 Mae'r unrhyw yw Professor Gillie Sammon. Gillie yw Professor of E-Learning and Learning Technologies at the University of Leicester, ychydig i'r ysgol yng Nghymru, Research Alliance, a'r Media Zoo. Gillie has written many books, she's written five books on e-learning, many of which which will be on our bookshelves, including her latest one, podcasting for learning in universities. Gillie will also be co-chair of Ulzee 2009, and I think there's some information tomorrow about that. Her talk today is, if learning technologists ruled the world. So, over to you Gillie, thank you. Hi everyone, thanks very much for the chance to talk to you, especially as I didn't have to put a paper in to do this, so that was a big advantage for me, wasn't it? Okay, what I'm going to do is do a bit of intervention stuff, give you my view, perhaps, or some ideas of what might happen if learning technologists were ruling a number of different worlds. And then I'm going to ask you to tell me what you would do if you were ruling the world, okay? So, that's what you're in for for the next 45 minutes. So, those of you who are going to sleep, okay, move to the back now, so that your neighbours don't have to kick you when it comes to the discussion bits, okay? Yeah? Okay. Now, I believe that we are at the beginning, not only of the greatest technological change in history, but the greatest change in learning and educational processes too. So, I know that some of you will agree with me, some others may be not, but the rest of what I'm going to say is on the basis that those big huge changes are about to happen. Now, when you look at what these changes might be, you look at the role of the historian and look at the trends that have been happening up until now, and also try and look into the future in various ways. Not just to show the momentum of events, although those are important, not even just the possibilities at each juncture, but most importantly, the human ideas, the emotions and the visions, including the implications for society. And do you know in all of this, it is so curious, a very rarely is the role of education at any level truly addressed, either as the enabler or the constrainer of the future. Or is the issue of how we support the learning process itself and the impact that might have on the future also addressed. Now, each one of you here, every one of you I know, both individually and collectively in your various groupings, is able to explore future ideas. You're able to make choices between scientific principles. You're able to do imaginative innovation. You're able to combine ideas. You're able to extrapolate. And yet very few of us really know or really feel we know of what's going to be happening to us in three years, five years, 10 years. So, we know we're in a rapid change in society and it is intimately bound up with the digitalisation of all of life. I mean, obviously, broadband, smaller personal devices, you name it, we hear it in every presentation, the changes that are happening. Supercomputers, fibre optic networks, making data available in unimaginable ways only a few years ago. So, I'm pretty certain you'll agree and I don't need to rehearse that the technology and its impact on almost every aspect of daily life comes continuously and fast. And every time there's a change in the technology, there comes the inevitable rethink in ideas including perhaps about learning, knowledge, education and so on. Now, traditional forms of education with their specialism, silo thinking and the associated ways of transmitting knowledge have done almost nothing to prepare any of us for this huge abundance of information everywhere, everyone. And there is the known phenomenon, the arrogance of the presence which is often associated with reductionist views, rife in education and continues to be powerful in our very competitive times and they rarely accommodate the huge complexity in thinking that's actually needed to change the world of the future. So, you might say, well, okay, very well, how on earth do we do this? It's something you're all trying to do really every day of your lives in working with learning technology. Well, first, you need to do something called capturing the spirit of the times and there's two ways of doing this. One way is when you look at an idea, you evaluate it as a with the grain approach. As you know, a lot of your colleagues, particularly the educators, prefer to stay within existing patterns. Have you noticed that? And are concerned perhaps that they can reasonably ask learners to adopt a new approach or at least a new usage of a familiar device. And working with the grain can sometimes be a good thing because it's an incremental approach and over time, it does result in change but it can be also very restrictive. The most effective approaches are likely actually to be open to two perspectives. Undercovering existing patterns and at times working with them but at other times also seeking to enlarge their scope to enable more ambitious learning. Something technologists are very good at. So that's one of the reasons why I particularly wanted a learning technologist to have a look at the what ifs. I know it's good to stay with incremental and stay with the patterns of what you can achieve but you also need to be looking over the horizon to thinking out of the box as they say and looking at what's coming a bit further up. And you could then be the hidden bridge between the past and the future for education. Now, there's lots of examples of small groups of thoughtful people who could change the world. Indeed, the great anthropologist Margaret Mead pointed out in fact it's the only way you change the world by small groups of influential people. And I thought the Paralympics would be one example of that. Think how all the views on that has changed not the least in China over a very small period of time by a group of people who got together and made it happen. And this could be us. I don't suppose there was any more people who did that than sitting in this room now who really said, okay, we're going to do something different. And also, some of you some of the people are slightly older like me will remember the James Burke TV series. By the way, they're all on YouTube now even though you can't buy them from the BBC. And they're absolutely great programs to watch yourself and also to use in your teaching. And actually, this is the idea that each small change will make a different. But you do need a vision. You do need a pathway. So each one of those changes will take you somewhere new. And also, this is something we've all thought about from time to time. But the change comes most by these just positions between various disciplines. And even if you take your first discipline because most of you didn't decide to be a learning technologist. I don't suppose when you were 16 or whatever you come from some other discipline to this point of time. But between there and the technology and the education and all the pedagogical stuff it's actually at the interfaces at those boundaries that some of the most interesting things really are happening. So, that's what I'm on about. You were still with me. Anyone want to go home? I started to think about what if we had more influence than we have so far? Okay, what if we really could start to change things in the way that many of us want to change them? So, I've thought about just a few things against these three sectors. First of all, the university sector. And I'm going to talk about that first of all. Now, of course, universities are very solid structures and they're based mainly on buildings, aren't they? You know, usually named over some benefactor or somebody who was a great innovator or if you have a handy one a Nobel Prize winner. And they have laboratories which apparently have to be physical spaces and they have lecture theatres just like this one. And this is a picture of where I work and some of my colleagues who are in the audience down here give us a wave. And when we called ourselves beyond distance, it was kind of a play on words about the research we were doing but the university took us very seriously and our offices are on the top floor of this tower block. So, they put us well out of the way so we didn't taint too much of the prettier buildings around us. But of course a lot of our work actually takes place now in quite different environments such as this one and this is the entrance to the media zoo on Second Life. So, that's the tradition that we're dealing with. So, it's no wonder that it's pretty difficult to change that. The buildings and the libraries and the labs and the museums and everything we work in are pretty solid structures around us. Not easy to change. I think this has been for me a very simple and influential model and it's based on the idea of social entrepreneurship. A lot of it actually is based really not so much on education although if you look on the Michael Young site he was the guy who imagined the Open University the consumer society and lots of other things. It's worth a look but there's some very good publications coming out of the ideas of taking innovation into social enterprise for different purposes other than commercial gain. And you'll see there's kind of three horizons that you can look at. So, if you like the idea of doing a bit of what if when you leave this conference and go back to your own institutions and your own areas of work you might like to have a look at this. And the first one is horizon one is looking at what if you could actually use a new approach to extend and defend your core business. Okay. The second one is looking at building a new and emerging business actually going out on a limb and running and taking a few risks and of course there's another and that's creating new and viable options rather than actually running with what's there creating something new that somebody else hadn't thought of before. Now, I don't know what you think but would you like to say the way your institution is at the moment think might put Leicester there somewhere around there horizon one anybody else? Is anybody at three? I think most you know around this sort of area and of course we should really all be having something over there in three and that's where your sort of what if imagining can take you. Of course you have to do a bit of both. Do you remember I said you need to go with the grain and you need the innovation Leicester we actually focus on both existing students and stable technologies and we try and look at new technologies and new students and new technologies. So rather than having one e-learning strategy or one approach you actually need different approaches to take account of the different kinds of innovation and the difference between the incremental and radical approaches that you can take and you will find that on the left hand side here you're working with core technologies and developmental approaches and possibly you can have targets that embrace everybody in the university whereas on the right hand side that's where your research comes from that's where you can do small things you can do pilot studies and it's only at the point at which these sort of peripheral technologies podcasting as an example are ready to move across for everyone there's stable enough pedagogical models from the research that you can then move across there. Does that make any sense to you? Okay, just like say a few things if you should want in your imagining to talk to change anything here before you can rule or indeed influence anything you need first to seek to understand it one worrying part of my networking to get ideas on this talk was the number of learning technologies who saw academics as the problem or thought that the organisation the institution should do something for example to improve communications I think before you can rule or influence anyone or anything you do need to stop hiding in your firewalls sending insults or early salvos from entrenched positions yourself so that's why I think some of the what if imagining needs to start with ourselves perhaps there's no need to be shaping up for a war when what are needed are alliances I think of a new kind Of course I'm not insensitive or untainted by this value set that the academics are the problem I've been working in learning technologies for some 20 years now but I do think that there has to be another way in the 21st century to avoid yet another long cold and unproductive war what I should tell you though that there is no grand master plan the existing campaign maps are old and no longer describe the territories in which we will be travelling in the future so it is up to each of us to take a fresh approach to learn and share constantly across all the camps using the fantastic opportunities that we have and unrivaled chance given to our generation and our generation of educators alone that no one has ever seen before we also have very much better understanding of how to develop what you call it wisdom and action through experience we know more about knowledge construction quite simply but we need now to apply these processes widely to learning and technology to ourselves in fact so, well, let me have a look now at the world of formal education there's two quick bits from me on this because a lot of you will know more about this one about teachers and one about learners first, a lot of you know and it was mentioned in my introduction that I've always been interested in the role of the teacher in online environments and of course we moved didn't we from the stage on the stage 2 altogether now the guide on the side and then where do we go next do you think host on the post or something like that with asynchronous environments where do you think we go next any suggestions well here's some ideas okay so there's no good thinking that if we've needed to if we managed to get teachers online that we've done it because obviously every time there's a new technology they will claim that they need training and development again this is why some of the research projects we're now doing at beyond distance we're trying to look at some of the pedagogical models that we've developed in one environment and seeing to what extent they will work and transfer to another environment because then it's a much quicker to get from the right hand side of the experimentation the small pilot studies over to the mainstream if we can do that rather than starting all over again I thought you might be interested in this one of the people who did respond to my request out in various networks of you know if you you know if you're learning technologies ruled the world what would you want came from Diana Laurie Lard and she was focusing almost entirely as you can see here on teacher education which I thought was really interesting she obviously feels that at this point in development that teachers need to become partners with learning technologies and also she's recognized that in order to scale up they must become very much more independent which is one of the reasons why also at Leicester we are trying to focus on low cost high pedagogical value approaches because that's the way we think a lot more teachers can get involved okay and now there's learners themselves I actually think that what if learners really rose to the fore you know is education the last social institution of the 21st century that does not consult its consumers I mean even as a patient in the National Health Service you do get asked how you're doing you know there are panels and ways of getting involved in many ways at the moment yeah there's bits of feedback isn't there I mean mainly what it does is allows a bit of feedback at the end of three years of an undergraduate degree and then in a highly contested format I know there's a problem innovation literature tells that ask any consumer what they want of a product that they've never used and you get very little help that's always the case we know that students entering higher education for example have very little idea of what to expect so if you ask them what technology will help with their learning when they get to university they haven't got the slightest clue and that really doesn't take us anywhere very much and of course I also know that learners are not consumers choosing a washing machine but neither are they mere users needing training in exploiting computers nor are they any longer patients where the doctors cut out their ignorance so learning technologies could define this new pathway to relationship between educators and educated this is one project that we're just about to start at Leicester which is going to have a go at this we've had a bit of a go of focus groups and so on you don't get much from learners about the future in that because they know what they know but we're going to try some more creative approaches so if any of you are interested in that please stay in touch with us on that we're going to produce lots of podcasts and lots of report and try and engage as many people as possible with what we're doing so we do hope that you'll keep an eye on the CARF project so I'll put the URL up there future labs have also got if you're interested in learning a voice some excellent publications so I think there's a bit of a start in that area okay, just to say not everybody likes this idea, do they? this is quite a recent the idea of lunatics taking over the asylum if you Google it you get a whole range of stuff this is teachers complaining that they don't want students pupils age 10 on their interview panels so, I mean the world is changing a bit in those sorts of directions okay, just one more intervention from me and the impact of learning and knowledge on society well you know there's a lot of talk isn't there about the big issues of the 21st century despite dramatically better health living conditions and yes, education for much of the world we still face huge challenges and the keynote yesterday you saw you know how he's trying to do a graphical representation of how that's going to go now what if, what if education informal, formal, conscious, unconscious was actually able to get to grips with some of the big issues of our day why are we standing by and letting other people do this I know you'll all have your own take on the answer to why I mean one of the interesting things I thought about was this one I don't know if you've seen this it's quite an interesting page did I put the URL on it yes, it's there the engineering challenges but they're not just engineering they've got advanced personalised learning in their secure cyberspace and these are really interesting pages to look at to explore the challenges and of course there's climate change and all the environmental issues as well the one at the bottom is the Millennium Goals for Health Education Entrepreneurship at Leicester we're having a bit of a goal with some of those with one of our research projects I started to think about just supposing if every learning technologist blogged about how he or she could contribute to one of these just supposing that one outcome from the ALT conference if not this year then next year was a learning technology blog which was addressing the big issues of the societies the global society 21st century just think how that would change the way people hear about the truth and reality I mean it's changed the delivery blogs for instance to take one example of change the way we think about media how it's chosen how it's structured how it's presented by vested interest in a span of five years blogs have invaded our culture and left what I think is an indelible mark across politics, marketing, journalism and I think Clive's going to talk about content I don't know whether he'll mention this but it is reshaping our notion would you agree on how content is created and information is disseminated just supposing each of us oh no another thing to do started a blog which actually tackled one of these big issues from the point of view of how learning and technology could contribute what if is my question to you there it would be such a great environment to read other people's ideas of course we know the ideas may not always be fact based they may not always be insightful they may not always be politically correct but blogging does provide anyone with access to the web in a way to write about anything they want and potentially interact with a global audience then this has not been possible in the past as a minimum, blogging is making our society more transparent and causing an acceleration in the flattening of the world of knowledge so what if blogging became the new deterrent the new defence I mean deterrents stopping disgraceful behaviour through speedy reporting to the global community the time to get out through borders is no longer controlled or controllable it could be a deterrent to malpractice atrocity, ethnic cleansing, everything just what if if we did something like this so that's my challenge too I hope that each one of you is actually now going to invent the Greek alphabet and impact on demographic process or the printing press or the telegraph and impact on a new revolution of some kind in education and I hope that each one of you will report back at next year's conference and I want to go back to that actually I think I'm going to pass over to you now only are we educating the generation that will need to solve the problems of the future but we should be enabling them to use the incredible power in their learning now I'm going to ask you what are your what ifs against those three categories I'm going to ask you to talk to the person next to you in the great spirit of snowballing I was trying to teach through the Open University course just a few minutes to talk to someone about these ideas and then I'm going to ask you to give me some what ifs which we're going to record on my slides and on Illuminate for the rest of the world so a few minutes to talk okay, is that alright? okay as was that as much information as possible would be available to as many people as possible so it was that promotion as much information oh information as possible available to as many people as possible the first keynote speaker who opened the conference talked about database hugging and we thought and then to all that in an accessible way yeah fantastic thank you there's one there one there and can we get the cross there just to save a bit of time the point I just wanted to make quickly is that there's a view out there that the technologists love to look at screens and not at people I think there's a key word rule I think rulership is about where you look are you looking at the screen or are you looking at the crowd perhaps there's a need to change both orientation and also power structures got it, okay what if our academics were expected to be creative in the way they approached their students okay any idea what you put in place remove the solid bits okay got it yeah I wonder if we could do without intellectual property rights and the idea of owning information being right, a single point of view a curriculum and everything that's linked to that okay yeah anyone over here what if excellence in teaching was rewarded there was one here hello I think more about play and the idea of actually getting people to understand their own knowledge, construction and getting people to play more to do with testing at the moment is about creating or be creative about the world themselves and putting it back out there for other people to be creative with I think that needs to be sort of changed I hope you're all going to do this it's one over here what if universities and schools weren't forced to be so protective of their interests as business units and were therefore able to share resources better okay it's a couple here what if there was no assignments what if educational establishments had to innovate I just say if you want to rule you have to know how you're going to make it happen there's one over here thank you what if teachers really learnt to let go and let the learners direct the learning experience so I really learnt to direct the learning experience yeah okay any more it's one up the top there anyone over here hang on just wait because it's not recorded I will come to you next what if education was free at the point of need okay and that can go behind you now and there's one here was there can you pass that one up there please oh sorry you've got go on go on no go on what if we're not reaching those we want to reach or what if they do not want to access it on this side what if universities thought that students were the most valuable thing and realised they don't own them I didn't get the last bit and also realised that they don't own the students don't own the students wash your mouth out okay can you take another two what if we all really bought into the values of wiki university is there any more learning technology what if learning technologists actually helped each other and maybe like picked one target per year and genuinely worked on it okay I need to finish but I think that's absolutely brilliant so I really would like you to give yourselves and each other a very good clap as a start to follow that first one so thank you I believe that in the future education will be valued quite differently and even if each one of you took one of these ideas for me or yourselves today we could actually start to transform the world of learning technologies quite quickly we could be at the forefront of the way education is construed if you like and bridge these gaps between the real and virtual worlds it's nothing less than the change of the culture of knowledge now how would I leave you with the idea as we move on to Clive's talk about how will history judge your reign and your rule would your epitaph be oh those learning technologists they stuck to the knitting you know or will it be that they led the global community in building bridges to sharing knowledge and understanding in the 21st century within such dreams begins responsibility which is the topic for next year's conference which as you heard I'm co-chairing so you have a year to report back okay so come to Manchester next year and let us know what you had to go I will promise to make sure there's space and time during next year's conference to hear about some of these achievements alright so thank you very much everyone for listening