It's About Learning

iPhone users driving nearly half of smartphone Web traffic

Dwayne Harapnuik — October 18, 2012 — Leave a comment

iPhone users driving nearly half of smartphone Web traffic | Mobile – CNET News via kwout

It is currently a two horse race between the IOS and Android. Samsung must be mentioned as a major player in this space considering it is the developer of the Galaxy S2, S3 and Google’s own Nexus device not to mention all the other models of smartphones is has offered. Apple and Android own the smartphone and it will be interesting to see how much of an impact Windows 8, Microsoft Surface and the Nokia phones will make on these numbers. There is also the long shot that RIM may revive some interest in its platform in 2013 but most people believe RIM will be a niche play at best.

It is always fascinating to see just how much an impact the smartphone has had in such a short period.

When you combine the smartphone growth With the explosive growth of the iPad, mobile access to the web is now the new norm. Perhaps the most exciting part about this for learners is that access to the world’s information is truly available all the time and from everywhere. Even more exiting is the fact that we has just started to see development in this space. One can only imagine where we will be in the next 3-5 years.

In mobile, Uncategorized android, IOS, iPhone, smartphone

It’s Just the Way We do Things Around Here…

Dwayne Harapnuik — October 17, 2012 — Leave a comment

PLEASE NOTE: There are several videos on Youtube that highlight the parable of the five monkeys and while this experiment is NOT based on actual research the principles extracted from the fable are still useful.

Most people or organizations who use this parable point to Harry Harlow the American psychologist best known for his maternal-separation and social isolation experiments on rhesus monkeys as the source for but the parable can more than likely attributed to the work of Gordon R. Stephenson:

“Stephenson (1967) trained adult male and female rhesus monkeys to avoid manipulating an object and then placed individual naïve animals in a cage with a trained individual of the same age and sex and the object in question. In one case, a trained male actually pulled his naïve partner away from the previously punished manipulandum during their period of interaction, whereas the other two trained males exhibited what were described as “threat facial expressions while in a fear posture” when a naïve animal approached the manipulandum. When placed alone in the cage with the novel object, naïve males that had been paired with trained males showed greatly reduced manipulation of the training object in comparison with controls. Unfortunately, training and testing were not carried out using a discrimination procedure so the nature of the transmitted information cannot be determined, but the data are of considerable interest.”

Sources:
Stephenson, G. R. (1967). Cultural acquisition of a specific learned response among rhesus monkeys. In: Starek, D., Schneider, R., and Kuhn, H. J. (eds.), Progress in Primatology, Stuttgart: Fischer, pp. 279-288.

Mentioned in: Galef, B. G., Jr. (1976). Social Transmission of Acquired Behavior: A Discussion of Tradition and Social Learning in Vertebrates. In: Rosenblatt, J.S., Hinde, R.A., Shaw, E. and Beer, C. (eds.), Advances in the study of behavior, Vol. 6, New York: Academic Press, pp. 87-88:

In Video - Wednesday Watchlist creativity, culture, habit

File-Sharers Buy 30% More Music Than Non-P2P Peers

Dwayne Harapnuik — October 16, 2012 — Leave a comment

File-Sharers Buy 30% More Music Than Non-P2P Peers | TorrentFreak via kwout

The following statement needs repeating:

One of the most comprehensive studies into media sharing and consumption habits in the United States and Germany reveals that file-sharers buy 30% more music than their non-sharing counterparts. The result confirms that file-sharers are actually the music industry’s best customers…

This is direct contrast to what the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) claims:

The more music people pirate, the less they buy…

What does this have to do with learning? A great deal when you consider that the best way to determine who is right is to see what the data says. According to the Copy Culture report by the American Assembly, a non-partisan public policy forum affiliated with Columbia University, people who pirate music files purchase 30% more than those who don’t.

This isn’t the first study, nor the last, that will reveal this fact. When will we start making decisions and implementing policy based on the facts?

For the additional information read the American Assembly posts:
Unauthorized File Sharing: Is It Wrong?
Where do Music Collections Come From?

Wh

In Technology & Culture file sharing, music, piracy, pirates

Smart failure for a fast-changing world

Dwayne Harapnuik — October 15, 2012 — Leave a comment

The key concept in this talk needs repeating:

And this is what I’m trying to explain has happened to us in the 21st century. Somebody or something has changed the rules about how our world works. When I’m joking, I try and explain it happened at midnight, you see, while we were asleep, but it was midnight 15 years ago. Okay? You didn’t notice it? But basically, what they do is, they switched all the rules round, so that the way to successfully run a business, an organization, or even a country, has been deleted, flipped, and it’s a completely new — you think I’m joking, don’t you — there’s a completely new set of rules in operation. Did you notice that? I mean, you missed this one. You probably — No, you didn’t. Okay.

My simple idea is that what’s happened is, the real 21st century around us isn’t so obvious to us, so instead we spend our time responding rationally to a world which we understand and recognize, but which no longer exists.

The following video provides another perspective on the World After Midnight:

The world has radically changed and most people are still trying to make sense of it in from a perspective that no longer exists. Where you up at midnight 15 years ago? Did you notice the change? Some of us were…so why won’t you listen to us?

In 21st century learning, Innovation Change, failure, global

Arts Integration for Deeper Learning: Its the Context and Environment that Matter

Dwayne Harapnuik — October 12, 2012 — 2 Comments

When I reviewed this video my former colleague Tyler Wall, the Lead Media Specialist at Lethbridge College, sent my way I immediately thought: this is great–but it isn’t the Arts program that is the key to this success. The Arts integration is simply the mechanism or catalyst that provides the context for learning. Students are not asked to just regurgitate information, they are required to apply what they are learning to some context that is Arts related. Or an Arts context is the starting point for teasing out principle that the students need to discover, understand and then apply.

It is the context and the environment that really matters and Arts integration programs are wonderful ways to move the learning environment beyond recipe and regurgitation and onto deeper learning. But Arts integration is not the only way to create a significant learning environment and the context for learning. STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) schools or programs are becoming popular in the US because they provide a project based focus for students to use the STEM disciplines to create solutions to real problems. Another unique school that provides a positive context and signficant learning environment is the Oasis Alternative Secondary School which is behind the Oasis Skateboard Factory. Students are involved in the planning, design, production and distribution of skateboards. This program has not only helped many kids to appreciate learning it has also saved many kids from dropping out of school.

My wife and I have been using significant learning environments with our own two boys. My youngest son Caleb recently built up a Specialized Demo 7 downhill mountain bike. The following video highlights the bare frame build up but it doesn’t show the over 100 hours of work that went into planning the project, finding and aquiring the right frame, parts and components and finally the building and testing.

The right context and learning environment empower students to learn while they create something meaningful. Whether it is creating art, performing dance or theatre, building skateboards or bikes or working on a “real world” STEM related project it is very clear that our students benefit greatly by being creative. These types of programs or personal initiatives help to provide the context and the learning environment that motivate learners to create and learn. Unfortunately, these are the exception and not the norm.

Why are we so quick to highlight these exceptions and laud their effectiveness but fail to move beyond these special programs? Don’t we owe it to our children and society’s future to provide significant learning environments for all our students?

In Learning create, significant learning environment, STEM