Future Learning: Desire or Fate?

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Future Learning Desire or Fate?

• Professor Gilly Salmon, University of Leicester

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Are we educating students well enough those who
will need to solve the challenges of the 21st
Century?
http//www.futures.hawaii.edu
http//www.le.ac.uk/beyonddistance/calf/
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but to myself I seem to have been only like a
boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting
myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble
or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the
great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before
me." Isaac Newton (1642-1727)In Brewster,
Memoirs of Newton (1855), vol II, Ch. 27
Gilly Salmon, July 2008
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• The future is not to be forecast but created.
• What we do today will decide the shape of things
  tomorrow
• Ervin Laszlo, Founder of the Club of Budapest

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• There are so many variables that you dont know
  what the hell is going to happen. Thats when a
  leader or a group comes in and says what they
  want to see happen.
• (Hank Lederer of the Minnesota Futurists)

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Heavier than air flying machines are
impossible Lord Kelvin, President of the Royal
Society
Ernest Rutherford (Founder of nuclear physics,
Nobel Prize winner) once declared talk of
nuclear power is moonshine
British Astronomer Royal, Sir Harald Spencer
Jones, 1957 space flight is bunk (Russian
Sputnik launched 2 weeks later)

Thomas J. Watson CEO of IBM, there is a world
market for five computers
Gilly Salmon, July 2008
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Big trends (looking backwards for looking
forwards)
Gilly Salmon, July 2008
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Ripples from the history of Education
Bruner
Dewey
Lave
Vygotsky
Marton
Freire
Situated
Säljö
reflective practice
Inquiry
Pask
Seely Brown
instructional design
Discovery
conversation
double loop
Laurillard
Constructivism
Biggs
Piaget
Resnick
connectivism
problem based learning
Gilly Salmon, July 2008
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1 horse power
1,000 Horse power
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http//www.computerhistory.org,
http//www.informationeconomy.sa.gov.au/digital_en
gagement/jargonbuster/optical_fibre,
http//www.applebytes.info/apbC.html, Laszlo (
2006 p. 106)
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2008
E-assess
Blog
Podcasts
Wikis
E-portfolio
Social bookmarks
2008 UCISA/JISC Survey of Technology Enhanced
Learning Browne, Hewitt, Jenkins Walker
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2008
Drivers
Constraints/ challenges
Enhancing L T
Technology Enhanced Learning in
Higher Education
Lack of time
Meeting students expectations
Staff skills
Committed local champions
Career Development Opportunities
E-learning strategies
Support for Web 2.0 technologies
Central support/funding
2008 UCISA/JISC Survey of Technology Enhanced
Learning Browne, Hewitt, Jenkins Walker
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Technologies to campus watch Adoption Horizons
(in years)
4-5
2-3
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Grassroots video (capture, edit,
share) Collaboration webs (personal, flexible,
free)

• Mobile /devices broadband
• (affordable, portable, deliverable)
• Data mash-ups
• (converge, re-represent)

Collective intelligence (large numbers, explicit
implicit collection) Social operating Systems (
organisation of knowledge round people rather
than content)
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7 Metatrends over 5 years
Communications Between human machines
Games as pedagogical tools
Users as content producers
Ubiquitous platforms
http//www.nmc.org/horizon/
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Lord Robbins
Lord Dearing
http//www.leeds.ac.uk/educol/ncihe/,
http//www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id11463
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Micro trends (making a difference)
Gilly Salmon, July 2008
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Never doubt the power of a small group of people
to change the world. Nothing else ever
has. Margaret Mead
Be the change you want to see in the
world Mahatma Ghandi
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Microtrends on Facebook.
http//apps.new.facebook.com/microtrends
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Visioning
Gilly Salmon, July 2008
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To them that come after us, it may be as
ordinary to buy a pair of wings to fly to the
remotest regions, as now a pair of boots to ride
a journey, and to confer at the distance of the
Indies by sympathetic conveyances, may be as
usual in the future as literary
conveyances Joseph Glanvill, philosopher,
clergyman and chaplain to Charles II of England
1661
Gilly Salmon, July 2008
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Some men see things as they are and say, why? I
dream things that never were and say why
not? Robert Kennedy
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Change comes most of all from the unvisited no
mans land between the disciplines Norbert
Wiener
Gilly Salmon, July 2008
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Pictures from Flickr Avi- Abrams,
hornsrev.dk/Engelsk/default_ie.htm,
www.darkroastedblend.com/2007/10/cool-road-rail-ve
hicles.html enchgallery.com/fractals/fractalpages
/suspension.htm,
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A word about resistance
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Creating the future through curriculum
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Delivery
Pedagogical Challenge
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5
Development
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Choice of learning technology/ enhancement
2
Design
3
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New books Learning Futures Festival
www.le.ac.uk/beyonddistance/festival
www.podcastingforlearning.com
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• Thanks for listening
• Please carry on the discussion online

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Additional refs/bibiography

• Stille, A. (2003) The Future of the Past,
  Picador, London.
• Long term views of trends.
• Laszlo, E. (2006) The Chaos Point the world at a
  crossroads, Hampton, London. See the nice
  foreward by the (now late) Arthur C. Clarke the
  brief excursion into chaos theory.
• Dregni, E. Dregni, J. Follies of Science, 20th
  Century visions of our Fantastic Future
  SpeckPress, Denver Colorado. Fabulous easy
  read, and loads of pictures, good mix of science
  and fiction, also attempts to look well at 21st
  Century science.
• http//www.ucisa.ac.uk/groups/tlig/surveys.aspx
• The UCISA surveys- 2001-8.
• 2008 Horizon ReportJohnson, Laurence F., Levine,
  Alan, and Smith, Rachel S. 2008 Horizon Report.
  Austin, TX The New Media Consortium, 2008.
• http//www.nmc.org/horizon/
• Like the hype cycles models?
• http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hype_cycle,
  reasonably good, free summary. The Garnter paper
  usually have to be paid for. Their new book is
  Mastering the hype cycle how to choose the right
  innovation at the right time. Fenn Raskino.