Deezer: Free Music You Can (almost) Embed on a Teaching Page

"Nice one ... Geezer!" - Pulp

The promise: http://www.deezer.com/ is a *legal* site that enables you to listen to free music on demand. In theory it should enable users embed tunes on web pages. If this worked then it would be a *great* teaching and learning tool. For example, my partner recently wanted to play her students "Joe Hill" by Joan Baez as part of a lecture on the history of American unions. Theoretically she could then embed the song on the course web page so that the students could listen to it at their convenience. Students could also embed songs for in presentations and personal / shared learning environments. Yes, I know you can do this from You Tube but … see below.

In practice: Deezer generates code that you can insert onto a web site or blog. I tried (see the embedded player below) and cannot get it to work yet but I am going to investigate further as this is such a great idea. I will edit this post if I can work our what went wrong.

Reflection: Of course you can do this with You Tube but I remain skeptical about the morality of You Tube and I think we have to set a digital rights management example to our students. This is a very grey area. I would claim that the quotes and pictures used on this site are examples of ‘fair use’. But I am not a lawyer. However, I was recently struck by something one of David Mamet’s characters said on ‘The Unit’ to advise someone with a moral dilemma: “If you knew the answer, then what would it be?”. My answer is that You Tube is built on shakey ground, I realize that the law and the younger generation think otherwise.

Susan Bull and Open Learner Models: Special Issues of IJAIE

"Turn the pages you didn't open ..." - Gene Clark

I shared an office with Susan Bull at the University of Brighton in the late 1990s. Susan, who has now moved to the University of Birmingham, is one of the most imaginative and hard working people I ever met and she has produced umpteen trillion papers on Learner Modeling and in particular Open Learner Models. I wish I had thought of open learner models myself but at least I was lucky enough to co-author a couple of papers with Susan (Bull & Shurville, 1999a, 1999b).

So what are open learner models? Over to Susan and her co-authors ...

• "The learner model is central to an adaptive educational system, as it is the model of the learner’s understanding (and possibly also other attributes such as their goals, motivation, learning preferences, etc.), that enables a system to adapt to the individual user’s current learning requirements. Traditionally, the learner model has been closed to the learner since its primary purpose, as indicated above, has been to allow a system to adapt to the individual’s needs. For several decades now, the Artificial Intelligence in Education community has been developing methods for modelling learners, and dealing with the dynamics and potential inaccuracy of learner models. One promising approach to improving the accuracy of the learner model is to open the contents of the model to the learner it represents, to allow them to suggest additional information, or to propose corrections to entries, thereby helping to maintain the accuracy of a system’s model of the user’s knowledge and other attributes relevant to the specific educational context. A second benefit of this interactive approach to learner modelling is that the learner model now plays a new role – not only can the learner contribute information to help increase the accuracy and therefore the utility of their learner model for adaptation purposes, but the model can also become a learning resource for the student in its own right. Such an open learner model (i.e. a learner model accessible to the learner modelled) offers the learner a perspective on their understanding that is not usually available to them, which can facilitate reflection on their knowledge and on the learning process more generally, as students must carefully consider their knowledge state before suggesting changes to their model. Furthermore, even non-interactive open learner models (that is, learner models that are inspectable but not changeable by the user) have the potential to prompt learner reflection and metacognition in a similar manner, as they confront the learner with information about their understanding which is likely to provoke some kind of cognitive reaction from them." (Bull, Dimitrova, and McCalla, 2007).
  

That more or less says it all. My only comment is that open learner models herald a way for artificial intellgence in education to embrace constructivist and student-centred approaches. To my mind reflection and metacognition have to outshine passive grazing of knowledge. It would be trendy to mention that open learner models have potential in personal learning environments and connections to learner-generated contexts. As Lyn Pemberton used to tease, I'm so a la mode that I'm going to do it anyway.

Susan has just co-edited a pair of special issues of the International Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education that introduce the state of play and current research issues in open student models. I recommend that anyone with an interest in AI and education should read the first and second parts of the introduction (Bull, Dimitrova & McCalla, G, 2007; Dimitrova, McCalla & Bull, 2007). Susan's has a paper in the issue with Judy Kay of the University of Sydney 'Student Models that Invite the Learner In: The SMILI
:-) Learner Modelling Framework' , which takes us toward a common framework to compare and contrast open learner models. Phil Agre argues that research in AI goes through neat and scruffy phases and both are necessary to make progress. It is good to see the emergence of a neat framework to tie the field of open learner models together. Now people can get on with some wild and scruffy research!

With further progress in mind, I notice from her home page that Susan has some PhD opportunities available and is particularly interested in supervising PhD students interested in open learner modelling, adaptive learning environments, mobile learning or computer-assisted language learning. If you are setting out in educational technology then having Susan as a supervisor would be a grand way to start. I certainly learned a lot sharing that office.

References

• Bull, S., Dimitrova, V. & McCalla, G. (2007). Open Learner Models: Research Questions (Preface to Special Issue of the IJAIED Part 1), International Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education 17(2), 83-87.
• Dimitrova, V., McCalla, G. & Bull, S. (2007). Open Learner Models: Future Research Directions (Preface to Special Issue of the IJAIED Part 2), International Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education 17(3), 217-226.
• Bull, S. & Kay, J. (2007). Student Models that Invite the Learner In: The SMILI Open Learner Modelling Framework, International Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education 17(2), 89-120.
• Bull, S. & Shurville, S. (1999a). Cooperative Writer Modeling: Facilitating Reader-Based Writing with Scrawl. In Morales, R., Pain, H., Bull, S. and Kay, J. (eds), Proceedings of Workshop on Open, Interactive and Other Overt Approaches to Learner Modeling, International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Education 1999, pp 1-8.
• Bull S. & Shurville S. (1999b). Online Reader, Writer and Student Models to Support the Writing Process. In Kay J. (ed.) The Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on User Modeling 1999, Banff, Canada, pp 295–297.

Learner-Generated Contexts

"Mercy, mercy me ... the ecology" - Marvin Gaye

Should we conceptualize learners as tourists in zoologicalgardens curated by educators or as explorers in open environments fraught with danger and reward? In other words do we see ourseves as Johnny Morris or our learners as Steve Irwin?

Rose Luckin and her colleagues Jon Akass, John Cook, Peter Day, Nigel Ecclesfield, Fred Garnett, Matt Gould, Tom Hamilton, Andrew Whitworth have published some interesting and much needed theoretical work to frame discussions of education and web 2.0 grounded in ideas of self-organization and ecology. I think they would opt for Steve Irwin!

In 'Learner-Generated Contexts: Sustainable Learning Pathways Through Open Content' they write: "The proposal of a Learner Generated Context arose initially from the suggestion that an educational context can be described as a learner-centric ecology of resources and that a learner-generated context is one in which a user or group of users collaboratively marshal the available resources to create an ecology that meets their needs (see Luckin, R. 2006; Luckin, du Boulay, Smith, Underwood, Fitzpatrick, Holmberg, Kerawalla, Tunley, Brewster & Pearce, 2005; Luckin, Shurville & Browne, 2007 for more detail on the learnercentric ecology of resources framework and for more detailed examples). Through the discussions of the Learner Generated Context group fresh perspectives on thiscontention have developed. For example, both spatial and process issues emerge. These could be described as Changing the learning context and generating learning spaces, and Changing the learning process and the learning context.” (Luckin et al, 2007 p 90).

Elsewhere writing as the The Learner Generated Contexts Group, Luckin et al provide a nice pithy definition: "“A Learner Generated Context can be defined as a context created by people interacting together with a common, self-defined or negotiated learning goal. The key aspect of Learner Generated Contexts is that they are generated through the enterprise of those who would previously have been consumers in a context created for them." You can find out more and add to discussion at the wiki.

I think that the concept of a Learner-Generated Context helps us to start thinking about personal learning environments from a learning and teaching perspective rather than a purely technical one. Supporting approaches like mode two, participative action learning / research and enquiry-based learning with web 2.0 will require its own ecology of models and frameworks. For example, second order cybernetics becomes a useful tool to study and reflect upon Learner-Generated Contexts once we start to view learners as conscious modelers of their own learnings and learning environments. As educators we can teach reflective practice, perhaps using some form of scaffolding, to help learners to become second order cyberneticians in their own right.

Turning to materiality, I think that the ecological metaphor helps to make it clear that virtual learning environments, personal learning environments and other forms of technology mediated learning are part of a wider and more tangible world of books, museums and coffee bar conversations etc that learners inhabit and animate. Sometimes ‘hidden learning environments’ are only hiding in plain sight. Perhaps learning technologisits should get out more ...

Further reading: You can download a great powerpoint on learner-generated contexts. A smart addition to anyone's ecology.

References

• Luckin, R.; du Boulay, B.; Smith, H.; Underwood, J.; Fitzpatrick, G.; Holmberg, J.; Kerawalla, L.; Tunley, H.; Brewster, D. and Pearce, D. (2005). Using Mobile Technology to Create Flexible Learning Contexts, Journal of Interactive Media in Education, Special Issue on Portable Learning .
• Luckin, R. (2006). Understanding Learning Contexts as Ecologies of Resources: From the Zone of Proximal Development to Learner Generated Contexts. In T. Reeves & S. Yamashita (Eds.), Proceedings of World Conference on Elearning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare, and Higher Education 2006 (pp. 2195–2202). Chesapeake, VA: AACE.
• Luckin, R., Shurville, S. and Browne, T. (2007) Initiating elearning by stealth, participation and consultation in a late majority institution, Organisational Transformation and Social Change Volume 3 Number 3 and Volume 4 Number 1 pp. 317–332.
  

Further reading

• Judy Robertson attended the recent London Knowledge Lab event on learner-generated contexts (I missed it as I was busy migrating) and her reflections on the event can be found on her previous blog. Judy has now moved her blog to typepad. It looks like an interesting platform. http://www.macs.hw.ac.uk/~judy/blog/2007/09/learner-generated-contexts.html