Up in the clouds

WAYNE ERB talks to DEREK WENMOTH about what The Horizon Report means for New Zealand.

The question gets asked, says Derek Wenmoth, about whether professors are prepared to be contradicted by their students.

Students can access the internet during a lecture. Expect to be challenged, he says. Technology brings change, not just in how students learn but also in their relationship with teachers.

Wenmoth is director of e-learning at Core Education, a well-known blogger, and a contributor to The Horizon Report, including its Australasian version.

“I think we’re probably tracking along reasonably in step,” he says about New Zealand’s progress in using ICT in education compared to the world.

“For me the thing that is quite significant over the past two years is the extent of activity around cloud technology and mobile technology.”

Cloud computing lets you use software and services over the internet when needed, without needing control over the technology. Mobile devices range from laptops with wireless internet access to smart phones.

Wenmoth says other emerging technologies like augmented reality and location-based computing are dependent on these first two developments. Their application has some way to go in this country.

“I don’t think at the tertiary level that we’ve really woken up to what the cloud can offer. There are some people who are very well-informed but if you look at what our tertiary institutions are doing, there is probably not the movement in that direction I would have envisaged.”

Cloud computing saves money and allows students to contribute to exciting online environments. They can increasingly create their own learning pathways, as in the potential uses of portfolios.

Wenmoth says students could keep control of their work, recreate and re-present it for different audiences.

“It’s been a dream for many, especially in the school sector. It’s not until you step into the cloud that the true potential of a portfolio system can be realised. You find it’s not the institution which owns the portfolio but it’s the student and it’s how you give that ubiquity to take it from institution to institution. It’s quite a different mindset.”

The role of teacher is shifting away from someone who filters knowledge and presents it.

“Now teachers have to start being the experienced learners in that process, and say hey, let’s find out about this. The most valuable thing I can do is help you to access the information but then sort, sift, analyse and prioritise it and beyond that, give coherence by comparing and contrasting.”

How we make changes in ICT use at the institutional level occurs in several ways, says Derek.

“First, it comes about through visionary policy development, people anticipating what might happen and creating policy and then enablers with funding to allow that to happen.”

This type of change might be a reaction to grass roots or underground activity.

This means tertiary institutions play catch-up as students expand their experience of the internet, through social networking for example.

“We have a number of teachers doing that too – you only need to look at the number of blogs and wikis, but we don’t have that at an institutional level.”

Instead, he says some think in terms of “closed ecology” – keeping learning contained within the institution’s controlled systems, or even banning access to some technologies.

As a sector, we do need a sense of direction, says Wenmoth, but it is less about having an absolute destination in mind as looking at where emerging trends may take each of us.

While there are many pressing current issues, if you don’t take time out up in the sky, looking towards the future, he says, “you’ll lose the opportunity to innovate and move forward”.