A week ago I gave a keynote at the Universidad de Ibagué in Tolima, Colombia. The Universidad de Ibagué is very advanced in the use of ICT in education. Most of the professors use Moodle with their in-campus courses and the university is strongly training and supporting its teaching staff to improve their course design and pedagogy with digital tools.

The slides of my talk are here.

In my talk I told a long story all the way from the Finnish geography and history to my University and my pedagogical thinking and teaching practice. In the end I also showed some snippets from my research.

You may ask why to explain the geography and history of Finland when giving a talk about pedagogy and use of ICT in higher education?

I think that the context — the cultural-historical reality — where we come from and live in is extremely important. I come from Finland, whatever I may sometimes try to act as some kind of citizen of the world. The history of my people, language and culture shapes the way I see the world. My talk makes more sense if people know a bit of the world where I come from.

What is universal, however, is that educational methods, pedagogy and technology used in and for teaching and learning is changing. Many people do not understand how much it is actually changing. It is not naive to compare the changes we are facing to the changes caused by the invention of the movable type in 1000 A.D. in China and about 400 years later in Europe. In Europe it was the starting point for communities of scientists and universities as we know them today. With the printing press the new scientific discoveries were communicated and disseminated across the Europe in a speed never seen before.

With the Internet and the Web we are again living transition time. Now the change is not primary happening in Europe, but everywhere. The price of communication, the price to deliver information is becoming close to zero. This is forcing educators to reconsider their practices.

It means, that higher education relying only to classical lectures is coming to the end. In educational planning we should have a “digital first” strategy. We should aim to have all the learning materials and a large part of course communication such as announcements and assignments, in addition to administrative tasks all in the open web. When we have done this we must think, what shall we anymore do in the classroom?

Some people are on that opinion that nothing, that we may turn of the lights and close the door. I disagree.

I think the classroom time can be very valuable — more valuable with the “digital first” approach than in most cases ever before. In a classroom students may have access to the tacit knowledge of the academic community. In the classroom — of which most should be modified to me laboratories, studios and workshops — students can see and take part in experts way of working. Problem based learning and progressive inquiry, where students are asked to do research in small groups, is one way to do it. And in the introduction courses we may give students homeworks, ask them to read and watch video lectures and then use the classroom time to discuss about the content.

On the other hand, in addition to becoming an expert in some field, there is a real need to learn skills that will help to work in multidisciplinary groups. Essential is to learn to understand other competences — to respect them and to get excited about them. Therefore part of the studies should take place in multidisciplinary study projects focusing on to solve real world problems with others.

I ended my talk with a slide advertising my latest research article, the first one in Spanish. Here is a link in to article:

Teemu Leinonen, Eva Durall Gazulla (in press): Pensamiento de diseño y aprendizaje colaborativo. Comunicar. Revista Cientifica de Communicación y Educación.

Finally, I want to thank everyone at the Universidad de Ibagué who made my stay easy and pleasant, even when I missed my meetings and forgot to have my phone with me. Really nice people. Thank you!

With my research group we have released a new prototype that aims to help people to learn from each other — as part of their work, in situ, in same time and space where work takes place. The specific target group is construction industry, the people working in the construction fields. The tool is called Ach So!.

I think the Ach So! prototype’s greatest advantage is its simple design. However, it is important to point out that still the design is rooted on pretty solid pedagogical thinking and research on workplace learning. Ach So! is an Android App in an Aplha state (but functional) and available in the Google Play app store.

Last Friday I gave a talk about it in the 10th International Conference on Mobile Learning 2014. The talk explained a bit more the context and some theoretical considerations. The slides are here:

The research paper will be online at some point. Here are the publication details:

Bauters, M.; Purma, J.; Leinonen, T. (2014). In-time on-place learning. Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Mobile Learning 2014, 28 February – 2 March, Madrid, Spain

I wrote a small piece to the forthcoming Media Lab Helsinki 20 years anniversary book. I’ll post here a draft, unedited version that has not yet go though any language checking etc. The book will be published in September 2014.

1. Introduction

Designing learning environments — methods, tools and spaces for good learning — have been one of the cornerstones of the Media Lab Helsinki since it’s founding in the early 1990’s. Within the emergency of new computational tools, digital media and networks it was seen that these would radically change the educational landscape of our time. In the Media Lab we decided to have an active role in the process where the future of education is designed.

In the Media Lab the approach has been to enable meta-design: to have activities that create new methods, tools and environments that allow people to be creative and act as designers (Fischer and Scharff 2000). The idea constitutes a deeper pedagogical principle, too. Learning is not primary about receiving information and gaining skills but rather a process of participation to practices of an expert community.

In the early days the pedagogy of the Media Lab was summarized with the statement “hands-on with minds-on“. Finding balance between the “just do it” attitude and serious considerations of the consequences of the doings is still central in the Media Lab.

Timeline of the Main Paradigms of Using Computers in Learning (Leinonen 2010)

In the last 20-years we have seen several stages in the history of mainstream development of computer-based learning tools (see Leinonen 2010). I have recognized five stages of paradigms of using computers in learning. From those, Media Lab has been influenced by all of them and actively involved in the three latest one. Although we have been living with these trends the focus in the Media Lab has been, already from the very beginning, to the latest stage: social software + free and open content. We may proudly say that in this we have seen and done the future.

Today, in the field of design research of New Media for learning in the Learning Environments research group of the Media Lab we recognize and focus on three topics that are essential part of the social software + free and open content paradigm. These are New Media enhanced methods, tools and spaces (1) for knowledge building, (2) for reflection and (3) for design and creativity.

In the following, I will present each of them from theoretical and pedagogical point of view and then present some ideas on how New Media can be used in them. If you are interested in the prototypes designed in the research group to experiment within these areas, you may point your browser to the URL’s listed in the end of the article.

2. Methods, tools and spaces for knowledge building

In the knowledge building research we have a long history. The Learning Environments research group was found in 1998 on the bases of the Future Learning Environment research project carried out with the Centre for Research on Networked Learning and Knowledge Building at the University of Helsinki. Since then, the theoretical framework of the research has stayed the same, although we have witness remarkable development in it, too. In it the central concepts are the social constructivist learning theory, Vygotsky’s (1978) theory of the zone of proximal development, knowledge building theory (Scardamalia & Bereiter 1994) and progressive inquiry learning (Hakkarainen 2003).

The pedagogical framework can be summarized to be an attempt to facilitate similar kind of working practice with knowledge that are common among expert communities, such as scientific or art and design communities. In knowledge building people are engaged to work together to create knowledge. In the computer science, some of the earliest experiments of computer supported collaborative work (CSCW), were having very similar kind of objectives. Especially Douglas Engelbart’s 1968 demo of the oN-Line System (NLS), designed for collaborative knowledge work can, be named to be the first attempt to design computer system for knowledge building (Engelbart & English, 1968).

Using New Media in knowledge building is a widely studied topic. There are still, however, a lot of work to make it properly. The design and development of knowledge building tools that will truly support progressive discourses, are able to guide students to deepen their understanding collaboratively, that will help them to self regulate their activities, as well as to follow and take different views to the process is not a trivial design research challenge. With several prototypes (Fle3, Fle4) and experiments with them, we have contributed to this research tradition.

With some connections to knowledge building theory there are also topics I would like to explore in the future. These are rich media (audio-video) tools in a knowledge building processes, as well as dialogue and discourse tools specifically designed for organizational strategy work, for conflict meditation and to support deliberative democracy.

3. Methods, tools and spaces for reflection

According to dictionary reflection means “serious thought or consideration”. Thinking and thinking about once own thinking are common methods used for better learning. In formal education, reflection is often a process, in which individuals are writing texts, such as lecture notes, journals and essays.

Reflection is important in knowledge building, too. Knowledge building can invite the participants to guide and regulate their own learning: to think and decide on what is important to find out, what to do next and how to do it. The process is asking people to take responsibility about their learning. In this the participants need both, self and group reflection.

To experiment with the possibilities to use New Media to enhance reflection we have designed several prototypes (ReFlex, TeamUp, Ach So!). The tools are expected to help teachers and their students to create spaces for reflection, to make their classroom a learning environment where reflection is essential part of all activities. When brought to the classroom the tools are formulating new kind of interaction between the students and teachers, as well as among the students themselves. The tools also support transparency and sharing culture in a classroom or in a workplace.

4. Methods, tools and spaces for design and creativity

The third area of research in the field of New Media and learning we have worked lately, is the use of the tools in design and creativity. In this arena we have focus on the essence of New Media, the possibility to program, to code things that will serve you. We see that programming, ability to command a computer to do things for you, is in the core of New Media and with a great impact to creative practices.

We call the ability to think and interact with computers computational thinking skill. In practice it means that when doing stuff — designing and creating new things — students are able to recognize situations where a computer can help them to achieve their goal but also situations when computers are not for any good.

As the research group’s senior researcher Tarmo Toikkanen have present, programming in its essence is same time math and art: problem solving, logical thinking and creative expression. In the digital society coding is as important skill as farming use to be in the agrarian society or technical drawing in the industrial society.

As design researchers we are interested in to design and develop prototypes (Square1, Meemoo) that will provide computational thinking, programming and coding for the rest of us. Also this area of research has a long history to build on. In our case we have been interested in hardware and the meta-design aspects with them. Concrete hardware components can demystify the computer technology and when build to be hackable, they can provide tools for students to take full ownership of the tools used.

5. Conclusion

Diversity of ideas and working practices is good for learning. Students should everyday experience new discoveries and inventions. To make this to happen, we need intellectually rich environments: different people with different ideas. Within the Media Lab we should ask everyday how we could be more sophisticated community of scholars, designers and artists — all exploring new frontiers.

Continuous revising and developing our methods, tools and spaces for better learning is a way to keep Media Lab relevant. Building on what we already know, but also providing possibilities for meta-design are critical. We believe that these are the philosophical, pedagogical and research methodological approaches that will create digital society that is fair and sustainable.

References

Engelbart, D. C., & English, W. K. (1968). A research center for augmenting
human intellect. In Proceedings of the December 9-11,

Fischer, G., & Scharff, E. (2000). Meta-design: design for designers. In Proceedings
of the 3rd conference on Designing interactive systems: processes, practices, methods, and techniques (pp. 396–405).

Hakkarainen, K. (2003). Emergence of Progressive-Inquiry Culture in Computer- Supported Collaborative Learning. Learning Environments Research, 6(2),
199-220.

Leinonen, T. (2010). Designing learning tools. Methodological insights. Aalto University.

Scardamalia, M., & Bereiter, C. (1993). Computer Support for Knowledge-
Building Communities. The Journal of the Learning Sciences, 3(3), 265-283.

Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in Society: Development of Higher Psychological
Processes (14th ed.). Harvard University Press.

Prototypes to study methods, tools and spaces for knowledge building

Fle3: http://fle3.uiah.fi

Fle4: http://fle4.aalto.fi

Prototypes to study methods, tools and spaces for reflection

ReFlex: http://reflex.aalto.fi

TeamUp: http://teamup.aalto.fi

Ach So!: http://achso.aalto.fi

Prototypes to study methods, tools and spaces for design and creativity

Square1: http://lead.aalto.fi/tag/square1

Meemo: http://meemoo.org

I am afraid I am now writing some pretty obvious observations. Something we all know. Nothing unique. Unfortunately, I feel that I must write these obvious things as it looks that so many people are ignoring them. Maybe I am writing more to myself than to anyone else — to remind myself.

Education pays off. Democracy needs education and education is the key to a healthy economy. The question is why it is still so difficult to provide even basic education for all? Without any conspiracy theories it is reasonable to ask who benefits from the lack of education?

Far too often when talking about democracy we emphasis elections, the right to choose and replace government through fair election. Same time we easily pay less attention to the most important aspects of democracy: respect of human rights and people’s active participation to civic life. Without these in place there will never be fair elections, either. Again we may ask, are there people, mobs or individuals who benefit from the lack of democracy?

Characteristic for the latest armed conflicts in Ukraine and in Israel-Palestine have been their expansion from the battlefields where people die to the information warfare where the killings are justified. Military intelligence, spying and propaganda have always been part of warfare. Today it is different. For public the number of sources of information is almost infinite. Information is provided by news agencies representing different regimes and working for their interests. There are messages, pictures, selfies and video clips in social media from the solders and civilians (or made to look like and claimed to be made by solders or civilians).

Furthermore, the information warfare is not only about propaganda and attempts to influence the public opinion. Today the information warfare is also real and fake surveillance disclosures and attacks to information infrastructure. All these made by government agencies, paid or unpaid hacktivist — who knows. No surprise that educated public with critical thinking skills is confused what source one should trust. And in places where ignorance is bliss, it is anyway folly to be wise. (Thomas Gray). Ignore the truth or die. Again I am asking, who benefits from the confusion and ignorance?

Education, democracy and information warfare are all interlinked. Without educated public it is impossible to have democracy. Without democracy there are wars.

Therefore, these days we probably need more Wikipedia that ever before. Why? Wikipedia has a simple and clear content policies (neutral point of view, verifiability etc.) and motivated crowds around the world that are committed to the vision and the mission. This means that Wikipedia is transparent and aims to be multilingual and accessible for all (see: free mobile access in various countries). All this makes Wikipedia a great source of information. It is hard to manipulate and difficult to infiltrate to. People are watching.

With its hypertext format and latest move to the direction of semantic web with the Wikidata, Wikipedia is providing not only news about the current issues but the context, too. This makes it easy to get an overview, to compare different events, to read about the history of the events and to compare how different language groups are writing about the topics. Lets have a look of the situation in Ukraine via Wikipedia. To study the topic, to get an overview and context, you may have a look of these articles:

• 2014 pro-Russian unrest in Ukraine
• Timeline of the war in Donbass
• 2014 Ukrainian revolution
• Timeline of the Euromaidan
• Modern history of Ukraine
• List of ongoing armed conflicts

Wikipedia is important. On our way to democratic and peaceful world — to the world were we all respect human rights and take part in civic life — we still need more. Because:

“Information is not knowledge.
Knowledge is not wisdom.
Wisdom is not truth.
Truth is not beauty.
Beauty is not love.
Love is not music.
Music is the best.”
― Frank Zappa

We need primary education focusing on basics: reading and writing, math, science, geography, history, languages and arts (including music). The point of primary education is not to have skills with exchange value in a job market. They are important for the sake of democracy and peace: for people to become humans. Continuing deepening understanding on the “basics” is important in higher levels of education, too. When combined with domain specific studies people become questioning, creative and empathic. And guess what? It pays off.

We just published a research article in the British Journal of Educational Technology. You will find the article from the journals’ website. The correct citations is:

Leinonen, T., Keune, A., Veermans, M. and Toikkanen, T. (2014), Mobile apps for reflection in learning: A design research in K-12 education. British Journal of Educational Technology. doi: 10.1111/bjet.12224

The journal is not Open Access. Although I have a right to send individual copies of the PDF to colleagues upon their request and to share it as part of my teaching duties.

So, if you are my colleague or student and interested in to have a look the article, please send me an email and I will send you the PDF.

Here is the abstract.

Mobile apps for reflection in learning: A design research in K-12 education

This study takes a design-based research approach to explore how applications designed for mobile devices could support reflection in learning in K-12 education. Use of mobile devices is increasing in schools. Most of the educational apps support single-person use of interactive learning materials, simulations and learning games. Apps designed to correspond to collaborative learning paradigms, such as collaborative progressive inquiry or project-based learning, are scarce. In these pedagogical approaches, reflection plays an important role. This paper presents a design-based research study of mobile device apps, ReFlex and TeamUp, that are specifically designed for use in student-centred and collaborative school learning, in which continuous reflection is an important part of the learning process. The design of the apps has relied on earlier research on digital tools for reflection and research about mobile devices in classroom learning. The design of the apps was accomplished as part of the qualitative design-based research conducted with a total of 165 teachers in 13 European countries. As a characteristic for a design-based research, the results of the study are twofold: practical and theoretical. The apps designed, ReFlex and TeamUp, are practical results of the qualitative research carried out in schools with teachers and students to understand the design challenges and opportunities in schools, to renew their pedagogical practices and to take new tools in use. To understand better the capacity of the apps to facilitate reflection, we analysed the apps in light of earlier studies concerning the levels of reflection that digital tools may support and categorisations of affordances that mobile device apps may provide for classroom learning. Our research indicates that there is potential for fostering the practice of reflection in classroom learning through the use of apps for audio-visual recordings.

I have come up with a conclusion that for the future of (open) education Internet Archive and Wikidata are the two most important web services in the world. And not only for the open education, but also for the open web. Therefore, I think the Internet Archive and Wikidata are becoming the most important websites for the entire humanity.

The new user interface of the Internet Archive

When people write about open education they often make reference to MOOC services, Khan Academy and MIT’s Open Courseware. Furthermore, they may include to the list TED talks and other online video lecture services. This seems to be the case especially with writers coming from the United States of America.

Khan Academy’s interactive exercises are great. Dragon box is a cool learning game. SmarKids games are good, too. About the closed MOOCs I am not so sure, but free online lectures by top researchers — yes please. These are all important when we are aiming to have better education for all. They are, however, not the solution. We need something much more foundational.

Education need access to knowledge. This is the classical idea of standing on the shoulders of giants. It is so obvious that we easily forget it. Everything we know comes from somewhere or is build on something. People editing WIkipedia know this. To edit you need sources, you need a library.

I am sure that Wikipedia is the most popular open education resource repository in the world. Every student with an Internet connection uses it. To get deeper to some topic, however, you need more than an encyclopedia. You need a library. Internet is the media of the people. Internet Archive is the library of the people.

If we think open education, Internet Archive is serving both individuals and educators. With it people can study and discover independently but also find content that will be used in more formal education: from study groups to university classes. The question, is learning taking place online or offline is becoming irrelevant. You do it on- or offline, depending on the situation.

Wikidata

The Wikimedia sites, especially Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons and Wiktionary are extremely important sites for open education. They are part of the foundation. The role of the latest Wikimedia project, Wikidata is growing fast.

Wikidata is an infrastructure service for open education. Wikidata is a database with structured data used in the Wikipedia. This means that in the Wikidata there is information that is then used in the Wikipedia articles. If the data (for instance the population of a nation) is changed in the Wikidata it will also change it in all the Wikipedia article replicating the information.

This may not sound like a big think, but actually it is. Having the basics facts about our universe in a machine-readable data opens up interesting possibilities for education. First of all, we can easily create various kind of new educational materials and presentations about the world affairs. We may analyze, visualize and study the world. Wen the data is available for all anyone can do this, just like anyone can go to the library. This way Wikidata is serving both individuals and educators.

The Wikidata may also bootstrap our common aim of understanding the world. The shared database of basic facts may help us to move forward in the discussion. When we agree on the facts, we may move forward to discuss about the meaning of the facts.

There are two things I would like to see happening in the Internet Archive, to maximize its impact for open education:

(1) Internet Archive could become truly international and multi-lingual. The first step would be to translate the user interface to other languages. Already this would invite people to upload document and content to the site in other languages than English.

(2) Internet Archive could aim to provide for all a better access to scholarly literature. Currently the situation is terrible. To access the latest research you must have access to University libraries paying for the publishers. The Internet Archive could have a Google Scholar kind of service to open access journals.

Wikidata and Internet Archive are both projects funded by people. You may consider donating to support the Internet Archive or Wikidata: Wikimedia Deutschland, developing the Wikidata or the mothership Wikimedia Foundation.

I have come-up(* with a simple strategy statement — three points — for the future of learning. It works in all levels of education, from kindergartens to workplace learning.

(1) Do not select one of the good ways of teaching and learning. Do all of them.

(2) Do it all online.

(3) Get rid of all the stupidity.

In the last six months or so I have been working with a group of smart people looking for a vision (and action) to redesign education in Finland. In the New Education Forum we have been studying, debating, designing and seeking for consensus to find a new path for education in Finland. We made a vision statement:

A country where everyone loves learning.

This is a bold vision, but possible to reach. A vision is a vision. The strategy points are there to tell how to do it. Let me explain.

(1) Do not select one of the good ways of teaching and learning. Do all of them.

We know, partly from research and partly from practice, that in the era of digital and Internet there are good ways of teaching and learning. Some ways of teaching and learning work, so lets focus on them.

For instance, we know that computer supported collaborative knowledge building and organizing learning according to the principles of the Self Organised Learning Environment are good practices. From both there are research evidence.

We also know that there are good learning games. And there will be more: games, digital toys, toys mixing digital and physical. We should use them.

Opening up the classroom to the rest of the world is good. Letting people to move around and play is good. Doing stuff with your hands — art, craft and science — is good. Working in a lab and in a studio is good. The possibility to show achievements is good.

We also know that a good online videos, such as a TED talks can be very inspiring. We know that using instruction videos is a clever way to solve problems in hand. Checking facts from the Wikipedia is smart, editing Wikipedia is even smarter. We also know that for some people studying independently or with an online peer-group in an online class is good. This, however, is not for all. Everyone, however, loves when they have an easy access to all the study related materials.

Furthermore, we also know that a good classroom discussion, a debate, a seminar, un-conference and even an inspiring lecture once is a while can be awesome. Still we should use the time with others wisely. Show that we care.

The point is we should do all this. All the good practices at the same time. But this is not enough.

(2) Do it all online

Digital first. Above I was presenting a list of good practice that makes sense today. To make most out of this, all these activities should be visible online — have a web presence.

For instance, if you have a knowledge building classroom using some knowledge building tool, such as FLE4, make your activities with your students visible for the rest of the world. There are reasons why GitHub is popular. This is not only, but from large part, because it is open for anyone to study other people’s code. Same is the reason behind the popularity of Wikipedia.

To take the most out of learning games, get to know the best learning games and let your children to play them. Play them with them. Be part of their joy. Share your experience, the ways of using games with others, online. At some point start doing your own games and share them with others.

If you do a study trip to a museum or organize a mobile game with activities outdoors, again make sure you tell your story online. Write a a blog post. If you do a project of art, craft or science. Tell others about your achievements, online, of course.

If you are a great lecturer, make sure your lectures are available online. To help your students to get most out of the online sources, show them how to work with Wikipedia. Help them to find great online learning sites to study. If you are guiding your students to do research and to present their results in a form of a video essays, make sure they are put online. Share everything.

When having discussion, debate, seminar or un-conference in a shared time and space (e.g. in a classroom), let your students to contribute their thoughts — not only in the classroom — but also online. Make sure that there is a chat/IRC channel, hash tag or a blog in your class. Do this to make it possible for anyone to continue the discussions between and after the classes. When you are with people — face to face — help your students to pay all their attention to the live situation. Help them to learn to care.

(3) Get rid of all the stupidity

So what is this then? Stupidity. What is stupid? To find time to do all the things that make sense you should get rid of many things that are limiting you to do meaningful things. Here are some suggestions.

As a teacher do not lock the doors of your lab or studio from the students. It can be annoying when students are just walking in to see what you are doing, but if you are interested in learning of your students your door should always be open.

Get rid of grades as they are commonly used today. Giving grades is only a way to select people — to put them in some artificial order of superiority. They motivate only a handful of people. but do not do much good for most of us. Evaluation and assessment is important and can be done in more constructive ways than simply giving grades.

Don’t let the norms, rules of laws to keep you inside. Find all the possible loopholes to get the resources to get your students out of the classroom. Break the rules keeping you and your students out of the real world: museums, forests, parks, city space.

Do not show the great online video lectures in your classroom. Spending time to watch a movie in a shared time and space is waste of time. Instead find the best online videos for your students. Coordinate group screenings or independent watching of them outside the classroom and use the classroom time to discuss about them. You may call it flipped classroom if you wish.

Get rid of all lectures as they are commonly known in a university today. It just doesn’t make any sense to talk 2 times 45 minutes. You may ask your students to get together in a lecture hall every week to have a “town hall meeting” to inform, to discuss and to manage with organizational issues, but, please, serious, do not give a lecture (especially if you are not awesome lecturer). Instead you may give a talk of 20 minutes but let your students then to study, to find out themselves, to discuss, to debate.

Implementing these points is not easy. The hardest part is to get rid of the old: the long tradition of teaching and learning from the times when information was a scarcity and finding a place for everyone in an industrial society was one of the main reason to have an educational system. Today we need people who are inspired to get better and to go forward in their life — intellectually, skill wise, emotionally and culturally. We need love of learning.

*) The first strategy point is built on Lauri Järvilehto’s idea. Lauri has been promoting the idea that we should not think what is the best new way of teaching and learning but rather take them all in use.

I just realized that maybe I should explain the connection between the three points presented in my last post and the overall theme of this blog — Free, Libre and Open Source Software in Education. To improve learning in the era of Internet we should follow these rules:

(1.) Do not select one of the good ways of teaching and learning. Do all of them.
(2.) Do it all online.
(3.) Get rid of all the stupidity.

For me the connection to FLOSS is very obvious. Implementing the three points becomes possible only when people working in the field of education know about, and see the value of free culture. Without the ideas of freedom and sharing the strategy will fail.

In education this shouldn’t be hard, as people know the benefits gained when people are free to learn and to share their learning with others. When you help someone to learn something you do not loose your skills or knowledge, but rather add something to it.

The idea of sharing is interesting in a more general level. too. We ask our children to share things with their friends and family. Why should we stop this in their later education?

Also science and art per se are results of sharing and building on. Without getting to know other peoples research and art you can’t do your own research and art.

The first step in our attempt to build a better word is to ensure that people can enjoy and build upon each other work. This is why we eat together and tell stories to each other. This is why we have libraries, museums, festivals, science centers, schools and universities. This is also why we have Wikipedia, WordPress and Linux.

An educational system can never be really good without strong commitment to the same ideas that are behind the free/libre/open source and culture movement. Free education pays off.

Ten years ago I wrote a blog post with the title (Critical) history of ICT in education – and where we are heading? I feel that the post is still pretty accurate interpretation of the history, but there are some issues I see today differently.

In 2005 I was optimistic. Social media and free and open content were growing. More people were having access to free knowledge. Services and platforms for social interaction were becoming user-friendly and more accessible for more people. A large part of the Internet was commons. Internet was on its way to become a global public sphere to create, share and participate.

In 2005 many things started to change. Closed social media services, especially Facebook (found in 2004) and mobile apps (iPhone 2007), started to take over the internet.

Already for some years, for many people Facebook and the Internet are the same. Or actually many people using Facebook and mobile apps don’t even know that they are actually using Internet. The most ironic anecdote in this issue is that today Facebook owns the domain Internet.org and host there a project claiming to provide free Internet connection for people who currently can’t afford one.

Today Internet is also a battlefield for intelligence agencies. As a such, it is causing a real threat to democracy, civil liberties and human rights. It is fair to say that in 2015 the world is a lot like the world described in the Orwell’s dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. Furthermore, surveillance is not only the business of the national intelligence agencies. There are proofs that Internet corporations are collaborating with national intelligence agencies. Surveillance is easier in a walled garden than in a public space.

Because of walled gardens, mobile apps, lost of net neutrality and online privacy, Internet is not anymore what many of us think it should be.

So, what are the consequences of these changes for the future use of computers in education?

In 2005 I wrote:

I really hope that in the late 2000 social software and free and open content will make a real breakthrough in the field of educational technology. Blogs and wikis have already brought web back to its original idea: simple tool for your personal notes that are easily accessible and even editable by your peers and your potential peers.

About the pedagogy I wrote:

The pedagogical thinking behind the social software and the free and open content can be located to the social constructivist theory and cultural-historical psychology. “Any true understanding is dialogic in nature” wrote Mikhail Bakhtin and Lev Vygotsky wrote that “all higher [mental] functions originate as actual relations between human individuals”.

Although, things didn’t go exactly the way I hoped them to go, there is hope.

The history of computers seems to be a continuous power struggle between exploitation and common good. For instance, PC was partly a respond to the worry that the governments running the main frame computers would have the ultimate power over people as the holders of the data and all the computing power. PC was there to give power to the people.

Similarly, the free and open source software was a result of people looking for alternatives for proprietary software that was seen to limit some of the most fundamental freedoms, such as a right to study (how the program works) and a right to help your neighbor. By introducing free software license people doing software found a way to protect these rights.

Also the growth of the Internet itself was a result of people inventing new models of governance and taking distance from the traditional corporate and governmental forms of organizations. Yochai Benkler (2013) have called these organizational forms of the internet governance, the Web, many FLOSS development and Wikipedia practical anarchy and working anarchy. We may assume that this has been partly a social response aiming to protect people’s freedoms as computer users.

Today using computers in education is problematic. E-learning cloud services where the main interest is to have your data rather than to help you to learn are common. MOOCs are good example of this. At least part of the trick with MOOCs is to collect data about the users and use that for various purposes. Often MOOC providers don’t even know why do they collect the data in the first place. There are same challenge with many publishers and providers of digital learning materials and services. In some countries there are even plans of aggregating content from various sources to a single service to make it possible to collect data about the use of the content from every school children attending a school. This would mean that in a couple of years someone could have a database to check, for instance, how many time a student X tried to pass test Y or played the game Z, when she was 7 years old.

These cloud services are collecting data with the believe that, at some point the data will be valuable. For what the data could be used then for? It could be sold for universities looking for talent, recruiters, human resource departments, insurance companies, intelligence agencies . . . I know that most likely it is not, but it is possible and therefore I am worried.

Still I am optimistic. From the history of computing we may learn that we can turn things around. We can hack things.

In our everyday practices we can find ways to use computers in a beneficial way in education without giving our data to anyone. For instance, we should always provide our students options to do their online studies anonymously. When selecting learning materials for our students, we can favor open access journals and open knowledge. When publishing our own research, we can again favor open knowledge when ever possible. We may use only services that are primary web apps and therefore work with all the web browsers and devices.

Furthermore, we must educate people about the Internet. We must make sure that everyone understands how the Internet works, why net neutrality, internet privacy and data privacy in general are important. We may tell people about FLOSS, open knowledge, creative commons and the importance of having fair use in the legislation (e.g. we do not have this in Finland).

We may invite people to protect the Internet as commons. We may support and use those services that are in common. We may show people how to edit Wikipedia and how to publish useful media in the Wikimedia Commons. Like all good things in the world, also the Internet commons needs caretaking.

Disclaimer: I don’t have anything against Facebook. I actually like their service. Facebook has made social media a mass media and that is exactly what I wanted to happen in 2005. I am also sure that a world with net neutrality, privacy, democracy, civil liberties and human rights benefits Facebook, too.

“Education is a source of pride in Finnish society. However, the transformation of working life, digitisation, growing inequality, multiculturalism, and globalisation pose challenges for the future of the education sector. How might education and training respond to changing skill needs in the working life of the future? How can we foster educational equality and equal opportunities for all in education and training, in an increasingly polarised society? How can education be reformed in a student-oriented manner, while taking advantage of technology and setting our sights on the future? Instead of the traditional division into subjects, should the education system be based on a phenomenon-oriented approach?”

These are the opening words of the report composed by the SITRA’s New Education Forum. In the report, however, education and learning is not seen as something that is adapting to the changes around us. Learning can be an active force driving the change:

“We insist that education must not settle for adapting to change, but also act as a driver. To raise brave, compassionate citizens capable of independent thought and bearing the responsibility for themselves and for others; curious people, capable of finding things out for themselves and assessing the reliability of whatever information they come across. People with a tolerance of uncertainty, the courage to implement their ideas in practice and even break a few rules, if necessary.”

To do this we must see every individual as a human with a huge potential in them. We must let teachers to renew their working practices — let them to work together, to get the best practices to move in the community of educators. We should get rid of many traditions in a culture of schools: reconsider grades and evaluation, think how we can focus on competences instead of degrees. We can build a system with little red tape and a high impact. And we can design and use technology to serve people trying to do the right things.

You may read the report in here:

• New Education Forum: A land of people who love to learn

Read also:

• (E-)learning strategy for the future
• How to do the learning revolution?
• A real educational revolution: System thinking + long-term thinking = universal basic education

Imagine a jazz band. A guitarist, a saxophonist, a pianist, a bass player and a drummer.

The band is lead by the guitar player. He is the one that is, not only composing the first ideas, but also organizing most of the practicalities with the agent of the band. There are rehearsals, gigs, transportation, catering and of course money.

All members of the band are great with their instruments. Still any of them can play a note or two from each other instruments – even from a saxophone. When jamming they may change their instruments for fun.

Imagine the band on a stage. The guitar player starts the songs. Their style of playing is to start with a theme and then improvise from there. In turns the musicians take the front stage to play a solo. When playing the band members are communicating with body language and glances. From small hints they know what will happen next in the song.

The gig is over. Next day the guitar player is spending his time on practicing and composing new themes. In the evening he goes to jam in a club with some old friends. He is looking for a possibility to start a new project: a band playing jazz fusion. The saxophone player is playing jazz standards in a hotel lobby. She is playing with a pianist, but not the one she is playing in the band. Same time the pianist of the band is giving piano lessons for children. The drummer and the bass player are having a gig with a salsa band. it is their other project.

Doing collaborative learning and knowledge work is like being in a jazz band. The instruments played are computers and software.

All bands — including learning and working groups — should have a leader. Just like some bands may have an agent or management, this can be the case in a collaborative learning and work, too. Important is that the management is not telling the band what or how they should play. This is how it should be in a collaborative learning or work groups, too.

In a collaborative learning group the participants should learn to play their instruments: computers and software needed to create new knowledge. The instruments can be various. They can be tools for searching information, tools to evaluate and validate the information found, tools to conceptualize things in a written or visual forms, programming tools, tools to design models and simulations, tools for collecting data, tools to measure things, tools to create audio and video. There are many and all groups don’t need them all. Important is to learn to be a master of some of them and to be able to play a bit with the other instruments, too. At least for fun.

The natural place, the stage, for collaborative learning and knowledge work is online. A teacher and supervisor should act as the leader of the group. She should participate to the playing, lead the work but also step back when someone is ready to play a solo. Multifaceted communication is a key.

Collaborative learning and knowledge work doesn’t end when the school day or working hours are over. It continues in different times and spaces. People should be encouraged to use the skills they have learned. To start their own group. To learn and to work for fun. To make most out of the skills and knowledge learned in a another project.

This autumn our research group was involved in the design and implementation of a MOOC for Finnish teachers. The Code Alphabet MOOC was designed to help teachers bring coding to their classes, as proposed by the national curriculum framework for primary education in Finland from 2016 onwards. The national curriculum states, for example, that a 6th grade student should be able to create simple programs using a visual programming environment.

To help teachers do their job, in autumn 2015, we designed a six-week program that was ran as a MOOC. All the learning materials are online under creative commons license and the course was free and open for all. The program was particularly designed with school teachers in mind. The objectives of the MOOC were:

• To learn computational thinking and basic programming concepts (such as command, loop, conditional statements).
• To get  hands-on experience of programming tools that are considered to be suitable for students (Preschool-Grade 2: ScratchJr / Grades 3-5 Scratch / Grades 7-9 Racket).
• To study how computational thinking could be brought to students in a meaningful way so that the learning objectives of the curriculum are met.
• To study how the teacher’s role and classroom practices are changing.
• To study how coding could be used in all school activities, from sports, to music and art and from cooking and crafts to academic subjects and STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics).

From all the primary and secondary teachers of Finland over 6% (2727) registered themselves to the MOOC. 1301 teachers started the course by completing the first exercise. 471 teachers finished the whole course doing all the 6 weekly exercises and the “final diploma work”. From those who registered to the MOOC 36% completed the course. We’re planning a second implementation in the spring of 2016.

Why are we doing this? What is the point of teaching all teachers to code? Why they should introduce coding for their students? Do we think that everyone should know how to code?

We do not think that everyone should know how to code.

Everyone, however, should understand automatization and how to use it in problem solving. We may call it computational thinking. A good way to get a basic understanding about how computers and software work is by studying some coding. Knowing how to code, however, is not enough.

Often the reasons to promote coding in schools are wrong. Coding is not important, because there might be a growing need of computer scientists and software developers in the industry. A better approach is to see coding as new type of literacy and personal expression — a new way to organize, express and share ideas.

Fair enough. Although there are also more fundamental reasons to learn computational thinking. These reasons are related to power, social justice, equality and do I dare to say (?) . . . our attempt to build a better world.

The world is changing. Without understanding of computer and software we can’t have an impact. Someone somewhere will decide on our destiny. It is a question of power. It is a matter of access to tools, empowerment and freedom.

Computers, software and code are everywhere. The world around us is ran by code. Today, we all use online media outlets, read and write blogs, post images and videos to online services and update our status to social media services. We use credits cards, online banking services, buy goods and service online, make an appointment to a doctor and apply for our social security benefits online. All these are running on software that is making decisions on our behalf. Schools, business and governments are managed with software. And, of course when we take a bus, a train or a plain we again rely on software.

Do we know how these things work? No we don’t and it is not even really necessary. Still, by understanding what is automatization and how it is used in problem solving it will help us to make educated choices and to ask hard questions from those who are building these systems.

So does knowing how to code help us to get along in the new world? No, but it’s a good start. It is a small step to a world where everyone is able to critically observe whats going on in the world. And then to participate in the society — to have an impact.

In addition of playing with the code, we need great educators who are able to lead their students to explore complex issues. Educators, who are letting their students to ask questions and that are able to guide their students to uncover assumptions — many of them related to computers, software and code.

Brining coding to school is the first, small step.

It is well documented and known that there is a gender bias on Wikipedia. In the Finnish Wikipedia only 19 % of the biography articles are about women.

So, what can we do to get more women to the Finnish Wikipedia? How could we get more women to write Wikipedia articles? How could we get more people to write about women to the Wikipedia?

On Tuesday 8.3., on the International Women’s Day the Finnish Wikipedians are organizing One hundred women to Wikipedia -event in the Helsinki University Library’s Kaisa-building. The aim is to write 100 new articles about women.

Staff of the university library and staff of ten cultural institutions (museums, archives and libraries) are joining the event to help people doing research on the women — searching and selecting references. The Wikipedians will help people in the actual writing, to add images and other media to the articles. The Finnish National Gallery’s Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma will bring their expertise of organizing Wikipedia editing events.

To join, please fill in the registration form (sorry, that the form is only in Finnish but you can handle it!). The event is of course open for people speaking other languages than Finnish and of you are very welcome to join regardless on in which 260 Wikipedias in different languages you are interested in to write and edit.

In 2011 Sue Garder wrote a blogs post with a list of nine reasons why women don’t edit Wikipedia. My hunch is that from those some of the obstacles have been removed. Here is my (educated) guess about the situation in Finland.

1) Some women don’t edit Wikipedia because the editing interface isn’t sufficiently user-friendly.

Since 2011 this has been improving a lot. Today, with the new editing user interface writing to Wikipedia is almost as easy as writing and email. So, if you can write and email you can edit Wikipedia.

2) Some women don’t edit Wikipedia because they are too busy.

This must be true in Finland, too. Studies show that women, most of them in the work life, too, do more household work than men. Women have less free time than men. On the other hand, it is know that in Finland, women are the heavy users of art and culture. They go to museums, theater and concerts much more than men. I do not see Wikipedia to be much different from these. To equalize the distribution of work in household is of course the first task. The second could be to show for women how editing Wikipedia is fun in a similar way as visiting museum and library or going to theater. It actually is!

3) Some women don’t edit Wikipedia because they aren’t sufficiently self-confident, and editing Wikipedia requires a lot of self-confidence.

Probably partly true in Finland. I, however, think that most of the women in Finland are raised so that they become very self-confidence women. The pre-schools and schools are emphasizing this and I think we can see the results. We have some very self-confident women in this country.

4) Some women don’t edit Wikipedia because they are conflict-averse and don’t like Wikipedia’s sometimes-fighty culture.

I think this is true in the Finnish Wikipedia. The events like the one organized now in Helsinki are really important in here. When you see that the people editing the Wikipedia are real people it changes your perception: strangers become humans with feelings and emotions. They don’t need to become your friends. Just seeing that they are humans, just like you, often helps.

5) Some women don’t edit Wikipedia because the information they bring to Wikipedia is too likely to be reverted or deleted.

True and closely related to the point 4. Again, events are important. When you have the discussion with others about the topics you are planning to write to the Wikipedia you’ll get feedback early. This way you are not spending hours on something that will be then deleted.

6) Some women don’t edit Wikipedia because they find its overall atmosphere misogynist.

I would like to say that this is not true in the Finnish Wikipedia but I can be wrong. Again this is closely related to he point 4 and 5. Events help.

7) Some women find Wikipedia culture to be sexual in ways they find off-putting.

I haven’t heard this to be an issue in the Finnish Wikipedia. It would be good to know if it happens. Anyone?

8) Some women whose primary language has grammatical gender find being addressed by Wikipedia as male off-putting.

In the Finnish Wikipedia we are lucky with this. The language completely lacks grammatical gender. For instance, Finnish has only gender-neutral pronouns.

9) Some women don’t edit Wikipedia because social relationships and a welcoming tone are important to them, and Wikipedia offers fewer opportunities for that than other sites.

This is important. When you see a new editor in the Wikipedia. Say to them hi and welcome!

I have been teaching over 20 years. One thing many people do not necessary know about the work of a teacher, is that big part of teaching is to develop it — gradually by iterating the course design.

Introduction to Media Art and Culture course I have been teaching for 6 years. Before it I used to co-design and co-teach A Brief History of New Media course, where many of the elements and practices I have today, as part of the Media Art and Culture course, were originally developed. So in its current form the Introduction to Media Art and Culture course is a result of about 10 years of product development.

Today the course is a combination of flipped classroom practices with self-directed group study activities.

Introduction to Media Art and Culture (nickname: IMAC) is a 3 ECTS credit points course and belong to the MA program of the Media Lab Helsinki at the Aalto University. The course lasts three weeks and belong to the group of so called “intensive courses”. In the intensive courses there are classroom activities every day from Tuesday to Friday, three hours per day in the mornings (9-12). In addition to the 36 hours of classroom time students are expected to dedicate in total 45 hours to do the assignments and to prepare for the classes. In a way this is administrative mathematics but also an important fact for student must now about. They are expected to do a lot of things outside the classroom.

In the IMAC-course the number of participants is limited to 40 students. The course is facilitated by two teachers and one teaching assistant. The general structure is that during the first week the focus is on media culture and media studies. I am facilitating the first week. The second week is lead by a visiting teacher (there has been several of them), who directs students to participate in contemporary discussion about media art. The third week is lead by the students and dedicated to their presentations and discussions about their study work done in small groups.

The objective of the course is to introduce central ideas that form both contemporary media culture and media art discourses and practices. By taking the course students will have a basic understanding about many topics and number of pointers to study more.

To introduce the course content I do lectures but I keep them very short, often less than 20 minutes. I also invite visitors to give lectures. The mini-lectures are introductions to themes that students may then study more independently. I thing the lectures are important, because with them I can underline things which I (and most of my colleagues) consider to be the most central concepts and themes. For each topic of the course we also have an online library of articles and videos that are categorized by the topics of the course. Students may use the library to study more and to prepare to the classroom activities.

The flipped classroom is used by providing students with homework reading and video screening for every class. The homework students are asked to do between the classes. In the class we then have a fishbowl discussion (see the image above) about the reading and the videos. The videos are often long documentary movies. The discussions may last from one hour to two hours depending on how it goes.

The second assignment of the course is a study that is made in a small groups of students (2-3 students in each). The members of the study groups are selected randomly. Also the topics of study are selected blindly by picking two media culture and media art related topics, such as (1) generative art and (2) internet or (1) cultural jamming and (2) augmented reality. The task is to study the selected two concepts and to combine out of them a coherent video essay. The video must be 2-5 minutes long with 2-3 minutes of spoken voice over (see an example below). With the video students must also return the text of the voice over with a list of references. The videos are uploaded to online video services, such as Vimeo or YouTube and screened and discussed during the third week of the course.

Today the course is a combination of flipped classroom practices with self-directed group study activities.

The reasons to have a combination of flipped classroom practices (homework readings/screenings and fishbowl discussions) and self-directed group study activities (groups study assignment) are various.

Naturally, within 3 weeks I and my colleagues are not able to lecture everything under the title “Media Art and Culture”. It is an “Introduction”. This means that a lot of things should be introduced without having time to get very deep to the topics. With this kind of design the course is an invitation to study more.

With the flipped classroom I aim to have engaged students that are taking responsibility of their own learning. Within the framework of the course they may choose what topics they will study more. With the classroom discussions they are asked to take an active role in the learning situations. If they do not like the homework readings or screenings (documentary movies) in the fishbowl discussions they can have the opportunity to tell this to everyone with reasons.

With the group study assignment I am guiding students to do research: to search and synthesize information and to present findings. This also gives students an opportunity to set their own learning objectives to the right level. They can make it challenging for themselves. With the assignment it is also good to remember that the best way to learn something is to teach it for others. With the video essays students are teaching each other.

PS. From the last course we have collect some data and are at the moment writing a research article about the findings. I will post a link to the blog when the article is published.

“It is only through enforced standardization of methods, enforced adoption of the best implements and working conditions, and enforced cooperation that this faster work can be assured. And the duty of enforcing the adoption of standards and enforcing this cooperation rests with management alone.” F.W. Taylor (1911). The Principles of Scientific Management

Our time is a time of metrics and analytics. The growing possibilities to collect data is having a huge effect on everything: from security to the ways academia works. Especially in the academia there seems to be a strong believe that if we just get enough data we’ll finally get the Taylor’s idea of scientific management right. For many people in the academia it is very appealing concept. Think about it: scientific management.

Quantitative data is dangerous. People are good at manipulating it. Over-optimization happens before you are able to type Key Performance Indicator. It drives people to consequentialism and degenerates virtue ethics. Yes. It happens in the academia, too.

Reaching quality requires long term thinking. It needs time. It needs continuous development. Designing high quality university programs and courses takes tens of years. Many of the courses in the top universities have been taught for decades. Stanford’s ME310 course is one example of a course that has been developed over 30 years. The methods and culture developed in the 1920’s in the Bauhaus were so powerful that the New Bauhaus is today in Chicago. Developing MIT Media Lab’s culture and pedagogy took years. After 35 years they are still “inventing the better future” and really doing it.

My academic home base, the little Media Lab Helsinki is 22 years old. The culture and pedagogy in there is unique, too. The mission of the Media Lab is to explore, discover and comprehend the new digital technology and its impact in society: to find and exploit the possibilities it opens to communication, interaction and expression and to evaluate, understand and deal with the challenges it poses to design and creative production. Mixing research, thinking, doing practical experiments and demos is deep in the culture of the Media Lab.

In the Media Lab Helsinki I teach the Introduction to Media Art and Culture course. I have been working on it over 6 years. It is not perfect at all. I was just reviewing student feedback and there is a lot of work to do, to make it better. Quality needs time to evolve.

This autumn I am helping to design and develop another course The Storytelling in Virtual Reality. It is an experiment. We will explore how we can combine meaningful online study work and flipped classroom with hands-on workshop. One major thing is to develop an online service for fishbowl conversations. It will be a bit different video conference.

I am expecting that the first pilot course is not a great success. The hands-on workshop will be good as the people doing it have done it many times. The online part, especially the conversations, will be difficult to arrange. Anyhow, the next year it will be better. Quality will be there. Slowly.

In the last years the Wikipedia’s search has been improving. It still sucks, but it is getting better. There is a smart team working with the search and the Wikidata is giving a structure to the data.

Think what Wikipedia Search could be? Think what Wikipedia Search could do?

First of all, it could answer to some relatively complex questions presented in a natural language. For instance, it could easily give an answer to the question: What are the ten largest cities on the planet with female mayors?  – written just like that to the search field.

This would be useful, no doubt — but in a way trivial.

The most interesting possibilities of the Wikipedia Search are closely related to the vision and the mission of the movement.

“Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge.”

“The mission of the Wikimedia Foundation is to empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally.”

To get the movement few steps forward to the direction of the the vision and to help us all with the mission, the Wikipedia Search could do so much more. Some software development and awesome UX-design, however, is needed.

In the first stage, the new Wikipedia Search could be expanded to be a federated search to all the Wikimedia projects. This would simply mean that we’ll make all the resources of all the Wikimedia projects easily accessible for all – from a single user interface.

The next step would be to integrate the Wikipedia Search with all the other open and free educational content providers, such as PLOS – an Open Access publisher, Europeana, and Internet Archive.

With the Open Search one could do a search like: “Eiffel tower at night” and get as a result in a single page:

• photos of the Eiffel tower at night, all taken from different angles
• art works / painting of the Eiffel tower at night
• videos of the Eiffel tower at night
• poems about the Eiffel tower at night
• songs about the Eiffel tower at night
• translation of the sentence “Eiffel tower at night” to tens of languages
• a tip where to take a free cooking course close to the Eiffel tower at night
• a link to the book The Eiffel Tower, and other mythologies by Roland Barthes

. . . . and so on.

But that’s not all!

Just remember that all the content found with the Open Search would be free / libre content. You could study and use the content and benefit from using the content. You could make copies and distribute them. You could edit the content and distribute these derivative works.

This would make it possible for more and more people to take in use the great pool of free content and to use it in their own endeavors. Teachers could create learning materials. Students could do their studies and present their findings with presentations made out of the free content.

I see that this is what the Wikipedia/Wikimedia is all about. Serving people. Making it easier for people to freely share knowledge.

Finally. Guess what?

This is not my idea. It is not a new idea. I just like it. The Wikimedia Foundation started to work on it last year but it all ended-up to be a megalomaniac wiki-drama. You can read about it from the Wikipedia article Knowledge Engine.

This weekend the Wikipedia/Wikimedia community is getting together in the annual Wikimania conference. I couldn’t make it, because of family reasons. I am sure, the search will be discussed in the Wikimania. Enjoy! Break a leg!

Victor Papanek begins his book, published in 1971, with the words “All men are designers”. By this, Papanek means that an element of design is involved in almost everything people do. Design is the basis of all human activity. The fact that Papanek himself was an industrial designer gives more weight to his words, even if his statement can be considered self-evident. This includes the idea that each and every one of us is capable of designing products, for ourselves or our loved ones.

A high-quality product is not considered a status symbol, but a means of leading a good life.

It is often thought that Finnish design is reflected in the durability and timelessness of its products. We believe that buying high-quality products is more economical, even at a higher price, than creating inferior quality for less. High-quality products are cheaper in the long run. Due to industrial production, high-quality products are viewed as a universal entitlement. A high-quality product is not considered a status symbol, but a means of leading a good life. Industrialisation is viewed as having democratised design products. This can be considered the first wave of the democratisation of design.

Design is a peculiar word. Where Papanek refers to design as an activity, as something that produces a plan, new product or service, in Finland the word tends to take on its second meaning – that of a finished product. When we talk about design, we often refer to a high-quality product, not the underlying process. This is probably partly rooted in the honourable history of Finnish design and architecture. We are well aware of what good design, or a high-quality product, means.

Three phenomena are rapidly changing our society and its economy and culture: (1) the Internet-based network; (2) growing computing capacity; and (3) robotics.

Design too is being challenged by the post-industrial and global network society. In new products and services based on digital technologies, such as Uber, Airbnb, Facebook and Wikipedia, design has been the key to hyper-success. These design products of our time are successful combinations of an enjoyable user and service experience, to which aesthetic values have been added. The key element, however, is the user’s experience of using the service together with other people, and the service experience thereby generated. The design and development of such services requires seamless collaboration between multi-professional teams.

Three phenomena are rapidly changing our society and its economy and culture: (1) the Internet-based network; (2) growing computing capacity; and (3) robotics. The above services are mainly based on the first two elements, but each of them is also flirting seriously with robotics. Major future products and services will probably be based on a smart combination of these three phenomena.

What will this mean for design if we consider it as an activity in the way Papanek did? It is easy to foresee product design in particular becoming more democratic as the impact of the above-mentioned phenomena accumulates. Increasing numbers of people can design products themselves using tools such as 3D software (growing computing capacity), can share activities and learn from others (Internet network) and manufacture products independently (robotics) without expensive investments in production facilities.

When the service experience is based on a network, it makes sense to include all network operators in the design of the service.

Alongside industrial products, at both a superficial and deeper level design is also becoming more democratic in terms of services. The services described above represent superficial, democratic design. Uber and Airbnb are networks that rely on car and house owners. The people with whom these companies have established a new kind of contractual relationship constitute one of the cores of their design service. The service experience provided by these companies is dependent on car and house owners, and their drivers and caretakers. When the service experience is based on a network, it makes sense to include all network operators in the design of the service.

Similarly, Facebook and Wikipedia are dependent on their own users, who create the value added provided by the service. In these examples, too, power accrues to the users, although this is often in the form of faceless swarm intelligence that service providers cannot ignore if they want to remain competitive. Wikipedia, in particular, can be primarily defined as a community which has developed a novel operating model and complex and multi-level design method for implementing its goal of producing and disseminating information for all people in the world.

. . . the key issue is, once again, how they apply contemporary phenomena, i.e. the Internet-based network, growing computing capacity, and robotics. The cleverest democratic design groups use all of them in their own activities and the services they are collaboratively designing.

On the other hand, the so-called deep-level democratisation of design can be seen in services such as those that rely on novel social peer networks, and the reorganisation of public space and public services. Restaurant Day, Cleaning Day and Time Banks are examples of services that have been developed by active communities. The broader dispersal, in recent years, of urban planning towards ordinary citizens and away from professionals, political decision-makers and various interest groups is another example of the democratisation of design. In recent years, public service provision has been developed through collaborative processes, while exploring how services might also be produced on this basis. In all of the above examples, the key issue is, once again, how they apply contemporary phenomena, i.e. the Internet-based network, growing computing capacity, and robotics. The cleverest democratic design groups use all of them in their own activities and the services they are collaboratively designing.

. . . all of us act as designers providing products and services for one another.

In other words, it looks as though Papanek’s statement that all men are designers is coming true. The first wave of the democratisation of design, or the provision of high-quality products and services for everyone, is blending into the second wave, where all of us act as designers providing products and services for one another. We need to keep both traditions alive and capable of reinventing themselves.

Postscript 1: This text was originally published in Esko Kilpi’s book Perspectives on new work (Sitra Studies 114). The book is available as PDF. If you want to make a reference to this text, it goes like this:

Leinonen, T. (2016): The democratisation of design. In Esko Kilpi (Ed.) Perspectives on new work. Sitra Studies 114, Helsinki, Finland.

Postscript 2: When writing this I didn’t think precisely education but you may easily think how the democratisation of design applies to education. The first wave of democratisation of education was the idea of Volksschule, the compulsory education described in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1946) Article 26 as follows: ”Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory”. Right now we are potentially living the second wave of democratisation of education. What is it? Maybe this is a topic for another blog post.

The term e-learning is close to 20 years old. In 2004, 12 years ago, I wrote somehow polemic text with the title E-learning is dead. Long live learning!”

I now read it and felt that I could update it with some new thoughts, although the original one is not a bad text as a such, either. The first part is so generic that it is all still relevant. To the last part I made some edits.

Memorizing or cultivating knowledge?

With the term e-learning most scholars, educational practitioners and technology developers mean learning that is facilitated and enhanced with information and communication technology. The little “e” – the electronic – is easy to define. However for many of us the other part of the word, the “learning” seems to be extremely difficult to conceptualize.

First of all it is important to recognize that there are different types of learning: starting from the classical conditioning and mechanical route memorizing to processes of meaning making and gaining skills to solve problems and to create knowledge. The results of different types of learning have different value.

A simple way to approach the value of learning is to think its usefulness. Nonetheless the kind of skills and knowledge that are useful to individuals, employers, society and humankind in general are often conflicting and difficult to combine. It seems to be that in the rallying point of the different needs are abstract things, such as theoretical and methodological knowledge, collaboration skills, values and ethics.

The conception of learning as memorization of facts and procedures is living strong in the western world. The two main supporters of the simplified conception of learning are the industry producing mass products for consumer society and the military organizations training millions of individuals annually. In both cases — in the industrial world and in military — the aim is to train people to behave as reliable pieces of the system.

However, the classical idea of an university is to carry out research and offer highest level of learning opportunities. The learning follows the research. The cultivation of knowledge is the primary task and the learning is based on it. In its practice the university is growing scientists, scholars and professionals with skills to adopt, cultivate, create and share knowledge.

Knowledge is cultural — so is learning

From studies of expert’s way of thinking we know that the knowledge that is useful in real world situations is hard to modify or cast in a way that can be saved to the hard disk of a computer. Experts’ knowledge is often called tacit knowledge. Experts know what to do when facing novelty in their field of expertise. Still it can be extremely difficult for them to explain why they did what they did. This type of expert knowledge is hard to make explicit, as it is strongly situated to the practices where it is used.

The best way to assimilate experts’ knowledge is to participate in the practices of an expert community. Participation means that the activity is dialogical: you read, watch, hear, comment, try out yourself and then present your interpretation of the issues under study in the community. There is a community that is reflecting and working on improving its cumulative and communal knowledge.

Knowledge is situated in the time and place where it is generated, modified, and exploited. In this way knowledge is cultural. We learn in time and place where we are collaborating with other people. Just like knowledge is cultural, so is learning.

Building the culture of learning online (and some other options)

In the late 1990’s I met with Manuel Castells who was one of the initiators of the Open University of Catalonia (UOC), the world’s first fully online university. We discussed what are the possible consequences of Internet (WWW) and emerging network society for traditional campus universities. Castells was sure that most of them will face real challenges. According to him only those universities that do research will survive, because they will still provide value for the society. Teaching will all be online and globally available.(*

When designing e-learning services that builds on research, the focus should be on building communities, offering people spaces and facilitating their advances in the community’s area of interests. At the same time, the community should involve new generations, have them take part in its activities. Unfortunately in e-learning we too often pay most of our attention to such issues as technology, e-learning platforms, ready-made content, standards, management of learning and automated assessment.

Building a long lasting cultures in an online community is difficult. Just like in life in general, in an online community we also need leadership, common values, shared visions and mission, social norms, social ties and relations. When thinking about their e-learning solutions, universities should primary think how do they make their online learners to feel that they are part of the university community. Examples of the rights questions to ask are: Do you invite your online learners to the campus? Do they feel at home in the campus? Can they take part in the social events of the university?

I do not claim that building a culture of learning online is the only possible way of implementing e-learning. I am convinced — and actually we have done some research on the topic, too — that mobile tools can support (informal) learning that takes place in actual work operations (see the slides above). This is done by guiding people to share information with their peers and to help their colleagues. Furthermore the devices can provide access to information already available in the organization or online. However, the practice of sharing work processes and the information related to them requires an organizational culture that values openness, tolerates critics and respects individuals.

Play environments and games are another way of using computers in teaching and learning. People love to play and for many of us competing and winning is important, too. Also various forms of gamification in teaching and learning are proven to motivate people.

These different ways of implementing e-learning will result as different type of learning. Some of it will be classical conditioning and mechanical route memorizing when some will reach processes of meaning making, problem solving and knowledge building skills. All these forms of learning are needed.

Important is to choose the right tool for the job. It is also good to keep in mind that a skillful master never blames the tools, but rather is able to make her own tools.

– – – – – – – – – – –
*)I remember this very well, because I asked then Castells that how much research people do in the UOC and after thinking for a while, he said: “some … they should do more”. I have understood that today in the UOC they do quite a lot of research, too.

I am writing a short article about a blended-learning experiment we did the last autumn semester. Before checking the actual research data we gathered from the experiment, I wanted to post here some first thoughts. Notes to myself. Here they are.

I explained the experiment already shortly in an earlier post I wrote some time ago. The main point of that post was the importance of slowness in academic work, but in the end I mention The Storytelling in Virtual Reality course. Here are some early thoughts about the course (as a whole the course was a disaster, but there was something good in it, too).

One of the idea behind the experiment was to try out if we could implement fishbowl conversation in an online classroom. It didn’t work out. Or it worked somehow. To really work well, we should do some major redesign of the current UX/UI paradigms of group video conference software. We will take a look of this later. Maybe we can build a prototype.

Anyhow. What did workout pretty well was the flipped classroom without a classroom (I have wrote earlier about the flipped classroom, too). So, we didn’t have a real classroom, but we were having  online classes — group video conference sessions of 1.5 hours with about 25 student in each. So how did it workout?

For each online class session with the group video conference we were having pre-tasks for the participants. In practice, we asked students to watch some short video lecture and to prepare at least two questions about them. This was a requirement for all.

In the video conference everyone was then ready to discuss about the video lectures with their questions. The questions were written to the chat of the video conference where the moderator (one of the teaching assistants) then opened four microphones, including the one of the participants who’s questions was discussed. Then people joined the discussion if they wanted to add something, and the moderator always muted one of the participants microphones so that there were always only 4 microphones open. Later in the sessions people started to open and mute their microphones without the moderators help. Having just 4 microphones on at time was a good decision (comes from the Fishbowl). This way  everyone got a chance to participate to the conversation.

Here are guidelines on how to implement flipped online class:

1. Use a group video conference service/app where all the participants are shown on a single screen. At least the zoom.us, the one we were using, is able to show 25 video participants per page.
2. Select or prepare video lectures for your students and ask them to watch them before each online class session.
3. Ask your students to prepare two questions from each video lecture and to write them down.
4. In the video conference session ask everyone to post their questions to the chat window.
5. Start the discussion by presenting the first question and the student who was asking it.
6. Open four microphones of the participants to discuss about the topic.
7. When people are showing signs (like raising their hand) open their microphone and close one, so that there is always only four microphones on.
8. If you know colleagues who are experts on the topics discussed in the online video conference classroom invite them to follow and to participate in the discussion.

Wikimedia movement is in the middle of (global) discussion to consider its future. There are many ways to participate to the discussion. The Wikimedia 2030 site is one of them.

For the Wikimedia 2017 conference the strategy team got together “A draft of the Wikimedia movement’s strategic direction”. We are all invited to comment and to give feedback on it. Here is my (Canadian) nickel.

The draft document starts with the sentence:

The strategic direction of the Wikimedia movement for 2030 is to become the roads, bridges, and villages that support the world’s journey towards free knowledge.

I understand that the “roads”, “bridges” and “villages” are metaphors and are referring to the Wikimedia’s role of providing global infrastructure to create and share “free knowledge”. Fair enough. I assume the “Wikimedia movement” in the same opening sentence is the people — a core of any movement. The expression, however, makes me ask should the community be at first and the most building the infrastructure?

If not an infrastructure project, what is Wikimedia? I would define it to be three things:

(1) Wikimedia is an enlightenment movement

(2) Wikimedia is an education movement

(3) Wikimedia is an internet movement

Lets take a closer look of these three in the context of the Wikimedia 2030 strategy.

(1) Wikimedia is an enlightenment movement

One way to formulate the “strategic direction” could be to rely strongly to the Wikimedia movement’s vision. From it we could then imaging how would be the world 2030 where we are close(r) to achieve the vision — a world were we have made some progress. The Wikimedia vision is:

Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. That’s our commitment. Wikimedia Vision

Building on the vision, the first sentence of the strategic direction 2030 of the Wikimedia could be formulated as follows:

The strategic direction of the Wikimedia movement for 2030 is to serve half (or 1/4, 1/3 ?) of the world population in their needs to share and access reliable and self-correcting knowledge.

Using the words “reliable and self-correcting knowledge” (I am not a native English speaker, so there is maybe a better way to express the idea) we would make it clear that Wikimedia is continuity of the enlightenment movement where scientific method, reliability, validity and especially the self-correcting nature of knowledge are central. Wikipedia (and other Wikimedia projects) is never ready, because the science is progressive.

From the enlightenment we also get the idea of natural law, human rights, equality, diversity, respect of cultures and so on. It is all in there.

(2) Wikimedia is an education movement

From the Wikimedia we can recognize practices that are common for all great educational systems: they are free and inclusive, everyone can have an impact in them (edit) and last but not least it, they rely on “reliable and self-correcting knowledge”. The role of being and education movement comes clear in the Wikimedia mission statement, too:

The mission of the Wikimedia Foundation is to empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally. Wikimedia Mission statement

As an education movement we aim to empower and engage people effectively and globally.

When the Wikimedia mission was written (2007?), already there were “fake news” and “misinformation” online, but its impact to the society was marginal. To respond to this development, we should be even more education movement that ever before.

Distributing educational content is not enough, unfortunately. We should have a greater impact to people’s ability to understand what is knowledge and how it is created. People who do not vaccinate their children, because they are afraid that vaccines include chemicals, are not stupid. They are uneducated.

People come-up with silly and dangerous ideas because they do not know how knowledge is created. When you have an idea of the “reliable and self-correcting knowledge” you are more likely to make a right conclusions on information found online. This may sound trivial (and it of course is for most of us reading this blog), but this kind of lack of education is a reason of most, if not all, the problems of our time.

It looks that disseminating knowledge is not enough. As an educational movement Wikimedia could do much more by raising people awareness on how knowledge is created. Editing is knowledge creation. Everyone should edit Wikipedia — or well, let say, know how it is done.

Today about 50% of Internet traffic is on “social media”. These are the “village pumps” where people today get their education. How to be the voice of reason in social media services should be high in our list of priorities.

In the current draft document the Wikimedia’s role as an education movement is minimal. If we look to the year 2030 (climate change, migration etc.) we for sure should pay attention to this.

(3) Wikimedia is an internet movement

Somehow the Wikimedia’s role of being and internet movement is also hidden from the draft document. In the first session of the Wikimania, Gabriella Coleman said something like: “when the everyone gets on the Internet, you also get the world’s problems on the Internet”. What we should think, is how do we respond to this?

Internet is the roads, bridges and villages of our time. In the Wikimedia movement we definitely have an interest to care how they are, who owns them and how people can use them. Therefore we must keep on making noice about net neutrality, privacy, anonymity, open standards, open source, free licenses, access etc. For the Wikimedia these are important for obvious reasons.

Decisions on these topics are political. As individuals we also do decisions on things related to these everyday, whatever we are developers, editors or users in the Wikimedia movement.

Thanks for reading.

“The vocation of every man and woman is to serve other people.” – Leo Tolstoy