REAL QUESTIONS ABOUT LEARNING IN A KNOWLEDGE BASED ECONOMY

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REAL QUESTIONS ABOUT LEARNING IN A KNOWLEDGE
BASED ECONOMY

• WALTER STEWART
• Walter Stewart Associates Inc.

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A GLOSSARY

• Knowledge Based Economy an economy in which the
  key value is knowledge and its successful,
  generation, dissemination, and deployment
• Cyberinfrastructure the convergence of
  networks, compute systems, scientific devices,
  data bases, middleware, applications, etc into a
  seamless infrastructure that enables the movement
  of data, information and knowledge without
  boundaries.

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A GLOSSARY

• OPEN

SOURCE
ACCESS
CONTENT
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A GLOSSARY

• Self-organization - social structures enable and
  constrain social actions and are produced and
  reproduced by social actions. Social systems in
  this sense are re-creative, they permanently
  produce and reproduce actions and structures.
  self-organization also as a critical notion in
  the sense of self-management, self-determination,
  grassroots organization, and participatory
  democracy (Christian Fuchs 2006).

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A GLOSSARY

• A wiki is a website that allows the visitors
  themselves to easily add, remove, and otherwise
  edit and change available content, typically
  without the need for registration. This ease of
  interaction and operation makes a wiki an
  effective tool for mass collaborative authoring.
  The term wiki also can refer to the collaborative
  software itself (wiki engine) that facilitates
  the operation of such a Web site, or to certain
  specific wiki sites, including the computer
  science site (the original wiki) WikiWikiWeb and
  on-line encyclopedias such as Wikipedia.

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REAL QUESTIONS ABOUT LEARNING IN A KNOWLEDGE
BASED ECONOMY

• What do I mean by real questions?
• A Story

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REAL QUESTIONS ABOUT LEARNING IN A KNOWLEDGE
BASED ECONOMY

• 14,000 troops
• 10,000 miles
• 30knt _at_ 2/3 power
• top speed/top secret
• The S.S. United States

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REAL QUESTIONS ABOUT LEARNING IN A KNOWLEDGE
BASED ECONOMY

• Major Response to Former Needs
• Wade Davis, National Geographic

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REAL QUESTIONS ABOUT LEARNING IN A KNOWLEDGE
BASED ECONOMY

• LIVE WITH THE QUESTIONS!!!!
• Questions are reliable.
• Answers are highly suspect!

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REAL QUESTIONS ABOUT LEARNING IN A KNOWLEDGE
BASED ECONOMY

• What?
• Why?
• How?

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Why? Why? Why? Why? Why?
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What would most of us do?

• What the f___k!!!

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For Newton,

• With the question always in mind,
• a foundation of Newtonian Physics is laid.

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Real Questions About Learning in a Knowledge
Based Economy

• We Need to Ask Real Questions

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Real Questions About Learning in a Knowledge
Based Economy

• Real Questions have the potential to deliver us
  from making a major response to former needs.

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A GLOSSARY

• KEY WORDS FROM THE GLOSSARY
• generation, dissemination, and deployment
• seamless infrastructure
• open
• produced and reproduced
• participatory democracy
• collaborative authoring

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Real Questions About Learning in a Knowledge
Based Economy
Note that these are not words about
technology. They are words about human behaviour.
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The Mediaeval Help Desk
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Real Questions About Learning in a Knowledge
Based Economy

• For me, most of the questions about learning are
  rooted in the switch from an industrial economy
  to a knowledge based economy.

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Real Questions About Learning in a Knowledge
Based Economy

• A Different Way of Knowing Because Knowledge is
  Different

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Real Questions About Learning in a Knowledge
Based Economy

• What is learning when knowledge is different?
• When knowledge/intelligence are collaborative not
  individual
• Lateral rather than vertical
• Iterative rather than finished
• Network based rather than locational
• Managed complexity rather than imposed simplicity
• Trust rather than control
• When text is no longer supreme?
• Our educational institutions - how much do they
  relate to learning or to knowledge?
• What is the nature of authority?
• How do you learn for a century or more?
• What do we really care about?

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What is learning in a knowledge economy?
The Industrial Process
Gather
Process
Fabricate
Use
Discard
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What is learning in a knowledge economy?
Industrial Learning
Higher Learning
Birth
Learn
Produce
Retire
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What is learning in a knowledge economy?
Learn
Produce
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What is learning in a knowledge economy?

• Alphabetic Hegemony is Declining
• Our Approach to Learning has been shaped by
  syntax
• Linear progression is both a characteristic of
  and a product of alphabetic literacy it is also a
  characteristic of the Industrial Era

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What is learning when text is no longer supreme?

• What do I know about myself?
• Reality begins at the top left and finishes at
  the bottom right.
• Reality only exists in complete sentences.
• Reality is a linear phenomenon with a single
  direction.
• Reality is best communicated through
  introduction, development, and conclusion.
• Reality experienced can only be fully validated
  by textual authority

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What is learning when text is no longer supreme?
MY WORLD
Introduction
Development
IT IS ALL ABOUT EXCLUSION
Conclusion
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What is learning when text is no longer supreme?

• MY WORLD IS DESIGNED FOR REDUCTIONISM
• IT IS NOT DESIGNED FOR INTEGRATION
• AND IT IS NOT DESIGNED FOR COMPLEXITY

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Real Questions About Learning in a Knowledge
Based Economy

• LINKED, THE NEW SCIENCE OF NETWORKS -
• Albert-Laszlo Barabasi,
• Emile T. Hoffman Professor of Physics, University
  of Notre Dame

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Real Questions About Learning in a Knowledge
Based Economy
O world of spring and autumn, birth and
dying!The endless cycle of idea and
action,Endless invention, endless
experiment,Brings knowledge of motion, but not
of stillnessKnowledge of speech, but not of
silenceKnowledge of words, and ignorance of the
Word.All our knowledge brings us nearer to
death,But nearness to death no nearer to
God.Where is the Life we have lost in
living?Where is the wisdom we have lost in
knowledge?Where is the knowledge we have lost in
information?The cycles of Heaven in twenty
centuriesBrings us farther from God and nearer
to the Dust. T.S. Eliot, Choruses from the Rock
1934
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Real Questions About Learning in a Knowledge
Based Economy

• Lateral rather vertical
• Iterative rather than finished
• Managed Complexity rather than imposed simplicity

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What is learning in a knowledge economy?

• THE NEW SYNONYMS
• Learning
• Production
• Communication

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What is learning in a knowledge economy?

• The Elect and the Damned

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What is learning when knowledge is different?

• What is knowledge and how do you acquire it when
  intelligence is communal?
• The Petroleum Experience

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The Home of Communal Intelligence

• 1. Sender/receiver.conversation.Receiver/sender
  
• shared space
• 2. Sender/receiver Receiver/sender
• Michael Schrage

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Our systems of education - how much do they
relate to learning?

• YOUR INSTITUTIONS WERE NEVER CHARGED WITH
  LEARNING. THEY WERE CHARGED TO EFFECT CONTROL.
• TEACHING CERTAIN SKILLS WERE CRITICAL TO SOCIAL
  CONFORMITY
• AT BEHEST OF CHURCH AND STATE, SYSTEMS OF MASS
  EDUCATION WERE CREATED TO ENSURE SOCIAL, ECONOMIC
  AND RELIGIOUS COMPLIANCE.

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What is the nature of authority?

• TEXT AND NOTATION DESCRIBE PHENOMENA
• BUT THEY DESCRIBE IT AT A DOUBLE REMOVE

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What is the nature of authority?

• THE DOOR IS 1/2 CLOSED.
• HOW DO WE UNDERSTAND THIS SENTENCE?

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What is the nature of authority?

• WE DECODE THE LETTERS TO THE SOUNDS WE WOULD MAKE
  WHEN WE SPEAK AND
• WE DECODE THOSE SOUNDS TO AN APPRECIATION OF THE
  PHENOMENON
• BUT

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What is the nature of authority?

• WHEN WE CAN SEE THE PHENOMENON ABOUT WHICH WE
  WRITE AND SPEAK OUR UNDERSTANDING IS IMMEDIATE

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What is the nature of authority?
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What is the nature of authority?

• Or do you see it as half open?
• the weakening of authority

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What is the nature of authority?

• the weakening of authority
• The Generation Gap in Not Knowing
• The experience of authority -
• the authority of experience

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How do you learn for a century or more?

• CONSIDER MANY STUDENTS WHO ENTER COLLEGE NEXT
  SEPTEMBER WILL BE ALIVE WELL INTO THE THIRD
  QUARTER OF THIS CENTURY
• WHAT DOES THAT DO TO FRONT- END LOADING AS A
  CONCEPT?

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The only viable model for a century or more of
life
Learn
Produce
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What do we really care about?

• What kind of world do we want to live in?
• They Planted Trees Under Whose Shade They Will
  Not Sit.

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What do we really care about?

• I say to you Make perfect your will.I say take
  no thought of the harvest,But only of proper
  sowing.
• T.S. Eliot, Choruses From the Rock, 1934

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Real Questions About Learning in a Knowledge
Based Economy

• Live With These Questions, And Others They Are
  Your Context.
• These Questions Are More Important Than Any
  Answers That Might Be Offered Today.

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Real Questions About Learning in a Knowledge
Based Economy
Thank You