«It’s better to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission»
This phrase of Professor Gilly Salmon’s during «Philosopher’s cafe» open discussion was one of the learning highlights for me at the International Conference on Information Communication Technologies in Education (ICICTE 2008) in Corfu. It shows a clear mentality so to act upon the main message of her keynote speech
«now is the time for educators & teachers to embrace learning technologies and to create the future of education. Otherwise somebody will do it and we might not like it».
According to Gilly, the stake is for the learning technologies to be adopted and deployed institution-wide.
Macromyopia is the tendency to overestimate the short term results of a technology and to underestimate its long term results. Macromyopia is why innovative projects (could) fail. Big win comes later by incorporating innovation into the system.
«Change comes most of all from the unvisited no man’s land between the disciplines» (Norbert Wiener)
«Our success in life depends on our ability to master the unforeseen.»
University of Leicester embraced Gilly’s framwork for pedagogical innocation in four directions that can be seen in the following 2X2 matrix:
- Improvement of old practices for existing students
- Existing technology to new students
- New technologies for existing students
- New technologies for new students
In each direction projects were launched under Media Zoo, a site worth exploring. Links:
- Gilly’s introduction to Media Zoo (ppt file).
- Second Life Meda zoo video:
Check out especially the projects
- ADELIE: Course adaptation from f2f to VLE
- IMPALA: Podcasting – Links: bbc video (wmv) + brand new book: Podcasting for Learning
- MOOSE: Second Life and 3-D in Education
The results of this strategy:
- University of Leicester reached no. 1 in student satisfaction and teaching quality in the United Kingdom and
- Gilly Salmon won the UK’s national award for teaching excellence.
For more information check out: http://www.le.ac.uk/beyonddistance
More photos from the ICICTE can be found here. More reports from ICICTE08 to follow soon.
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