Comments on: Tool & Content Malleability

By: jonmott

jonmott — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 16:16:26 +0000

Great insights Kyle. I agree that we're at a unique place in the history of teaching & learning technology. We have real opportunities for synergy that haven't existed before.

By: Kyle Mathews

Kyle Mathews — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 19:04:39 +0000

Hal Varian, chief economist at Google, recently gave an interview where he made some similar points to yours:

We’re in the middle of a period that I refer to as a period of “combinatorial innovation.” So if you look historically, you’ll find periods in history where there would be the availability of a different component parts that innovators could combine or recombine to create new inventions. In the 1800s, it was interchangeable parts. In 1920, it was electronics. In the 1970s, it was integrated circuits.

Now what we see is a period where you have Internet components, where you have software, protocols, languages, and capabilities to combine these component parts in ways that create totally new innovations. The great thing about the current period is that component parts are all bits. That means you never run out of them. You can reproduce them, you can duplicate them, you can spread them around the world, and you can have thousands and tens of thousands of innovators combining or recombining the same component parts to create new innovation. So there’s no shortage. There are no inventory delays. It’s a situation where the components are available for everyone, and so we get this tremendous burst of innovation that we’re seeing.

The rest of the article is quite interesting as well:
http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Strategy/Innov...

I was also reminded of a John Seely Brown lecture I watched a few weeks ago. He says the remix culture is coming to schools that learning in universities will become a cycle of creating knowledge, using, and remixing.
https://island.byu.edu/content/notes-lecture-jo...

By: mikefarmer

mikefarmer — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 17:23:05 +0000

This is a monumental undertaking to redefine learning technology. I applaud your study and articulation of the problem and the direction you set forth for creating the next generation. This is the right way to go and doing so will be inevitable. I'm very interested in seeing some prototypes and working examples of how this can be accomplished. Five years ago I would have thought Service Oriented Architectures (SOA) would have brought the desired modularity. Having read much about the failure of many SOA initiatives, I now question whether that is the right approach.

I believe that future initiatives to implement modularity (malleability as you call it) into the learning experience will involve integration of web based applications delivered through a common interface. In other words, utilizing existing integration standards such as REST compatible API's from highly specialized online services into a single framework that can provide a consistent user experience. An example would be to provide a single access-point for Google Docs and Facebook groups where documents could be shared to members of the groups in a very low friction interaction.

Do you know of any current initiatives to articulate a possible software architecture and identify existing technologies that could be implemented and tested under the guidelines you've specified?