iFacilitate

Here are a few tips to help you with forum summaries: Tip 1: Do it! Make sure you summarise all discussions. Include all the pertinent, insightful and incisive points made in the discussion, and ignore the dross (sorry, less useful info). Tip 2: Use students' names If you're going to name some contributors (e.g. Jane pointed out that xxx, while Joe felt that xxx, ), then try to name all of the contributors. Imagine yourself as a student reading a forum summary in which all of your course colleagues are mentioned except you! Tip 3: Don't use students' names Or rather, don't always use students' names in summaries. Although students report feeling a warm glow of pride when reading their own names in a forum summary, don't labour the point. Write some summaries in which names are included, and some in which names are not included at all. A bullet point list of the main points made in a discussion may suffice (but see below for some tips on how to liven this up visually). Tip 4: Be there Respond as appropriate during the discussion. You may need to step in and redirect a discussion that is getting off the point. You may need to answer a query in a posting. You may want to provide a summary halfway through a discussion (this will make your final summarising job easier in the long run). It's important to be present and visible during a forum discussion. Students need to know that you are reading, thinking about, expanding on, and responding to their comments. There is nothing worse than an absent online tutor. Tip 5: Don't skive You can always get a student to produce a summary for you, but it needs to be a meaningful activity for the student, not a chance for you to skive. Students should receive credit for any summaries they produce, even if it is only lavish praise. Best to get students to volunteer to produce a summary, rather than forcing them to do so. Make sure your students have several different summary models to refer to. Summarising

Here is a slidehsare of ideas for how to make online forum summaries look interesting

"What are the questions we are not asking that prevent us from seeing further possibility? Types of Good Questions 1."Wait-a-minute" -- The ones that make us pause and realize there is more to discover. 2."Sit-on-it" -- Questions that can't be answered when they are asked. They require some time to think, and perhaps even let go of for a time. 3."Address-the-grand-assumption" -- Or as Hani, one of the participants challenged, address even the smaller assumptions. Karen, one participant from a team of county planners, asked this type of question regarding her work -- "well, when did we start believing that we needed to pave all of our roads?" She was thinking systemically, aware of the cost and resource implications of that assumption. 4."Name-the-elephant" -- The unspoken that many people know and feel, and that if left unaddressed, renders the work less meaningful or real. Arguably blocked and ineffective. 5."Still-cooking" -- The ones that keep us actively learning. Or even better, reaching, stretching, letting go, reorganizing, innovating. I found this in this cafe as I further explored best practices (things like marketing decisions), as well as field practices (things like non-local effects). The latter from the awareness that many of us were describing big dreams and projects that feel like they run into walls of systemic resistance. Or that seem to not have much impact. The belief we were exploring, named as the impact of a morphogenic field, was that even running into a wall in one area of work can have a non-local effect, increasing the likelihood that another seemingly unrelated bit of work will be successful. Like the way the 4-minute mile was forever a significant barrier broken by nobody, yet, once accomplished, was broken by many. 6."Antenna-out" -- Yes, another variation of continuous learning and attention giving. But even further, an invitation to be learning on behalf of the whole. One participant, Marilyn Hami

There are multiple layers to curation, each of which has benefits when applied to learning and performance: ·         Aggregation: Gathering and sharing relevant content. It releases the individual worker from needing to seek out the content. ·         Filtering: Instead of simply aggregating content, filtering shares only those resources that are most relevant and valuable. ·         Elevation: Recognizing a larger trend in the sea of seemingly less important content. ·         Mashups: Merging two or more unrelated pieces of content to form a new message. ·         Timelines: Organizing random pieces of content in chronological order to show the evolution of an idea. 

Characteristics of Strong Critical Thinkers inquisitiveness with regard to a wide range of issues concern to become and remain well-informed alertness to opportunities to use critical thinking self-confidence in one's own abilities to reason open-mindedness regarding divergent world views flexibility in considering alternatives and opinions understanding of the opinions of other people fair-mindedness in appraising reasoning honesty in facing one's own biases, prejudices, stereotypes, or egocentric tendencies prudence in suspending, making or altering judgments willingness to reconsider and revise views where honest r

Many of you have noticed pingbacks on your blog. What is pingback ? The following information is from http://www.hixie.ch/specs/pingback/pingback-1.0 Pingback is a method for web authors to request notification when somebody links to one of their documents. Typically, web publishing software will automatically inform the relevent parties on behalf of the user, allowing for the possibility of automatically creating links to referring documents. For example, Alice writes an interesting article on her Web log. Bob then reads this article and comments about it, linking back to Alice\'s original post. Using pingback, Bob\'s software can automatically notify Alice that her post has been linked to, and Alice\'s software can then include this information on her site.

As Morin says of information: "Information is not an end-of-the-line concept, but rather, a point-of-departure concept" (14). As he says later, we must learn to define from the center out, not from the outside in. Siemens says about the basic principles of Connectivism in his online book Knowing Knowledge (2006): Learning and knowledge require diversity of opinions to present the whole … and to permit selection of best approach. Learning is a network formation process of connecting specialized nodes or information sources.  Knowledge rests in networks. Knowledge may reside in non-human appliances and learning is enabled/facilitated by technology. Capacity to know more is more critical than what is currently known. Learning and knowing are constant, on going processes (not end states or products). Ability to see connections and recognize patterns and make sense between fields, ideas, and concepts is the core skill for individuals today. Currency (accurate, up-to-date knowledge) is the intent of all connectivist learning activities. Decision-making is learning. Choosing what to learn and the meaning of incoming information is seen through the lens of a shifting reality. While there is a right answer now, it may be wrong tomorrow due to alterations in the information climate affecting the decision.

Overview of a program looking at connected learning describing a "gap between the more engaging social learning environments young people encounter outside of school, and the top-down and standardized curriculum that they encounter in most classrooms." It's much more communal and participation-oriented than the approach I take, promoting:  -- "Equity - when educational opportunity is available and accessible to all young people, it elevates the world we all live in.  -- Full Participation - learning environments, communities, and civic life thrive when all members actively engage and contribute.  -- Social connection - learning is meaningful when it is part of valued social relationships and shared practice, culture, and identity."  While I value both creativity and participation, I think it's important to allow that more or less participation are equally valuable. And I don't agree that "shared" practice, culture, and identity is essential. 

A challenge Can you provide a link to an open educational resource that would be in your view an excellent example of any of the above applications of video? Here are some criteria I will be applying for inclusion: the example is well produced (clear camera work, good presenter, clear audio) it is short and to the point it demonstrates clearly a particular topic or subject and links it to what the student is intended to learn. I have to say that most of the examples I found on the Internet do NOT meet all three of these criteria! The video highlighted at the start of this post does, but then it is produced for the Open University. Can university in-house media departments meet this standard? I believe that some do, but I need examples! Once chosen, I will add the link with an acknowledgement to whoever provides me with the link. In the meantime, I will look for my own examples. My second set of questions is perhaps more of a challenge: This list was developed initially from broadcast television. How well do these functions apply to the use of video on the Internet?  Are there other educational applications of video on the Internet that are not on this list? Let's make this an opportunity for upgrading the extent and the quality of video in online learning.

Here is a good  critique of the Community of Inquiry framework (CoI) advanced by Garrison, Archer and Anderson about a decade ago. "Online discussion consists of a flow of relatively disorganized improvisational exchanges that somehow achieve highly goal-directed, rational course agendas... the apparent chaos and order are in fact one and the same process of knowledge construction combining the informal logic of conversation with the formal rationality of academic discourse." This paper explains how  apparent chaos and order are in fact one and the same process of knowledge construction combining the informal logic of conversation with the formal rationality of academic discourse. 

Launch of the Why Open Education Matters Video Competition Creative Commons, U.S. Department of Education, Open Society Institute launch high profile video competition to highlight potential of free educational materials Mountain View, California and Washington, D.C., - March 5, 2012 Today Creative Commons, the U.S. Department of Education, and the Open Society Institute announce the launch of the Why Open Education Matters Video Competition. The competition will award cash prizes for the best short videos that explain the use and promise of free, high-quality Open Educational Resources-or "OER"-and describe the benefits and opportunities these materials create for teachers, students and schools.

In particular, the designation of MOOCs as 'democratizing education' really needs to be carefully examined. Presumably, 135,000 learners who wanted to learn about AI were disappointed or unable to follow the Stanford AI course. If this was really about democratizing education, these students should have been accommodated in some way. With regard to connectivist MOOCs, I worry whether they are just preaching to the converted by reinforcing participants' existing knowledge or values, or whether they lead to significant change in learners. They may do or they may not. We need more research on this. Octavo's simple research study, although valuable, just reinforces the need for more thorough research, and we also need more experimentation, with different designs and approaches.

What you see happening now with the massive open courses is going to fundamentally change the business models. It's going to put the notion of value front and center. Why would I want a credential from this university? Why would I want to pay tuition to this university? It really ups the stakes.

MOOCs aren't for every learner. This article provides both sides of the story around some common components of most MOOCs. To provide the reader a participant's point of view of MOOCs, our collective interpretations (along with impressions shared with us by others) are encapsulated.

t's ds106, a digital-storytelling course he teaches with a group of colleagues. His team shunned the learning-management market and built its own virtual classroom by cobbling together free open-source tools. The class blossomed into a "family" of students from five universities. Hundreds more play along online. Mr. Groom said a vendor's learning-software tool could never sustain the community, because most limit access to those with an account at that university.

Harold Jarche comments on collaboration are what iFacilitate is all about, "knowledge exists within systems which are accessed through people participating in activities. It is by doing our work that we co-create our roles in our networks. Roles emerge from the activities involved in working with others toward some common purpose. This is social. Social media are merely a conduit for collaboration."

Choosing a Topic - take a little extra time defining your topic and the post will flow better and you'll develop something that matters to readers. Crafting Your Post's Title - perhaps the most crucial part of actually getting readers to start reading your post when they see it in an RSS reader or search engine results page. The Opening Line - first impressions matter. Once you've got someone past your post's title your opening line draws them deeper into your post. Your 'point/s' (making your posts matter) - a post needs to have a point. If it's just an intriguing title and opening you'll get people to read - but if the post doesn't 'matter' to them it'll never get traction. Call to Action - driving readers to do something cements a post in their mind and helps them to apply it and helps you to make a deeper connection with them. Adding Depth - before publishing your post - ask yourself how you could add depth to it and make it even more useful and memorable to readers? Quality Control and Polishing of Posts - small mistakes can be barriers to engagement for some readers. Spending time fixing errors and making a post 'look' good can take it to the next level. Timing of Publishing Your Post - timing can be everything - strategic timing of posts can ensure the right people see it at the right time. Post Promotion - having hit publish - don't just leave it to chance that your post will be read by people. Giving it a few strategic 'nudges' can increase the exposure it gets exponentially. Conversation - often the real action happens once your post is published and being interacted with by readers and other bloggers. Taking time to dialogue can be very fruitful.

Free software that creates a folder on your hard drive and automatically syncs the documents in your Google Docs to it.

why colleges should experiment with inviting tens of thousands of students to participate in their courses free online.

The goal of Singularity University is to rewire students' brains so they can escape the incremental thinking that bogs most of us down. Students learn not only about exponentially accelerating technologies such as DNA sequencing, communication, nanotech and AI, but about the interplay among them that will lead to "manifold intertwined technological revolutions."