This Friday and Saturday the DLTV Education Conference take place. I have been fortunate enough to have played a role in its organization and direction.

This Friday and Saturday the DLTV Education Conference take place. I have been fortunate enough to have played a role in its organization and direction. 

I am a believer that the traditional conference format needs to update to actually reflect contemporary thinking regarding how we best learn.

Self-directed learning, network learning, self-managed learning are all terms I have spoken of many times and they are all key to my work in attempting to bring transformation to our education system and assist in the natural evolutionary process of our system. These terms represent significant developments in understanding the nature of knowledge and how we as humans best learn. They are also terms that have increased in general usage within western education as the metaphor of the internet makes concepts such as “networked learning” something that is more tangible and readily understandable.

Knowledge never resides in the individual it resides in relationships. Those relationships are what build up networks. That is where knowledge resides. It is a key point to understand that dramatically shines a light on many of the outdated practices we continue within current schooling, practices such as lesson plans, teaching that is based on content or information transferal, learning that supposes an idea of linearity, adherence to top-down developed curriculums, and almost all the hierarchical structures our entire system is built on, including teacher as expert, but also many other power structures are seen within traditional schools and in our departments as a whole.

Interestingly enough almost all education conferences also adhere to these traditional, somewhat tired structures.

I am organizing the Gaming in Education Stream at the DLTV conference and I thought I would try something different with this stream, something that actually represented my thinking about learning.

Let me state again, knowledge does not reside in individuals, it resides in networks.

Complexity thinking says that a highly functioning network, or system, will have a number of key properties. These include:

1. There will be a nonhierarchical structure (no centralizing controller),
2. The network will self organize,
3. There will be a mix of order and disorder, too much of either is disastrous, too much order leads to stasis and death, too much disorder leads to chaos and death,
4. There will be strong internal communication built into the system,
5. The system will communicate based on prior memories and new understanding developed through the communication,
6. The network will be open.

When these are in place emergence arises. Emergence is a phenomenon that cannot be predicted by looking at any of the data that makes up the individual agents within the system. Emergence, in my mind, is another word for pure creativity – it arises from the system, NEVER from individuals. Emergence is new knowledge.

Complexity thinking is the theory that has given rise to such terms as “self-directed learning” and the phrase, “teacher as a facilitator not a teacher as expert”.

So…how do you apply this to a conference. Well, we asked for people to submit expressions of ideas they were interested in presenting about and everyone who spoke somewhere in the region of Gaming in Education, we grouped together. That is an example of forming the initial network.

Self-organization – I then decided to throw out the idea of structured session/timetables as that is an example of top-down limiting hierarchy, I tried to put in into place as much openness as possible, I facilitated a number of potential internal communication devices with the group (video conferences, email, Google +, etc) but while I facilitated, I never imposed any structures on the group. Furthermore, we were conscious and comfortable with the rule of order and disorder (the network must be sitting on the edge of chaos but never slip in) and then I watched what happened.  I think this group has “self-organized” in an amazing way.

We have a number of participants that, in the normal conference style, would just have shown up and delivered their PowerPoint presentation on the great work they had been doing at their schools. That is because the “normal conference”  reflects a form of top-down hierarchy – it has been predetermined and it almost forces the style of presentation. By removing this the participants in the Gaming in Education stream have now all met each other, discussed their ideas, changed, teamed up, evolved thinking, reorganized their presentations, and are now are collectively presenting with others. They are aware that they are part of a system, not just individuals. They have actively participated and the system is creating new things – Emergence.

There has been a general commitment to making our stream experiential so now everyone is bringing things to ensure that all participants in our stream are immersed in an experience.

In regards to the variety of games and learning about games, there is cross-collaboration within the group. There will be games happening in the assigned rooms there will be immersive games happening throughout other stream spaces and in fact, there will be one large overarching game happening throughout the entire conference. If you are at this conference you will be involved whether you’re aware of it or not. There will be formal and informal talks, presentations and who knows maybe we might even get spontaneous and impromptu presentations by audience members (for use of a better term).

This is also an example of the group wanting to allow the further participants in this new network – the conference audience  – to also now be able to actively participate in the system, and enhance their learning and the learning of the group. We are all co-learners.

Emergence – it is already in evidence through the way the collective presenters of this stream have come together and it will continue to evidence itself throughout the entirety of the conference as more and more participants actively get involved. Emergence is new knowledge.

This is how we learn and develop. It is what I always speak of when talking about what learning actually is, it is key to the work I do assist schools as they attempt to change themselves to better represent contemporary thinking, and hopefully it will be represented in this small attempt to evolve the conference format. It will emerge because we have allowed for the above-mentioned things including; self-organisation, no hierarchical dominance, and encouragement for active participation in knowledge construction.

If nothing else it’s great fun!!

A big thank you needs to go to all the amazing presenters/co-learners in this stream including Dan Donahoo, Jess McCulloch, Roxanne Ciddor, Michael Ha, John Pearce, Nathan Connors, Vincent Trundle, Sayraphim Lothian, Robert Reid form Popupplagrounds and  Kalani Robinson. They have done all the collective learning so far. I just tried to allow for it to happen. Now it’s over to you, hope to see you there on Friday and Saturday.

See you at DLTV 2014

See you at DLTV 2014