And immediately there fell from his eyes as it were scales

David Wiley asks “What would highly scalable learning look like if we invented it today…?” To which I would respond with another question, Leigh Blackall’s challenge to the flexible learning course’s online panel @8:49 “Is scalability even [an] appropriate way to be thinking about learning?”

Are we, by talking of scalability simply perpetuating an industrial model of education? An outdated model based on scarcity and top-down allocation of resources when education is increasingly based on an abundance of resource allocated over the network.

My thinking of late has been influenced by Doug Rushkoff. On WMFU’s The Media Squat he comments @32:05 that “one trap to avoid is the idea that, this false premise, (and again it’s from industrial culture) that everything you do has to be scalable for everyone, everywhere else…”

For Rushkoff, it’s an issue of sustainability not scale:

…and the fact that it doesn’t scale really doesn’t matter because your not, this is not a business plan... it doesn’t have to keep growing… all you need to do is to sustain and in order to sustain you just get to the point that works and then you’re there right and then people can either borrow, you know borrow hopefully the sort of the more fundamental decisions you’ve made or choices you’ve made rather than the specific choices of praxis that you’ve made.

So what would highly sustainable learning look like? By all means borrow those "fundamental decisions", but lay off best praxis. I'm reminded of Dave Snowden's advice when asked how he would sustain and scale successful ICT practice in schools:

It's not so much about repeating a success as repeating the conditions which led to that success. In any complex system you can never replicate outcome, but you can replicate starting conditions. Maybe part of the problem of scale and replication is a consequence of a failure to recognise this basic fact. In a sense you want multiple diverse initiatives to emerge, and you want to measure their impact on the social and educational fabric not a series of pre-determined targeted outcomes.

Back to the online panel and fast forward to 1:16:00 where Mark Nicols observes that education can be thought of as just this sort of complex problem or social mess. After which Leigh responds by calling for space for new ways of working, free from industrial scale systems.

In a "too big to fail" economy that Rushkoff describes as "about neutralising the small and encouraging the big" we can help build a diverse and more resiliant learning eco-system that is too small to fail. Simply by answering Leigh's call and encouraging the small numbers of people who are finding new ways of working we can invent highly sustainable learning.

Edu-speak bingo

Both Cherrie and Artichoke have recently noted the love affair educationalists have with jargon. Here's Cherrie on edu-speak:

…there is so much jargon all over the place when it comes to education—too many cliches that people think they understand, but don't. It's ironic really, because it's a lot like school—if you remember the keywords to write in your answer, it mostly doesn't matter whether you understand it or not.

Meanwhile Artichoke, who is busy defending her reputation for anticipating edu-speak trends, is seriously considering bagsing Communities of Practice for 2006. For what it's worth, my money's on that perennial favourite: collaboration.

Storytelling across the pond

From Bryan comes news of another e-twinning project. Trans-Pond leverages storytelling as a medium for cultural exchange between school kids from the North East of the United Kingdom and those in Canada (see the Frappr-powered Trans-Pond map). The project is the brainchild of Steve Thompson who writes:

…I'll be shaping open source blogging software to create an interface that will allow 20 (10 UK, 10 Canada) schools to have their own blog… We'll also be using our community media archive software developed here at Teesside Uni to allow a range of multimedia objects to be utilised in the storytelling.

More than my 2 cents worth

I’m excited to have discovered Cherrieland thanks to David Warlick who added his 2 Cents Worth to a comment Cherrie left on his blog. (Funny how someone 10000 miles away can connect you with someone 100 miles away!)

Cherrie posts some very insightful observations on education from the point of view of a student. Her latest post, a comparison of formal and informal learning, makes sobering reading for teachers.

Of school Cherrie writes "you help each other but they call that cheating", in life "you basically never have to remember because [answers are] in books, pamphlets and websites." She continues, in life "everything is related", in school "English is in period one, Economics period two, maths period 3…"

I love Lucy

The folks at QUT and ANU are running an interesting project that connects isolated rural school children across the globe. Australian Aboriginal students from Cherbourg State School are learning about their Chinese counterparts in Fanchong Primary School through the sharing of digital stories (via Lucy’s Blog).

ZoomIn' marvellous!

Just when I resigned myself to New Zealand getting Google Maps street level coverage sometime in 2010 the folks at ProjectX, who were less patient, have written their own AJAX-ed map of New Zealand (via Second pOst). ZoomIn Maps is bloomin' marvellous!

Where in the world…

Inspired by Josie's directory of edubloggers and Tom Techszewski's Where in the US is digital storytelling, I thought I'd create a directory of digital storytellers. So if you're a digital storyteller, add yourself to the map and help spread the word.

It's a small world

Tip of the hat to Frappr chief publicist Josie Fraser who has created an international edubloggers directory reminiscent of Jo Murray's earlier attempt to map the Australian blogosphere using CMapTools. Josie is encouraging others to add themselves and advertise the map. Thanks to Josie's directory I've already discovered one more Kiwi edublogger!

Update: Jo pointed me to this directory of Australian edubloggers built using PBWiki.