Thoughts on Multiliteracy #5


Robin Good:
"Synchronous Collaboration Tools for the Academic World"

Last night I started a long summary (seven pages of notes) of Good's rather long (45 slides plus audio) presentation but was too tired to finish it. Tonight I resolved to finish it, but I'm already tired and don't have the energy to keep going for another two hours or so. I've decided, however, that a long summary isn't really necessary—so this will be my shortest entry in this blog to date.

In a nutshell, Good's presentation consists of a set of mini-reviews of "new-breed" online presentation software. The software is "new-breed" because it's been produced by companies which are both new in terms of when they were started and also new in that they have a different orientation from that of much larger, more established online presentation providers (such as Elluminate, LiveMeeting, and Horizon Live).

Good characterizes "new-breed" providers as small companies that are

• more interested in communicative and collaborative competence than (at least at this point) in making money and building an empire;

• able to offer free trial versions of their products and are willing to do so without requiring long-term contracts or (for the most part) making it necessary to speak with a salesperson;

• typically (though not always) usable by a variety of operating systems—Mac, Linux, Unix, and others, as well as Windows;

• more apt to have customer service which is quick and provided by real prople;

• able to offer products with attractive features, yet are not so feature-overloaded that they are confusing to learn to use.

Good also divides the "new-breed" software into a number of types—that is, software which primarily offers the following:

• screen sharing;
• live presentation capability;
• videoconferencing;
• full collaboration (i.e., making use of a large number of features);
• web conferencing;
• grass-roots conferencing.

Further, Good provides a short list of guidelines for selecting the most appropriate software:

• should be easy to use;
• should feature quick response;
• should have an attractive array of default features;
• should feature live mark-up and/or annotation capabilities;
• should be useful across platforms (PC/Windows, Mac, Linux, Unix, etc.);
• should have real people supplying quick customer service;
• should be attractively priced;
• should feature free trial use.

In addition, Good shows the main features of products in each category and also gives the price and a user rating for each. Moreover, he gives the URL for Kolabora.Com, where more detailed information is available.

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The information Good presented was fairly straightforward and easy to understand.

But what did it have to do with multiliteracy? —Nothing directly and nothing mentioning multiliteracy by name. However, in order to understand what Good was describing, one needed to have a better-than-average level of tech literacy (in order to understand the different categories and the features they provided) and one also needed to have some familiarity with the more familiar established providers (e.g., LiveMeeting, Horizon Live, Eluminate) and what their products provide.

Good didn't really help me understand multiliteracy better, but he gave useful information—except for one key consideration: cost. While the fees asked by nearly all the "new-breed" providers were much less than the those asked by established providers, they were still pretty spendy from my point of view—at least for individuals. For entire school districts, universities, and the like, the costs might seem considerably more affordable, however.

I suppose Good's presentation made me realize that the more technologically literate the reader, the more sense the presentation would make. Other than that, it was much less informative vis-a-vis multiliteracy than what was said by both Downes and Siemens.









D. O.

Thoughts on Multiliteracy #4

Like Downes, Siemens (in "Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age") does not mention multiliteracy per se; what he describes, however, is similar to Downes' thoughts, though Siemens is much more focused.

Essentially Siemens says that three major conceptual frameworks— behaviorism, cognitivism, and constructivism—no longer seem to work as viable ways of describing learning and the nature of knowledge. This has happened, Siemens suggests, for a number of reasons—among them, the exponential growth of knowledge and the rapid diminution of its "shelf life"; a trend to move from lifetime jobs/careers to work in a variety of fields, even "unrelated" ones; a trend to see learning as a lifelong process, not the gradual acquisition of a discrete but limited set of skills and knowledge; a trend for learning to move from a formal, individual effort to an informal, social one; the effects of technology on our thinking; an interest in understanding the interface of organizational and individual learning; the fact that many processes formerly explained by learning theories can now be transferred to or supported by technology; the fact that, since the rapid increase of technology has made information more available than ever before, evaluation of information has taken on paramount importance; and the fact that acquiring discrete sets of information ("know-what") and specific skills ("know-how") is rapidly being supplemented (though not replaced) by the need to locate reliable information sources ("know-where").

Siemens also notes other changes:

• Knowledge is no longer being acquired in a linear fashion.

• Many cognitive operations (e.g., information storage and retrieval) which were once done individually by learners are now being done by technology.

• Traditional approaches to learning cannot provide a means of keeping current as the rapid expansion of technology continually results in an information explosion.

• Traditional approaches do not address those moments in which one must perform even when understanding is incomplete.

• Traditional approaches focus on order, yet a seeming lack of order—i.e., chaos and complex pattern recognition—is becoming more and more necessary.

• Traditional approaches cannot sufficiently address the importance of establishing open, yet systematic interconnections in differing fields of knowledge—interconnections which must be fluid, since they involve making decisions based on changeable patterns.
  

• Networking—forming social connections—is becoming more important than acquiring specific sets of information and skills: sharing knowledge with others is becoming more important than acquiring it in isolation.

• Open, self-organizing processes are becoming more important than absorbing sets of information and skills in lock-step fashion.

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Siemens then notes a new approach at describing the nature of knowledge and how it is acquired—connectivism. Siemens describes connectivism by listing what might be described as key tenets:

• A diversity of opinions gives rise to both learning and knowledge.

• The learning process consists of connecting specialized nodes of knowledge or sources of information.

• Learning may be extra-human: it may reside in non-human appliances.

• If continual learning (a key characteristic of connectivism) is to be facilitated, nurturing and maintenance of connections are critical.

• The focus of all connectivist learning activities is being current (i.e., both up-to-date and accurate).

• Decision-making is not seen as being part of the learning process, but as being a learning process in its own right. Further, choosing what to learn and ascribing meaning to incoming information must be flexible and changeable: an answer, for example, might be right today but wrong tomorrow because the information climate affecting a decision may change.

Siemens then goes on to describe other characteristics of connectivism:

• It requires organizations to manage the distribution of knowledge (connecting the right people with the right knowledge) and it also requires information flow to be active. Creating, preserving, and utilizing information flow should, according to Siemens, be a key organizational activity.

• It depends on effective social networks, since organizations have a collective cognitive capability. Further, effective social networks are built around "hubs": well-connected individuals who are able to both foster and maintain knowledge flow and who are interdependent with (one assumes) other networks and other "hubs."

• It depends on pattern recognition—especially understanding, through inference, of the interrelationships between "vast numbers of weak interrelations." The ability to perceive patterns and to include our own limited knowledge within such patterns can have an impact on our personal learning which Siemens describes as exponential.

• It depends on connections of information nodes which are indirect and unusual; such connections amplify learning, knowledge, and understanding through extension of one's personal network.

Finally, Siemens gives several implications that the notion of collectivism has outside of learning:

• management and leadership: Effective management of resources is challenging, since there must be a realization that complete knowledge cannot reside in one person only. Accordingly, utilization of diverse teams, each with varying viewpoints, is critical, as is the importance which must be given to innovation: revolutionary ideas must not be limited to fringe elements. Siemens sums up by saying that in order to survive in a knowledge economy (and also to decrease the time between ideas and their implementation), an organization must have the ability to foster, nurture, and synthesize the impacts of varying views of information.
  

• media, news, and information: Siemens notes that structured mainstream media, news, and information organizations are already being challenged by the open, real-time, two-way information flow represented by the much less structured and much less mainstream phenomenon of blogging.

• personal vs organizational knowledge management: Siemens suggests (I think) that personal knowledge management will become (or is becoming) at least as important as organizational knowledge management.

• design of learning environments: Siemens also suggests (I think) that the design of learning environments will be greatly affected by the expansion of what he calls connectivism. (My own interpretation, here, is that learning environments will need to become less wall-confined, less formal, less rigid, less controlled, less sterile, and less bound by the "soldiers-in-a-row-listening-to-lectures" prototype typical of past learning environments.)

Siemens concludes by saying that connections are more important than acquisition of discrete units of content ("The pipe is more important than the content within the pipe"), since "when knowledge . . . is needed but not known, the ability to plug into sources to meet the requirements becomes a vital skill." Siemens also both expands and highlights this key idea when he says, "As knowledge continues to grow and evolve, access to what is needed is more important than what the learner currently possesses."

Siemens then states that connectivism presents a model of learning that acknowledges major changes in society—changes which have led to the shift of learning away from an internal, individualistic activity. He also notes that the field of education has been slow to recognize the impact of both societal change and the new nature of learning—but then adds that connectivism provides insights into the skills and tasks which are appropriate and needed if learners are to flourish in a digital era.

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Siemens and Downes

On the whole, I found Siemens easier to understand than Downes—probably because even though I'm to a large extent intuitive, I'm still a product of the era of linear thinking and acquisition of knowledge by predetermined "packets." However, I found both Siemens' and Downes' explications meaningful—but meaningful in very different ways.

I would say that Siemens took a "choreographic" approach: by outlining basic tenets and characteristics of what might be called the "dance" of multiliteracy, the dance itself began to acquire a form. In Downes' approach, however, the "dancer" (Downes) became the dance—so to glean any understanding of what his message(s) entailed, one had to synthesize and co-experience whatever Downes was feeling and thinking and suggesting vis-a-vis the whole presentation (sight, sound, text, the many interconnected references) in an intuitive way.

A more traditional approach would have been to attempt to "digest" Siemens before tackling Downes. If that had been done, however, I think the flavor of multiliteracy would have been lost.

Thoughts on Multiliteracy #3

It's challenging to list how many kinds of multiliteracy can be recognized in Downes' remarks—partly because one has to be multiliterate to make sense out of what Downes had to say and partly because it's difficult to know what to call the various literacies that manifest themselves to one degree or another. Even so, I'll give this my best shot.

Multiliteracies I recognize in Downes' remarks:

academic literacy
Downes suggests that his remarks are modified by the limits imposed by the abstract he wrote for it. (Understanding the nature of abstracts is necessary in order to understand the limitations it imposed on his remarks.)

literary-rhetorical literacy
Downes uses several standard literary-rhetorical devices (e.g., analogy, metaphor, comparison) to clarify, expand, and synthesize many references and clusters of information.

name literacy
Downes uses names of people (William Gibson, Tim Reilly, Lessig, Rory McGreal, Shapiro, Varian, Hegel) to refer to varied interpretations of concept areas and to points of view which are both similar to and different from his own.

product literacy
Downes uses names of specific products (lego, NoteTab, Skype, Encyclopedia Britannica, wikipedia, Friendster, Orkut, Word) as examples of new media and as symbols for new protocols and processes for communication amd information processing.

institutional literacy
Downes uses names of corporations and organizations (Microsoft, Sun, Intel, Cisco, Yahoo, Compuserve, Prodigy, America Online) as quick references for many things—among them user characteristics, product design, and approaches to marketing and information management.

historical literacy
Downes mentions historical events (e.g., when Compuserve, Prodigy, and AOL joined the net; Romans, their chariots, and their roads; railtracks and shuttlecraft) in order to reference various historical milestones and to focus on catalysts for change.

business/marketing literacy
Downes frequently uses terms from business and marketing (vertical market, production based on demand, proprietary, commercial, peaked, declining, bundling, pay-per-view) as "shorthand" references to characteristics and protocols typical of new media.

jargon literacy
Downes uses terms which are common in the world of technology and new media (URL, remix, jewel case, telephony, DRM high-bar, IMS, spam, digital repositories, reusable learning objects, CSS, RSS, pdf, text editors, Real media, XML, mp3, SCORM, FTP, UseNet) but which might well be incomprehensible to those who are not directly involved in these areas or are involved but only marginally.

learning theory
Downes makes occasional reference to learning design and such approaches as needs analysis.

lexical literacy
Downes makes free use of English word-building techniques in order to coin new terms and to use existing terms in unexpected ways. He also freely draws on multiple meanings of specific terms (e.g., free = 'no cost' and free = 'unrestrained') and on use of unusual terms (affordance) in order to capture one's attention and to focus on varying points of view.

sociological literacy
Downes frequently uses sociological terms (e.g., institutional vs individual, peer-to-peer, diversity) to refer to characteristics of new media.

symbolic literacy
Downes frequently uses metaphors and similes ("like electricity, not like legos"; "it's like something that flows, it's like the water system"; lock-out, filter, directionality) in order to explain difficult concepts in a more understandable way.

contextual literacy
Downes' remarks don't make much sense unless they're heard or read as the PowerPoint is played.

cultural literacy
Downes makes at least on remark which suggests different world views among Canadians and Americans.

visual literacy
Downes' PowerPoint uses standard conventions to distinguish between primary information (e.g., key concepts of his talk) and supplements to these key concepts (citation information).

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And there are certainly more.

D. O.

Thoughts on Multiliteracy #2

After the last entry, I thought of an incident when I was a small boy in the southern part of Illinois more than 50 years ago: the death of my great-great aunt Victoria Pickens. "Aunt Vic," according to my maternal grandmother, had seen Abraham Lincoln and also remembered when there were Native Americans where we lived. More to the point, she had seen railroads become commonplace and had had to come to terms with "electrification" (my grandmother's word), cars, radio, and even air travel; she would also have become more globalized, due to the effects of World Wars I and II, and more "liberated" (due to universal sufferage). What an increase in inputs to her understanding! How her thinking must've changed!

My grandmothers added even more inputs. My maternal grandmother, Mamaw Cook, took societal changes by the tail and became the first woman in her family to bob her hair, drive a car, and get a divorce. My paternal grandmother, Granny Oliver, had an easy-going acceptance of "technology," since she kept her radio going almost all day long and was also one of the first in our small town to get a TV. Both died in the late 70s, so they experienced even more rapid changes in society and technology than "Aunt Vic"—changes which have continued their onward rush from the Industrial Age to the Information Age.


I suppose the inputs to my own understanding have actually been just as dramatic as those to "Aunt Vic" and my grandmothers. As a Baby Boomer, I remember the residue of Commie Bashing, newsreels at the movie theatre, the assassination of JFK, segregation before the Civil Rights Era, the birth of the Nation of Islam, the horrors of the war in Vietnam and the omnipotence of the draft board, and the Hippie Era. I also saw global air travel become commonplace, lived through UFO mania, came to take TV for granted, was forced to become part of the Computer Age, and made my first foray into cyberspace more than 20 years ago. My literacies changed, have changed, are changing, and will change even more.

Thoughts on Multiliteracy #1

Multiliteracy. Hmmm.

I've been pondering this topic for three days, and unless I completely misunderstand the ideas of the New London Group, literacy (absorbing information through the artifacts, such as the printed page, used to convey it) is, due to the globalization of society made possible through rapid advances in technology, changing: we understand through becoming color-literate, sound-literate, place-literate, and more.

I think we've always been "multiliterate": even what we understand from what we read changes as we accumulate life experience. We synthesize what we encounter along the way and add it to the mix of input from whatever medium adds to the message. We consider the social setting. We factor in cultural elements. We link to similar past experiences. We consider age and gender and occupation and purpose and a hundred other things—and as long as we remain mentally active, we all gradually become more and more multiliterate. I understand far differently now, I think, than I did at 16 or 30 or even 50 because my input both increases and changes.

I think what the New London Group has done is to try to shake up our thinking and force us to realize that many elements combine in the information processing we call 'understanding.' I don't think this is really anything new, though I grant that the ingredients of the mix of stimuli may be. We're all multiliterate. We have to be unless we want to remain frozen in time and space.

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Sources:

"Putting Multiliteracies to the Test"
Part 1
Part 2
Part 4