Thanks to Scott Adams for showing me this restatement of Gil Scot-Heron’s lyrics ::HorsePigCow:: life uncommon: The Revolution will not be televised. Me? I don’t think it’s quite right yet. It ignores the fact that the Revolution is already underway and it will never be over.

The Revolution is not being televised.

The Revolution will not end just because it makes us criminals.

The Revolution will not end just because we are right.

The Revolution does not depend on status, skill, knowledge, or credential.

The Revolution uses old ideas — as fodder.

The Revolution creates new technologies to use in ways that it can’t imagine yet.

The Revolution does not care if MPAA, RIAA, DMCA, NCAA, or GOP exist because the Revolution makes them irrelevant.

The Revolution is occuring in your schools, in your businesses, and in your computers.

The Revolution is happening whether you know it, see it, participate in it, or care about it.

The Revolution will not change your life. You have to do that.

The Revolution will change everything else — it’s up to you whether you change with it or become stranded — ignorant, ineffective, and unemployable.

The Revolution is being fought — with or without you.

The Revolution is not being televised.

Sill not quite right — but getting closer.

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When my name was put in nomination for board member-at-large, the nominating committee asked me to fill out an application. I was lead to believe that the responses would be posted in the election page, but for some reason they’re not, I haven’t been asked to provide any kind of photo, bio, or other statement, but I believe the membership has the right to see why I think I should be elected to the board of directors as a member-at-large. Here are the answers to the nomination application as I submitted them. [Note: This page has since been linked into the bio/statement box on the election form]

1-Describe your involvement with AECT, past and present.

I first became a member in 1999 in the first year of my PhD program at the University of Northern Colorado (UNCo). In 2000 I was the Strobehn Intern and Mentor Scholar in the last Spring conference (Long Beach). At that time I noted that the graduate student lounge, an historic part of the AECT Annual Conference had fallen into inactivity. This seemed wrong to me so I returned to Greeley and began trying to organize grad students from around the country. I used free tools available in public spaces and managed to build a cadre of grad students from around the country.

I used some of the Mentor award money to pay my way to the Summer Institute in Montreal during the Summer of 2000 and convinced Marcy Driscoll (then president elect and program chair for 2000 Denver) to find me space for the Graduate Student Lounge. The idea was that the “host” school for the annual conference would provide students to support that effort and have the opportunity to showcase their individual programs. Since the 2000 Denver conference was in our backyard, UNCo took the lead and began the new GSL. In the intervening years, the grad student group has risen in prominence within the organization and I’m pleased to have had some small part in re-vitalizing this important piece of AECT history.

In 2002 I was elected by the Division of Distance Learning and served as DDL Program Chair for the AECT 2003 Anaheim. After moving up to President in 2004, I started trying to revitalize the DDL by posting my Wednesday Wanderings to the DDL list. That created a fair stir in the community. In October, 2004, the new president asked me to move off the list so I took my Wanderings to the Cognitive Dissonance blog where I have continued to write about issues relevant to the AECT and Distance Education — for better or worse.

In the summer of 2003, I was nominated to join the AECT Strategic Planning Task Force and joined Donal Little in dealing with issues surrounding leadership within the AECT and the strategic positioning of the AECT in the context of the field as a whole. Along the way, we’ve established several tools to help in the collaborative effort including the flagship – Terra Incognita. One of the more exciting tools is the new interactive interface for the annual conference — The Overlay — that we hope will serve to unite the members “on the ground” with those who are unable to attend. By giving them a mechanism to connect with each other while onsite, the idea is that they well form those connections that will carry them forward into the coming year and bridge the “contact gap” between conferences.

I’ve also served on the AECT Special Needs Committee since 2000 and was appointed to Chair that committee this year.

2-Describe your education, career and other experience including leadership roles in other professional organizations.

I hold a BS in Business Administration (Marketing) from SUNY/Buffalo, MA and PhD in Educational Technology from University of Northern Colorado.

I spent 20+ years in management information systems before moving to Greeley. In that time I was president of the Software Management Association, a professional organization for IS people responsible for the maintenance of legacy business information systems.

I spent 5 years as a corporate trainer in the Denver area specializing in Internet applications and the Microsoft Office suite before starting graduate school. In my time here, I have worked with the Dept of Special Education to help them get master’s programs in blindness, deafness, and significant support needs online.

3- In 500 words or less, describe your vision for AECT?

The AECT is a community with rich historical roots. We come from the proud traditions of the DAVI. Our past members have shaped the world of educational technology. Looking forward into the new century, we have a rich field of opportunities and a firm foundation upon which to build them. The AECT should use its knowledge, history, and expertise to address the larger issues of education in the new millenium.

4.What would be your agenda be and/or what should the agenda be for moving AECT forward in the next 3-5 years?

We need to stake out our strategic markets. Member benefits of the last century are largely meaningless in the world of blogs, aggregators, and ubiquitous access. Google is the clearing house and Amazon the mall. eBay has become the world’s flea market. The AECT needs to move into that space to provide a kind of membership experience that does not replace the face-to-face, but augments it and facilitates it where it cannot happen in physical space — even creating new kinds of membership experiences that cannot happen without access to the new technologies. In the same way that online education can aid, assist, and augment classrooms, the AECT should pursue that notion. We should:

Recruit underserved populations:
– A large number of practicing professionals are in one-person, unsupported shops where physical participation in the conference is not possible.
– A larger number of people are cut off simply because they have no readily available mode of connection to the field.

Provide the connections
– Create tools and avenues for members to talk to members. The once-a-month newsletter is obsolete and it’s time to move into “everyday” contact among the membership.

Address the continuing education requirements for existing members
– The one thing our members need is a reliable source to connect to innovation and training in applying those innovations.
– Provide a model for modern publications practices that keep the best of the old, but update them to the new.

The value of membership is not embodied in the static content protected by the organization’s firewall, but rather in the opportunity for daily contact with the people who are active, working, thinking, and shaping the field of educational technology. The prime member benefit is not in WHAT being a member gives me access to, but who. It’s not the “names” and it’s not the people who have long vitas and big bookshelves. It’s having access to people who can inspire, inform, cajole, amuse, and sympathize.

The first word says it all. Association.

5. Why do you think you would make a good candidate? Also, please reflect briefly on your leadership style and group facilitation style.

Being a candidate is the easy part. The AECT doesn’t require a candidate to do much. The follow through is the key and I think that I’ve demonstrated a good track record in organizing action and following through. I believe that a lot of people recognize my name from being active with the graduate students and in my work with the Strategic Task Force. When I stand up in front of the assembly, many of the people will know who I am and what I stand for. They may not agree with me, but they will at least know who I am and what I believe. From that perspective, I think I have sufficient recognition within the organization to be a viable candidate. (I’m not sure if that means a “good candidate” or not.)

My leadership style is on display daily in my blogs (Cognitive Dissonance and Terra Incognita). I lead by example. I don’t ask anybody to do something I’m not willing to do myself — and often demonstrate it for them along the way. I have strong opinions but I’m incapable of rejecting a logical argument against me. While many may see me as arrogant, age and experience have given me a perspective that I hope — someday — will resolve into real wisdom. In the meantime, I believe that leadership requires somebody who is willing to stand up and lead — even while recognizing that the direction may be wrong, and knowing that direction may need to be changed for good cause. I don’t believe in doing something just for the sake of doing something, but I do believe that inaction should be a deliberate choice, not a default.

Thank you to the Committee for considering me for the post.

Sincerely,
Nathan O. Lowell, Ph.D.
National Center on Low-Incidence Disabilities

Posted in AECT, aect2006 | 2 Comments »

Clarence over at Remote Access often puts ideas that are floating about in my head into words on his blog. Usually before I’m even aware of the ideas.

Remote Access: Classrooms of 2015
Yesterday, while out shoveling snow, I finally had a chance to listen to David Warlick’s podcast #50. A main point of this session was to spend some time thinking about what classrooms will be like in 2015. I finished this program and was worried. What worried me was not the ideas that many people had about what advances are possible. Many people spoke about wireless technologies, laptops in classrooms, digital books, distributed learning, etc. Great ideas, but here already; and this is what concerns me.

I left him a comment this morning, but the whole thing has been swirling about in my synapses for most of the day.

My problem with visualizing classrooms of 2015 is that we’re visualizing classrooms. We’re NOT considering what Education is or how it needs to be replaced. That it does need replacing is — or should be — a given. The current models of Education are not working.

Specifically, for the most part K-12 does not prepare students for the present, let alone the future. The disassociation between school and life is readily apparent to my seven year old who can’t wait to get out of school so she can “learn stuff that’s fun.” Our vision of K-12 as a basic skill training and socialization for our citizenry is desperately lacking with fewer than 90% of our citizens earning a high school diploma or equivalent by the time they’re 25 years old.

The bachelor’s degree has become the new “diploma.” It used to be that you needed a high school diploma in order to “support yourself” but that was replaced by the bachelor’s degree in the last 20 years. I say 20 years because I used to be able to make a living as an experienced systems analyst up to about 20 years ago. Then I ran into companies with H.R. policies that discounted my decades of experience because the job qualifications called for “a bachelor’s degree.” Note that in many cases, it’s not a “relevant bachelor’s degree” but just ANY degree. As one HR boffin explained it to me, “Jeez, if you had a degree in basket weaving, you’d be hired in a minute with this level of experience behind you, but without a degree, I’m prohibited from passing your resume to the hiring unit.” Now he may have been blowing smoke, but I have the feeling that there’s more of this than we know about going on.

And fewer than 25% of Americans have bachelor’s degrees.

So where does that leave us?

The Federal government has declared No Child Left Behind and requires that states spend education money on assessments to prove that schools are performing. It requires a clinical trial model of research to consider interventions valid but does not require that the assessment instrumentation even be valid. On the basis of that, the government in the US is slowly taking control of the local Educational establishment out of the hands of local communities and replacing it with … well, with nothing yet.

So, what can we do? What does Education mean?

Last year, Jim Elsworth and I went around about the commodification of Education. I think we may need to revisit that discussion. Jim suggests that the purpose of Education is to prepare a nation’s citizens to be productive in the world marketplace. That’s a good working definition until somebody comes up with a better one.

I’ve suggested that there are three obstacles to replacing the current educational infrastructure — credentialling, funding, and childcare. There may be more, but those three will be horrendously difficult to overcome.

Credentialling is the process of certifying that somebody knows something. Right now, you need a bachelor’s degree to get any job outside of the service industry in the US — and probably many of those IN th service industry as well. Why? Doesn’t the ABA have a better model? You can get a law degree anywhere you want — or even no law degree (is this true?) — and if you pass the bar exam, you’re a lawyer. Of course, without a degree you are a bit limited because firms will look unkindly at somebody who hasn’t been to law school … and practially speaking getting a law degree constitutes “Bar Exam Prep” in a big way.

But the model — learn it, pass the credentially examination, begin practice — seems to be a practical way to deal with credentialling.

So what’s the credentialling model for, say, high school? GED? What about reading credentials? Math?

If we use Stephen Downes model of “Education like Water” where you turn on the tap to get the amount of education you need just this minute, where does that put the notion of credentials? What does that mean for a society of educated citizens?

Posted in General | 1 Comment »

David Ebenbach has a new book — Between Camelots and he promoted it on a recent Morning Stories podcast. Ebenbach says in this podcast, “Where I think we do most of our living is between these high points of having maybe a huge circle of friends and everybody’s close. You know, the commune idea or something — the kibbutz… I read about people who — whether in their families or in romantic relationships — are trying to find the connection that they need to sustain them. And it’s like a search for food. It’s urgent.”

Hearing that reminded me that the affiliation and affection drives are hugely important. I’m sure that Ebenbach didn’t have Maslow in mind because he’s responding to his own experience of talking and reading and running into people who — again and again — are searching for that connection.

It’s what Stephen Downes was talking about when he said

Reinventing Ourselves in 2006
I want to work in a place that sees me as something other than a means of transfering wealth from people and government to corporate shareholders, and to live in a community that has culture and diversity, new ideas and new ways of looking at the world.

It’s what Donal and I have been kvetching about with the AECT and our inability to find a way to talk to each other — and our concern that, perhaps, the reason is that we really have nothing to say. Can it possibly be the case that the AECT really is not the kind of community that I believed it to be? Can it be that we’re more interested in controlling the discourse than in participating in it? Is it simply that we don’t know we CAN have a discourse unless we’re all in the same place at the same time?

Or do we really not have enough in common to make the kind of connections necessary to create a community of practice? Am I misguided in my search for a Camelot within the AECT community?

Listen to the Morning Story here:

‘WGBH Morning Stories’, related links and additional (meta)information [Feeds4All.nl]
2. Misdirections WGBH podcast sponsored by Ipswitch, Inc. Misdirections WGBH podcast sponsored by Ipswitch, Inc. 30-12-2005
Morning Stories Author David Ebenbach tells Tony Kahn a story of a marriage, a mouse, and misdirections. David’s latest book is Between Camelots. The WGBH Morning Stories website is wgbh.org/morningstories. Thanks to our sponsor, Ipswitch, Inc., a leader in File Transfer Software.

Posted in Wanderings | 2 Comments »

I thought it was just me and Donal. Now I find that there’s a whole bunch of us out there.

Stephen’s Web ~ by Stephen Downes ~
You know how you feel that you’re on the verge of something important, but just can’t wrap your mind around it? That’s how I feel. Of course, I may just be deluding myself – I’m very good at that, and have deluded myself about a lot of things last year and during the course of my life. And I doubt that anyone will ever actually pay me to do the sort of things I want to do – we’re all so wrapped up these days in funding competitions, commercialization, paperwork, and all that. And maybe there isn’t a magic rainbow-land where every day of my life will feel meaningful and engaged and complete. And maybe I shouldn’t be typing this, and maybe you shouldn’t be reading it. But forget all that. This year isn’t last year, and I will be charting new directions to points unknown. Maybe I’ll founder, maybe not. But it’s now, I think, or never – and I couldn’t live with never.

If you didn’t read the whole post — and then go read Will Richardson’s original post — go do that now. This is important.

What are the opportunities here? What are the problems? How can we get paid enough to do something important? What is important enough that we could shoot for?

Capitalization? Monetization? Health insurance?

If Adam Curry can make money — and change the world for the better — with PodShow.net then why in hell can’t this group of savvy educational experts make a positive difference in the world??

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Last year was quite a ride. It was the first full calendar year of blogging (this started in October 2004) and I wrote just over 130 posts — more than 10 a month. I don’t know that I knew I had that much to say.

In January I started The Overlay at http://dragonfly.unco.edu/grid but the implementation at both the summer meeting and the fall convention were a bit … lacking. We proved the concept. People COULD have logged on and talked together. The Drupal environment did allow us to link up but our promotion of the space as a way to make connections was lacking. For those looking at Drupal to be a kind of community portal, please contact me. I also signed up for a blogging course with an international group of ESL teachers. Talk about a commnity! Wow!!

In February, we had the whole “what if I write in a blog and nobody reads it” meme. We got some folks to make blogs, but really didn’t succeed in making them bloggers. Hard to believe that was less than a year ago.

In March, we talked about pre-publication peer review and copyright. The discussion on who should be blogging continued.

In April, I began my now famous “Education as Toaster” rant. At mid-month, my dad died and I took a bitter-sweet trip downeast.

In May, I didn’t write much. Probably understandable.

In June, I started thinking more about learning and wrote “On Context”. I should add that to my Conversations links because looking at it 6 months later, it still works for me.

In July, we did the Orlando thing which I had high hopes for, but that didn’t really work out for a whole variety of reasons. This is also when the distributed representation showed up from The Stephen. I made a little flash presentation that didn’t really work to explain the construct but I never went back to it.

In August, we tried a “blog in” with a group of folks. Sort of like a theme-of-the-month to get a conversation going. That’s something we might try again but it wasn’t wildly successful then. At the end of the month, I started teaching my online class to teach teachers how to teach online. I was pretty excited to use the moodle for that. It didn’t work out so well.

September’s posting was light, but it was also the month with “The Janitor Model” post. Not one that generated as much comment as I had thought given the response to the earlier postings on commodification of education.

October was Orlando again.

November brought up the subject of a Virtual Convention on the DDL list and a post about synchrony. That was when I really started thinking hard about learning management — as opposed to learner management.

December brought the idea that I need to do a blog track on how non-technical people might be able to create their own environments using off the shelf tools. We also started the discussion about pulling the AECT’s electronic member services out of home office and making them the responsibility of a standing committee reporting to the Board of Directors. It’ll be interesting to see if that idea has any legs. Given the chronic complaints about the AECT web presence over the last 5 years, I wonder if anybody’s going to step up to make a difference.

So … 130+ posts and an unknown number of comments later … Has it made a difference in the world?

Well, it’s made a difference in MY world. To the degree that we are all connected in any kind of metaphyical sense, it’s made a difference in the world. My curmudgeonly observations regarding emperors and apparel have caused angst and started conversations that might not otherwise have occurred. I use this space in order to write about things so I can learn what I think. If anybody else finds my postings interesting — even aggravating — once in a while, that’s a Good Thing(tm).

I wish each of you a happy — and educational — new year.

Posted in Wanderings | 3 Comments »