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>> Okay.
>> Okay, my name is Graham Attwell.
I run a small educational technological organization based in Wales, in the UK,
called Pontydysgu and I'm also an associate fellow at the University of Warwick
and the University of Bremen in Germany.
>> I have a question for you, Graham.
As we're looking at providing the skill sets for the next generation of leaders
in online learning, what do you think might be a challenge that we should prepare them for?
>> I think there's three big challenges.
The first one is the absolute speed of change at the moment.
Now we're not saying go on at this speed forever,
but the present speed of change it bewildering.
We're living through a major Industrial Revolution,
[Inaudible] call it a technological revolution,
but it's as big as the first Industrial Revolution.
Just everything is changing.
Everything is in flux, and it's very difficult to make sense in that period
and to make decisions which you don't know are going to be right,
you don't know where tomorrow's going to be, if you like.
I think there's a quote, I've forgotten who it's from, it says the first time we've had
to prepare a generation of learners for a future which we don't know what it is.
>> So that reflection time for these new emerging leaders is very short.
>> It's a short reflection time.
It's a short time in terms of changing ideas and to practice.
It's the changing nature of practice.
We don't even know what jobs there will be tomorrow.
Jobs come and jobs go.
>> Good point.
>> Steve Wheeler made a point in a workshop yesterday,
that [Inaudible] 15 years ago he wanted to train as a video repair technician.
We don't even have video tape machines any more.
>> Right. So who knows ten years out.
>> No idea.
No idea.
>> All right, you said you had three.
That's one.
>> I had three points.
The second -- the second change relates to the nature of technology itself.
There's this tendency to see technology as something inevitable, as something like the rain
in Ireland, that tomorrow a new generation of technology comes down.
These technologies are not purely technical in nature.
They are socio-technical, and the impacting of technology with society, but also the shaping
of society altars technologies, which is at the issue's grasp.
So my advice is don't just look at the technologies,
consider the social nature, social impact of technologies.
And that's quite a hard thing to do.
>> Get your arms around it.
Yeah. Okay.
Third idea?
>> The third idea is the nature of knowledge itself.
We're moving from a situation where we had expert sanctioned knowledge,
expert produced knowledge, expert verified knowledge,
to a situation where knowledge is distributed throughout society
and is mediated through technology.
Now it's not the technology itself which has the knowledge,
but the technology plays a mediating role in that knowledge.
So knowledge development and knowledge sourcing have been democratized, if you like,
but have also been spread wider and wider.
Now that gives you a challenge in a number of different ways.
First of all, you are no longer as an educationalist the font of knowledge.
You are interpreting, questioning, mediating.
But you're not the font of knowledge any more.
That knowledge is [Inaudible] wide.
But second thing, the knowledge in your own organization.
What's the nature of organizational knowledge, and knowledge is no longer sticky.
You can't hold that knowledge in your organization any more.
That knowledge is going to be open knowledge and it's going to be distributed in communities
which are much wider than your own organization.
So you have to really actively think about how you develop knowledge, how you share knowledge,
and the nature of that knowledge and the communities in which your institution operates.
And therefore, as the [Inaudible] of your institution
with those wider communities, it shares knowledge.
So your institution isn't as bounded in knowledge and ideas terms
as it would have been, even ten years ago.
And that's a very big challenge, strategic challenge, one you've actually got to get right.
>> So any ideas of control over knowledge is an illusion?
>> It can't be done.
It's as simple as that.
We've had very large scale attempts by the Iranian government,
the Chinese government, to control.
If they can't do it, you're not going to do it.