So really, iTunesU is ill prepared for what I think is how higher education needs to re-organize, and that's as a multidisciplinary ground floor and further specialization higher up the food chain. It used to be in Ontario that you could get a taste of what University would be like in Grade 13, or more recently OAC. My OAC year at high school was difficult, but not too bad. I'm sure the teachers liked it too because they could actually challenge students, whereas it seemed in earlier years it might've been a rubber stamp process. I'll never forget being asked in Grade 12 Math if I was coming back to do OAC Math. When I said, "no", I got my 50%. Many high school graduates in Ontario don't have the fundamental understanding of how to write an essay, never mind several basic literacy issues. I could talk about the literacy levels of my former employer at length, and how most of the first year students should have been in a remedial writing class, which would've burdened the entire system so much they had to allow some students to just get by so they could manage the workload of teaching.

Anyways, I feel as we've seen with many disciplines that the silo approach doesn't work - there's too much overflow. I'm working in education but my history of computer programming, media creation and educational theory come into play each week. I'm sure many educators feel the same - they not only need to be educators, but technical enough to run computers, handle marking spreadsheets in addition to the social work skills to deal with students. This isn't new, but it's getting more difficult, and more complex to deal with on a daily basis. So how does iTunesU deal with the complexity? Shove it in a tube labelled one of many things, that essentially hides content or reveals it. I'm left wondering why have categories at all? Why not just make them self-identified tags and leave it at the search, which is ubiquitous in modern life and works well enough.

I use it as a consumption device primarily, which is the intended design. I'd like to get a HDMI out so I could shoot my window to the large TV - maybe that'll come in time.

1. It's the whole idea behind what makes the Internet great. Communication. Two-way communication, in fact, not just a faucet of information that spits out words when you turn it on.  Isn't the whole point of a blog to engage in an exchange of ideas? I typically don't respond to people who have comments turned off. I don't read D'arcy Norman's blog because it's a dead end. While he may be pushing out great ideas, and I'm sure he is, because he's written consistently good stuff. I don't bother with it. There is a clear statement (which is not intended, I'm sure) that my opinion doesn't matter. You see I like commenting on other's article in a way that's immediately reflected on that article/post. Most people won't bother clicking through trackbacks, nor searching for responses. They aren't that invested in it. Moreover, if you don't want to be bothered to curate your own blog posts why should I?

2.  You create a walled garden of readers and feedback by turning comments off. Someone who stumbles on your site, who doesn't have their own Internet presence, might comment if you gave them a chance. In fact, it might be their only way to comment (besides e-mail, which seems more and more to be an imposition rather than a service). So why take it away from them? It's not taking away their voice, but it is taking away the opportunity. So why do it? I get that it feels more "yours", which is an argument that D'arcy Norman makes - however, the Internet is not your, mine or anyone's. It's ours. So if you want part of it for you, keep it to yourself. But don't expect someone else to write about it.  I have an Internet presence, but I doubt I would've started had I been unable to see the exchange that goes on between Downes and the people he interacts with. It wasn't his writing that spurned me to action but the discussion around it.

2. Will web mining for information be a growth concept in 2012? I've seen Pattern, a python based toolset to access information, as well as sites developed like Ifttt which makes programming logic available to the masses in an easy to understand format (almost like Yahoo Pipes). There's a lot of hope for Ifttt, at least from my perspective, it does take a bit to manipulate to get it to work.

3. Does MITx make an impact? I suspect it will, it could change the whole model of distance education and if it's MIT that's assessing and stamping approval, that's a huge thing. However, does it mean that the credibility of MIT as a credential granting source takes a hit (ie. does more people with MIT education mean that it is worth less in the long term?) or are we looking at a real paradigm shift, where the credential means less and the knowledge exemplified means more?

4. Android tablets are cheap, but are they any match for the quality (and sheer amount of apps available for media creation) of an iPad in education? I know there's no evidence to suggest that iPads help learning (starts halfway down that page), however it does allow a form factor that beats a laptop as a mobile learning device - as we could consider any Internet enabled device a learning device - it's up to that pesky user to actually do something with it rather than play Angry Birds or Super Stickman Golf. By the way, Android tablets also have Angry Birds. And Super Stickman Golf - so consider your productivity screwed on either device.

5. Will Learning Technologists become even more important a bridge for faculty and technology? I provide support for the LMS at the institution but I also can help design learning, use different strategies and suggest ways to embed learning deeper by using different tools in and outside the LMS. I'm a big fan of wikis providing they are used in a way that support and demonstrate the learning. I think there's two ways institutions can go - one tell faculty to just worry about teaching and research, and let the technical side be developed by a techie. The other is to demand the faculty learn the technology, and use it to be supported by a techie. Either way, the technologist is there to support. I think the successful institutions will have technologists that can be given room to explore where the technology is going without being too far ahead of the faculty needs. That sweet spot is hard to find, and lots of institutions will fail at it.

1. What makes anyone think that the video games push (mostly by the iOS platform devices, but Xbox, Playstation and Wii) has anything to do with formal education? 

Well, I don't know if gamification gained any traction, but things like achievements in video games have lent themselves to things like badges. I suspect that my original assertion that it will be marginalized, will remain until someone can quantify and measure the whole process, much like they've tried to do with standardized testing.

2. Why haven't educational institutions really pushed for a mobile learning environment? 

I think there's been some motion here - certainly the open courses are structured so that they are mobile friendly, and the big two LMS vendors (Desire2Learn and Blackboard) are both becoming more mobile friendly, I suspect the resistance comes from the institution's inability to control and verify that a potentially mobile student may not be that student, and the only way to assess a person is still in-person. I don't think it matters anymore, in work most people will use the Internet to research a possible solution to whatever problem they face, so knowing something isn't as crucial as it once was. Knowing something however does allow you to find a solution sooner - making you a more efficient worker - which is what capitalism wants.

3. Will the consolidation of the web conferencing tools that education typically use (Wimba and Elluminate) mean that new companies with new models will arise? 

Well, they haven't arisen yet, but there's a plethora of tools out there to replace Blackboard Collaborate or whatever it's called this week. However, no one has put together the killer app - which I hope is the form the web conferencing takes - mobile native, low bandwidth friendly, and most of all, accessible.

4. Wither edupunk? 

Yup. edu-post-punk should be interesting.

5. What will Pearson as a publishing giant and accredited University mean? 

Turns out, not much. Unless you consider an extremely walled off garden of textbooks in a proprietary LMS with Google Doc integration something.

While the skills based workshop is interesting, it was fun to play around with time and planning. I did learn that I need to be able to tighten up my timing when I instruct with new material. However, my daily life doesn't necessarily need this constraint. The workshops I lead are typically fairly prescribed, have a flow and a rhythm all their own. I suppose I can add some more interactive elements, more discussion about the needs of users - which in turn would allow for deeper embedding of the skills I typically teach.

The facilitation workshop was far more involved, much more draining (never mind being five straight days, rather than the four days interspersed) and far more revealing. It was interesting that in facilitation feedback circles, I tended to be much more reflective, taking much more time to respond than when I would be facilitating, or teaching where I would be able to respond almost immediately. It's an interesting difference, because I always thought I was a bit of a ponderer, taking time to craft my answers carefully, almost labouring over the language and words. I'm still thinking about what the difference is.

The really key point that I came away with was that facilitation is difficult to do in person, it does rely on non-verbal cues to really work well. As a facilitator you have to gather the mood of the room, have some sense of how things are going. Are those possible online? Is it possible to sense how someone feels online? I suppose, but it's fundamentally different. The mediation that occurs makes it more difficult to get a sense, or to "feel" how something is going. I suspect that reducing the transactional distance is one strategy that helps, but still I can't imagine facilitation face-to-face has a great effect on one's skill online.

So, I leave you with this: what skills does a facilitator need online, in addition to the ones that they would need in a face-to-face environment?

I think the popular perception that we’re a lot like the Victorians is in large part correct. One way is that we’re all constantly in a state of ongoing t­echnoshock, without really being aware of it—it’s just become where we live. The Victorians were the first people to experience that, and I think it made them crazy in new ways. We’re still riding that wave of craziness. We’ve gotten so used to emergent technologies that we get anxious if we haven’t had one in a while.

William Gibson, interviewed by the Paris Review

It's interesting to look back and see the development of technology, and see how reaction mirrors to modern day attitudes - we see a lot of hand wringing about social skills (kids these days don't have any!) and writing skills. What we often fail to notice is that a lot of these criticisms were also laid at the feet of television, radio, recorded music, books and other technologies. This is a constant refrain from those critical of media in general, and usually amounts to nothing. The criticisms of violence on television dating back to the 50's? Well it turns out that exposure to violent imagery can make one more aggressive, but humans are complex creatures and to draw cause and effect type conclusions are not useful and usually are misleading. So does that mean that 50 years of "violent" programming the sum total is a resounding "meh"? Who is to say that increased aggressive behaviour is a direct response to the widening social gap and promise of  "you'll be lucky to be as well off as your parents" that the current and subsequent generations will live under? The will to survive is a primal one after all.

So it's interesting to note when people predict whether a new technology will make another one obsolete (radio, television, land line telephones) it rarely happens - the same occurs with social issues. There will be some decline in social graces, but for the most part, people will behave, co-operate when it benefits them (and sometimes when it doesn't) and things won't change that much. Hindsight's a wonderful thing isn't it?

Pearson, in my experience, have tried to muscle in on LMS territory for a long while. I can recall being embedded in a Language Studies department and Pearson making presentations to faculty about how things like MyCommLab, their textbook/website/testing one-stop solution and boasted of their integration with a series of LMSs. Well, they couldn't exchange marks data with Desire2Learn, and they couldn't even think of how First Class might integrate with it. Turns out the integration they had was with Blackboard (which wasn't available at my institution).

Even when presented with a space on Desire2Learn, Pearson couldn't figure out a good way to export marks from the MyCommLab to Desire2Learn. Now they may have fixed that issue, I haven't worked with Pearson or my former employer for a year now. Somehow I doubt it. Technologically, it's actually not that hard, myCommLab would have to export a CSV in the way that D2L expects it. Even more slick would be an XML transfer of data using the IMS standards and some ASP/PHP code to facilitate that exchange. Seems that Pearson and I have different ideas of what "open" and "free" mean.

Here's another issue. Google makes a lot of money gathering information about you. They already know a lot, and they do see knowing you as a value statement. Combine knowing about you and what you want to know about in school provides a whole different dimension of you. I've harped on about how different facets of one's life manifest themselves in different online personas.  Google+ doesn't allow for my school persona to be apart from my record collecting punk persona or my techno-programmer persona. Google (and Facebook) sees me as one person, and that one person can only have one persona. If you look at my Amazon profile, you'll see I've bought conspiracy books, edtech books, punk history books, an anime DVD and a VHS to USB dongle. It's a bit of a mish mash. Amazon recommends some weird stuff, most of it correct, but it doesn't have the context to understand that the conspiracy books were gifts for my brother (at his request). I don't have much time for conspiracies the equivalent of modern day science fiction.  Google is attempting, by gathering all your data from all your personas, to understand you real world contexts.

Those misgivings aside, my cynical side wants to have more separation between publishers and academics (much like the illusionary separation of church and state).

NOTE: After I originally posted this, Google has clarified it's position with the OpenClass LMS. Which makes OpenClass even less useful in my opinion. I still wonder if I can import a McGraw Hill package into a course?