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Charles Leadbeater, Debbie Powell and Tim Cowie assembled a short video based on Leadbeater’s We-think book, which “explores how the web is changing our world, creating a culture in which more people than ever can participate, share and collaborate, ideas and information.”

(Thanks to Cristóbal Cobo for the link.)

[Cross-posted from e-rgonomic]

Special thanks to John on showing how a paper cup is a technology (see post). Here is a small demonstration of the Open Seminar 2.0 conference and the emergence of M-Learning (mobile learning) era. This is a success story for the intelligent use of domestic mobile ICT and education. [Idea: Edwards Bermúdez]

[Marduk in his impressive connections tower in the middle of an English-Spanish conference: USA, Ecuador and Mexico]

Directed by a Twitter update, I landed on the PF HYPER blog… which directed me to a Wikipedia article on Open Space Technology:

In Open Space, a facilitator explains the process and then participants are invited to co-create the agenda and host their own discussion groups. Discussions are held in designated areas or separate rooms known as ‘breakout spaces’ and participants are free to move amongst the discussion groups. Each group records the conversations in a form which can be used to distribute or broadcast the proceedings of the meeting (in hard copy, blog, podcast, video, etc). Online networking can occur both before and following the actual face-to-face meetings so discussions can continue seamlessly. In a multi-day Open Space, participants have the opportunity to announce new discussion topics / late-breaking sessions each new morning. At the end of the day (or 2 days or 2.5 days) the full group reconvenes for comments and reflection. This helps participants to re-engage in the full group over the duration of the meeting.

Holy cow! That sounds a lot like open seminars/co-seminars — but with a problem-solving or conference-type focus. Open seminars and Open Space might have a lot to learn from each other!

Yesterday, I talked about all the good things that are said to be brought by university-industry collaboration. There is, however, other side of this seemingly almighty strategy.

Well, “other side” might be a bit too exaggerating. But there are some things we have to keep in our mind when we discuss university-industry collaboration. What I am going to talk about below applies not only to Japan but also to any countries in which university-industry collaboration takes place.

I say, it is necessary for us to consider possible dangers and negative outcomes in university-industry collaboration.

First of all, universities should consider that industrial interest which mainly focuses on near-market research and the aim of producing profit should not become the only priority of university at the expense of long-term orientation and basic research. In other words, money-generating research should not be always prioritized over fundamental or unprofitable research. This could put the fundamental philosophy of academic freedom in danger. There is also a danger that industrial requirements may jeopardize university’s initiative in building research themes. This is because private sectors place the utmost interest in making profits, and not necessarily purely academic intellectual exploration. Therefore, projects that are funded by private sectors may end up compromising universities’ academic agenda in order to comply with industry’s requests.

That is to say, university-industry collaboration has the inherent danger of allowing market criteria to dictate the paths of scientific inquiry.

When all is said, I would like to recommend a strategy to mitigate the possible dangers from university-industry collaboration.

First, it is crucial for universities to balance between innovation/technology-orientated research, and fundamental academic research and teaching. In other words, curricula should not favor only those studies with industrial cooperation. For instance, those disciplines that do not have much industrial needs, such as English, Philosophy, and Japanese literature, should be treated as equal as industry-related disciplines such as biochemistry, biotechnology, and aerospace-engineering.

Additionally, I suggest that Japanese universities introduce multiple major system which allows students to major more than one field of study or have minor. Though multiple majors are common in the U.S. , such systems are extremely rare in Japanese higher education. I think completing more than one major will provide students an advantage in today’s uncertain job market.

I know that university-industry collaboration brings many benefits to the society. Instead of completely agreeing with the idea, however, I just wanted to play devil’s advocate

In Japan, promotion of university-industry collaboration has been a key topic at many levels since the early 90’s, and especially since 2004 when all the former national universities became semi-privatized.

With this drastic reform in Japanese higher education in 2004, Japanese former national universities need to be transformed into a new mode of knowledge creation. With the increased autonomy in each university, now it is much easier for individual universities to seek cooperation with industry. Indeed, it is said that this reform was first proposed to make this collaboration easy (Prior to the privatization, professors at national university were civil servants and thus were not allowed to work elsewhere).

In the industrialized countries, technical innovation has become the main force for competitiveness. This results in a much stronger participation of industry in research and development (R & D). In industrialized countries, the participation of universities in R & D projects for industry has become key activity. Though in Japan, this trend is also apparent with 67% of research being financed by big companies, traditionally most of these universities have been the private ones.

Now under new regulations, newly privatized former national universities have a freedom to participate in this university-industry cooperation. Not only does university-industry cooperation will lead to a creation of knowledge-based society, this strategy could result in a win-win situation for both stakeholders, university and industry.

First, Japanese national universities can now target research and education to actual needs of the society which will strengthens the position of the university in the society and bring financial benefits. Also, they can mitigate their newly added financial constraint from not receiving subsidy from the Ministry of Education. Through university-industry collaboration, universities can use companies’ resources and expertise which may be up-to-date than those found in their universities.

And last but not least, universities can finally develop skills and resources for transferring research results to end users. Traditionally, knowledge generated in universities tended to just sit in an ivory tower without being utilized in a real world. Through university-industry collaboration, universities can learn the strategy to convey their newly generated knowledge to the society.

There are many benefits for industry as well.  First and foremost, they can obtain top-notch information on recent developments in science and technology.  Having direct access to research results will enable industry to develop more competitive products and services.

Sounds wonderful, right?  Yep, this university-industry collaboration seems as though it could be a panacea for everyone and everything.  It is actually a pretty good deal.

But! (and there is always “but”)  there are a few things that we might want to be careful and keep in our mind when promoting this strategy. 

I will talk about those points tomorrow… 

The Chronicle of Higher Education reports on a discussion paper, “British Universities in China: The Reality Beyond the Rhetoric,” published this month by Agora, a British organization focused on higher education. Paul Mooney writes in the Chronicle:

Ian Gow, an expert on Asia and former provost of the University of Nottingham at Ningbo, China, expresses similar skepticism toward dealing with that nation. British universities “must stop pussyfooting around this aggressively ambitious country,” he writes.

“Make no mistake: China wants to be the leading power in higher education, and it will extract what it can from the U.K.,” writes Mr. Gow, who now heads the business school at the University of the West of England.

Mr. Gow also describes the challenges of working in China, including finding high-quality staff members, the lack of “enabling regulatory frameworks” for joint ventures with foreign institutions, and partners that are constantly changing their terms.

I have no doubt that China wants to become the preeminent global power in education in 2050. They have the will and the investment capital to build fine institutions. I have doubts that they will achieve it, however. Their strategy to import technologies and ideas from abroad is somewhat flawed. Rather than piggybacking on ideas generated elsewhere, should they not instead leapfrog the competition to create knowledge spaces that are both indigenous and world-class in quality?

Perhaps non-Chinese universities need to assert themselves better and renegotiate their terms of cooperation with Chinese institutions. But, does this need to be a priority? If China is in a state of continuous catch-up with their foreign competition, what harm is there in collaboration?

This weekend, I’ll head off to Beijing and Changchun, China for several discussions with higher education institutions and leaders on how we might collaboration on open, co-seminars and other Leapfrog projects. Since I’m not sure if the Great Firewall of China will allow me to access this site, Jeffrey Schulz, curriculum director at BlueSky Online Charter School, will guest blog. I’ll introduce him shortly…

(Photo by Steve Webel)

An element missing from media coverage of the One Laptop per Child XO is the ramifications of using mesh networking. This scheme allows for data to be passed through individual machines acting as nodes, where data hops from machine-to-machine until its destination on the network –or on a foreign network is reached. This allows for instantly reconfigurable and self-healing networks that can self-adapt to a variety of network accessibility environments.

This networking model has also been recontextualized into the interface and software design of the device which encourages as much co-teaching and co-learning as possible. Working with teams from Pentagram Design and Red Hat, OLPC created SUGAR, a graphic user interface that captures the students’ world of fellow learners and teachers as collaborators, emphasizing connectivity between people and activities. From OLPC:

Everyone has the potential for being both a learner and a teacher. We have chosen to put collaboration at the core of the user experience in order to realize this potential. The presence of other members of the learning community will encourage children to take responsibility for others’ learning as well as their own. The exchange of ideas amongst peers can both make the learning process more engaging and stimulate critical thinking skills. We hope to encourage these types of social interaction with the laptops.

[...]

As most software developers would agree, the best way to learn how to write a program is to write one, or perhaps teach someone else how to do so; studying the syntax of the language might be useful, but it doesn’t teach one how to code. We hope to apply this principle of “learn through doing” to all types of creation, e.g., we emphasize composing music over downloading music. We also encourage the children to engage in the process of collaborative critique of their expressions and to iterate upon this expression as well.

While the developed world is using new technologies to teach the same old stuff its been pushing since the 19th century, the co-constructivism allowed by OLPC could allow children in less developed countries leapfrog their peers in new knowledge production. Is this purposeful orientation toward the use of technologies the start of a new revolution in education?

I’ve been participating on the Minneapolis Public Schools Technology Planning Steering Committee. The committee has adopted the Leapfrog Paradigm and leapfrog thinking into its planning. Leaping frogs are showing up in presentations, and leapfrog is becoming a metaphor for creativity in the district. The committee’s work has, however, thus far focused on discussion on the use of technologies to promote its vision to advance student achievement and improve staff productivity. I think MPS can still do better. Leapfrogging can allow the district to lead in achievement, productivity, and meaningful knowledge production.

Here are five quick thoughts on what I believe MPS can do to reinvent itself and thrive as an institution:

1. Commit to leadership in the reinvention of education in Minneapolis, the state, and in the world. The technology planning group can be the catalyst for this new orientation toward global leadership.
2. Total success is possible. Do not set any goal too low, and do not be afraid to set any goal too high. Set big, hairy, audacious goals –but, make sure to align them with a Noble Quest in a broader leapfrog strategy.
3. Don’t worry about breaking the rules. Bypass them. Better yet, leapfrog them! The disruptive change required to revolutionize MPS requires a new set of rules on a new playing field.
4. Collaborate! Advances in communications technologies and socioeconomic globalization now means that MPS competes with the world in creating meaningful education. Rather than compete, why not leverage technologies and resources available to build global-reaching partnerships and collaborations?
5. Forget about planning for the 21st Century. It’s meaningless to continue to plan for educating in the 21st Century. We’re already here. We need to start planning for the 22nd Century –and reassess our goals and priorities today based on where we need to be in the future.

That’s my two cents. I hope that these ideas will help to build a new MPS that is vibrant, edgy, hard-charging, and value-creating for Minneapolis, the state and the world.

Pressured largely by publication delays and a bandwidth limit in the amount of information and knowledge that can be distributed through traditional academic publishing formats, the “hard sciences” have made inroads in expanding the growth of the open sharing of research and ideas. The accelerating rate of change of knowledge and shortening of the half-life of knowledge in the 21st Century render traditional publication and knowledge sharing methods obsolete. Open access libraries such as the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory collaboratory project and the National Fusion Collaboratory allow for the rapid sharing of ideas and rapid publication.

With few exceptions, these open collaboratories are absent from the social sciences. FLACSO México initiated a collaboratory project that can help fill the gap: Colaboratorios (the name is a play on “collaboration” and “laboratory”). Allowing authors to publish under a Creative Commons license, Colaboratios provides space for the sharing of ideas through publication of papers, a collaborative wiki, shared blog, and Skype-based conferences.

Check it out. Non-Spanish speakers may want to use the Babel Fish.