Educational Innovation in the Era of Openness
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Palestra proferida por Anthony D. Williams, no Conecta 2011.
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Educational Innovation in the Era of Openness
- 2. Wikipedia: The Encyclopedia That Anyone Can Edit | © 2009 Anthony D. Williams. All Rights Reserved. From Wikinomics to Macrowikinomics The encyclopedia that anyone can edit
- 3. | © 2009 Anthony D. Williams. All Rights Reserved. From Wikinomics to Macrowikinomics The operating system that anyone can program
- 4. From Wikinomics to Macrowikinomics The new fabric of connectivity
- 5. From Wikinomics to Macrowikinomics Social networks transcend geography
- 6. | © 2009 Anthony D. Williams. All Rights Reserved. From Wikinomics to Macrowikinomics Social networking becomes social business
- 7. | © 2009 Anthony D. Williams. All Rights Reserved. From Wikinomics to Macrowikinomics Scouring the globe for innovation
- 8. | © 2009 Anthony D. Williams. All Rights Reserved. From Wikinomics to Macrowikinomics Turning a product into a platform for innovation
- 9. | © 2009 Anthony D. Williams. All Rights Reserved. From Wikinomics to Macrowikinomics Extraordinary sharing for extraordinary challenges
- 10. | © 2010 Anthony D. Williams. All Rights Reserved. From Wikinomics to Macrowikinomics The Principles of Wikinomics
- 11. | © 2009 Anthony D. Williams. All Rights Reserved. From Wikinomics to Macrowikinomics Digital utilities on tap
- 12. | © 2009 Anthony D. Williams. All Rights Reserved. From Wikinomics to Macrowikinomics Raise financing from the crowd
- 13. | © 2009 Anthony D. Williams. All Rights Reserved. From Wikinomics to Macrowikinomics Source talent from the cloud
- 14. | © 2009 Anthony D. Williams. All Rights Reserved. From Wikinomics to Macrowikinomics Find or provide scientific expertise on demand
- 15. | © 2009 Anthony D. Williams. All Rights Reserved. From Wikinomics to Macrowikinomics Manufacture products from your living room
- 16. | © 2009 Anthony D. Williams. All Rights Reserved. From Wikinomics to Macrowikinomics Retail your products globally
- 17. | © 2009 Anthony D. Williams. All Rights Reserved. From Wikinomics to Macrowikinomics Rise of the project economy
- 19. | © 2010 Anthony D. Williams. All Rights Reserved. 3 Phases of the Web From information highway to global computer
- 20. v | © 2009 Anthony D. Williams. All Rights Reserved. 3 Phases of the Web From search to the social web
- 21. / | © 2009 Anthony D. Williams. All Rights Reserved. 3 Phases of the Web Social media meets artificial intelligence
- 23. | © 2009 Anthony D. Williams. All Rights Reserved. 3 Phases of the Web Connecting with people, places and things nearby
- 24. | © 2009 Anthony D. Williams. All Rights Reserved. 3 Phases of the Web Browsing the physical world
- 25. | © 2009 Anthony D. Williams. All Rights Reserved. 3 Phases of the Web Earth’s central nervous system
- 26. Rebooting Our Institutions | © 2010 Anthony D. Williams. All Rights Reserved. From Wikinomics to Macrowikinomics Wikinomics transforms society and its institutions
- 28. | © 2009 Anthony D. Williams. All Rights Reserved. The Role of Higher Learning Convey knowledge
- 29. OLD: ‘One Size Fits All’ Lectures Rebooting the University Rethinking the model of pedagogy
- 30. | © 2009 Anthony D. Williams. All Rights Reserved. Rebooting the University The world’s best lectures for free
- 31. Education: ??????????????????? | © 2010 nGenera. All Rights Reserved. Rebooting the University Experiential learning in Second Life
- 32. | © 2009 Anthony D. Williams. All Rights Reserved. Rebooting the University Collaborative learning in Portugal
- 33. | © 2009 Anthony D. Williams. All Rights Reserved. Rebooting the University Collaborative learning in Portugal
- 34. | © 2009 Anthony D. Williams. All Rights Reserved. Rebooting the University Here come the prosumers
- 35. | © 2009 Anthony D. Williams. All Rights Reserved. Rebooting the University Prosumers: Facebook study groups
- 36. | © 2009 Anthony D. Williams. All Rights Reserved. Rebooting the University Prosumers: Why not wiki your course notes?
- 37. Rebooting the University Prosumers: Peer-to-peer support networks
- 38. | © 2009 Anthony D. Williams. All Rights Reserved. Rebooting the University Your personal tutor, online
- 39. Saving the Planet: Citizens are Getting Engaged in the Major Issues | © 2010 Anthony D. Williams. All Rights Reserved. Rebooting the University Get students engaged in problem-solving
- 44. Blog Ideas & Comments Personal Attractor Wiki Shared Documents Status/Policies/etc. Forum Question & Answer Discussion Point Shared Bookmarks Co-developed resource Research/Look up Feed Reader Updates in one place Quick scan Social Networking Search & Find People Bonds over distance RSS Feeds and Tags Act as Linking Mechanism Harnessing the Power of Collaboration Enterprise collaboration: more bottom-up, less top-down
- 45. | © 2010 Anthony D. Williams. All Rights Reserved. Harnessing the Power of Collaboration Rethink the organization
- 46. 4. Strengthen the Vanguard: Citizen Scientists Help Map the Universe | © 2010 Anthony D. Williams. All Rights Reserved. Harnessing the Power of Collaboration Mobilize the masses to do the impossible
- 47. Reach (# of people accessed) Variety (Diversity of skills and knowledge available to the network) Department Enterprise Ecosystem The World | © 2010 Anthony D. Williams. All Rights Reserved. Rebooting the University Reach out from the enterprise to the world
Editor's Notes
- Four main points to share with you today: 1) You have all heard of concepts like wikinomics, mass collaboration, crowdsourcing and the social Web. You’ve seen Wikipedia and heard of Linux. This phenomenon runs deeper than social media and even social networking. It all point to a deeper change in the fabric of our society and in the basic modus operandi of our core institutions. Organizations are becoming less like the military hierarchies of the past and more like networks, with dispersed participants that come together for a short-time and then go off to do different projects. We’ve been hearing about this shift for a long time, but evidence suggests that collaborative approaches are taking root in every field of human endeavour. 2) We’re still in the pioneer stage. There are three phases to evolution of the Internet (there could be more). We’re in the midst of the second phase, with the third phase looming around the corner. The next decade will likely bring more change and disruption than the last. Technology is also becoming more pervasive, with innovation happening across all sectors – not just in high tech industries. 3) Education is one of the most critical issues of our time. It underpins the competitiveness of the US economy. It also sits at a nexus of powerful technological and demographic forces that are revolutionizing the basic models of pedagogy and also the way in which educational content is developed and delivered. 4) Finally, the tools of social media also offer powerful new approaches to fostering innovation and collaboration in the workplace. I will conclude with an overview of how other organizations are harnessing social media and what Follett can do about it.
- First, there was Wikipedia, arguably the world’s largest repository of human knowledge. It’s about 15 times the size of Encyclopedia Britannica, but it’s supported by about 10 full-time employees and millions of volunteer editors. In other words, most of its human capital was outside the boundaries of its organization and rather than fiercely protecting its IP, Wikipedia actively encourages user to edit and contribute. In theory, Wikipedia shouldn’t exist at all. Who would have believed that millions of strangers could collectively build such an incredible resource. But it turns out that there are enough people in the world with some disposable time and some passion for a particular subject that when you provide them with a platform and bring them all together over the Internet, you get this constantly evolving knowledge base without the complex bureaucracy one finds in traditional publishing organizations.
- And then there was Linux – a free, open source operating system that emerged from the hacker fringes to become one of the most ubiquitous operating systems in the world. Jim Zemlin of the Linux Foundation likes to say that every person in the modern world uses linux multiple times everyday, often without even knowing it. Think about it. Linux is running 80% of the world’s web servers and runs in the background of hundreds of consumer products, including playstations, tivos and even some BMWs. In fact, in researching the new book we found out that Linux is running germany’s air traffic control systems and even some nuclear power plants. Like Wikipedia, Linux was not created by a traditional company. There are no traditional management structures, no paycheques, no corporate campuses or free haircuts. But don’t be mistaken, there is plenty of economic value creation. Recent estimates put the Linux economy at about $50 billion annually – that’s all of the consulting, hardware sales, and service contracts that Linux makes possible.
- The Web has gotten a lot bigger . It’s richer in content, more diverse in terms of voices, and more accessible to the masses. I like to remind people just how quickly Wikinomics has gotten out of date: Internet Users : nearly 1 billion users to nearly 2 billion. Facebook : 100 million users now it has 750 million. Twitter : becoming one of the dominant channels for spreading and discussing real-time news and information across the Web. So the point is that the Web now connects a whole lot more people in more useful ways . And the result is that we have a new fabric of connectivity in society. it’s really fundamentally changed the nature of human communities. It’s not just about the people in your neighborhood or the people at work. Billions of people can connect and collaborate around any conceivable shared interest, goal or objective and they can do so in a heart beat. Not just a quantitative difference, but a qualitative difference.
- The Web has gotten a lot bigger . It’s richer in content, more diverse in terms of voices, and more accessible to the masses. I like to remind people just how quickly Wikinomics has gotten out of date: Internet Users : nearly 1 billion users to nearly 2 billion. Facebook : 100 million users now it has 750 million. Twitter : becoming one of the dominant channels for spreading and discussing real-time news and information across the Web. So the point is that the Web now connects a whole lot more people in more useful ways . And the result is that we have a new fabric of connectivity in society. it’s really fundamentally changed the nature of human communities. It’s not just about the people in your neighborhood or the people at work. Billions of people can connect and collaborate around any conceivable shared interest, goal or objective and they can do so in a heart beat. Not just a quantitative difference, but a qualitative difference.
- We gone from social networking to a new mode of economic production. In others words, we gone from merely connecting around shared interests to using the Web as a platform to build products and services. Fortunately, the digital revolution offers all organizations new opportunities to tap into knowledge and skill, by both unleashing the talent we already employ and by exploiting new talent pools outside our traditional boundaries. In fact, organizations can draw on much larger and more diverse pool of knowledge and skills than has been available in the past. After all, there’s nearly 7 billion on the planet – increasingly connected and well educated. In the past it was hard to find them The Internet has radically dropped the cost of collaborating . In doing so it enables us to orchestrate human thought and capability in new ways – ways that are better than the industrial management models that dominated the last century
- How can conventional companies take advantages of mass collaboration? A big company like P&G now gets 50% of its ideas and innovations from outside of the company. They have 9,000 R&D professionals – leaders in chemistry, biology, and engineering. But for everyone of the 9,000 they identified another 200 who were just as good. So the company’s talent pool is actually 1.8 million people. Meanwhile R&D productivity has gone up by 60% because they are that more efficient when it comes to solving problems. What if the Government of Canada could do something similar? Tapping into the problem solving capacity of the entire public service, at levels of government in Canada. Then add citizens, NGOs, businesses and other stakeholders.
- To harness all of this external talent you need a platform – a place where people can innovate. There’s an app for everything. Apple didn’t go out and invent them all. It created a platform for innovation. It’s not just about the static product – it’s about the entire innovation ecosystem the product creates. Now rather than product, think government service or think education. How do we create a vibrant ecosystem around public service innovation?
- Nike is one of the most innovative companies around. And recently its been focusing on reducing its environmental footprint. As part of those efforts, it developed a new form of green rubber, along with water-based adhesives that are 96% less toxic than conventional products. Rather than sit on the technology, it decided to share it openly with other companies. Economies of scale. In fact, it went even further, forming a greenxchange with companies like BestBuy, IDEO and others, where members contribute patents and share know-how related to new methods of production that reduce energy, water, toxicity, and so on. After all, companies everywhere are working on sustainable innovations and there’s a lot of overlapping efforts and ultimately wasted resources. At the same time, when you consider the environmental challenges in front of us, the greenxchange and other forums for sharing intellectual property can help disseminate these innovations more quickly. As Nike’s CEO Mark Parker put it: extraordinary challenges must be met with extraordinary acts of sharing and collaboration. What assets does the government posses that would be more valuable if it was shared publicly? There’s land, buildings, lots of talented people, there’s IT systems, and there’s public data –arguably one of the most valuable assets we have. I’ll be talking much more about that in a few minutes.
- The principles of Wikinomics Conventional wisdom says you hire the best people and retaining them with money and perks. I say you co-create with the best available talent , wherever it is 2. Conventional wisdom says that should keep innovation closed and especially your end products. I say that in many cases it makes sense to open up your products like Apple did in order to create a robust ecosystem for innovation. 3. Conventional wisdom: if someone infringes your intellectual property , you get the lawyers out to do battle. I say: You can’t collaborate if all of your IP is hidden . And when you put it all together: 4. Conventional wisdom: need a strict top down hierarchy to keep employees in line . I say: unleash creative and intellectual potential by encouraging employees to self-organize , both inside and outside the corp boundaries Small Companies are taking advantage too – embracing the principles to turbo boost innovation and acting on a global scale.
- The largest funding platform for creative projects in the world.
- The digital revolution is just getting going In just a few short years, the digital revolution has transformed the way we connect with family and friends, the way we work, and the way we consume media. It has transformed major industries, from media and entertainment to financial services to software to pharmaceuticals. But more fundamentally I believe that it has begun to transform the way we organize ourselves as a human society. In a very real sense, the social network is replacing the bureaucratic hierarchy as the dominant form of human organization. And that shift from hierarchy to network, from command and control to collaboration, has profound implications not just for the economy and business but for every institution ranging from science, health care and education to the way we produce and consume energy to the very nature of government and democracy. Before talking about these institutional shifts, I’m going to share a little bit of the wikinomics journey and how my thinking on mass collaboration evolved. I will also provide some of my thoughts on where the digital revolution is going. And at the end, I will make sure you walk away with a whole bunch of tangible ideas that you or your organization can get started on today.
- The most amazing thing about this technology revolution is not only how much it has transformed the way we work learn, create and connect, but how much the technology itself has evolved in such a short time span. Radio station – from scanning the local papers to scanning a global network with news from around the world. The Association for Progressive Communications – independent journalists from around the world filing their stories. Opened up a new universe and made me fall in love with the medium. But that was only the beginning. That was the information highway or the publish and browse web. It was about publishing websites. T he First generation of the Web was about websites and publishing information. We had the information highway metaphor in which the Internet was akin to the cable system – a big pipe to for delivering content to passive users. That’s now changed – We have something fundamentally new. We have gone through a cultural shift in how we use and think about the Internet -- The Internet is more like a global computer that everyone programs. Uploading videos to YouTube, tagging photos on flickr, modifying a facebook profile or tweaking a Wikipedia entry, you are – in some small way -- programming the Web. You are contributing to this global fabric of knowledge and content. And when 2 billion users are doing this collectively, every second of every day, it adds up to a staggering rate of content creation.
- The other interesting change is that the way we access and organize information on the Web is changing. I find myself relying less and less Google searches and more and more on the people in my extended social network. People can still access authoritative sources of news and information. They can search on Google. But they can also participate in this larger cloud of information which acts as a conduit to relevant and trusted sources of content. In other words, our social networks are increasingly becoming our gateways to relevant information on the Web. This is Twitter’s forte – the ability of you and I to find curators of relevant information in virtually every field you can imagine. You follow the right people, and you won’t miss any pertinent developments.
- As this evolves, this networked structure of relationships will overlay everything we do on the Web. In many areas it already does. Who’s recommendations do you follow when making purchases online? Our network – and particularly people we share similar tastes with – will recommends everything from movies and music to which doctors to consult for a particular medical issues.
- The third phase: In parallel we are seeing rapid innovation in the devices we use to connect to the Web, with mobile phones and tablets replacing traditional PCs and laptops as the dominant vehicle, at least for now. Not just a North American or European phenomenon. There are 5 billion wireless subscribers worldwide – this is becoming a global phenomenon. Hard to reach communities will have access. Was doing research on energy and found out that only 10% have access to a modern electrical grid but 97% can access a cell phone! As of 2010, almost 5 billion people use mobile phones. This amount comprises many of the world’s poorest, including nearly 90% of the most impoverished populations of Brazil, India, China, and South Africa. An estimated 2 billion people access the Internet, with 60% of them living in developing or emerging economies (ITU, 2010). It is predicted that the majority of people in the developing world will have access to the Internet within the next decade, particularly as accessing the Internet through mobiles becomes more prevalent. In China alone, the number of mobile Internet users is expected to reach 600 million by 2012 (China Economic Review, 2011).
- Of course, it’s not just the global interconnectivity, but the local connectivity that users find valuable. You can carry your phone with you so it becomes your interface with the local surrounding, with interesting people and places nearby.
- Thanks to the incorporation of location sensors, your phone knows where you are. And since information can be tagged by location too, we have an opportunity to build a rich virtual overlay over physical reality. A bit like a digitally-enhanced museum tour, but out in the real world. This creates countless opportunities. Tourism is an obvious application – you can overlay interesting historical information over places of interest. Restaurant reviews Health inspections. Users can annotate reality too – in a sense leaving virtual sticky notes for other people passing by. So you can see what your friends have said about local restaurants and coffee shops for example. Real estate – we could do away with real estate signage if your phone notifies you that a property is for sale.
- Thanks to the ongoing miniaturization of computing and wireless communications, it will no longer be just computers and mobile devices that we connect to the Internet. We can embed intelligence and connectivity into just about anything. Tiny sensors in our cars will report information about road conditions and traffic conditions to databases that are monitored by local authorities. Eventually self-driving cars filled with sensors will be able to navigate themselves and help optimize the flow of traffic. Sensors embedded in farmer’s fields will detect moisture and communicate with weather satellites in order optimize irrigation. Sensors embedded in public works and infrastructures like bridges will give engineers advance warning of potential structural problems. And yes, even our bodies will be connected, perhaps even through Internet-connected underpants that monitor our heart rate, our glucose levels and other health indicators. People talk about data today and they don’t necessarily understand that we just seeing the tip the iceberg in terms of what’s coming next.
- These are not just principles for business, but principles for all institutions in society. The good news is that in contrast to our failing institutions, we see signs of sparkling new possibilities and powerful new approaches to problem-solving that can be a catalyst for reinvention. This is second big idea. And as I will explain, powerful new approaches are thanks largely to the ability of individuals to participate more deeply in their government, their education, their healthcare, in the production and consumption of energy and even in the fight against climate change. The result is that formerly closed and opaque institutions are becoming open and more collaborative – sometimes by their own volition and sometimes because change has been imposed upon them. This is leading to some disruption, to be sure. Just look at the trauma inflicted on the newspapers as the digital revolution destroys the business model for printed news. But in the many examples we have documented we have seen how this new Internet-enabled participation we call wikinomics can be a force for positive change.
- Certainly the core of the university is the role it plays in passing on knowledge to experts and professors to students who come to learn. This mission has been at the core of higher learning since the invention of the first universities. The problem of course is that, with some important exceptions right here in this room, is that the methods for teaching have not changed a great deal. Indeed if you brought Plato or Aristotle back from the dead they would very much still feel comfortable in 95% of today’s classrooms. We’ll come back to this point in a moment.
- Let’s go back to how universities convey knowledge. Is the lecture dead? Not quite – its likely to be around for some time. But it reinforces a passive model of learning and for students who have grown up interacting and collaborating online, it’s especially problematic. I appreciate the irony of the fact that I’m up here giving you a lecture, but the truth is that its simply not a great way to promote learning . Within a few hours of me having given this talk, you probably won’t remember many of my key points. Most of us learn through experience – we learn by doing, that’s how knowledge gets encoded in the brain. I’ve spent many years in university myself and quite frankly I have a hard time recalling any truly memorable lectures – most of them were highly forgettable. What I do remember is that I spent all of my extra curricular time in the university radio station where I was a volunteer news producer . I was learning how to do radio in my spare time. I wasn’t going to lectures about how to produce good radio. I was learning by doing. Indeed, in our research for the book, we found out that its become fashionable for students to try to get an ‘A’ these days, without having attended a single lecture. So what that means is that the cream of the crop is essentially boycotting the basic model of pedagogy.
- The world is awash in great lecture content – so the role of the professor changes somewhat. It’s not that they can’t or shouldn’t lecture. But increasingly they will be educational experience designers, who help students navigate and interpret the world of knowledge. Education will be more personalized. Built around the unique needs of students.
- For example, imagine, as a student, that you could not only read about what it is like to be a scientist, an architect, an artist, an entrepreneur, or an engineer , but also collaborate with fellow students in a safe virtual environment to recreate that experience for yourself. In other words, you could directly participate in and experience the ways a particular discipline thinks about and solves problems . Thanks to the malleability and immersive nature of virtual worlds like Second Life, that possibility is already here today. Andrew Lang, Oral Roberts University, finds the “publish and browse” model of distance learning frustrating, describing it as “totally deficient compared to a face-to-face class.” But discovering Second Life literally opened up new worlds for Lang and his students, deepening the engagement and unleashing a level of creativity and collaboration unsurpassed by anything he had previously experienced as a professor. He has built some pretty unique and fascinating functionality into his new virtual classroom—functionality that allows students to visualize molecular phenomena and run experiments that would be impossible in a real world lab or lecture theatre . In one instance, Lang built what he describes as a “molecule rezzer.” For laymen like us, that essentially means that students can create a 3D representation of a molecule, model a chemical reaction, or even build a molecular machine that will interact with other virtual objects and people.
- My co-author and I had an opportunity to see aspects of this firsthand in Portugal. First of all, Portugal is hardly the richest country. Sovereign debt crisis. But every child lets a laptop at school. Telecom Portugal. But the learning experiences are orchestrated very differently. Rather than give a short lecture about the equinox, the teacher asks the question. Can anyone tell me what an equinox? We toured a classroom of seven-year-olds in a public school in Lisbon, a city where every child in the classroom is getting a laptop connected to a high-speed network. It was the most exciting, noisy, collaborative classroom we have seen. The teacher directed the kids to an astronomy blog with a beautiful color image of a rotating solar system on the screen. “Now,” said the teacher, “Who knows what the equinox is?” Nobody knew. “Alright, why don’t you find out?”
- The chattering began, as the children clustered together to figure out what an equinox was. Then one group leapt up and waved their hands. They found it! The children in this Portuguese classroom discovering astronomy and the solar system barely noticed the technology, the much-vaunted laptop. It was like air to them. But it changed the relationship they had with their teacher. Instead of fidgeting in their chairs while the teacher lectures and scrawls some notes on the blackboard, they were the explorers, the discoverers, and the teacher was their guide.
- Research suggests only a small fraction of customers are what I call prosumers – customers who not only early adopters of technology but active modifiers and makers – people who push the boundaries of existing technologies. Nevertheless this segment often foreshadows where the mainstream market is eventually heading. But in fact the pool of prosumers is potentially much larger today. Young people have grown up with digital technologies and products that are much easier to modify than physical goods. Moreover, 70% of young people said they would help companies. How do you get your customers onboard. And in particular, how do you attract those customers who are most likely to invest time with you in advancing your products? For education: get students involved in co-creating the rich and diverse aspects of student life.
- Richard J. Light, of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, discovered that one of the strongest determinants of students’ success in higher education was their ability to form or participate in small study groups. Students who studied in groups were more engaged in their studies, were better prepared for class, and learned significantly more than students who worked on their own. It appears that when students get engaged they take a greater interest and responsibility for their own learning.
- Sites that facilitate note sharing and even pay students for high quality notes!
- Talked about how universities help develop the person. With the rise of social networking, we’re seeing a new layer of interaction and social support in online forums where students can ask questions and get frank responses. 1.7 million users who discuss everything from tuition fees to sexual health issues.
- There is a wealth of online support too.
- We see similar opportunities in addressing global challenges. Remember that this is a way to bolster the public role of universities. Rather than just teach about climate change. Why not have students contribute solutions. Perhaps the most important application of mass collaboration is climate change. It’s become pretty clear that we’re not going to fix the problem with a few new regulations or a tax on carbon. We need deep and fundamental changes in the way we produce and consume that affect everything from industry to our daily routines. There was a pretty spectacular failure on the part of governments to move forward on the issue in Copenhagen in 2009. But thankfully, we’re seeing the rise of citizen-led initiatives that could make a big difference. Carbon Rally. 40K. People propose actions to reduce carbon emissions, the community chooses the best ideas to pursue as a team. Carbonrally tracks the collective impacts. Could become competitive. Microsoft versus Google. Harvard versus Yale. The EU Parliament versus the US Congress.
- SO how about the 21 st century book? What will it look like. First it’s going to digital and accessible from many devices. It will be searchable, tagable and easily updatable. One day we may get to the point where we have only one book that connects human knowledge and culture in a vast Web of hyperlinks. Like music, television and newspapers, readers won’t be passive readers, they will be prosumers that co-create with their favorite authors. Rather than act as stand alone artifacts, books may become more like Lego blocks that can be recombined with other elements as desired. Geospatial awareness will figure prominently. For example, books that are designed to accompany the reader on a journey through a foreign country. As the reader moves around the country, the story unfolds. Above all the book will be a tool for learning, collaboration, composition and innovation -- where everyone can participate
- In fact, it’s not inconceivable that the entire universal library of human knowledge could one day be retrieved on one’s phone. We’re talking about millions of books, articles, images, videos. Today you might need a hard drive the size of your living room to store all of this information. But if the IP and business model issues could be worked out, it would be possible to get access to all of this on demand.
- There is a sense that there is a great deal of inertia and that universities, like the newspapers or the music industry, have been slow to adapt to new realities. And while it is true that university enrolment is at an all time high , it is also true that universities are quickly losing their monopoly on higher learning . It’s no longer taken for granted that the old model of the university will necessarily survive in its current form. Universities won’t go away. Nor will the need for higher learning. But I am convinced that higher learning will begin to look very different in the coming decades In the world of higher education, MIT has been a path breaker by putting all of its courseware online. Since doing so, 200 universities have followed suit. And now Charles M Vest, president emeritus says that the open access movement could lead to a new form of meta-university that is constructed on a framework of open materials and platforms. Imagine a student, who may have a home campus and a relationship with local professors and TAs, but who can also draw from the deep and vast repository of content to facilitate their unique learning journey. 3 stages: Putting courseware online Course content co-innovation – a new synthesis of materials, together with learning management systems that can measure the effectiveness of the curriculum Collaborative learning connection – breaking down the silos between institutions and allow students to put together there own personal learning program with courses and professors from around the world.
- The old-style military bureaucracies are the enemy of innovation. In many cases, they stifle talent and creativity. Bureaucracy is built for stability and control. Not for innovation and creativity. This may have been appropriate for an agricultural economy and even an industrial manufacturing economy. But it is absolutely the wrong model for knowledge-based work and for nurturing the creative potential of knowledge-based work. Unleash talent and ideas internally so that they flow freely across the organization, while at the same time making the boundaries of organization more porous to external knowledge and talent
- Started with a couple of astrophysicists at Yale and Oxford looking for a better way to organize and classify the millions of galaxies that have been spotted using high-powered telescopes. This turns out to be key to understanding how galaxies form and evolve. Computers can’t automate it , because they don’t have the pattern recognition capabilities of the human brain. The prospect of doing it by hand with a small team of graduate students was daunting. It would take years for one person just to get through 50,000 , but they had over a million galaxies to classify So then they had the bright idea of putting these images online and seeing if perhaps there were some amateur astronomers who could help out. They thought that there was perhaps 200 people in the world who might be interested in this. And there were questions about whether laymen could do this effectively. Well, within a few weeks of launching Galaxy Zoo they had over 250,000 people helping them classify images. And it turned out that the average user was accurate with their classifications 95 time out of 100 -- which means they’re just as good as a trained astronomer. The result is that Galaxy Zoo members have classified over 1 million images in the 2 years the project has been running. And just to put this into perspective, there are roughly 6,000 astrophysicists in the whole world . With Galaxy Zoo’s 250,000 members they have effectively increased their talent pool by 40 times .