Learning technology: a forward and backward look
Seb Schmoller
Association for Learning Technology (ALT)
http://www.alt.ac.uk/
[email protected]
11/3/2009
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Image from Samira Makhmalbaf's film "Blackboards" from Alexandre Borovik's Mathematics Under the Microscope blog
Main headings for this talk
1. Changes as the cost of processing drops - F
2. Ubiquity – U
3. Openness – O
Handout with references at http://fm.schmoller.net, and
printed here.
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F1
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Gordon E. Moore, Co-founder, Intel Corporation.
F2 – Moore’s Law
Relative
Manufacturing
Cost per
Component
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In 1965, Gordon Moore sketched out his prediction of the pace of silicon technology. Decades later, Moore’s Law
remains true, driven largely by Intel’s unparalleled silicon expertise.. Copyright © 2005 Intel Corporation.
Copyright © 2005 Intel Corporation.
Number of
Components per
Integrated Circuit
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F3
20
18
16
14
12
10
World sales of
netbooks - millions
8
6
4
2
0
2007
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Source: Economist, 17 January 2009
2008
2009
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F4
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Image from http://www.handcellphone.com/mobile/files/phone-images/google-g1-phone-review-4.jpg
F5
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Source: Google/Android web site
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F6 – Some speculation
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Chart by Hans Moravec: http://www.frc.ri.cmu.edu/~hpm/talks/revo.slides/2030.html
C4 what title do you give this?
From Boston Dynamics
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U1 Home computer access
Households with access to a home computer (1), 2000-06. % of all households. Source: OECD.
%
2003
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2005
2006
100
80
60
40
20
0
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U2 Broadband connections per 100 inhabitants
Source OECD 2008
Rank
DSL
Cable
LAN
Other
Total
1
Denmark
20.9
9.9
3.3
0.8
35.1
2
Netherlands
20.7
13.4
0.4
0.2
34.8
3
Iceland
31.1
0.0
0.4
0.7
32.2
4
Norway
23.3
5.5
2.0
0.4
31.2
5
Switzerland
21.2
9.4
0.1
0.3
31.0
6
Finland
25.6
4.0
0.0
1.1
30.7
7
Korea
9.5
10.5
10.4
0.0
30.5
8
Sweden
18.9
5.9
5.5
0.1
30.3
9
Luxembourg
24.1
2.4
0.1
0.1
26.7
10
Canada
12.4
13.8
0.0
0.4
26.6
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20.1
5.6
0.0
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0.1
25.8
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11
United
Kingdom
U3 Mobile and gaming devices
Mobiles
• 1990 – 11 million ~ 0.3% of the world’s adult population
• 2007 – 2.5 billion ~ well over 50% of the world’s adult
population
(37% compound annual growth rate)
Gaming devices in the UK at the end of 2007….
• 5 million Nintendo DS
• 2 million Wiis
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U4 Eric Schmidt – CEO of Google
“It’s pretty clear that there’s an architectural shift
going on. These occur every 10 or 20 years. The
previous architecture was a proprietary network
with PCs attached to it. With this new
architecture, you’re always online, every device
can see every application, and the applications
are stored in the cloud.”
Eric Schmidt, 9/4/2007 Interview in Wired. See
also 6/3/2009 interview on “Charlie Rose on
Friday
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U5 The learner’s context
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Source: NSF LIFE Centre
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U6 Learners create learning
“The key concept here [….] is that teachers do
not create learning. That’s true—teachers do not
create learning, and yet most teachers behave
as if they do. Learners create learning. Teachers
create the conditions under which learning can
take place.”
Dylan Wiliam, Deputy Director of the Institute of
Education, Keynote speech at the 2007 ALT
Conference
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U7
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Source: ADL via Norm Friesen and From: Slosser, S. (2001) "ADL and the Sharable Content Object Reference Model." MERLOT
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2001.
O1 star performers
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Erik Jacobs
for The New York Times
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C4 what title do you give this?
From Boston Dynamics
11/3/2009
Source:
two MIT OCW videos available onhttp://creativecommons.org/licens
YouTube at http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=97oTDANuZco
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O2 Open Source software
Open Source software sits behind much of the
ubiquitous Internet, and it plays a key direct
role in a lot of e-learning.
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O3 Open Source software
The success/feasibility of Open Source
software is itself partly a product of the
“architecture of ubiquity”.
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O4 Open content - why it matters
1. A chance to improve what the learners will find
and use in any case
2. Closing the inefficient cottage industry of loneteachers/trainers creating content
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O5 The challenges (i.e. why I am cautious
about open content)
1. The parallel with Open Source software is not
very close
•
Judging efficacy
•
Different governance models
2. Software is modular in a way that learning
materials rarely are
3. There are cultural and organisational
challenges relating to use of OER in formal
education
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O6 Where OER might be expected to work
1. As part of a continuous improvement process
relating to content for widely used
subjects/courses
2. When small good snippets make a difference
e.g. diagrams, focused explanations and “howtos”
3. Learning activities (these are, in effect,
teacher/trainer “how-tos”)
4. MIT’s OpenCourseWare, the Open University’s
OpenLearn, Oxford University’s podcasts, and
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their ilk
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Summary
Moore’s Law – faster, cheaper, smaller, more
powerful. 5 years: 8-10x; 10 years: 64-100x;
20 years: 4000-10,000x.
Architecture of ubiquity – nearly everyone
always on, always connected, and in powerful
environment for learning.
Openness – open software and open content
are here to stay and will each grow in
importance; open educational resources will
thrive in particular
circumstances.
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A cautionary note about time
2 hours of vertebrate life
1 minute of tool-making humans
2 hours of tool-making humans
30 seconds of farming
15 seconds of recorded history
2 hours of recorded history, that is, 0.2% of the time since humans evolved
18 minutes of printing
40 seconds with PCs
22 seconds of Web
3 seconds with iPhones
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