WARNING! This website is no longer actively maintained. It is an archive of 2 years work by Doug Belshaw who now blogs at dougbelshaw.com...
You can tell it’s back-to-school time as there’s more quality posts in the edublogosphere than you can shake a board rubber at! In fact, in a bit of a break with tradition - but as needs must - I’m going to have to do two roundups this week. I’m going to theme them, so this first one is on theory and the second one will be on more practical areas… 
Here’s what I’ll be looking at in the first of this week’s roundups (theory):
- Will Richardson - Teachers as Learners Part 27
- Will Richardson - Experts vs. Collective Intelligence
- Wes Fryer - To Blog or Not to Blog? You Decide
- George Siemens - What you should learn
- David Muir - Education: product or process?
When I first started blogging back in the heady days of December 2005, Will Richardson’s Weblogg-ed was (amongst others) a revelation. I thought he’d gone off the boil a bit since changing roles from teacher to speaker, but this week has seen a bit of a return to form. In Teachers as Learners Part 27 and Experts vs. Collective Intelligence, Will looks at the changing nature of knowledge - and therefore teaching - in the 21st century. Drawing upon Henry Jenkins’ Convergence Culture: where old and new media collide, Will states:
In a world where knowledge is scarce (and I know I’m using that phrase an awful lot these days), I can see why we needed teachers to be, well, teachers. But here’s what I’m wondering: in a world where knowledge is abundant, is that still the case? In a world where, if we have access, we can find what we need to know, doesn’t a teacher’s role fundamentally change? Isn’t it more important that the adults we put into the rooms with our kids be learners first? Real, continual learners? Real models for the practice of learning? People who make learning transparent and really become a part of the community?
Indeed. And it’s the conception of knowledge that society has (and therefore most teachers have) that’s the problem. As Will cites Jenkins as noting, we need to move away from the ‘expert paradigm’ of education. He quotes Jenkins as saying:
The expert paradigm requires a bounded body of knowledge, which an individual can master. The types of questions that thrive in a collective intelligence, however, are open ended and profoundly interdisciplinary; they slip and slide across borders and draw of the combined knowledge of more diverse community.
This is dangerous for educational institutions as it means that usual indicators of success - examination results - are all but useless. Will then cites Jenkins as making the following points:
- No standardized test can capture the complex and multi-faceted nature of human intelligence.
- The ‘expert paradigm’ excludes some from the debate (creates an interior and an exterior), whereas ‘collective intelligence’ values the input of all.
- The ‘expert paradigm’ lays down rules for what you can do with knowledge - the ways in which you can process it. In reality, knowledge can be ‘disorderly, undisciplined, and unruly’.
- Those involving themselves in ‘collective intelligence’ often have not gone through formal accreditation processes, but this does not necessarily affect the status of their contributions.
The problem for Will, and this is something that I’ve discussed (Death to the INSET!), is that all this makes his new career unnecessary and irrelevant - as noted by Tom Hoffman in the comments section:
Isn’t this all just circular, though, at least in reference to your experiences arriving at schools as an expert in the obsolescence of expertise? I mean, isn’t the conclusion that your new role is obselete? Shouldn’t schools be spending their money on lesson study and critical friends groups instead of bringing people like you in for a hit and run workshop?
Yes, they should - but as I also noted in Looking to get into INSETs, sometimes you have to meet people half-way to get your ideas across. I’m sure no-one would say Will is doing anything but a good job in laying the foundations and getting the message ‘out there’.
You can’t strongarm people into blogging and collaborating, it’s something that comes from within. Obviously it’s not something that people were ‘born to do’ but it nevertheless takes a certain type of character. That’s not to say that a lot (a lot) more educators could and should be blogging than actually are. Wes Fryer in To Blog or Not to Blog? You Decide links to his article (PDF) of the same name in Interactive Educator, the magazine of the people who make SMARTboards. In it, he lays out the pros and cons of blogging and podcasting. The pros, as far as he sees them are:
- They’re safe
- Low cost, high viability
- Connects parents with schools
- Supports content creation
- They’re fun
The arguments he puts forward in support of the above points, he hopes, go against those who say that they don’t have time, they’re just another fad or that they pose a security risk. However, he does list some cons of blogging and podcasting, namely:
- Zero-sum schedules (i.e. likely to take time away from another activity)
- New IT demands
- Requires administrator support
- Disruptive technology may be opposed
He then goes on to give some tips for those who want to experiment with blogging and podcasting, as well as some links to useful sites. All in all, a useful article that should be shown to those in positions in authority in schools around the world! 
The skills which are used by students in blogging and podcasting are part of a wider ‘toolkit’ of skills and abilities which are needed in the 21st century. George Siemens links to posts by Clark Quinn and Stephen Downes which reference an original list by Guy Kawasaki (Ten Things to Learn This School Year). I’m not going to go into detail about it as it’s something I mentioned in last week’s roundup. Suffice to say that Stephen and Clark have a bit of a debate over specifics, but end up agreeing to a great extent. Have a closer look by clicking on the links provided to the individual posts.
One thing that’s striking me more and more - especially after reading George Siemens’ (almost) final draft of Knowing Knowledge is that knowledge isn’t something fixed and that most types of knowledge actually has quite a short ’shelf-life’. This is something discussed by David Muir in his post Education: product or process? in which he gives a great definition of intelligence:
Intelligence is knowing what to do when you don’t know what to do.
Yes, there is some knowledge which it is fair to expect everyone in society to have, but we need to do something about the (implied) definition of intelligence as being able to regurgitate ‘facts’. As the quote above shows, intelligence is more about procedural knowledge and making connections between data. This brings us full circle back to what Will was saying above about networks instead of experts.
Certainly something to think about as I start a new school year tomorrow! 
Popularity: 15% [?]
If I remember correctly, “Intelligence is knowing what to do when you don’t know what to do.” was credited to Piaget. However, I have never found an original source and have also seen it credited to Art Costa and John Holt. One thing is for sure, I didn’t think of it first… but I wish I had!
Yep, upon further research seems it is indeed Piaget but has been quoted by the other two you mention!