Digital artefact for #EDCMOOC on youtube

Made a short clip - sort of sketch for a documentary I'd like to make if I were a documentary maker (quod non) and if I had the time (idem). I'd call it a History of the future of education and I wuld try to go back to Greek times, but in this clip I show clips from 1939 and 1951, interlaced with screencasts of Tweetdeck about MOOCs this february. Comments welcome:






Submission looks like this in the Coursera page



https://class.coursera.org/edc-001/human_grading/view/courses/314/assessments/10/submissions

Reading for week 4: On Bostrom (2005) ‘Transhumanist values vs Wrestling with transhumanism (Katherine Hayles 2011)

The teachers asked in week 4:

• What is your own response to the ‘values’ he proposes?
• Do you find them attractive or repellent?
• On what basis?
• Bostrom mentions education a few times here: what might his vision of transhumanism mean for the future of education?
• What would a transhumanist theory of education look like?

Nick Bostrom (2005) ‘Transhumanist values’ reproduced from Review of Contemporary Philosophy, Vol. 4, May (2005) http://www.nickbostrom.com/ethics/values.html

"The transhumanist view that we ought to explore the realm of posthuman values does not entail that we should forego our current values"

Evolution is slow and about the whole and not one specific species. We can't be transhumans, but should strive to be trans-ecosystem, or trans-planetary. From Science Fiction, Dune comes to mind.

"Transhumanism promotes the quest to develop further so that we can explore hitherto inaccessible realms of value. Technological enhancement of human organisms is a means that we ought to pursue to this end. There are limits to how much can be achieved by low-tech means such as education, philosophical contemplation, moral self-scrutiny and other such methods proposed by classical philosophers."

What are "the hitherto inaccessible realms of value"? Is it possible to know the future? Speculation is not knowledge. In any case, survival on this planets seems a good value, worthy of pursuit. Education is called a low-tech means, but education is a process which has always been enhanced with technology.

"collective problem-solving capacities of our species"

And other species too, cf Bees, ants, etc. The problem solving should be regarded in contexts and environments.

"Collectively, we might get smarter and more informed through such means as scientific research, public debate and open discussion of the future, information markets, collaborative information filtering. On an individual level, we can benefit from education, critical thinking, open-mindedness, study techniques, information technology, and perhaps memory- or attention-enhancing drugs and other cognitive enhancement technologies."

Certainly worth while for education. Cognitive enhancement should be investigated but caution taken for long term reverse effects.

"Given the limitations of our current wisdom, a certain epistemic tentativeness is appropriate."

tentative? 'epistemic tentativeness' - Had to look this up. Should mean something like 'cognitive provisionality'. But what does this sentence mean? Our current knowledge is always limited so any conclusion must be provisional.

http://www.metanexus.net/essay/h-wrestling-transhumanism - Wrestling with Transhumanism (Katherine Hayles 2011)

"perform decontextualizing moves that over-simplify the situation and carry into the new millennium some of the most questionable aspects of capitalist ideology. Why then is transhumanism appealing, despite its problems? Most versions share the assumption that technology is involved in a spiraling dynamic of co-evolution with human development."

Apparantly Hayles is less enthousiastic about transhumanism, or technology per se than Bostrom.

"How can we extract the valuable questions transhumanism confronts without accepting all the implications of transhumanist claims? One possibility is to embed transhumanist ideas in deep, rich, and challenging contextualizations that re-introduce the complexities it strips away."

I read in this circular reasoning. Transhumanism is the stripping away of complexities and consists of certain claims about the future. Of course the future asks valuable questions, and transhumanism, like any other -ism, is a (logically constructed) simplification: an angle to look from. It seems impossible to embed a simplification in a deeper context.

There has been a discussion on the Coursera site, whether Transhumanism equals religion.
"As a sample of transhumanist rhetoric, consider the following passage from Max More, a prominent movement spokesperson:"

We seek to void all limits to life, intelligence, freedom, knowledge, and happiness. Science, technology and reason must be harnessed to our extropic values to abolish the greatest evil: death. Death does not stop the progress of intelligent beings considered collectively, but it obliterates the individual. No philosophy of life can be truly satisfying which glorifies the advance of intelligent beings and yet which condemns each and every individual to rot into nothingness. Each of us seeks growth and the transcendence of our current forms and limitations. The abolition of aging and, finally, all causes of death, is essential to any philosophy of optimism and transcendence relevant to the individual.

(Max More, “Transhumanism: Toward a Futurist Philosophy” (1996), http://www.maxmore.com/transhum.htm.) Indeed, this sounds like religion. "critiques of transhumanism enacted in these SF fictions". Described are:

• Arthur C. Clarke, Childhood’s End
• Vernon Vinge, Rainbows End: A Novel with One Foot in the Future
• Greg Bear, Darwin’s Radio
• Nancy Kress, Beggars in Spain
• James Patrick Kelly, Mr. Boy

Each of these scenarios involves complexities for which the transhumanist philosophy is simply not able to account or to understand, much less to explain. Reason is certainly needed, but so are emotion, systemic analysis, ecological thinking, and ethical consideration

. This shows Hayles' criticism on Transhumanist ideas.

framework in which transhumanism considers these questions is, I have argued, too narrow and ideologically fraught with individualism and neoliberal philosophy

Too narrow, fraught with neoliberal philosophy. I tend to agree.

Short Questionaire in Google Docs on MOOC per faculty / subject

made a short Questionaire in Google Docs https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1fxxREfqb6bI4rhTDEHq5x0ugREx9snaUjziCBitesvA/viewform hopefully it works - love to have some feedback.

#EDCMOOC hangout

I Watched parts of it live and the rest now from the archived footage - the one hour hangout of the team from Edinburgh



http://youtu.be/InthTAX8Xjc.

Good to feel connected and see and hear some talking heads.

here are some timestamps and pointers:
- ca 5 minutes - HamishMacLeod gives statistics from the course in Coursera. 17% of participants are active.
- 6 min - Google Analytics shows aggregation of blogs.
- 11 min - logging in is defiend as the minimal level of activity in the MOOC.
- 12 min - Sian sharing a quote about Postmodernism & education
- 15 min - Showing of images on the Flickr stream:


and



and



- 18 min - Christine talks about MOOC processes and group forming and what is happening and not happening there. - 23 min - how to get to studygroups within the Discussion Forum of EDCMOOC on Coursera
https://class.coursera.org/edc-001/forum/list?forum_id=18.
- 24 min - Jeremy talking about Steve Fuller lecture - what it is to be human in a historical context. Has changed throughout history.
The slides of the presentation of Fuller:
https://spark-public.s3.amazonaws.com/edc/readings/TEDx%20lecture%20Steve%20Fuller.ppsx.
Purpose of humanity is to strive to increasing the difference between us and other living beings. This is done through technology. Asimov in 1988 talked about humanism and dilemmas of potential modification. http://www.dontwasteyourtime.co.uk/elearning/the-future-of-education-from-isaac-asimov-1988-edcmooc/. "A must watch video" said David Hopkins.
Jeremy tweeted: Blogs I mentioned in the hangout: http://krustelkrammoocs.blogspot.com/2013/02/steve-fuller-isaac-asimov-what-is.html … and http://jimsweetmanmooc.wordpress.com/2013/02/15/defining-humanity/.

32 minutes - Sian talks about the process of the Mooc development. The university signed an agreement with Coursera before this, and then there was a search for academic teams who would be keen to do a MOOC. Our institution was aware of the MOOC debate. "We wanted to experiment with the combinateion of the massiveness of the Mooc and the uniqueness of the credited course". 40 min. - Christine Sinclair talks about what might be retained after the course. The #EDCMOOC team does not have control over what Coursera will do with the material. "From our point of view it is great if people stay in touch".

relation of a Talking head and the particular for in which this MOOC has been set up. A little bit early to say what MOOCs are, says Hamish.
47 min. - about Reassurance, very important, that people are comfortable..
The next time some Edinburgh Mooc runs, there will far lower enrollment figures because there will be less window shoppers.
Jen Ross looks forward in seeing how MOOCs break out from the campus / class model and develop in something new. This is the first wave of Coursera courses in the UK. Christine Sinclair likes the idea of window shopping because potential students can try out things before actually starting a formal course. There is a lot of pressure on teachers to maintain students, and students have to put in a lot of investment.

About the final assignment http://youtu.be/InthTAX8Xjc?t=53m (at 53 min.). Copyright issues are complex and it depends on where you are. "A bit of a bouncing act" - reference things that you are using. Follow your interest, and look at the assessment criteria. How would you redeliver the key messages of the course. Rewording it.

Reading + watching for week 3 #EDCMOOC

Just a quick note - will expand later. It is now past midnight in my timezone, and Morfeus is calling:-)

have been reading:
Badmington, Neil (2000) Introduction: approaching posthumanism. Posthumanism. Houndmills; New York: Palgrave. http://www.palgrave.com/PDFs/0333765389.Pdf

and

Kolowich, S (2010) The Human Element. Inside Higher Ed http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/03/29/lms.

and Monke, L (2004) The Human Touch, EducationNext http://educationnext.org/thehumantouch/.

Specially Monke brought a fresh view to the debate about technology and education for me. I would not call it Luddite or "old humanist". His central proposition is that learning takes time and that technology is overloading us with loads of information in such a short time stretch that mediated 'learning' becomes counterproductive. Enjoyed the clips this week. The advertisements were sort of entertaining but I missed a link to either a dystopian future or a reassertion of a human factor. The "World builder" was brilliantly done, stunning film techniques. The best clip with the closest link to the subject matter o week 3 seems to me "Meat" Short film produced at the New York Film Academy and directed by Stephen o'Regan, written by Terry Bisson. Dialogue between two aliens studying humans, concluding they're all meat. "How do the communicate?" "By meat"... Made me think though that what actually goes on in our brains when we think and communicate (and in other animal's brains too for that matter) is signals between cells. The firing of carrier signals between synapses.

Surveillance & privacy in education

Saw "Plurality", a film directed by Dennis Liu and written by Ryan Condal



It was uploaded to youtube on October 1st 2012, and released by Traffik Filmworks.

"Plurality" depicts a highly developed surveillance system that has caused the crime rate of 2023 New York to drop "below that of Cheyenne, Wyoming". and is faultless within a margin of 0.001%. "I think anyone would sacrifice a little bit of privacy for that kind of personal safety", is the well known argument from the protagonists of more police powers. Benjamin Franklin's quote comes to mind: 'They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.'.

In today's social and educational practice people seem to worry a lot about privacy and the dangers of 'Big Brother is watching you'. Advocacy groups such as Bits of Freedom (Netherlands or the European Digital Rights Initiative keep a close watch on developments in legislation and jurisdiction. In education we need to keep a close watch on developments, but large scale breaches of student privacy have not been reported to my knowledge. Checks and balances should be in place, and the larger MOOC's and platforms like Coursera become, the more vulnerable they will become, to identity theft, viruses and breach of privacy. Teaching the value of privacy and digital safety in general, starting in elementary school, seems to be the best safeguard against runaway surveillance societies.

Further reading might be: Davis, K. & James, C. (2013). Tweens' conception of privacy online: implications for educators. Learning, Media & technology, 38(1), 4-25.

Diploma Mills vs Natives & Immigrants

From the learning resources of week 1 of #EDCMOOC https://class.coursera.org/edc-001/wiki/view?page=DeterminingThePast I read "Digital natives, digital immigrants" by Marc Prensky (2001) and "Digital diploma mills: the automation of higher education" by David Noble (1998). These two authors take a standpoint almost opposite of eachother. Prensky's utopian view of students whose brains are altered by the ubiquitous environment of internet contrasts quite starkly with the warnings of Noble who warns us for "driving this headlong rush to implement technology" and "risk of student and faculty alienation". Privatization of public education will turn universities in "patent holding companies' and rising tuition fees must 'subsidize the commercial infrastructure'. Already in 1998 Noble notes Lehman Brothers, an investment firm that was at the center of the 2008 banking crisis(1), as stating that:"investment opportunity in education has never been better". Universities were rapidly being taken over by commercialization, forged ahead by 'ubiquitous technozealots who simply view computers as the panacea for everything.' The darkest vision here is described in a quote from Educom president Robert Heterich: "the potential to remove the human mediation in some areas and replace it with automation - smart, computer-based, network-based systems - is tremendous, it's gonna happen.' The origin of this quotes is difficult to find, I found a scholarly reference in Weaver, 1999 in Libri Journal(2) which gives Noble 1997(3) as a source. Prensky's article also lacks references. His argument uses the metaphor of immigrant and natives to illustrate the difference between tech-savvy students and internet-deprived older folk 'who print their e-mail'. Prensky's enthousiams can work inspiring, to try out new things, and try multitasking 'at higher speed'. But his assumption that 'their brains may already be different' remains unreferenced. His part 2 article is reported to present evidence(4).

upper Marc Prensky - theage.com.au and under: David F. Noble cla.umn.edu (1) Baba, N.& Packer, F. (2009) From turmoil to crisis: dislocations in the FX swap market before and after the failure of Lehman Brothers; Journal of International Money and Finance. http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/wbs/subjects/finance/confpapers09/baba_packer_paper.pdf. (2) http://www.librijournal.org/pdf/1999-3pp142-149.pdf. (3) Noble, David F. 1997. “Digital Diploma Mills” (October) [article on-line]; URL: http://www.hronline. com/forums/labour/9711/0271.html; accessed October 6, 1998 [not online anymore, feb 2013]. (4) Digital natives, digital immigrants Part 2: Do they really think differently? M Prensky - On the horizon, 2001 - emeraldinsight