 the three of you have you all met each other and talk with each other well we haven't really no I know of you yeah okay well it's nice to have all three of you together thank you again I'll say it again so do you want to come and sit down here those seats are reserved just for you yes we have three right now hello come on in so for uh let me just do a quick check here we had an interesting sound issue that's a good beard keep it coming keep it coming that's all right people will ask me how long it take to grow this they say two weeks they go okay wait a minute yeah so you can mess with them you could say it took me ten years and then you can build an elaborate story you know special powders you had to apply to grow it just right and and we just I met you earlier today didn't I oh you have a fantastic memory that was great in Valencia which is a wonderful place to be yes remind me of your name I'm sorry and where are you from excellent excellent and you sir I can barely see your badge at all okay and what's your name David it's not the most German name I've ever heard my life yeah so you have two minutes to go what about you too you're not with them see that the big cavernous gap between them you're both from France you tell them your names again welcome welcome we'll start this in about one and a half minutes we'll get some time for two other people to show up oh we have Roxanne excellent hello Roxanne so we've been doing this for about almost four years and so every week we have a different guest usually and the guest can be anyone from University president to a great reporter to a venture capitalist to an inventor to a librarian to a critic we have a lot of different people mostly from the US although quite a few from around the world and then we meet in this virtual space technologies called Shindig and then we converse and there's no presentation I've got a couple of slides I'm just going to show them and then get rid of them but then it's all conversation the goal is to take advantage of the technology which lets us have video and audio so that we can see Olivier's smiling face and here is was and then to have questions going from everybody involved and that's that's the ethos of this it's the other conversation yes usually in the same day and time yeah but there's a lot to there's a lot to cover so we have one person talking about charitable donations we had another person talking about what is it like to be a president another person talking about mental health issues someone talking about virtual reality someone talking about gaming I mean every week is a lot of stuff to cover and then we come back to some people Audrey was our very first guest almost four years ago so 2016 and so if people's work changes or something happens we interviewed the head of a fantastic new college from Providence Rhode Island wonderful wonderful school and they had just started off they weren't accredited yet so they got accredited so we talked to them after that to see how that changed right well I think we have the top of the hour and so let me begin let me say we welcome everybody welcome you to the Future Transform people who are here in person as well as people who are online so to the virtual people hello to Ed Roxanne Barbara Tom and Tom as especially nice to see Ed Webb because he has great questions for the show but he's never able to make it in person so I'm glad to actually see him we're coming to you live from Berlin Germany in the middle of the OED conference so we have a live audience in fact I'm just gonna get a little vertiginous here and turn the camera around so you can see all these people here and we have three fantastic people to talk with tonight so we will introduce each one of them one by one we just quickly had our signal so there was glitter there were there are beads and there were shiny lights hung up all over the room and when I got there the people were just chatting and talking and it was just it was wonderful yeah and we were doing a lot of drawing and drawings and you had footprint documents well the course you've got to leave footprints for the picture haven't you I'm hoping to get some from you today well I will my feet are like yeti feet so I'm happy to do but let me ask then as leading the workshop and as being here today yes what are some of the thoughts and themes and what's the vibe that you've gotten from OED and you've been doing this for a while yeah yeah well this is year 25 and I think I've missed three since the beginning so I mean in the very beginning like going back 20 plus years most people had European projects and talking about experimental software development so you can see over the time where now this conference is really talking about influencing and positively constructing the future by all the ways we're talking about real prototypes like Olivia's well it's been modern prototype now isn't it really but is building up you know so I think it has gone I mean if in systems terms I think we've pushed the boundaries again and again and again and again and because it makes it more complex it makes it harder it makes multiple perspectives on the problem but now in the last probably the last couple of years we've added the mix of the complex adaptive system that's the future to it so we've had the we've added the temporal dimension not only what we're doing why we're doing it how it's working but where's going and of course it is one of the few conferences that I attend that really crosses all education sectors from sort of kindergarten and composter education higher education which I've already stayed in always stayed in and you know and then into corporate learning there's a very big corporate learning development contingent and we all talk to each other that must be good that must be good and the three of you here on the stage like the four of us each represent very very different yeah let me just ask for those of you the six of you in the audience the fist-to-face audience how many of you are from primary and secondary schools how many of you are from universities and colleges how many of you from corporate learning and you too where are you from second or post-secondary I would be higher education yeah I think so I think so I like the secrecy and mystery though we can either confirm nor deny this so thinking as well about them if I can if I can bring Olivier back into this as well you heard the debate that just happened and so you were you were brought on to to argue about the principle that thinking of economics is a problem in higher education or what was the exact proposition you're arguing position this house believe that an obsession for economics is harming education yes and and you heard this this walk is to be and I voted for his side how did how did the debate go what did you think overall well well we didn't win so you were convinced by him but you well it's one of those things that I mean it actually in in in the statement it was talking about obsession with yes whereas in fact I don't think we're obsessed with it okay but we want to be inclusive so I mean in my my work which is trying to understand new curricula for the future which is what I'm working on very much now and it looks like from the student point of view of course they want careers they want to earn money and sometimes you know the new generation is considered to be focusing on that but they also want to make a contribution they do want to be prepared you know for for long working lives and with good companies and and organizations and so I think it the answer was probably some sort of balance and but I didn't want to be accused of sitting on the front since I'm a Brit and everyone's sitting on the fence oh don't you're not gonna talk about it I promise I'm not but it's pretty miserable yeah I'm sorry but this is but the part of it's an artificial you know the structure that you know let me ask everybody what questions do you have for Jillie either about her workshop or her approach to 4.0 learning or about to this question of curriculum or economics and this is a course of question for everybody who was involved here on the online as well one quick note were we actually gone from the virtual audience for 20 minutes that's really bad well it's okay we were recording this and we'll repeat this on YouTube but what questions do you will have in the face to face for them they're just they're just intimidated by you so this is a biographical question about your background as a faculty member it just leads you to sure I've worked in the area of online learning I started off at the University my original research and practice has always been in large online learning and I gradually became more and more interested in in attempting to create or at least influence the future for that and and I mean the main reason I did it is that I went to Australia for seven years and what they loved it but I was at the point where I needed to come back my children wondered where I'd gone and you know they thought it was time and I kept getting grandchildren being born in London that also wanted to meet me so I came back from I came back and and then I when I was in Swinburne University in Melbourne it it started a joint venture with an Australian company to support the University to provide online learning on a large scale which of course there's a lot of companies around now doing that and it was very successful and but I was on the University side so I you know I was making it work for the University but then when they knew I was back in London they said oh we're going to start up in the UK so it seemed a natural progression destiny yeah it seemed a natural thing to do to have a go and I have to say I thought it would be easy to make that shift I haven't found it easy really so that's what's good for you isn't it to do something different to get another perspective but it is it is a way of deploying my long-term work which is about learning design you know the use of technology for for student focus actually understanding a whole range of technologies which I've moved with over the years so I did see it as a way of fulfilling another aspect of my long-term work and and we'll still do it actually I think I'm going to go and learn to code I know a great school for that Does anybody have a rating? I know and and it's interesting because you know I do really think that if I'm going to carry on working past retirement age which is what I'm already doing all the traditional retirement age I do need to look for new things it's not that I don't want to use what I've done before but I need to look for new applications and new directions for what I'm doing and so yeah I'm bodying life about it We don't have a campus in the UK It's about time isn't it? Wow that would be remarkable something in Europe investing in the UK I think there should be someone inside the UK who wants to invest in the UK I think you'll find some really desperate people yes Actually I know who we can ask I'll follow up with you I'm glad you two met Yeah please please Which tools? Which tools do you prefer? Which tools do you prefer? Okay well for some sort of volume you're going to have to use a VLE or an LMS but I don't find them adequate to do everything that I would want to do Is it a little bit of that way? Why? Well they've grown up to be you know safe secure not creative and of course if you're dealing with five ten twelve thousand students you have to have something like that for all the reasons that are obvious they've got to be secure not subject to deed or tax every day and all the rest of it However I'm doing a huge amount of work in the moment with robotics with video and with the whole aspect of creativity so what Brian described that I'll do in face to face I'm constantly attempting to reproduce that in remote online environments so I'm just about any tool anyone hands me I have a go with to be quite honest I wouldn't say there's just one thing or another So you're embodying what we like to see? Oh really? Good question, thank you Yes please Tools that can be good for creating an interactive future environment That's the challenge that I've seen Our challenge is to create the environment of frustration that you can have in your own discussion and try to find a solution to a problem We've sort of started and just started from the computer to do it in remote online environments So if you were in an online patient with disturbing solutions to motivate people to stay connected Right, okay That's one of the most amazing things we think is good Let me just repeat that for people who can't hear it That's quite alright, it's quite alright It's a lush, wonderful question But quickly the idea is how can you recreate the face to face environment from a physical classroom or a meeting session like this online and the combination of frustration and face to face engagement that's peer to peer which is a key term to use Is there a particular tool that you found that does that? I will add maybe, sorry Does it lead you to the classic MOOC dropout that you can see in many different situations where MOOCs are way not followed by many people who are starting a MOOC Okay Right, my work is not with MOOCs although I have run MOOCs as well and a lot of my pedagogical frameworks are used for MOOCs and we'll make a difference However what I do is full degree courses over a period of time entirely online but at volume and with global students So I think what I would do is come back and say I think you can to a certain extent use a technology tool like this one and if you structure it appropriately it will have some similarities and some differences and you can emulate some of what we're doing now However, rather than be frustrated about that it's better to go back and look at the pedagogical frameworks that have been developed that add great value to the very special characteristics of creating an online environment which is a different sort of environment and then designing for that Rather than saying this is the only and the best way of doing it and somehow we've got to reproduce that through technology So the answer is no, there is no one tool that will fix that but you need to look at the concepts that you're wanting and if yours is the collaboration which for example the management education where I've worked a lot is critically important and then the whole range from actually getting people together I've developed something called the five stage model which is fairly well known which is a scaffold of people gradually working together which usually uses mainly asynchronous technologies and you can develop very strong bonds and networks through that So it does come back to learning design and then also appropriate human intervention to support the students on their journey So it's a bit of a long story but I suppose my quick answer would be no, there isn't a tool that will do that for you you've got to design for what you want to achieve but it is possible Thank you for that question Thank you for the great answer Speaking of questions and answers if you're new to the forum you can see from the diversity of questions just how rich the conversation can be and let me ask our virtual folks if you would like to ask questions either you can type them in by the text chat button by pressing the question mark button or you can join us up here on stage if you'd like to ask another question What? Please, even that's the question Actually, maybe you think since you or two has no teachers how do you deal with kind of coachable constructional design and how do you help the students get there? Do you have a small team? It's a little bit more than 4,000 students we have two of 35 people and this crew will do 6 people dedicated to the category we have another 8 people team who is creating the intro the intro is used by all the students and the intro is designed so every student can be completely autonomous and the category team will use the intro to design the curriculum to create different projects to the students' challenge and the connection between the challenge it works just like a tree graph everyone starting from the 7 or 5 project at some point you start to have different branches and the students will be able to make their own choice inside the curriculum and the new project is connected to the previous one so when the previous one is completed then it unlocks the next project of the curriculum all these design and the rules to help the project the rules are created by the category team it's implemented in the intro by the developer team that created the template and then the students are following this so there is a lot of learning to design going into it in fact or it has already gone into it that you have 42 is a in video terms there is a lot of pre-production that has gone into this we do have a small amount of pre-production we are not creating any kind of content because we want our students to also develop skills about facing the huge amount of data that exists on the internet and developing the skills on how to filter this huge amount of data so the students will be able to figure out what is important, what is relevant in ICT, what is obsolete or not what is completely false because sometimes you can go into a website and a blog explaining how to code stuff and to rely on it it's completely fake or it's completely not understood by the creator of this webpage and you need of course to test everything to figure out if it's true if it's not true and the same when you debate with each other it's completely wrong because you have to debate with each other and to have some input from someone else and any time you need to have a doubt about how the information will get from the internet and the doubt and the information will get from the labels and you are facing the same challenge so that's why we do not create any content if we create some kind of content the students will be stuck with this content and say ok if the school created this so the answer is what the school did create and I just need to follow what the school is telling me in this video without any kind of doubt and testing and nothing so that's why we completely remove the pointing at creating some content or pointing at some specific content yeah it's interestingly it's not terribly different from the framework I was talking about which actually just uses a spark to start the dialogue so something is offered but that's all a spark a spark so it's called a it might be a YouTube video it might be a saying it might be a poem all sorts of different things and then you'll direct them off on the task at that point so he has given you a model to a certain extent there the way it works best with large scale online learning too yes thank you for making that connection back I have the feeling that after in a few minutes they're going to storm the stage so I want to give what I can after that thank you for asking these questions can I ask you if I can bring Audrey to the hot seat and Julie thank you very much thank you very much I think it's very unlikely that people don't know who Audrey Waters is especially since she's the first guest in the Future Transform she's well known I think as one of EdTech's fiercest and most powerful critics she's the founder of a project I think calling it a website is too small a hack education she has published numerous e-books she has also just finished a book about the history of EdTech which is due out from which press MIT Press it's due out in 2020 sure it might coincide with something that the US is doing in November so I might see if we can push it back in November I can't think of a don't push back the election please we could no no no because yeah never mind we can talk about that later if we want Audrey is just one of the greatest people I know in this field and always a pleasure to have here and so this morning you were one of the plenary speakers and you gave a devastating critique of what you called the EdTech imaginary where you describe the ways in which EdTech lunges towards utopia but actually succeeds in plowing a furrow for its dystopia and you broke this down in many ways so the question I'd like to ask you and all of you will have questions I know is how do people respond I mean you were expecting heckling you were expecting the blues I was expecting heckling and I identified where the hecklers were in the audience so but fortunately there was they were a cow by my ferocity they were and I think the response that I heard was overwhelmingly positive and I think it was interesting to see some of the chatter ongoing chatter today with people pushing back at me and saying that they were sure that these things were true and then me pointing to sources and saying perhaps not you mean like the N number of jobs will cease to exist Benjamin Dockstader was here he was another guest in the Future Transform last year and so it was nice of you to name check him and see him also another man with a good beard just to let you know so those myths still hold I think they do hold and I think that they're incredibly powerful I think that you know definitely our backgrounds are in literature I think that we understand the power of story the power of mythology and sort of the elevation of certain stories to to truths that then sort of become unquestionable I mean that's what we use the word myth often to mean things that are not true that's just a myth myths are our most important stories myths are our truths and so I think that education technology does have a lot of myths in terms of things that we just don't challenge things that we don't really question the inevitability the inevitability of the forward march of you know sort of this teleology that things get faster and more digital and I think it's worth just asking asking ourselves to think more carefully about the stories that we hear and definitely think more carefully about the stories we tell I have a sideways question on that but I would love to hear questions from everybody else first so anybody in the audience and actually let me bring up one of the one of the folks in the audience who has several questions and I've been I have not yet beamed him up so let's see if he can show up here there we go Tom can you hear us? yeah I can hear you can you hear me I very well I'm back in court with Germany and back to the US well I had a question earlier about economics but we can fold all these things together the question about economics I had was do we really know if education is a bet on the future so if we're educating for the future do we know what that future looks like 10 years down the road which is kind of related to the second question in the sense that I'm trying to get a handle on what Audrey's thrust is is the argument that technology is driving pedagogy instead of pedagogy driving technology and if so yeah absolutely machines don't make us we should make the machines but those two things are semi-related but if you can stitch them together Bravo those are two huge questions Tom if I can we just segment them out so that we can chew on them but quickly where are you at home in the Houston area in my in-laws house in the community excellent that's right and I should say to all the Americans in the audience thank you for participating in the Future Transform on Thanksgiving Day that's a really nice sign and Tom is a good friend of the program that's been a very great supporter of us from the beginning and always ask good questions like he just did now so let's start off with this idea of how do we plan for educational technology for the next 10 years thinking about the economy and so on when we have such fuzzy knowledge I mean you are devastating this morning and as for a few other speakers our inability to model 10 years out so how can we do this I think I mean I one thing I think that we should resist is the notion that things don't change and that things have never changed things have changed substantially I think that we don't always notice it as Larry Cuban and David I wrote right this is sort of tinkering towards Utopia that the shifts are not always as dramatic again as these sweeping narratives that we talk that we you know that we use to talk about education revolutions things have shifted demographics you talk a lot in your work about demographics shifting and demographics are going to continue to shift and that that changes what happens in the classroom who you know the pop how your classroom is populated changes what happens changes what happens in it but I think that there are longer term things that we have to start thinking about I'm not sure that we can model the way in which we have weather forecasting where we can say that there's 74% chance of rain on Thursday but I do think that we can think about some of these things as a futurist I'm wiping my browsing thank you I do appreciate that although we often use the term forecasting but we're not as good as meteorologists yet although we do look at the terrain Tom your second question was a little more complicated I want to make sure I understood do you get the so you're asking about all these critiques but you're distinguishing education and technology I lost the last part of that could you be afraid of this the question I have is on what is the current critique based on is it the fact that in many cases we see technology driving pedagogy and that's a problem and that's one I certainly am on board with or is it that or is it that we should have pedagogy driving if that's the case we need to drive technology and the system should adapt to the needs of the teacher and is that if we were to fix that would we solve the ed tech problem does that make a question I don't know I mean what is the ed tech problem I mean I have my I mean I think that you know I'm not sure present company excluded of course I'm not sure that a lot of technologists think about pedagogy at all in fact I think that there's a fair amount particularly in the sort of what I call the Silicon Valley narrative that everyone's an auto didact and as long as you as long as you give people information they'll all become wildly successful entrepreneurs and I think that means that they don't actually think about how teaching or learning happens often for these individuals it was quite easy they never really struggled this is you know this is sort of like the sol con model you know four degrees advanced degrees from MIT I think school came easy for him and so he hasn't actually spent a lot of time thinking about teaching to people who for whom it doesn't it doesn't I have this in my face all the time and you teach up to four colleges classes a semester on government so you see quite a bit of that absolutely yeah well that's a very concise clear answer what is the proper relationship between technology and pedagogy I think that's the simple version of the question so you have two hours to speak now in five minutes I think it depends on what you're I mean I think that that's such a broad question I mean I think it depends on what you're doing I think it depends on what you think of as technology I mean my favorite technology for the work I do as a writer is having a window with sun shining in and I have a pen because I seem to be holding on to a pen that I really like I'm not sure I can necessarily talk about one a relationship and have it be a constant across all learning scenarios, all teaching scenarios, all subject matters all preferences that's interesting of course yes yes yes no no no some people understand the shape of the renewal I can recite and I know when you're born for some people for some people it means analyzing what you're trying to say and what the context is how it was linked to things so it's also emotional which is developing through the shape it's not just and if we could define education for the skills this field I just want to repeat that no problem, it's a wonderful question part of it is how do we define education and the example you gave what does it mean to understand Shakespeare or to be educated in Shakespeare and there are different ways we can unpack I would say in every school I go to people have arguments about the purpose of education well your debate earlier today was in part about that the role of economics in education there's a branch of American higher education called liberal education and everyone likes to argue about what that exactly means and they never agree agree there's your pedagogy that you were describing before people having contested the purpose of education is to make people aware that there are different ways of looking at the world that's one answer that's one answer by the way if you're new to this what we just did here bringing Tom up and leading him into the conversation this is what we do and so if you're new to it we can bring people up here all the time Tom thank you so much good luck with your in-laws and again thank you for coming here we'll get along great with my in-laws we'll see you soon I'm also conscious of time we have about four minutes left let me say we have a question for Audrey and let me just flash this on the screen this is from our awesome friend George Station and here is his question remiths she's been labeled Cassandra but I also see Sisyphus what's your current myth status are you defying or rewriting these myths thank you George and good morning to you George on the west coast I think it's about 1155 well George I appreciate both of those difficult tasks that you've assigned me it's like rolling a rock at the hill I'm either not believed or just I actually feel both of those sometimes I like to remind people that I did not decide that I choose the label ed text Cassandra it was a label bestowed upon me certainly I would not have chosen chosen to be seen as the crazy woman who no one listens to it's not a particularly fun place to be I hope that I am defying and rewriting and challenging these myths and I sometimes I do feel like the task is what's the adjective Sisyphian yes but that would be too depressing well whoever can move his line we must imagine Sisyphus happy in doing this George thank you for that that's a great question a happy Thanksgiving George that's a very kind question thank you we have time for one more question from all of you before we have to wrap up so either those of you who are online and that's everyone from Tom and Tom Roxanne and Ed now is your chance to get in Ricardo what questions you have are those of you who are in the room what questions you have we have one we have a keen eye let's bring Tom on here and I bet you I can guess Tom's question so let me do this hello Tom your mic is muted when you done mute perpetual issue with video there you go I'm working on our climate crisis and I'm all specifically working on rewriting the myths needed for it and I'm very sure very soon we're going to get our teeth kicked out of our throat and so it's a matter of do your myths new myths for higher education include myths in a major life or death worldwide climate crisis thank you Tom if you couldn't hear that I got this and let me just repeat this for everyone to hear Tom is among other things a long running commentator on our program based in the Boston Massachusetts area and he's very keen on climate change which when he refers to a planetary crisis that's what he's referring to so question is what could the myths are we seeing coming up around the intersection of higher education and climate change I was hoping that someone was going to ask about this tip because it was one of the things I've been thinking a lot with the sort of the predictions of AI in the future which seems to be the latest thing that the latest things in the last 65 years that we've been obsessing that the future will be about AI and I've been thinking a lot about the amount of energy power that goes into artificial intelligence the power that it takes for machine learning the power that it takes to have these cloud based systems that can spin up more and more processing power it seems to sort of be we're going to I wonder to make a choice between a future of artificial intelligence and a future that is sustainable and it isn't simply the amount of electricity it's all these other concerns that we have that I don't think that we've really based about the environmental impact of computing technology the waste the rare earth materials and the geopolitics of the future of that and I think about just again the question of demographics when things happen with global climate change what are the demographics how are the demographics going to change and how will that change how we prioritize what we know and who we decide whose knowledge we decide to care for and I think it's again this is one of the things that I would very much we pay attention to then some of the other things that I feel we get sidetracked on can we talk about this afterwards Tom thank you again for caring that forward I hate to pause things but we are really out of time and you guys need to have food or else that will be bad I want to make sure that you get to feed yourselves let me first of all I just want to thank you our sessions for next week but I also want to begin by by saying thank you for everybody thank you for the people who came here face to face particularly the wonderful people in the audience who had great questions and I just want to say and thank you to the people from afar who defied time and space and joined us in the middle of America's national holiday questions that we got were so rich and varied everything from the very personal empathetic questions about careers to the larger questions of what is the purpose of higher education itself or education in general and let me above all thank our guests three wonderful people from Audrey and Olivier and for Jelly for being so wonderful to be here starving yourselves to be here but also each of you bring so rich a variety of backgrounds thoughts and projects that you will thank you all before you go let me just take 30 quick seconds to say next week December 5th I can't believe it's December already but we'll have Keith McIntosh he's the chief information officer for the University of Richmond in Virginia in the United States he's done some pioneering work on supporting minorities in higher education educational technology so I'm really grateful for him I'm looking forward to seeing him next week also if you want to keep up with the forum we have almost four years of videos going back to our guest's first appearance 2016 and so all of that is on YouTube completely for free for you to look at it anytime and if you want to keep arguing about this stuff if you want to talk about the great tool that will unite this all or the design thinking that's part of it or how does 42Mesh do what it does we have places on everywhere from LinkedIn, Facebook we have a Slack channel we appear on Twitter the whole time thank you all again I really admire all of you coming and we'll see you next time thanks everybody and thanks to the AV people for making everything keep going thank you and we'll enjoy OAB bye bye