Telling stories about digital futures

1. Telling stories about digital futures Helen Beethame-learning consultant

2. stories we tell about the future

3. are stories about our present (and past)

4. Telling stories about digital futures Because… • There are different ways of telling • There are different stories to be told • There are different possible futures

5. top hit on ‘education 2.0’ ‘Want an education? Open up a browser. With the information available online you could probably get a complete education without ever leaving your house’

6. ‘…to make best use of emergent technologies (such as those that are now becoming synonymous with Web 2.0 and social software), creating a community that is equipped to rapidly adapt and adopt to provide a more coherent and personalised user experience’

7. Focus groups with teachers and young people: what challenges face education? • Students and teachers envisage similar learning environments in the future, specifically they want: learning environments to continue to exist in a physical form; real people as teachers; similar technologies, for example: “I want more interactive whiteboards“. • Students felt ‘What we will need to know’ was the most important challenge, as it addressed what they felt to be a key purpose of education - which is to enable them to get a job. [In other words a focus on content.] • Despite the focus on social interactions, teachers and students think that the least important challenges include: ‘How we interact with each other and information with and through technology’ ‘Beyond Current Horizons’ programme 2008

8. Surveys of 16-18 year olds and new students about their expectations of ICT • Students value face-to-face interaction and really need to see the value and relevance of technology before they are persuaded • Although generally open to the idea of new technologies, just 57% say they look for new technologies to help their learning • Students make wide use of social networking but struggle to see how it could be used in learning JISC/Ipsos MORI 2007/08

9. But new enough to be worth hearing Stories must be familiar enough to be heard

10. But innovations must hope to change their users Innovations must find users (must ‘fit’ with at least some existing practices, rules, roles)

11. Some parallel stories Users 2.0? is blurring the boundaries between: Read/writers (wikis, fan fiction) Pro-sumers, sharers (Flickr, Youtube) taggers, bloggers, commentators Agile developers and adopters (sourceforge) ‘Agile’ learners?

12. BUT: ‘traditional’ roles are powerful • Even in the most democratic online spaces, the ‘powerful’ (writers, teachers, developers, media producers) maintain their own: • Separate communities – often with their own unwritten rules and specialist languages • Professional codes, values and identities • Economic models (usually: we get paid, you don’t) • Consider the different rules that govern: • Content produced by professional designers, publishers, teachers, and learners • Content/code owned by Facebook, its application developers, its advertisers, and its users (none!)

13. Less ‘story’ in the technology

14. Tagging refuses any final order or finished story. It passes on a fragment of sense to future users, leaving them with the task of making new sense in a new context.

15. A person is always located at “nodal points” of specific communication circuits... Or better: one is always located at a post through which various kinds of messages pass. J.-F. Lyotard (1979, trans 1984) The Postmodern Condition

16. Blurred boundaries/permeable layers Permeable layers of actors, with different rules, roles and expertise: • Expert creators • Expert communicators • Chatters, taggers and twitterers • commentators, ‘enrichers’, active remixers, personalisers, hybridisers, optimisers... • pursuing their own goals they consciously leave traces for others • Users/consumers • participation at the level of choice (opting in/out?) • through ‘architectures of participation’, choices can create new traces for others, and even new knowledge Researchers, innovators Teachers? Reflective learners?

17. These ‘new’ users need new skills and agilities • act in different roles and move between them • engage critically with ideas in multiple media • re-purpose what they know for different contexts • accumulate personal and public knowledge • record their journeys • reflect and plan purposefully Tell their own stories

18. Learners are creating their own learning environments and blends. Personal attributes and styles of learning/technology use come to the fore. They are active participants in communities of knowledge building and sharing. Developing effective e-learners Digital pioneers Creative producers Everyday communicators Information gatherers(Green and Hannon 2007) attributes/identities strategies ReadinessResourcefulnessResilienceRememberingReflecting(Higgins et al 2005) skills access Attention Creativity Social participation Developing and projecting identities (based on Owens et al 2007)

19. “A story is an attempt to create order and security out of a chaotic world.” Doyle (2004) quoted in Hughes (2005) Tangled weblogs as spaces for transformational stories of lifelong learning

20. Stories traditionally put us into place, and into history.

21. Alternative stories: alternative futures • flexibility, (re)aggregation • Modular ‘memes’ (learning objects, video clips, datasets, widgets) • BUT: do we sacrifice rationales, contexts, unifying narratives? • personalisation • Learning is always ‘my story’ • BUT: also ‘our story’ (cohort) and ‘their story’ (education system) • Who owns the stories we create and share with technologies? • knowledge as use-value • ‘cool’, popular and ‘linked-in’ are key Web 2.0 values • knowledge must be ‘just-in-time’ and ‘just-for-me’ • the eternal present of web information • BUT: academic knowledge has different values • (plagiarism as crunch-point) • multiple identities • resources to be playfully managed • BUT: deep personal development? Learning as self-actualisation?

22. Better to ask: • How are the roles of writer/reader, producer/ consumer, developer/user, teacher/learner changing with respect to one another? • How do their different stories intersect? • Where do the different intentions and meanings of the writer/teacher, reader/learner etc find common expression? • As writers/producers/developers/teachers: • What space is there for the user here? How can she make this her own? • As readers/consumers/users/learners: • What can I make of/in this space? Who can I be?

23. How can we enable learners to become creative storytellers, and actors in their own stories? • How can we keep telling ‘traditional’ stories we value, for example about disciplinary ways of knowing? • What role can technologies play?