I still often feel that the discussion with e-learning and using information and communications technology (also social media) in education hasn’t been taken to the next level and it’s still mostly on how great it is that we have some devices to play with. Not too many reflect what this really asks from us, from the whole education system (from the management, leaders, teachers, pedagogy, everything). The shift isn’t just technological, even more, it is about us as humans and how we could learn the best in the changing world.

I was glad to read that, although a magazine writing more about technological things, CW mostly addressed this topic very nicely. They wrote about how the role of the teacher should be turned more into a facilitator, how new [worldwide] learning communities are emerging and how learning is changing more and more ubiquitous, i.e. the classroom isn’t the king anymore.

Although, I have a couple of things to add. Even if we are giving individual devices (for example PDAs or smart phones) to the students to use in the classes, we also have to change the pedagogy, how we teach. The devices are alone just devices. Like books are just books.

The new paradigm of Networked Society asks for systemic thinking and creativity, not just the ability to answer right to teacher’s right or wrong questions. So to introduce new devices and to use them merely as polling devices for teacher’s questions to see who knows the correct answer and who doesn’t, isn’t anything new, creative nor too effective.

Using devices with social media applications for collaborative knowledge construction and facilitated learning experience are one of the most important goals we should begin to explore more deeply. Like stated in the CW’s article, facilitation is very important in this kind of pedagogy, but few know what real facilitation really takes. To facilitate is to help the learner to learn more efficiently and to construct his/her understanding in a deeper level.

Facilitation doesn’t mean we give answers to students, like some teachers thinking with traditional way of teaching do, but we help them to build the understanding on the topic and ease their way towards their goals. Deep learning doesn’t happen with just reading a book about a topic and answering some right/wrong answers. It happens with getting to know the topic from different angles, reflecting it with other people (face-to-face or online) and applying it to something or building something totally new from it.

We have long known that people don’t learn by just remembering. Just think about your own best learning experiences. That’s why we need to bring what people think is learning to a whole new level.

So if the topic about the future of learning interests you, pic up the issue on your favorite device (although I have to confess, I read it in paper ).

Building an interactive One Room School Experience in Second Life: An example of TPACK at work
Kajal Shah, Mimi Lee, Iowa State University, USA

Excellent feel-good presentation about using Second Life! Nice to see someone so excited about her subject as she was!

Also, some great thoughts to think about:

“The students know a lot more about technology, why not letting them to teach us [the teachers] these things as they know more about them? No problem with authority, engaging and the students feel they are special and know something.”

This raised an interesting discussion between participants about the fact, do younger people really know more about tech than the older people? I think it could be more like “the one who knows, should be the teacher at that time”. Sometimes some people know more and sometimes less, but generalizing that kids know it generally better can be a bit misleading statement.

This is a question I’ve been pondering a lot lately when I’ve cleared to many people what I do for a living. Could a simple deduction practice help to determine this?

So am I a,

1. Creative Director?

This is something I even printed on my business card, because at that time it sounded this is what I do.

But in order to be a director, shouldn’t you be having people to direct, right? Well, first of all, I work through networks, and my job description varies a lot, so simple Creative Director [although it sounds good and very mighty] doesn’t do the trick.

2. Just a “Creative”

Well this is most definitely an ambiguous term in a time when everyone and everything is somewhat “creative” or “innovative”. So, no thanks.

3. Social Media Expert?

I find this term a bit hilarious, but I had to put it here in order to make a statement: If there’s someone telling he is a social media expert, don’t believe him. At least too easily.

There are people who understand a lot more about the current web than others, but there are also some of those who try to open up for you a Twitter account or a Facebook Fan Page without really making it clear what it all means.

I would be most cautious about how much we can currently understand what will become of this early mess that we call social media, social web or whatever.

4. Digital Native

I could also be called digital media native, but it’s not quite selling and most likely there aren’t too many people who even know what that means. And in the end it’s more a description than a profession anyway.

5. Digital Media Agent

I tried this for a week, but the word agent sounds like I’m a movie agent, or something from the James Bond saga. Yes, I’m investigating things and sometimes wear a suit, but that’s about it. No Walther PPK, just a Mac, sorry.

With this description I wanted to be considered someone who connects people with digital media.

Epilogue

I believe that new times need new descriptions. We didn’t say ” Metal horse” when the car was invented.

So what am I then? Like I’ve always said that I don’t want to categorize people or to be categorized too heavily [that can prevent self development and growth], but sometimes it’s just something that you have to do in order to make other people understand what you do for a living and where your professionalism could be helpful.

So currently I’m using the title Social and Digital Media Coach. This for two reasons,

2. Because I don’t want to be mixed with the label “professional” or “expert” too strongly. I believe the things in social media to be flexible and something that you need to consider with your client or whoever you are working with. You know, together, and not from your professional ivory tower.

And this is how I want the process to be, because that’s the only way to make people understand the new possibilities the web can actually offer. Possibilities that go far beyond than just simple status updating or Fan Paging.

EDIT (after much reasoning): I have to admit that I was wrong; there’s no one definite term I could currently use. There’s just situational terms and being a creative person I just cannot lock myself up with one.

So yes, unfortunately the term “Creative” that I’m mocking up there is a good term, and so is “Trainer”. So let’s keep with these for a while.

This is something that we all of course know in the basic level, but don’t often remember it before we again find ourselves in a situation where someone is acting differently that we usually would.

This is crucial for us so-certain-of-everything social media professionals to understand. People tend to use social media services differently and there’s really not a one real way to do things. It’s also creative and refreshing to speak with different people about them using social media, because you always hear about new ways you haven’t thought before – some are ‘good’ and some not that good.

So, instead of telling people how, we should make them more often ask the question why. Why do you do certain things with certain services in social media? And the reason cannot be simply “because one has to be there”.

This eventually comes to the need of having a strategy, which I think is as important with one’s personal success as with company’s. In these speedy times we tend to forget the reason, the goals behind our actions.

Here’s a simple checklist of thoughts to think while surfing in the wave of social media. These aren’t specifically social media related. I believe these are things that everyone who wants to achieve something should once in a while to ask themselves.

What am I trying to achieve with my current actions?

If I’m posting to my corporate Twitter account about how I’m “Doing a project”, does anybody care, really?

But posting “Contemplating a project for teaching #e-learning in rural schools in #Africa” instead [and maybe even using hashtags for helping people easier to find these topics], tells much more about you and your intentions and people who might be interested about e-learning and Africa might find you and start follow you – and if you are lucky, want to ask you more about these things. So remember to tell more about that issue in the future.

How’s my message?

We tend to sound different to ourselves than to other people. Ask someone, your friend, your partners, your customers or your mom; How do I seem/sound/feel like to you?

But once again, it’s up to you do you listen or not. Not everyone’s opinion matter and if you feel like your doing the right moves, stick with them.

Continuity (i.e. sticking with the story)

We are living in a story based society, or at least that’s what they are telling us everywhere. In a way that’s true and has always been with human beings from the dawn of times, but one has to really think what’s the story to tell.

One of the biggest benefits of continuity in your messages is that people tend to remember patterns better, instead of just single portions of different information. Also message that is lined with the previous ones “adds up” to the story being built – with a word “story” I don’t necessarily mean something fake or invented by the Creative Department.

How does being social benefit me?

What is the benefit of you blogging? Does it relieve your creative ambitions, is it just for fun, do you want to share your thoughts about your field of profession or show how good picture you can take?

If you can’t find any reason at all, you should really ask is blogging for me? But, here one should be cautious: It doesn’t necessarily mean that blogging is useless for you if you can’t think why to do it.

Search the web, what other people in your field of interest or profession are doing, ask your friends who are “socially fluent” so or ask a professional.

Use common sense

If you don’t know what to do in the web in some situation, ask yourself, how would you act in real life?

I’ve now faced a couple of times questions like “Who should I recommend in LinkedIn?” or “Should I go comment to someone’s blog if they have said something about me or about my company?”.

Think these in terms “Would I recommend this person in my normal life, is he or she worth it, do I really know her enough?” or “Do I want to show as a company that I care what people say about me?” and if it’s something good they’ve said “How would I feel if a company that I have praised in my blog would all of a sudden thank me directly in my blog?”.

Be polite

The web is currently a place easily get kicked in the head for small things or even nothing. But those who will answer to this kind of behavior with politeness and reason, are those to eventually survive another day. The web has a long memory and people are often more forgiving than people even consider themselves to be.

Like I wrote in the beginning of this post, if you can invent X variations of how to use social media tools, listening to others may get you to a whole different place, 10 times. So why not learn from others.

When I started to think about establishing my company, Digital_Alpaca, I started it from the values; from how my company could also for its part make this ball called Earth a little more decent place.

Back then I just had a glimpse of the idea, a feeling that there should be something more than just making money, cool mobile apps or web sites. I wanted to put my professional skills to a better use and offer my view and professionalism to the use for other people.

“Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth.”

I’ve always liked this quote from Muhammad Ali. I believe that if you want to be good in something, you should be egoistic because the true learning process is from the inside out. Otherwise if you do too much of the things that other people tell you to or expect you to do, you may get lost in the way or spend your time doing the wrong things. But one shouldn’t be selfish to the end. I don’t feel that real success can be achieved by only trying to get more to yourself – of course there are some who do, but are they truly happy is another question. I think one should share their selves to others in order to achieve a genuine and lasting fulfillment and self-development.

But back to my idea of wanting to do good. It came sooner than I thought, almost like dropped to my lap, and I’m really, really happy about it. Like I’ve tweeted the last two weeks, I’ve been taking part in hosting guests from the University of Dar es Salaam and Butimba Teachers’ College of Mwanza. The goal of the program that is going to be established is to improve the accessibility to high quality education in Tanzania through e-Learning programs.

My role is to give support in usability, visual design and designing to the web, and this week I gave the first basic presentation about these subjects to our guests. The actual workshops of these parts of the project take place next June in Dar es Salaam and after these past two weeks I’m really anxiously waiting for the next summer! The people who visited Tampere, were really great and I believe we will have lots of fun and of course a lot to do too.

I believe that the two weeks our guest were here, they learned a lot, but so did we who spent more time with them. In situations like these you start to understand better why you want to help and how.

For me it is more meaningful to help with ‘Me’ instead of just putting a coin to a box and never see where it’s going to help, or if it’s going to help. I’m not saying  fund-raising is useless and it should be stopped, but I myself believe in the longer sustainability of helping like this and I can see where the support is going.

Next summer is going to be something really different, I understand it now. It’s going to be interesting to see what kind of Marko comes out of it. I’m really thankful to be able to participate in a project like this and would like to give a “thumbs up” to those people who have originally started this and are managing it now and in the future. Something great has to come out from this all.

This morning I found out in Twitter that some guys were going to have a collective listening of Free, a book by Chris Anderson, in Spotify. For this, there was a chain, or a qaiku, made to Qaiku where participants could communicate and keep collective notes.

The idea was that everyone would listen every chapter at the same time and thus the notes from everyone who wanted to write them, would be submitted to the right part of the listening session’s message chain.

It was also an interesting way of enhancement to the learning experience when participants provided links and messages to extra information about matters in the book – although some information seemed a bit hard to take in use: for example paper magazine articles are not that easy to link.

People acting this way without someone whipping us to do so, clearly indicates how we can collaborate and share our knowledge with each others and thus expand the amount of information we may gain, even from a single one book.

It would be interesting to see would it change the learning experience to more effective if a book was listened to like this, chapter by chapter, but after each chapter the participants would stop to discuss about the subjects they just heard about. Then after a while when the conversation was diminishing, would carry on.

It was a shame that I couldn’t participate to this as intensely as I would’ve wanted to. Despite of it this experiment left an interesting aftertaste and visions of new ways of eLearning and collaboration in learning and how they could develop to be a standard way of doing things. Hope to see more things like this in the future!

Here’s a link to Juhana Kokkonen’s [juhana2 in Qaiku] post about this at Juhana.org: http://juhana.org/2009/08/avoin-ad-hoc-opiskelukokeilukutsu/. He originally invented the idea.

Tero Heiskanen’s post [in Finnish], written almost in real time during the listening, can be found here: http://teroheiskanen.net/2009/08/26/free-ilmainen/

I have a feeling, that we’re soon going to hear a lot more news from the mankind’s first home.

Africa is a rising continent, it is probably the next ‘big thing’ in our beautiful need of always something new. Africa is coming in every field.

Most likely people who follow their time have already smelled this in the air, but I have to write this down so I can say to myself ‘I told me so’ when this all slightly happens. Check out my small list of the signs. This is just a scratch, so add more if you think there’s something missing:

1. Art: I think I just wrote about this here: Exhibition: Tampere Art Museum – AFRICA/NOW Contemporary Art from Africa. Strangely, this has been one of the most read posts in my blog ever since.
2. Business: Just last week I read from one of the largest business magazine in Finland how this is the time to invest in Africa. Google results happen to know this too: 5 680 000 hits with the words “invest in african shares”.
3. Videogames: Do I even have to mention Resident Evil 5?
4. Fashion and Apparel: Just read the April’s Time Magazine‘s Style&Design supplement where there was a large article about African fashion and handmade jewelry, bags and any other things you can imagine. Oh, did I already mention how the H&M’s shop window looked like this morning? That’s right: very tribal.
   
5. Teaching, eLearning and Mobile: There has been a couple of very interesting starting collaborations in the field of eLearning and business, and continent has a huge potential study ground in using mobile phones. Maybe this is the place where mobile learning really takes off?
   
6. Politics: Obama, anyone?
7. Music: Well, I’m not a big fan of MTV, basically because they don’t play too much the music I like. But when you tune in to the channel, there’s an awfully lot of music which has its roots deep in the traditional African music. OK, this was maybe too obvious, but now the list is even longer.
   
8. I’m somehow writing about this. Of course the most important sign to me.

I hope this possible contemporary development is good. Too many times we have seen that the so-called progress has been just another sign of western greed and pursue of wealth, or just anther trend which is forgotten after it has been sucked dry.

Could this be the time when we stop just feeding donation money there and give real sustainable help to the continent’s needs, which can only be done by honest human effort? The issue is clearly a hard one.