Connections, clouds, things, and analytics

George SiemensDecember 9, 2010

Caledonian AcademyGlasgow, Scotland

Hell is a place where nothing connects with nothing

T.S. Eliot

…or where everything connects with everything

Openness increases accessibility which increases quantity of [everything]

Finding new (fluid) centres

A continual stream

Centering through hashtags, paper.li, Google Alerts, RSS readers, Twitter

Lists

Activity streams as today’s communication and collaboration tool

Splicing information and social connections based on current needs, interests, and context

Compare this with a traditional information unit

(course, news cast, newspaper, album)

Cloud computing & SaaS

Tale of a stolen and a crashed computer…

In five years, most university IT departments will be unrecognizable by

today’s standards

By 2020, we’ll “live mostly in the cloud” (some of us are already)

http://www.pewinternet.org/Media-Mentions/2010/CNN-Mashable-Cloud-Computing.aspx

“By 2014, about 34% of all new business software purchases will be consumed via SaaS, and SaaS delivery will constitute about 14.5% of worldwide software spending across all primary markets.”

http://www.idc.com/about/viewpressrelease.jsp?containerId=prUS22431810&sectionId=null&elementId=null&pageType=SYNOPSIS

What is cloud computing?

“…a style of computing in which scalable and elastic IT-enabled capabilities are delivered as a service to external customers using Internet technologies.”

http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1035013

“Cloud computing is on-demand access to virtualized IT resources that are housed outside of your own data center, shared by others, simple to use, paid for via subscription, and accessed over the Web.”

http://www.informationweek.com/cloud-computing/blog/archives/2008/09/a_definition_of.html

“Cloud computing really is accessing resources and services needed to perform functions with dynamically changing needs. An application or service developer requests access from the cloud rather than a specific endpoint or named resource”

http://cloudcomputing.sys-con.com/node/612375/

Huh??

“Buzzword compliant computing”

http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/07/17/2117221

Doing stuff online (“the cloud”) that we used to do on our computers or servers

Which means:

We can scale. Rapidly

We can off-load technical details & headaches

(hopefully) reduce costs

Better quality service & products

(should universities generate their own electricity?)

Internet of things

Blurring the physical and virtual worlds

Googling your car keys. Or shoes.

“Social data is set to be surpassed in the data economy, though, by data published by physical, real-world objects like sensors, smart grids and connected devices.”

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/china_moves_to_dominate_the_next_stage_of_the_web_internet_of_things.php

Central Nervous System for Earth (CeNSE)

http://www.hpl.hp.com/research/intelligent_infrastructure/

All the world is data. And so are we. And all of our actions.

http://www.hoganphoto.com/batsto_grist_mill.htm

Bringing together our various “us”

Learning and knowledge analytics

http://research.uow.edu.au/learningnetworks/seeing/snapp/index.html

http://www4.nau.edu/ua/GPS/student/

iKLAM

Integrated Knowledge and Learning Analytics Model:

Bringing together physical (libraries, bookstore, support services) and locational (xWeb) data with online activities (in various places: email, FB, LMS, PLE)…to improve personal learning and knowledge evaluation

Impact on teaching/learning

Courses as we know them=gone

Intelligent curriculum meets analytics meets social network meets personal profile

Peer/participatory pedagogy

Open science, open scholarship

Collaborative, multi-institutional networks

Assessment as matching, not explicit activity

You’re MOOCing up my view of education!

Open teaching & learning

2008, 2009,

(soon) 2011

Twitter/Facebook/Quora: gsiemens

Newsletter: www.elearnspace.org

Learning Analytics & Knowledge Conference: https://tekri.athabascau.ca/analytics/ (February 27-March 1, 2011. Banff, Canada)