Last year, I ran into a Call for chapters for a book on Open Online Courses edited by Rita Kop, Stephen Downes and George Siemens, so I decided it would be worth to try and organize a (somewhat general) account of the work I’ve been doing in this area since 2009, to communicate some of its outcomes to a non-Spanish audience.
Here’s a first (somewhat rough) draft of that chapter. Even though it contains a lot of information, there’s a lot that could not be said in the available space. Obviously, there’s plenty of room for improvement, so comments and suggestions will be very well received.
A few months ago, and taking as a starting point the presentation I did in OpenEd'09, I started to write an account of the work I did from 2007 to 2009 with the EduCamp workshops. It took longer than expected, but finally I have a full draft (release candidate, let's say) in English, which complements the chapter I wrote last year for this book edited by Alejandro Piscitelli and published by Espacio Fundación Telefónica of Argentina.
I'm deeply grateful to Stephen Downes, Scott Leslie and Linda Ashworth, who were extremely kind and took (a lot of) time to read the initial draft. I learned a lot from their suggestions, which definitely improved this version. It's important to say, though, that any error lingering in the document is my responsibility, not theirs.
So far, the document doesn't include any info about the workshop I did with secondary school students a few months ago, so it's an account of things that happened in 2007-2009. I'll have to find an opportunity to talk a bit more about it.
If you distribute this draft, please keep in mind that it is exactly that, a draft, and that there's a lot of room for improvement. Of course, if you have suggestions and comments, I'll be quite happy to hear them.
UPDATE (2010/10/13): I uploaded a second draft of this document, which includes additional information and reads a little better. The title was changed to better reflect the content.
On November 20 we'll begin a new series of EduCamps in several cities in Colombia. That's more than enough reason to try and finish the report of what happened in last year's workshops , as a starting point for thinking about how to improve them this year. This is the second in a series of four posts on this subject.
Starting an idea
The workshop in Bogota was the first one we did. With logistical support from CINTEL (the most important telecommunication research center in our country), we found a space designed for mass gatherings (called Logyk, if I remember correctly), where we arranged things to carry out the experiment.
After conducting several meetings with the entire CINTEL and MoE (Ministry of Education) teams, explaining in detail what we wanted to do, and showing how part of the challenge was to achieve a very open and informal (which, incidentally, was so uncommon as stimulating for all of us), we got to the day before the event (Tuesday, December 4 2007). While the staff members were putting on place tables, chairs and computers (all these hired by MoE with support from CINTEL), my previous work was to meet with Stephen and a group of students who would help us to coordinate the workshop the next day (all of them selected by CINTEL).
These students were supposed to be "catalysts" for the activity of over-the-shoulder learning. In the first meetings, we wondered what would happen if among the participants, we could not find users of any of the proposed tools. This made us consider the importance of having some knowledgeable users to start the activity. And here began the surprises. My initial assumption was that these students would have knowledge of the tools selected (by completing a total of 10) because, after all, they are "digital natives". The fact was that most of these tools were unknown to them too, although they had much experience in handling some of them (the most "social" ones).
Photo: Stephen Downes
The meeting was little more than a short description of what was supposed to happen the next day, in an atmosphere much more formal that I would have liked (a roundtable). I think this was caused, in part, by our own ignorance about what would happen. Meanwhile, staff were setting up the room where we would have the initial conference, placing tables and chairs in neat rows, in a traditional lecture format.
Putting on the t-shirt
Next morning, the registration started very early, and one of the big surprises for the participant were the white t-shirts we were giving them. Stephen and MoE staff (myself included) would have black t-shirts. The support students were dressed in red ones. The other participants would receive a white one. The t-shirt fulfilled two functions: first, to make easy for participants to tag themselves (in a previous meeting, someone suggested that people dressed with special clothing would be completely unwilling to stick adhesives to it); second, this simple garment helped to generate a sense of identity.
After many greetings and reunions with old acquaintances, and a reasonably informal atmosphere, we started the workshop.
First, a short presentation by me, talking about the structure of the National Program on Media and ICT Use (named that way at that time) and sharing with the audience what was going to happen throughout the day (IMPORTANT: This presentation is about one year old. Many things changed on the structure of the program on these months):
For those who do not want to watch the presentation, I want to highlight some "Game Rules" we defined at the beginning:
* Upon arrival, be prepared to share with other participants.
* When you leave, be prepared to share with the world.
* We are all learners.
* No one is a tourist.
* Whatever happens is the only thing that could have happened.
For me, the last one is perhaps the most important of all, and I think it speaks of something that also appeared in CCK08: It is not possible for one person to learn everything, or consume all the information produced by a large group of people . That is the world we live in. So we need to understand that we can only do what is within our reach, and that whatever that is, it is fine. Very philosophical.
Then came Stephen's talk, which was intended to provide a conceptual framework for the activities of the day:
As usual, Stephen caught the attention of the audience (not just of those who understood English, but everyone, thanks to the excellent work of the interpreters who supported the event). An interesting aspect of each person having his own computer, was discovering how many of them sought ways to record their ideas on the conference,whether by taking notes online, or using text processors and then emailing the files the themselves. (Tip: It is important to identify ways in which all participants can benefit from these notes, which we did not this first time).
After this talk, we started our work. The first thing we proposed to the participants was to draw their personal learning environment (PLE), and then start a process of peer learning (because everyone had a laptop), where everyone was expected to be both learner and teacher at the same time. The first part might not have had the impact we wanted, because I realized too late the need to expand a bit more what Stephen had mentioned on the PLE concept, and the only example I had at hand was a very raw diagram I made by hand before the workshop. (Tip: For this year, the ideas on PLE have matured a lot more. We have new elements to help participants make sense of their PLEs).
Once they made explicit which tools they used in their PLE, they would have to write down each tool in an adhesive label (that is, a tag) and put it on their t-shirt. Those labels would represent those things they knew about, those things they could teach about. They were asked to identify the tools they would like to know more about (we gave them a "tool sheet" including descriptions and URL of several tools, in 13 categories), and their mission was to find someone tagged with the tool they wanted to learn about, and ask that person to teach them about it.
With some initial diagrams, and the excuse of a coffee break in the middle of the morning, participants addressed the second part of the job, now with a much more informal atmosphere (tables and chairs were unorganized, and many people were on the space outside the auditorium, where more comfortable couches and sofas could be found). The only real requirement for this activity was a working Internet connection, for it was here where would be the greatest burden for the network. That was the only thing that was not supposed to fail.
Murphy's law
I think I heard the statement "If something can go wrong, it will" about 15 years ago, and since then (and with the multitude of paragraphs and corollaries added to it) I keep it in mind as a reminder of how those things we don't want to happen are the ones set to occur more frequently. In the case of the workshop, the only thing that shouldn't have failed, connectivity, failed. The wireless routers that were in place could not endure the burden of all users and collapsed one after another, leaving only a very small group of people online. The flaw was visible only when usage of the access points became intense (because initially, because we were in lecture mode, there were not many people using the network services). This left us in a situation quite difficult during the rest of the morning. The only solution to the problem was getting new routers, which only would come around noon.
Something that comes back to my mind, is that this incident created some tension between the organizers (including myself), because even though the response I received was "the network is not down" (which was absolutely correct from a technical point of view), the experience for everyone else was of a lousy network connection (which was unfair, given that we hired 20Mb for the day).
Photo: elearningcolombia
This situation reminds me of past situations in which engineers, ignoring completely the experience being lived by those who do not know about technical issues (and are not interested, also), try to explain that the experience they are living is not correct, and that almost everything is "running". I suppose it is a matter of empathy, and maybe it is learned best over the years ...
Anyway, participants were engaged against all odds and tried to perform the proposed tasks. All I could do was to say everyone that what we were living was something that could happen all the time, and that it was one of the challenges that we had to confront as teachers. However, it was clear to everyone that this affected the achievement of our objectives (this was expressed in the survey done after the workshop), as some of them said via Ustream:
We all tried and did our best to compensate for the situation. The students sat close to those with connectivity to support the participants. Me, I ended up sitting on the floor trying to explain the workings of a wiki using sheets of paper, taking ideas from the videos of CommonCraft. Some of them who managed to complete the mission, left traces of it on YouTube:
So, it was noon, and we went to lunch. Just before we left, the connectivity problem was solved, which led us to alter the schedule we had planned.
Plan B
Despite of everything that happened, the balance was positive at noon. Participants were very engaged and just the messy environment was for many of them a remarkable thing. But we were faced with a real problem: very few people had the opportunity to experience throughout the morning with the tools we had anticipated. There were a lot of conversations, but there wasn't that much exploration. That left us in a difficult situation for the first activity of the afternoon (which intended to collect ideas on possible ways to use the tools). For this reason, we decided to change our plan on the fly, and use the work tables in the afternoon as "demonstration stations", in which students were asked to talk about the functionality and ways to use some of the tools.
This was a case in which the idea of "Whatever happens is the only thing that could have happened" became true, even for us as organizers. And we faced the need to relax and accept that we would not achieve what we had initially imagined, but something different. Not better or worse, just different.
But this unexpected change, made on the fly, was also appreciated by some of the participants:
(This teacher talks about how recursive we were to change things and try to get them to see what they couldn't see in the morning. He's nice enough as to say that this was a "dynamic solution created on the fly")
However, not everything was perfect. We never thought the students would have to be in charge of "demonstration stations", so some of them (without liability on their part) did not have an adequate mastery of the tool they had to face. This meant that, for example, those who showed Facebook were able to show the participants what could be done with the tool, whereas there were cases (like Twitter, for example) in which for obvious reasons this activity was not so helpful. However, the situation was a great lesson who would use two days later, in Medellin.
While all this was happening, we were streaming (and recording) using Ustream. We had a video feed showed in one of the two plasma TVs we had in the room, while the other (which was outside the auditorium) was frankly underused.
The change in the dynamics meant that the activity that was planned for the beginning of the afternoon disappeared completely from the schedule. And instead of delaying everything, we continued with the rest of the agenda as we planned initially.
Our unconference
We prepared a large "board" with two half-hour slots and five tables for each slot, to complete a total of 10 possible discussions. We invite attendees to propose their topics of discussion and to sit down on the tables according to the number assigned to the discussion, and according to their own interests. The game rule here was: "If you are not learning or taking part in a discussion, please move to another one", to remind everyone that it was not required to stay in a place where they did not feel they should be.
Discussions proceeded without any problem, and then came the moment for every discussion leader to share their conclusions with the whole group. Curiously, this activity started to become kind of boring, not only because of the time (it was already 5p.m.), but because of the extent to which some participants took their points. Adding up the fact that we had 10 discussions, the discussion became longer than we would have liked it to be.
With this activity, we ended the first workshop. Due to accumulated fatigue throughout the day, we did not held a long meeting after that, but hardly discussed the critical aspects to be taken into account in Medellin, which became important lessons.
Lessons learned
Perhaps the first one is the importance of connectivity, and the need of having a plan B to make activities possible.
The flexibility in design and objectives is crucial. The building of enough confidence as to propose a change on the road is essential, and in fact constitutes a message about the use of technology: We need to change our actions depending on the context that we have around us.
The people of CINTEL proposed to play a little more with the room layout in Medellin, because we would have some space constraints. In Bogota, people left the auditorium after Stephen's conference (as there was a sort of lobby outside), which allowed us to reorganize tables and alter the space. We would not be able to do this in Medellín, so their proposal was to have a more informal atmosphere since the beginning. This messy space was, curiously, rather well received by many of the participants.
We could not make assumptions about the ability of the support students in handling the tools. We would have to do something about this situation, before the second workshop.
It was neccesary to limit the time for the final group discussion.
To finish, some opinions of the participants:
Two days later, we would have our second "trail": Medellin.
NOTE: Please let me know about mistakes and possible improvements in this writing. I tried to do a close translation of an Spanish post, so it may seem a little "funny" every now and then.
This is the first post in a series of four, in which I will be reporting and commenting on the experience we had last year (December 2007) with a couple of EduCamps (that is, workshops on the use of social software tools) we offered, from the Ministry of Education, in Bogotá and Medellín. This task is long (I mean, really long) overdue, but I finally decided to undertake it. This first post includes information about the origins, motivations and decisions that guided the design of the workshop and a link to a page on my wiki, where you can find all the wiki">detailed design (in Spanish, so far).
The second and third posts will be devoted to show a little of what happened in Bogotá and Medellín, respectively. The last one will contain some lessons learned and a sort of "toolbox" and suggestions, if you want to embark on an adventure of this sort on your own.
It is worth saying that it may pass some time to get to complete the four posts. However, I promised Stephen a long time ago to write in English about this, so it's a commitment that I really want to honor.
With that said, let's get started!
The idea of the workshops came a Saturday afternoon in Bogota (August 2007), while talking to Nancy White, Jay Cross and Fernando, a day after we finished the International Seminar on E-Learning Quality we organized back then, in which we had them as guest speakers.
Nancy mentioned that, while taking notes during the event (Nancy is a person incredibly efficient to take notes!) and reporting online what was happening , Ulf (Ulf-Daniel Ehlers, another of the guest speakers) asked about some of the tools she was using. She explained to him, and then Ulf did the same with Virginie (another guest speaker), who was sitting next to him.
This little situation was quite appealing to Nancy so, later, we ended up discussing how to organize an experience meant to foster "over-the-shoulder" learning. The ideas discussed were meant to turn into something "concrete" that what we often do with our colleagues (and even perfect strangers), when we read the newspaper of someone sitting next to us, or when we ask for help to someone sitting in the next chair in our office. In fact, this is a very common practice among programmers, for example, who share tips and solutions while working on the same computer room...
We saw that, if we wanted such an experiment to be successful, we would need each participant to have his own computer and, taking into account the intense use that both Nancy and Jay make of online tools, we would need a good Internet connection.
Back then, through my feeds I had already heard about Pecha Kucha and some of the BarCamps and PodCamps made in the United States and Europe, and about the experimental traveling unconference made in New Zealand in early 2007. I discussed about it with Jay and Nancy, and I started to see the huge importance of designing an event in which, to reproduce what I heard from Nancy and Stephen repeatedly, we could model practices of collaboration between perfect strangers, in an environment that would allow them to discover that we all can be teachers and learners at the same time.
To keep this short, in the following months I got more info about some of the various alternatives available in the unconference world (including, let's say, the OpenSpace technology and the World Café), and I started to design the overall narrative for the event.
The design document, which served as a guide to the activities of the workshop, can be found in my wiki (in Spanish only). From a static document (as released in December 2007), my wish is that it becomes a support to organizers and facilitators of this type of activity, so that's why it is a wiki right now.
As in so many other things, I have to say that the confidence that Claudia Zea and Maria Victoria Angulo gave me to launch these workshops was priceless, as well as the support of my team at the Ministry of Education (Gloria James, Karen Caceres and Francisco Suarez). The support offered by CINTEL to put in place all the logistics is equally priceless. And last but not least, the decision of Stephen Downes to join us in this new adventure was invaluable. Now, I would not say it was unexpected, because Stephen is someone with a very open mind to undertake this kind of thing, but I think it was very fortunate, because the date of the workshops matched a small space in his agenda, which allowed him to join us in Bogotá and Medellín.
Now, one may wonder why Stephen Downes and not any other speaker. The workshop is built on a background related not only to collaborative learning, but relies on concepts such as connectivism, personal learning environments and, ultimately, has to do with the possibility that each learner should have of discovering his interests (and eventually explore them with the support of technology), beyond a curriculum or some pre-defined learning goals.
During my time at the Ministry and through the inmersion I had in the blogosphere, I discovered that Downes is one of those people who not only preaches about technology, nor talks about its potential, but he takes time not only to use it, but to share, create and experiment with it. But it was not only a matter of technology. Stephen is also at the center of discussions about connectivism, e-learning and personal learning environments. That, added to the previous visits he did to Colombia, and his knowledge about the things we wanted to do, made him the best person to deliver a lecture to give some context about what we wanted to do in the workshop.
Both Nancy and Stephen, as well as Fernando and some other people, were key in debugging the initial design ideas and building the workshop narrative. To all of them my gratitude for the time they devoted to this.
So, to make a long story short, I'd like to invite you to review the wiki (that is, if you can read Spanish… I'll have to do something about that), to express your comments (good or bad) about the design (if there are any readers here who made part of it), and to join me in the report of what happened in Bogotá and Medellín.
