by location

Real-time analytics

Are they competing with others, or acting as infrastructure with 100,000 applications using their service?

Facebook and the Social GraphHarnesses the potential to personalize the web

Similar to Twitter, an attempt to become identity infrastructure

As a social space can it also become a learning space?

Great for photos, events, point of contact...

Yet should/can it be relied upon?

Where does leadership come from?What about authority?

Program or Be Programed?- Authority comes from creating signal amidst the noise

- Programming as the new literacy of our age

- "Make the software or be the software"

- "Instead of optimizing machines for humanity we optimize humans for machines"

Rushkoff.com(includes free study guide)

The Legacy of OLPC

- Great idea, difficult implementation

- Example of technology before culture

- Yet did make laptop computing accessible overall

- OLPC Tablet next

- Yet check out Raspberry PI, the $25 mini-computer!

Rheingold: Smart Mobs to Social Media

Howard Rheingold: an e-learning pioneer

Latest idea is socialmediaclassroom.com

Modified Drupal to enable interactivee-learning environments

Desires is to have learners as participator as teachers, balancing autonomy and structure

Stepping back to allow chaos of the group begin to form and stabilize independently

The Role of Gamification

Everything articulated as a game

Rewarding badges for check-ins

Support voluntary surveillance with discounts

Gaming the system

Rise of Virtual Reality

"Checking in" to virtual places

The power of clans

Acknowledgement of video gamesas semi-permanent social spaces

Time spent in virtual worlds as investmentAccumulation of virtual property as tangible assets

Rise of Virtual Goods

Started in MMORPG:Massive Multiplayer OnlineRole Playing GamesVirtual Goods market estimatedto grow to $1.6 billion in 2010,and over $2 billion in 2011Zynga has 250 million+ monthly active playersStart 2009 with 15 million playersIn 2009 Zynga was 2nd largest PayPal merchant (after Ebay)Lady Gaga and Zynga present GagaVille!Preview of her new albumvia a social game/world

Rise of Virtual CurrencyFacebook and Zynga PartnershipLoyalty programs and Social couponsEmerging exchanges: MyMMOShop.com(Sold in 2009 for $10 million)

Local currency as a model for school currency?

Literacy and the Network Effect

Knowing how to use new tools as they emerge

Pattern recognition instead of information overload

Understanding Smart Mobs

Based on media literacy and critical thinking

 

Dealing with the Digital Divide    

Socio-Economic

Access

Language

Usability

Empowerment

Open Source

 

Three Generations of the Web

Web 1.0 - Static

Web 2.0 - Interactive

Web 3.0 - Automatic

The Rise of Artificial Intelligence

Web 1.0 - Informational

Web 2.0 - Relational

Web 3.0 - Anticipatory

The Digital Classroom?

The Power of Dialogue

Shared experience

No stupid questions

Enables collaboration

Empowers all involved

Encourages critical thought

Get in Touch:

http://metaviews.cahttp://jessehirsh.ca