tokyokevin: Kevin Ryan in Tokyo

Kevin putting it out there

  • Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History

    I started listening to this podcast a couple of weeks ago. I can’t get enough.

    I remember driving all over Japan a few years ago, listening to the series about the Byzantines by Lars Brownworth, a prof,  who is doing one on the Normans. Driving around the US last summer I listened to How the Irish Saved Civilization, by Thomas Cahill.
    hh_headerBut now this new guy (for me), Dan Carlin, talks about lots of different kinds of history. His podcasts are long, 3-4 hours, but engrossing. I’ve listened to #48, about heretics and a trial in Munster, Germany just after Gutenberg and Martin Luther. And #41, about how the Dark Ages weren’t really so Dark, and how the Goths were a lot more civilized than most people think. Covers from the fall of Rome in 472 up through Charlemagne in the 800’s.
    He’s got a much more conversational style than Brownworth, and jumps all over the place. He is at the top of iTunes Podcast list, for a good reason. I just wish I had more time. Next for me: #49 The American Peril. He also does series, such as the ones about Mongolia and the Khan. Well worth the listen. 

  • Some Rhizomatic Learning on P2PU

    rhizomatic

    Our first task for the the first week of the new MOOC by Dave Cormier is not so much reconcile cheating with learning but rethink learning so there is no place for cheating. A MOOC, especially a Connectivist MOOC, with rhizomatic roots is a good place to do that. Rhizomatic Learning is an attempt to assemble a community of people, some with knowledge of the focal topic, others with knowledge of other topics, to work together to fill each others’ chinks. More on the root system that allows single plants to weave themselves together into a single organism, and how Dave had taken that idea and applied it to online learning. I have to take care of a couple of my other blogs, one over at DMLL, about Digital Mobile Language Learning, and another for student work over at languagejapan.com.

    But I will be right back with another post. About Burma.

  • Burma Bound

    MyanmarSchool3A friend of the family has wrangled me into volunteering as a teacher trainer for a week next January in Myanmar. The group is small, and works through a travel agent and has connections to the Education Network, founded by the National League for Democracy (NLD), the political party founded by Aung San Suu Kyi.

    At first, I was a bit apprehensive. I had to raise funding to get there, and stay there, and also find someone else to match that. I was extremely fortunate to ask Frank Berberich, longtime friend, who has recently retired. He immediately signed on, saying he had been looking for something exactly like this.

    We are in the process of raising funds now, and getting visas. It looks like we will be training about 100 high school teachers in the Yangon (Rangoon) area. These teachers are part of a network of schools that teach the poorest and most disadvantaged children in Myanmar.

    MyanmarSchool2So here I am, an expert in using computers to teach adults languages, and I am going to try to train teachers on the complete opposite end of the spectrum. Instead of polite Japanese school girls as students, we will have harried teachers, trying to add to their arsenal of teaching tools, so as to open up Myanmar to the world.

    As we approach deadlines and prepare for the training, Frank and I are getting more and more excited. We are going along with 6 others on the trip, and will meet them in Yangon shortly after the new year. I will keep you updated on events as they happen.

  • #ETMOOC, baby steps, students

    I have always figured I am about 3 years ahead of my students, at least in adoption of technology for learning. But with this MOOC thing, I have leapt way, way ahead. The way universities are set up, the education system so entrenched and ossified here in Japan, I fear for the 2020’s (and figure not much will happen until then).

    Japan’s Ministry of Education is promoting the idea of applying the “Plan-Do-Check-Act” cycle to learning. Never mind that this was developed to improve assembly lines for Toyota in the 1960’s by W. Edwards Deming who has reached mythical status over the years. Teachers tell me it can be used for anything. Sure it can. But should it?

    So how do we get from here to there? Baby steps? A gradual evolution? Or a revolution? Will digital citizens rise up and man the barricades, voting electronically to…do what? MOOCs of the Connectivist variety will require a lot of nurturing, and will get splashed with the backlash that is sure to come in the next few years of the emerging technologies hype cycle.

    My students are woefully unprepared for autonomous learning. They have been instructed and directed down to the minute in a very efficient system for developing instruction followers. I am guessing they will become the engine for whoever will lead them. I teach one day a week at the leader’s school. The ones who will go into the bureaucracy to push Japan forward in the next few years. They leave me hope. They are willing to experiment, but only so far. Tiny tiny groups are allowed to do things differently, such as take a gap year. Are these baby steps enough? Should I try to foment a revolution? They say the best leaders are adept at spotting a crowd going somewhere and getting in front of it. I don’t see much movement right now. Hopefully it is just me.

  • TV Guide to MOOCs

    The most profitable company for TV in its golden era, before cable and the Internet, was the TV guide. Cover TV Guide It made more than the networks did. Networks, for our younger readers, were large broadcasting companies that worked with local distributors (affiliates) to make a broadcast network, exemplified by CBS, NBC or ABC in the US.

    I can’t help but feel that we are ramping up to that golden age very quickly for MOOCs, and whoever has the best directory will have tremendous influence over how the industry (and it will be an industry) develops.

    Stephen Downes MOOC Guide is a good example of an open source guide. Coursera is working hard to involve so many universities that it will become a defacto guide in itself. Edx is offering its courseware to anyone who wants to install and use it.

    One or more of these groups will eventually (and I think already has) offer the platform as-is for teachers to use to offer courses. A guide for that will also be essential in the near future. This guide would include the each platform available, the tools available, the requirements for hosting a course, and the outcome for both teachers and students.

    ETMOOC LogoIn the age of digital citizenship, (currently being discussed at the ETMOOC), the educational component of that citizenship may well require access to a directory like this, either for learning or for teaching, and may even be required eventually for access to parts of society the citizen belongs to. One may have to take a course in the constitution before running for office, for example. Certainly driver’s licenses could have requirements that might be satisfied with a MOOC, and add a built-in support group for driving issues after the license is obtained, in case one gets arrested or breaks down.

    The ramifications are endless.