In a recent inkubator podcast I talked to Doug Belshaw. In this episode he tried to help me unpack the question “What is project nodenoggin?” We recorded the episode shortly after I made the project code public and his series of questions and the discussion really helped me think about a few specific points. One neat question he posed was if you could describe the project with current products what would they be?

A great question as it allows you to situate your own concept quickly and helps overcome the hurdle of the unknown.

What is your PhD?

Well the worst way to describe it quickly is “it's a better Blackboard” [footnote]Blackboard Learn (previously the Blackboard Learning Management System) is a  learning management system developed by Blackboard Inc. [/footnote]

True, the project nodenoggin is a digital tool to support teaching and learning. But that’s the only connection to a product like Blackboard, so any of the other thoughts one might have about Blackboard will potentially ruin, in your mind at least, what the project is.

My project argues why the Learning Management System (LMS) is and probably has always been outdated. A key point is that the paradigm used by current tools we use is wrong and we need something else - a different paradigm.

I was also reminded this week of the app Notion and it’s about page. Please quickly visit and come back…

Ok so that’s an very awesome, fantastically illustrated, neat summary of some of the topics I am trying to tackle and they are certainly doing some good work. So now you have some clues as to why we need new types of tools. [footnote]If you would like more in-depth details now on why we need a new paradigm and that this is not just a new clever tool check out https://manifold.soton.ac.uk[/footnote].

So lets get back to the main question, what is project nodenoggin?

Following the approach of ‘describe it in the context of other products’ I am going to suggest it is :

Ulysses + Deckset + Ember + Milanote + a Community of practice.

What!!! That doesn’t help!! I hear you cry. Fair point, so here is a little more of an explanation.

Ulysses

Ulysses is a Markdown [footnote]Markdown is a simple way to structure the inner workings of a document, the semantic structure of a document. Headings, Paragraphs, quotes etc. are all indicated via simple characters such as hash , angle bracket and the asterisk [/footnote] editor with a great user interface (UI) and great looking previews of said markdown text. All your sheets are stored in groups on the left pane and can be connected together to structure longer writing. The main UI in the middle is the markdown editor itself. The far right pane lets you add attachments, notes and meta data such as word count targets to each sheet to support your writing. You can also quickly share (save) the sheet in a rendered view, which makes it look nice. This output can be done in a variety of ways very quickly. Its a pretty complex app but the core aspect is you can take plain text[footnote]plaintext is highly portable and can be opened on any device that supports text, even if the markdown syntax is not understood due to the syntax being plaintext there are no issues. [/footnote] and you can render the content to look great in a variety of outputs (which can be customised).

Deckset

Deckset uses a Markdown file to create and present slide decks. Using again a plaintext document with markdown syntax Deckset creates wonderful looking slides from templates (which can be customised) and has a fully fledged presenter mode. Think same formatting as within the main Ulysses UI (markdown) but with the output being slides and a presenter mode not documents.

Ember (from RealMacsoftware)

Ember was a macOS app (Littlesnapper 2 effectively) for quickly collecting and organising images and visuals for any project. It was pitched as a digital scrap book it was intuitive and very friendly to use, it included a built in RSS reader for connecting and viewing feeds of visual inspiration. You could add your own annotations and quickly snap (import) and share (export). It worked really well but unfortunately was sunset a number of years ago. Consequently I have included the original YouTube trailer to give you an idea of the app. I do have the application somewhere on an older Mac but haven’t dare launch it in a while.

Milanote

Milanote is a tool where you can start to arrange and organise objects into a spatial arrangement and make connections between those objects. I would define this for now as a spatial hypertext tool. There are a few other similar tools such as Tinderbox from Eastgate that do similar things, but Milanote seems to one of the more delightful looking approaches.

Community of Practice

The final piece of the puzzle is not another app but the concept of a community of practice.

Lave and Wenger (1991, p. 98) defined this as ‘a system of relationships between people, activities, and the world; developing with time.’ They argue that these relationships are essential for learning. Wenger (1998, 2000) made a link between situated practice and learning to three dimensions of ‘community’ – mutual engagement, sense of joint enterprise, and a shared repertoire of communal resources.  He proposed these as sources of learning  based on individuals doing things together, developing a sense of place, purpose and common identity and thus creating a dynamic learning environment within said community. (Roberts, 2008)

The Answer

Well that’s the answer for now. I hope it’s helpful or at least provokes some thoughts and reactions. If you find it interesting, debate on my discourse, contribute the code at my gitlab and chat with me via micro.blog.

In a follow up post I will outline how I envision workflows within this tool.

Design Led Learning Environments - Spatial Hypertext

• Procter, Adam
• Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton
• adam.procter@soton.ac.uk

ABSTRACT

Category: Oral Presentation

Area: innovative online learning designs or environments

I have migrated this site researchnot.es from my custom GoLang Markdown blog to wordpress, this means I am able to make more changes and keep things working. Will be ironing out broken links and images asap. Shout if anything is going very weird for you.

In the virtual learning environment and generally the Edutech space many digital tools have suffered from a focus on the functional, reliable and usable and have often become very feature driven. This can make them unusually unhelpful interfaces.

The LMS, the VLE, is a piece of administrative software — there’s that word “management” in there that sort of gives it away for us in the US at least — software that purports to address questions about teaching and learning but often circumscribing pedagogical possibilities. You can see its Dot Com roots too in the VLE functionality and in its interface. I mean, some VLEs still look like software from the year 2000! The VLE acts as an Internet portal to the student information system, and much like the old portals of the Dot Com era, much like AOL for example, it cautions you when you try to venture outside of it. (Watters, 2014) [footnote]Worth noting the AOL model is exactly what Facebook currently do, Facebook is the portal to the web for a lot of users[/footnote]

Higher education is ripe for “disruption”—to use Clayton Christensen’s theory of “disruptive innovation”—because there is a real, systemic crisis in higher education, one that offers no apparent or immanent solution. (Bady, 2013)

Universities need to engage with data tools now so they can understand their power.(Swain, 2016)

In 2014 Bainbridge published in the Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education this warning about data gathering;

I make the case that digital technologies are being imposed upon formal learning environments, particularly focused within HE and often associated with the ‘student experience’ agenda. This imposition often reflects what amounts to a thoughtless approach to teaching and learning, in which pedagogy is side-lined by neo-liberal practices of efficiency and surveillance (Bainbridge, 2014)

In 2015 Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg announced in an open letter to his new born daughter, that part of his new philanthropic company, bankrolled by Facebook Shares was a commitment to providing personalised learning;

technology that understands how you learn best and where you need to focus. (Zuckerberg, 2015)

While Facebook may feel like a modern town square, the company determines, according to its own interests, what we see and learn (O’Neil, 2016)

Google is ground zero for a wholly new subspecies of capitalism in which profits derive from the unilateral surveillance and modification of human behaviour (Zuboff, 2016)

Now Windows 10 devices offer the power, performance and security schools need at the same price as Chromebooks, with none of the compromises.

We will access, disclose and preserve personal data, including your content (such as the content of your emails, other private communications or files in private folders), when we have a good faith belief that doing so is necessary to protect our customers or enforce the terms governing the use of the services (Microsoft, 2015)

There is clearly a demand for technology in education which is coupled with a data driven agenda driving both how we measure education quality and how we understand and support student learning. The business model of Silicon Valley is by building technology that is based on gathering as much data as possible for ad revenue.

So with such powerful data gathering systems would it not be possible too identifies a student’s chance of going to University from their first day of Primary school. Toby Young was appointed (2018) as the UK Universities watchdog and subsequently resigned under public pressure could have suggested that with this type of data those children could be offered free school ‘milk’.

My proposal is this: once this technology (genetically engineered intelligence) becomes available, why not offer it free of charge to parents on low incomes with below-average IQs? Provided there is sufficient take-up, it could help to address the problem of flat-lining inter-generational social mobility and serve as a counterweight to the tendency for the meritocratic elite to become a hereditary elite. (Young, 2015)

Of course the technology companies can do just this and have a wealth of overarching user experience knowledge, they have been iterating and gathering a user base at a fantastic rate. The question is should they be allowed to and if not how do we counter this? So can higher education galvanise to provide something else. Should we provide something else?

I would be keen to hear your thoughts via my discourse, embedded below.