An infographic summarizing what needs to happen if edtech is play its part in improving education provision
I’m told that everyone who’s anyone does infographics these days—and also that most of my posts are too long and difficult to understand. Well, here is my first effort at an infographic and I hope it makes things clearer.
An outline and rationale for my proposal for “next generation SCORM”. I call it STARLET: Shareable Tools Activities and Resources for Learning Education and Training
This is the second in a series of papers prepared for an Education Priorities Working Group being run by W3C. While the first paper, Proposed W3C Priorities for Education, took a high level overview, this paper drills down into a proposal for a specific work item. At the technical level, which is not education-specific, I call this XDMDL, eXtensible Data Model Declaration Language. At the education level, I propose that the XDMDL should be used to underpin a new digitial ecosystem for learning. It is this education-specific ecosystem for which I propose the name STARLET: Shareable Tools Activities and Resources for Learning Education and Training. As before, if you are interested in what you read and want to get involved in the W3C discussions, email me at crispin.weston@saltis.org.
A white paper proposing key ed-tech priorities for the world wide web
I co-wrote the following paper with Pierre Danet from Hachette Livre for the task force being run by W3C, the consortium responsible for the world wide web. The paper outlines what we see as the key priorities for the world wide web in the face of an emerging market for digital ed-tech. The basic premises of the paper were accepted in a call last Friday and over the next two weeks we will be working on a paper to describe in greater detail the specifics of the next steps that we believe need to be taken. This will be intended to form the prospectus for a W3C Community Group, which anyone who is interested in taking this work forwards is invited to join. Please email me at crispin.weston@saltis.org and I will forward your details to Pierre, who is leading the current scoping exercise. The original paper is currently on the W3C wiki page for this group.
A copy of a comment regarding the difference between customisation and adaptation, and the importance of the latter to learning content that encapsulates pedagogy.
It is a central argument of this blog that the attempt to apply technology to the improvement of education has been held back by the lack of education-specific software. Such software will generally encapsulate pedagogy. An objection to this approach was recently raised by Peter Twining in a useful discussion on his blog, EdFutures. It is a little difficult to link directly to the part of the conversation where this occurs – the best way is probably to follow the link to the discussion page and then to search for “Re Technology Enhanced Learning”, which is the title of the thread in which this discussion occurs.
To paraphrase the general objection to software that encapsulates pedagogy, such software might be seen as a way of scripting lessons that dis-empower the teacher. At the top level, I would respond that many teachers have a pretty shaky understanding of pedagogy, so the ability to put pedagogically proven tools into their hands is a key way in which we will empower (not dis-empower) teachers (see my Education’s coming revolution). As for the nature of those tools, I certainly accept that the way in which software is used in the classroom needs to be flexible, allowing the teacher (the professional on the spot) to apply the software in the right way. This provides the background to my conversation with Peter Twining regarding the customisation or adaptation of education-specific software.
Peter’s argument is that, according to an OU project in the 1990s called SoURCE, in which he was involved, the pedagogy encapsulated in software often needed to be subverted by the teacher—and that this suggested that the encapsulation of pedagogy was something of a blind alley. I copy below my reply to Peter, followed by my conclusion.
Ed Tech Now 