It is a truism that we learn from experience, and yet creating a role for experience in learning has been one of the most difficult problems in education. And so much of education continues to rely on indirect methods depending on knowledge transfer - reading, lectures, videos - rather than hands-on practice and knowledge creation.
Activities
2018/12/16 12:00 Conversation with Amy BurvallSynopsis
It is a truism that we learn from experience, and yet creating a role for experience in learning has been one of the most difficult problems in education. And so much of education continues to rely on indirect methods depending on knowledge transfer - reading, lectures, videos - rather than hands-on practice and knowledge creation.
The emergence of the web, YouTube, Web 2.0 and social media was a great step forward, assigning a role for creativity in the learning experience. But experience, ultimately, requires an openness that media platforms were unable to provide.
New technology is beginning to combine the ability of teachers and role models to model and demonstrate successful practice and the need for learners to practice and reflect on their learning in that environment. Content distribution networks and live streaming are transforming real-world events into hands-on learning experiences.
A good example of this is the live-streaming platform Twitch and especially games like Fortnite, in which players become spectators, and back again, over and over. And using applications like xSplit or Open Broadcaster Software individuals can make their experiences part of the learning experience shared by others.
It is a model in which the creation of the content becomes a part of the content itself. We see this with the recent self-shredding art by Banksy or the inside look at how the single-scene time-lapse sequence in Kidding was filmed. Some artists have made working openly part of the act - Deadmau5, for example, showing how electronic music is produced. Being able to see and experience how something is created is a key step on the way to becoming a creator oneself, and becoming a creator, in turn, becomes a key part of the learning experience.
The difference between previous iterations of learning technology and that which we are experiencing with E-Learning 3.0 is that these creative activities become distributed and democratized. Just as multiple authors can edit Wikipedia articles or work on code in GitHub, participatory learning media enables learners to interact creatively without management or direction; the outcome is a consensus determined not by voting but by participation. Experience in learning changes the relation between teacher and student from one of persuasion (and even coercion) to one of creativity, co-work, and construction.
Workplaces, and especially distributed workplaces, are beginning to create self-organizing consensus-based co-production networks. Early awkward and exploitative platform-based efforts such as Uber and Airbnb are giving way to more sophisticated and equitable network alternatives such as Steam, Koumbit and Medium.
Tasks
Create Your ExperienceBe creative! Using the medium of your choice, create a representation of your experience of E-Learning 3.0. Then post your creation (or post a link to your creation) on your blog.
Here's a good example of the sort of thing you could create, by Kevin Hodgeson (who apparently also studied mind reading as he completed this Task before it was posted).
If you need inspiration, visit the DS106 Assignment Bank and select one of the assignments, and then interpret it in the light of E-Learning 3.0.
Media
The World Beyond the Word Dec 13, 2018 video Visit this page for both slides and video. In order to manage the deluge of data produced by modern technology, a rapidly changing society, and challenging environmental and economic systems, we need to relearn what we understand as social and scientific literacy. The students of today and the innovators of tomorrow will speak languages we barely recognize today. What are the fundamentals of these new literacies, how do we learn them and teach them, and how do they redefine innovation in the future? In this talk I describe a future in which learning is a creative act and give an overview of the environments and technologies that will be needed to support this learning.
Conversation with Amy Burvall Dec 16, 2018 video After 25 years in K-12 education, Amy Burvall is currently consulting, creating, and curating in the fields of creativity, visual thinking, and digital literacies. She joins us in week 8 of E-Learning 3.0.
Creating and Awarding a Badge in gRSShopper Dec 16, 2018 video n this video I show how I use gRSShopper to create a task, then create a Badge, upload the badge image, associate the badge with the task, create the Badge on Badgr, read RSS feeds of student contributions, award them a badge in the RSS reader, and have the badge save on Badgr, get sent as a WebMention, and registered in the gRSShopper badge blockchain.
Resources
Feature Article E-Learning 3.0, Part 8 - Experiencestephen@downes.ca, Dec 20, 2018.
The challenge for educators and for society in general will be in managing and accepting the transition from emphasizing 'what people learn' to 'how people learn'. Like the creative process itself, what's important is not what is created - it could be anything from a cake to a cathedral - but rather how it is created. It is the history, process and provenance of the creation that gives it meaning, relevance, and ultimately, truth.
Good advice that could be applied not only to art but to anything (substitute 'research scientist' for 'artist' and you get the same useful tips): "How do you get from there to making real art, great art? There's no special way; everyone has their own path. Yet, over the years, I've found myself giving the same bits of advice. Most of them were simply gleaned from looking at art, then looking some more. Others from listening to artists talk about their work and their struggles. (Everyone's a narcissist.) I've even stolen a couple from my wife."
Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]2018/12/12
"We are a global community of millions who come together each day to create their own entertainment: unique, live, unpredictable, never-to-be repeated experiences created by the magical interactions of the many. With chat built into every stream, you don't just watch on Twitch, you're a part of the show."
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Amy Burvall offers a series of pink Post-It notes talking about aspects and properties of creativity - running from 'remix' to 'messy' to 'constraint'.
Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]Scott Barry Kaufman, Scientific American, 2018/12/12
Openness to experience– the drive for cognitive exploration of inner and outer experience– is the personality trait most consistently associated with creativity.
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I've covered the topic of creativity quite a bit over the years. This is a listing of the posts I've written referring to different resoruces on creativity. There's a lot to pick and choose form.
Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]Karlyn Adams, National Center on Education and the Economy, 2018/12/14
The following pages represent a comprehensive summary of current research and theory on the sources of innovation and creativity, both in individuals and organizations. Based on the recurring concepts in the existing literature, the paper concludes with some recommendations for how education systems can best foster these attributes in students.
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What insights can we gain from studying the lives and creative processes of famous artists? Thinking like an artist means being porous, pushing past, and playing. This talk was given (in a slightly different form ) at TEDxWestVancouverED.
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All of Amy Burvall's posts on creativity. See also: Amy Burvall's website.
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This week is about experience. I was musing about indirect methods.
Continue reading →
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jennymackness, e-learning 3.0 – Jenny Connected, 2018/12/12
The topic for the penultimate week in the E-Learning 3.0 MOOCÂ is ‘Experience’. We haven’t really started discussing this yet, but Stephen Downes, who is running this course, has posted a Synopsis to get us going. I am copying this below,… Continue reading →
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This is a nice example of using virtualization to enhance learning: Repl.it Multiplayer. The site enables you to “code with friends in the same editor, execute programs in the same interpreter, interact with the same terminal, chat in the IDE, edit files and share the same system resources, and ship applications from the same interface.” […]
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We’re in the midst of our Hero’s Journey video game design unit, in which my sixth graders are developing and then publishing a video game based on the concept of the Hero’s Journey. We use Gamestar Mechanic, which teaches students how to build games by playing games, and provides tools for publishing. The first phase […]
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The task for this penultimate week of the E-Learning 3.0 MOOC on the topic of Experience is: Here is my submission This is the musical accompaniment for the verses below. Please sing along. For the introduction to this week’s topic,… Continue reading →
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I just blinked. Did I miss it? Actually I experienced that blink. I know I think a lot, and with words, their meaning, understanding, and having or breaking through limitations of contexts and definitions is important. Technology continues to develop, and with every blink that goes by we find more and more ways to facilitate connection across time and place, yet this does not supersede the physicality of living.
Web: [Direct Link] [This Post] This week’s call for Creativity via E-Learning 3.0, coming on the heels of considerations of distributed communities, had me thinking of heading back into the words of others, and maybe finding a poem. What the poem would say, and how it would look, I couldn’t say. But I hoped a deeper and closer reading, with […]
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In Amy Burwall's conversation with Stephen, she said something that resonated very much with me:
"Creativity is about connecting dots" Continue reading →
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ioannouolga, connecting data to information to knowledge, 2018/12/17
Oh, I really like this word. Thank you Amy for bringing it up. Meraki is a word that bears different meanings, it needs at least whole phrase to communicate its essence: it could express desire/longing, having fun or on the contrary suffering/feeling pain. The phrase however, is mostly used to describe one’s attentive curation of […]
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The penultimate week of the #EL30 MOOC, Experience. The learning task as set by Stephen called for us to creatively represent our experiences of the #El30 cMOOC and to post about it: Be creative! Using the medium of your choice, create a representation of your experience of E-Learning 3.0. Then post your creation (or post … Continue reading "#EL30 – Experience/Creativity Task"
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Be creative. go. That's the hardest. We once had 'guests' who came and sat on the sofa (for several days) and said – "Oh, carry on as normal, we'll just watch the show." That was excruciating. 'Watch the show?'
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