A beloved child has many names

Some of the buzz words we often hear today, describing learning for the 21str century are just to mention some; personalized learning, interpersonal learning, connected learning, collaborative learning, second life learning, 3d learning, mobile learning and virtual learning.  There is  a change in the paradigm for teaching and learning, or rather learning and education, including formal and informal learning as well as the Bildung concept, from the Humbolt school in Germany. Life, society and things are changing. The blogpost from educatorstechnology claim that "old methods and pedagogies are no longer relevant. The teacher-controlled learning where deconstructed and reconstructed information is presented in a highly formal and standardized classroom settings becomes very obsolete." It is often claimed that the 21st century pedagogy teachers have urgent issues to be aware of, such as:  What is the driving engine behind this huge transformation in learning ? and Do we need a new pedagogy to better enhance learning ? and What do we desire?

Doubters, however often raise questions like: Tell me what is the differences with the new paradigm for the 21 st century, everyone is talking about? Of course there is not just one answer on that, neither are there any simple answers. Probably it is more a question about attitudes, approaches, collaboration and glocalisation. Learning and education today is worldwide, community based, merging generations and cultures within lifelong learning perspectives and dimensions. The way Steve Wheeler argues in one  of his latest blogposts that the community is the curricula raise totally different demands and dimensions for learners, teachers and educational organizations. How will educational institutions cope with this new approach with  a huge variety of physical and virtual communities. Some differences on pedagogy from the 20 century and the 21st century paradigms are explained in the YouTube clip.

Advancements in technology and particularly social networking technologies are changing the whole educational framework. Users have access to information whenever and wherever they want . Blogs, wikis, socializing sites, podcasts, networks more and more democratizing knowledge and creating huge impacts on the process of schooling. Technology advancements have touched every facet of life including education.That’s why every educator and teacher should reconsider certain values and principles and that it is not just a question on technology. What is then special with the 21st century learner:

 

To be in the front-line

I have been around the area of e-learning and open learning for some 10 years by now, a fabulous interesting and challenging area. During the years one can say that sometimes things develops very quick and sometimes far too slow. Sweden has for long time been far ahead concerning IT development and maturity. For the  third year Sweden is ranked as the most IT mature country in the world by the organization World Economic Forum, countries following Sweden are Singapore and the other Nordic countries. The ranking results concerned IT development and maturity concerning people in general, public service, government and organizations.The diagram below shows Sweden´s strengths in relations to other comparable countries. In general it shows consistently very good conditions all over the field. This is good and nice news. Our IT minister Anna-Karin Hatt recently blogged on this. She has also created and launched a digital agenda for Sweden (in Swedish), this is also very good and the agenda is very proactive and strong. Unfortunately higher education is not mentioned or considered at all. Probably as we have a separate Minister of Education...

http://annakarinhatt.se/blogg/?p=1953
(Source:  IT Minister Anna-Karin Hatts Blog 6th April2012. http://annakarinhatt.se/blogg/sverige-varldens-mest-it-mogna-land/).

The diagram is interesting in many ways, but it also raise a lot of questions and remarks. Some questions which I can see due to national and international experiences and through networks, are questions like why are the educational sector and especially higher education so slow in modernizing education for the 21st century. Furthermore, Why are the digital competences often so low or un-priortized by teachers and managers in the educational sector in general. If we really want our education systems to prepare students for tomorrow’s digital world, we should worry less about formats and instead focus on what to teach – or what not to teach.Teaching screenagers is a concept worth to consider and how the digital world is changing learning. In UNESCO´s recently published  report on “ The four pillars of education “ collaboration is the core element of the four pillars.

Learning to know  
                Learning to do
                                 Learning to live together
                                                          Learning to be

Required skills for those core elements are Critical thinking; Active learning; Problem solving skills; Communicating, making connections, creating and expressing oneself in a variety of ways; and Contextualized knowledge. Such skills are mainly achieved through web2.0 technologies and social networking tools and pivotal to achieve for the 21st century pedagogy goals. 

Probably one of the main questions will be: 

How will higher education cope with this, and not just cope, but to be innovative, pro-active, open, eliminate borders on the digital divide and to be in the front-line... and how is the IT and digital maturity in higher education in Sweden (for sure even in many other countries) related to the diagram?

Epprobate

The international quality label for elearning courseware

Self-paced eLearning products and services are mainly based on courseware. Already now, the worldwide market reached $32.1 billion - with a five-year compound annual growth rate of 9.2% according to Ambient Insight!
In short: There is already a huge provision of eLearning courseware out there, and every day different kind of new material like Web Based Training (WBT), Computer Based Training (CBT), Game Based Learning (GBL), Videos, Open Educational Resources (OER), Mobile Learning Apps etc. are added. For the learner it becomes very difficult to distinguish what is of good quality and worth buying.
epprobate (from the Latin 'approbare', to approve) is the first international quality label for eLearning courseware. This quality label is an initiative of three organisations: The Learning Agency Network (LANETO), the Agence Wallonne des Télécommunication (AWT) and the e-Learning Quality Service Center (eLQSC). We are currently represented in around  30 countries.

Quality is becoming more and more important for individuals, and the market is growing very fast. The hard issues today is not to find information and resources, the hard issues are about quality, trust, confidence and to see and learn what´s in it for me.

I am now a Certified Head Reviewer at epprobate and  a national expert on quality for elearning courseware.

Ebba Ossiannilsson, Lund University, Sweden
www.epprobate.com
se@epprobate.com

My blog will be on reflections of the increasingly digitized society and digitized human beings and life in general. The blog will also reflect innovation, quality, the "e"  development  as such, serendipity and rhizome phenomenon. As individuals we are always related to ourselves and to others, either physical or virtual in a social environment and context. We have relations to few or several, one at a time or several at the same time. We are connected in many different ways and for different purposes, as  described in the theory of connectivism. We are also connected in a rhizome way. 

   The desire for search and connections in digital networks leads to the epistemology based on processes called serendipity. Serendipity, with the meaning to find something that was not expected to find but often lead to new connections and new insights, often never ending. The concept has  nothing to do with chance or randomness. Serendipity has to do with attention and about holism. Serendipity helps to make sense and is a general process. The concept can be seen as a connector between non-digital and digital life. Internet and social media allows us to do everything faster, more efficient. Everything, also people are often just a click away. Probably it is faster and more efficient. Probably also time matter and time to reflect and be thoughtful. This is  a quality indicator as well. Are there probably needs and desires for balance and harmony?
     Quality and innovation in the "e" world maybe depends...

It depends on why, who, when, what and how, like the five beloved names, of the elephants children.
When it comes to learning and education in the  21 st century quality may be seen more from the users perspectives.
 
How to use powerful technical resources and for creating good things and innovative things, like insights, inspiration, knowledge, learning, motivation, research, understanding of oneself, relations and life in general and as such are thoughts I will like to reflect on and share in my blog.

                                                  

                         Illustration of rhizome, photo from San Diego, 2011©Ossiannilsson 2011