www.futurelab.org.uk

Cyber-Spaces & Virtual Learning

ESRC Seminar

University of Southampton

Tim.Rudd@futurelab.org.uk

www.educationeye.org.uk

Introducing...

www.infocow.org.uk

Beyond Current Horizons

www.beyondcurrenthorizons.org.uk

www.visionmapper.org.uk

•3 year Research Programme

•6 Socio-technical trends

Beyond Current Horizons

Information landscape - “know more stuff about more stuff” - gather, store, use, share more data

Importance of geography - both less and more important

Beyond Current Horizons

Institutional boundaries - weakened & porous; info not tied to institution; blurring ‘work’ & ‘leisure’

Socio-technological trends – more communication, collaboration, content creation, social etc.

Beyond Current Horizons

‘Digital natives’ grow up – over 50% pop. 50+ by 2030?; extended life expectancy; adult-child relationships changing

Working with machines – redefining intelligence; challenging dependencies

Some thoughts

• New technologies are changing our navigation and experience of different spaces and places – in new ways/different media – we should be critical as to how positive it all is

• Beware utopias/dystopias – challenge techno-romanticism

• New ways of thinking – new frameworks (UK schools – ‘container model’? Individual knowledge acquisition and knowledge transfer – broadcast model – any wonder new technologies get mediated and colonised – e.g. VLE and Whiteboards

• How cyber-worlds can enhance existing cultural and national identities under certain circumstances

Some thoughts• Need to debate nature of space – virtual-real-

interplay

• Within broader analysis of power and structures

• Day prisons? - built power relationships – expression of power relationships – overtly and as bi product of ‘what has gone before’ - or what the ‘market’ or ’field’ demands

• Which structures of the past and present, which power inequalities are at play...and when?

Some thoughts

• How do these impact individual expectations and how, in turn, are these mediated by the past?

• Ask a pupil what a school of the future will look like and...

• Need alternative narratives about the future that empower individuals

• Interconnected web of ‘structuring structures’ – perceptions, roles, positions, schools ‘aims’, educational purpose, measures, standards

• politics, global – micro, meso, macro structures and fields within those that mediate – myriad – complex

Politics and Ideology in the UK – potential effects on education, spaces and cyberspaces

How do we respond to the ‘Big Society’?

Increasing ‘marketisation’ – roll back of the state – neo liberalism – growth of para-professionals and consultancy?

Globalisation of pedagogy (pedagogies) or consumption of ‘schooling’ ?

Consumerism and education – including growth of consultants – alternative measures and approaches?