Dancing In The Datasphere

The digital revolution is making data fluid. It no longer sits static on a printed page, out of date, irrelevant. This digital migration makes data dynamic, active, interrelated, and it's happening at an exponentially increasing rate.

Looking at data as facts in a book is becoming as outdated as looking at human biology in terms of humors; fictional and meaningless.

Visualizing data flow: how sciences are interconnecting through inter-disciplinary referencing

Teaching sciences as independent disciplines no longer prepares a student for a life in the sciences. The sciences aren't doing it any more, but education continues to.

...but science isn't the only field of human endeavour that benefits from the datasphere...

More people are leveraging Web2.0 to create public pieces of art than ever before in human history. The web is heavy with visual, written and musical art, and more is coming every day as more people discover the fluidity and access offered by digital delivery.

Mashups and media confluences are tying traditional copyright in knots.

Social networking online is having an ongoing impact on how we share ideas and communicate with each other. Entire societies are migrating to this format while education stands back, belittling the evolution, much like foot draggers in former media revolutions (television, telephone, printed books)

Rather than criticize student use, we should examine and enhance it, so that students aren't ovewhelmed by the data they are constantly being bombarded with. Inability to manage data often appears as an attention deficit and incomplete work. Teaching students to manage the datasphere is pivotal to their success in the future, and to our relevance as an educational system

This is happening in every field of human study; we generate exabytes of data, exponentially more is coming, and we choose to ignore the avalanche for the trickle we can manage out of a text book, or a teacher's mouth.

Our science is being fed by the information revolution, our understanding of our place in the universe is changing moment by moment, but we are not keeping up with the data that swarms around us.

Are we training our students to become digital serfs? Illiterates who have no understanding or ability to access the knowledge around them?

Will our willful ignorance cause the failure of representative democracy and usher in an era of technology leveraged control under the only entities willing to engage in this brave new world (multi-national corporations) ?

In a world of aggressive privatization, we not only threaten to lose our sense of self, we also may lose one of the few systems of representative government ever developed in human history.

Watch the whole thing for a bit of enlightenment, but (33:27-39:00) 35:35 is what I'm looking at for how one of the smartest people in the 20th Century saw the birth of digital technology.

“In the world of action a few things are obvious, so obvious I hesitate to repeat them. One of them is our increasing reliance on machines. They have really ceased to be tools and have begun to give us directions. And unfortunately, machines from the Maxim gun to the computer are, for the most part, means by which an authoritarian regime can keep men in subjection.”

- Sir Kenneth Clarke, 'Civilisation'

It is encumbant upon us as teachers to prepare our students for the world they are about to face. They are entering a time of physical scarcity and mental abundance unprecidented in human history. If we send them into this fray unprepared, systematized interests will abuse their ignorance and naivity, and reduce them to servile tools.

This is a serious time in human history, with serious needs. What can we do to quickly adapt education in order to help our students adapt and thrive?

Information Fluency

· Communication

· Information Processing, Reasoning & Synthesis

· Critical Thinking and Analysis

The ability to unconsciously and intuitively interpret information in all forms and formats in order to extract the essential knowledge, authenticate it, and perceive its meaning and significance. (21st Century Fluency Series) This also involves the ability to communicate face to face and digitally.

Collaboration Fluency

· Collaboration

· Teamwork

· Global Citizenship/Digital Citizenship

· Self Awareness

Collaboration fluency is team working proficiency that has reached the unconscious ability to work cooperatively with virtual and real partners in an online environment to create original digital products. (21st Century Fluency Series)

Working with others also requires one to be aware of their own role, circumstances and impact of their behaviour. One must practice life-long learning in order to ensure his/her readiness to participate in our changing world. That participation should reflect the principles of leadership, ethics, accountability, fiscal responsibility, environmental awareness, global citizenship and personal responsibility.

Creativity Fluency

· Creativity

· Innovation

· Artistic Proficiency

This is the process by which artistic proficiency adds meaning through design, art and storytelling. It regards form in addition to function, and the principles of innovative design combined with a quality functioning product.

Creative Fluency extends beyond visual creative skills, to using the imagination to create stories, a practice which is in demand in many facets of today’s economy. It is widely regarded by many successful industries that creative minds come up with creative solutions. (21st Century Fluency Series)

Media Fluency

· Technological Literacy

· Critical Thinking and Analysis

· Graphic Literacy

There are two components of Media Fluency. Firstly, the ability to look analytically at any communication media to interpret the real message, how the chosen media is being used to shape thinking, and evaluate the efficacy of the message. Secondly, to create and publish original digital products, matching the media to the intended message by determining the most appropriate and effective media for that message. (21st Century Fluency Series)

Solution Fluency

· Problem-solving and Application

· Adaptability

The ability to define a problem, creatively generate solutions, try a solution, review the outcome and modify the plan of action if needed. One must be flexible, willing to alter the chosen path and be open to opposing ideas before working to a solution.

We need to:

• recognize 21st Century Fluencies
• Know our students
• demand access in order to develop digital fluency for ourselves and our students

It is vital that we reach our students, and present them with a relevant, meaningful education if we hope for any kind of future in which people manipulate the technology around them, rather than the other way around.

In a world of decreasing physical resources and burgeoning information, we have an opportunity to create complex meaning and interrelated forms of intelligence and understanding far beyond the limits of our predecessors. If we want any chance of overcoming the imminanent population and resource problems that face us, we need to begin teaching and encouraging frictionless knowledge in the datasphere, rather than frantically clutching to antiquated, paper based knowledge from our past.

@tk1ng

timothy.king@ugdsb.on.ca

www.atking.ca

http://temkblog.blogspot.com/2011/09/dancing-in-datasphere.html

Gamer culture is not lazy culture. Education culture is slow, traditional and unwilling to adapt. Education shouldn't be adopting gaming mechanisms, gaming culture should be adopting education. The arrogance of education will probably result in heavy handed condescension and an utter failure to adapt to this powerful social force.

We have to break 20th Century habits of centralized, board run I.T.

http://www.ted.com/talks/jane_mcgonigal_gaming_can_make_a_better_world.html

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.04/genX.html

We need to know our students.

Generation Xbox

This is not an overpriced pipe dream. We would be replacing an outdated and expensive system with a lean, heterogeneous mix of technology that actually addresses educational needs.

1. Arrogance: Killing the bad guys and saving the universe leads to a superiority complex. This carries over into the real world, too. Gamers as young as 20 often claim to be experts at whatever they do.

4. Flexibility: There's always more than one way to win a game. To beat a particularly difficult sequence, gamers try different methods with tireless persistence. They tackle life's problems with the same flexibility. This allows for analytical, strategic, and open-minded thinking.

http://prezi.com/h7ms3hw7jx7-/mini-lab/

5. Competitiveness: Life is a game, and everyone plays to win. Even though gamers often succeed at teamwork, they retain a strong, underlying sense of personal ambition.

2. Sociability: Sitting alone at the �console isn't considered alone time - especially when it's spent playing massively multiplayer online games. The more a gamer plays, the more likely they are to identify themselves as sociable.

3. Coordination: Virtual heroes must react quickly to visual cues to advance to the next level. A study by the University of Rochester found that visual processing dramatically increases with as little as 10 hours of gameplay.

6. Insubordination: Logging thousands of hours in authority-free worlds teaches gamers to live by their own rules. Gen G accepts criticism exclusively from peers. Outsiders don't speak their language anyway.

//youtu.be/j449Dcqtmgc

An intern at social media site Facebook has created a graphic demonstration of the links between the social network site’s 500 million users

dancing in the datasphere

Managing a world of fluid information with static 19th Century habits;

How an antiquated school system is being left behind by the information revolution.

Paper based data

paper

data

• out of date by the time it's seen
• static, untouchable, uneditable
• unconnectable (un-hyper-textable)
• limited access to publication
• high cost of transmission
• high cost of copying, limits info
• emminently ownable!

"Every two days now we create as much information as we did from the dawn of civilization up until 2003."

“I spend most of my time assuming the world is not ready for the technology revolution that will be happening to them soon,”

feeds copyright lawyers and big business

HEAVY DRAG

Commoditizes Information

- Eric Schmidt, CEO, Google

'Modern' Education

When I was a kid, there were 9 planets, that was it. My parents' text book said the same thing. In the past two years, we have discovered over 1200 planets, and average over a dozen new discoveries a week...

http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/04/schmidt-data/

We cling to old icons and ideas just to make sense of it all...

This is not time wasting, or nonsense, in most cases it's not even fictional, it's communication and data, lots and lots of data. Ignoring new information breeds illiteracy. Not showing students how to manage it is a disaster

Continually being tested, contested and updated

Being produced at a prodigeous rate!

Frantically being blocked by industrial interests!

data in the sphere

access is key, not capitol

longs to be FREE!!!

democratized information

Nearly FRICTIONLESS data

continuously in motion

http://www.slideshare.net/PewInternet/the-internet-and-the-arts-how-new-technology-affects-old-aesthetics