#ICELW Opening Keynote with Steve Wheeler @timbuckteeth "The Future is Mobile…Social…Personal"

These are my live blogged notes from the International Conference on eLearning in the Workplace (ICELW), happing this week in NYC.  Forgive any typos or incoherencies.

Opening keynote with Steve Wheeler @timbuckteeth, The Future is Mobile…Social…Personal

Plymouth University UK

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” ~ Arthur C. Clark

We need to make the technology invisible –so we can concentrate on the learning. Remember that technology is just a tool.

We can’t predict the future, but we can look at trends and think about what’s coming in the next year or two.

In 1989, we thought the future was multi-media.

In 1999, we said the future is the Web.

In 2009, we said the future is smart mobile.

Steve shows this great cartoon from circa 1900, showing the illustrator’s idea of Learning in the year 2000– kids sitting at a desk, books being poured into a grinder. Wires connecting the book grinder to the kids brains.  He thought that learning would no longer be about instruction.

Disruptive technologies change things profoundly.  Sir Tim Berners Lee, on the web “ this is for everyone”…

What’s the next disruptive technology?

Is it Google Glass – will your organization use it?

Implementing new technology – the cycle sort of mimics the stages of grief (Denial > Anger > Bargaining> Acceptance):

Knowledge > Persuasion > Decision > Implementation > Confirmation

Trends in L&D

• Apprenticeship model (just for me) – in the olden days, and then we moved to…
• Standardized courses (just in case)
• Bespoke courses (just in time) – and now we’re moving to…
• Personalized learning (just for me)

 Everyone has a personalized learning environment/network – this will become essential.

Age and generations—these are NOT the issue—it’s context (he shows a picture of a kid reading a newspaper next to his grandfather on his computer).

The linguistics of text.  LOL to grandpa means “Lots of Love”…

Learners taking notes by taking pictures of your slides. One of his colleague says “it’s awful when they do this because this makes it so easy for them!” – we all laughed as half of the audience is taking pictures of Steve’s slides.

We have to be so careful of how we project our identity through social media.

We learn through making.

We need digital wisdom. E.g., Thomas Edison did NOT write or talk about the Internet.

Learners will need new literacies:

• Social networking
• Privacy maintenance
• Identity management
• Creating and organizing content
• Reusing and repurposing
• Filtering and selecting
• Self presentation
• Transliteracy (Working and communicating across many platforms, twitter/fb/email/etc.)

We have skills we need to acquire. > Those skills become competencies. > Later on those become literacies – we need to be fluent in them. > And final, we need mastery. 

(It’s a pyramid, with skills at the base and mastery at the top. Can you picture that?)

When you work in a digital environment you need to learn those new competencies – because it’s an alien environment for all of us. We’re all still getting used to it.

 These tools we use are both personal and social. They occupy the same place at the same time.

All of these tools are available: twitter, fb, youtube, instagram, linkedin…

The more people you connect to, the more noise there is, but your friends help you filter it out.

These PLNs (Personal Learning Networks) are going to become even MORE important to organizational learning.

“I store my knowledge with my friends.”

People still learn – even when it’s unstructured and chaotic.  The “learning” we provide is often too sterile.

BYOD or CYOD (Choose Your Own Device)…

The architecture of participation. Learners create their own content map through tools, sharing, collab, tagging, voting, networking, user generated content.

Skills we need:

• Connection (people witnessing history and sharing it, conneting people to each other through their networks – people share, reorganize and repurpose content)
• Context (understanding multiple meanings, diverse interpretations, creativity, we need to get back to divergent thinking)
• Complexity (being prepared for uncertainty)
• Connotation (making meaning, finding the impetus to push things farther).

These four Cs are the new 3 Rs (Reading, Riting, Rhithmatic…)

The NMC Horizon Report – every year they come up with predictions. These are some of the things they were looking at in 2012:

• Game based learning – provides opportunity for immediate feedback.
• Big Data – give us the picture of the big learner network.
• Voice and natural gestures (touch tablets, Xbox 360/Kinect type interfaces) – we’ll start seeing these in business

The Horizon Report 2014:

1 year or less = flipped classroom, learner analytics

2-3 years = 3D printing, games and gamification

4-5 years = the quantified self, virtual assistants

Future Learning Topology (Learning 3.0)

• Distributed (Cloud) Computing – outsourcing your memory. > Infrastructure
• 3D Visualization and Interaction (e.g. gestural) > Interface
• Smart Mobiel Technology > Tools
• Collaborative Intelligent Filtering

Web 1.0 The Web

Web 2.0 The Social Web

Web 3.0 Semantic Web

Web 4.0 MetaWeb

We are already seeing early evidence of the Smart eXtended Web (Web 4.0) – in things like intelligent filters, recommendation engines.

Things that are connecting to the web that aren’t computers – toilets, refrigerators, heating systems.

The Internet of Things = Ubiquitous Computing (computers will be embedded in everything!)

The wearable web, memory extension, vision enhancement, augmented reality, ubiquitous computing, the quantifiable self.

The future is ours.

“The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them, into the impossible.”  ~ Arthur C. Clark