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gobibijou

Stephen Downes - 0 views

  • ning 2.0 and the
    • gobibijou
       
      S. Downes: http://www.blip.tv/file/840097 2 approaches to learning - tradiotional (AI): old artifitial technology. Expert system organises. Old managnement systems. Focus on: - Goal orientated. - Competencies. - Efficency (from A to B in the most efficient). Requieres: - an expert - knowledge representation (VS. Siemens: the knowledge that we have CAN'T be represented) for expl. language -- Problem: it creates a simplification of the knowledge. - learning activities are set up by an expert. -network approach: (???IDF). Conectivism (born 40 years ago Pappert &?). Computational system is NOT set up as a representational system BUT is set up as a NETWORK (like a brain). The connectivist system: - is unnorganized - is unstructured (previously) - looks messy and unorganised - can NOT be predicted HOw Knowledge is represented in the system? DISTRIBUTED. Our concept of X is not a symbolic representation but a set up of active connections also in a neuronal level (?) Model of learning NOt based in deduction and inference BUT on ASSOCIATION based on: - concurrency. - proximity. - back propagation (economics: supply and demand market is based on that) - ???Amealing the way form networks/community in society work in THE SAME WAY that they do in a neuronal level and a personal level. Communities ARE networks that work through distributed connections. How should be the network? - DIVERSITY (wide representation of different points of views) Knowledge in a network is: EMERGENT - AUTONOMY : each individual is self-directed. Each individual works as his own guide. - CONNECTEDNESS (or interactivities). Knowledge produced by mechanism of interaction is produced by the nature/properties of the network. The way/organization of connections are formed is essential. - OPENESS (there's no inside/outside the "system"). Connection FLOWS freely. RECOGNITION of patterns (clustter). LEARNERS: Learners have different things they want to learn and the system
  • 2.0 and the impact of web 2
    • gobibijou
       
      S. Downes: http://www.blip.tv/file/840097 NOtes (need to be double checked) 2 approaches to learning 1. traditional (AI): old artifitial technology. Expert system organises. Old managnement systems. Focus on: - Goal orientated. - Competencies. - Efficency (from A to B in the most efficient). Requieres: - an expert - knowledge representation (VS. Siemens: the knowledge that we have CAN'T be represented) for expl. language -- Problem: it creates a simplification of the knowledge. - learning activities are set up by an expert. 2.-network approach: (???IDF). Conectivism (born 40 years ago Pappert &?). Computational system is NOT set up as a representational system BUT is set up as a NETWORK (like a brain). The connectivist system: - is unnorganized - is unstructured (previously) - looks messy and unorganised - can NOT be predicted HOw Knowledge is represented in the system? DISTRIBUTED. Our concept of X is not a symbolic representation but a set up of active connections also in a neuronal level (?) Model of learning NOt based in deduction and inference BUT on ASSOCIATION based on: - concurrency. - proximity. - back propagation (economics: supply and demand market is based on that) - ???Amealing the way form networks/community in society work in THE SAME WAY that they do in a neuronal level and a personal level. Communities ARE networks that work through distributed connections. How should be the network? - DIVERSITY (wide representation of different points of views) Knowledge in a network is: EMERGENT - AUTONOMY : each individual is self-directed. Each individual works as his own guide. - CONNECTEDNESS (or interactivities). Knowledge produced by mechanism of interaction is produced by the nature/properties of the network. The way/organization of connections are formed is essential. - OPENESS (there's no inside/outside the "system"). Connection FLOWS freely. RECOGNITION of patterns (clustter). LEARNERS: Learners have different thin
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    downes talking about approaches in education. Web 2.0, elearning...
Keith Hamon

Reflections on open courses « Connectivism - 4 views

  • In education, content can easily be produced (it’s important but has limited economic value). Lectures also have limited value (easy to record and to duplicate). Teaching – as done in most universities – can be duplicated. Learning, on the other hand, can’t be duplicated. Learning is personal, it has to occur one learner at a time. The support needed for learners to learn is a critical value point.
    • Ed Webb
       
      Excellent insight!
    • Keith Hamon
       
      Here's the key: if what we are typically doing in our classrooms can be easily duplicated, then it has lost its value in both the wider economy and in the educational ecosystem. We university professors must redefine the way we add value to our students' personal learning networks.
  • Learning, however, requires a human, social element: both peer-based and through interaction with subject area experts
  • Content is readily duplicated, reducing its value economically. It is still critical for learning – all fields have core elements that learners must master before they can advance (research in expertise supports this notion). - Teaching can be duplicated (lectures can be recorded, Elluminate or similar webconferencing system can bring people from around the world into a class). Assisting learners in the learning process, correcting misconceptions (see Private Universe), and providing social support and brokering introductions to other people and ideas in the discipline is critical. - Accreditation is a value statement – it is required when people don’t know each other. Content was the first area of focus in open education. Teaching (i.e. MOOCs) are the second. Accreditation will be next, but, before progress can be made, profile, identity, and peer-rating systems will need to improve dramatically. The underlying trust mechanism on which accreditation is based cannot yet be duplicated in open spaces (at least, it can’t be duplicated to such a degree that people who do not know each other will trust the mediating agent of open accreditation)
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  • The skills that are privileged and rewarded in a MOOC are similar to those that are needed to be effective in communicating with others and interacting with information online (specifically, social media and information sources like journals, databases, videos, lectures, etc.). Creative skills are the most critical. Facilitators and learners need something to “point to”. When a participant creates an insightful blog post, a video, a concept map, or other resource/artifact it generally gets attention.
  • Intentional diversity – not necessarily a digital skill, but the ability to self-evaluate ones network and ensure diversity of ideologies is critical when information is fragmented and is at risk of being sorted by single perspectives/ideologies.
  • The volume of information is very disorienting in a MOOC. For example, in CCK08, the initial flow of postings in Moodle, three weekly live sessions, Daily newsletter, and weekly readings and assignments proved to be overwhelming for many participants. Stephen and I somewhat intentionally structured the course for this disorienting experience. Deciding who to follow, which course concepts are important, and how to form sub-networks and sub-systems to assist in sensemaking are required to respond to information abundance. The process of coping and wayfinding (ontology) is as much a lesson in the learning process as mastering the content (epistemology). Learners often find it difficult to let go of the urge to master all content, read all the comments and blog posts.
  • e. Learning is a social trust-based process.
  • Patience, tolerance, suspension of judgment, and openness to other cultures and ideas are required to form social connections and negotiating misunderstandings.
  • An effective digital citizenry needs the skills to participate in important conversations. The growth of digital content and social networks raises the need citizens to have the technical and conceptual skills to express their ideas and engage with others in those spaces. MOOCs are a first generation testing grounds for knowledge growth in a distributed, global, digital world. Their role in developing a digital citizenry is still unclear, but democratic societies require a populace with the skills to participate in growing a society’s knowledge. As such, MOOCs, or similar open transparent learning experiences that foster the development of citizens confidence engage and create collaboratively, are important for the future of society.
Ed Webb

Social Media is Killing the LMS Star - A Bootleg of Bryan Alexander's Lost Presentation... - 0 views

  • Note that this isn’t just a technological alternate history. It also describes a different set of social and cultural practices.
  • CMSes lumber along like radio, still playing into the air as they continue to gradually shift ever farther away on the margins. In comparison, Web 2.0 is like movies and tv combined, plus printed books and magazines. That’s where the sheer scale, creative ferment, and wife-ranging influence reside. This is the necessary background for discussing how to integrate learning and the digital world.
  • These virtual classes are like musical practice rooms, small chambers where one may try out the instrument in silent isolation. It is not connectivism but disconnectivism.
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  • CMSes shift from being merely retrograde to being actively regressive if we consider the broader, subtler changes in the digital teaching landscape. Web 2.0 has rapidly grown an enormous amount of content through what Yochai Benkler calls “peer-based commons production.” One effect of this has been to grow a large area for informal learning, which students (and staff) access without our benign interference. Students (and staff) also contribute to this peering world; more on this later. For now, we can observe that as teachers we grapple with this mechanism of change through many means, but the CMS in its silo’d isolation is not a useful tool.
  • those curious about teaching with social media have easy access to a growing, accessible community of experienced staff by means of those very media. A meta-community of Web 2.0 academic practitioners is now too vast to catalogue. Academics in every discipline blog about their work. Wikis record their efforts and thoughts, as do podcasts. The reverse is true of the CMS, the very architecture of which forbids such peer-to-peer information sharing. For example, the Resource Center for Cyberculture Studies (RCCS) has for many years maintained a descriptive listing of courses about digital culture across the disciplines. During the 1990s that number grew with each semester. But after the explosive growth of CMSes that number dwindled. Not the number of classes taught, but the number of classes which could even be described. According to the RCCS’ founder, David Silver (University of San Francisco), this is due to the isolation of class content in CMS containers.
  • unless we consider the CMS environment to be a sort of corporate intranet simulation, the CMS set of community skills is unusual, rarely applicable to post-graduation examples. In other words, while a CMS might help privacy concerns, it is at best a partial, not sufficient solution, and can even be inappropriate for already online students.
  • That experiential, teachable moment of selecting one’s copyright stance is eliminated by the CMS.
  • Another argument in favor of CMSes over Web 2.0 concerns the latter’s open nature. It is too open, goes the thought, constituting a “Wild West” experience of unfettered information flow and unpleasant forms of access. Campuses should run CMSes to create shielded environments, iPhone-style walled gardens that protect the learning process from the Lovecraftian chaos without.
  • social sifting, information literacy, using the wisdom of crowds, and others. Such strategies are widely discussed, easily accessed, and continually revised and honed.
  • at present, radio CMS is the Clear Channel of online learning.
  • For now, the CMS landsape is a multi-institutional dark Web, an invisible, unsearchable, un-mash-up-able archipelago of hidden learning content.
  • Can the practice of using a CMS prepare either teacher or student to think critically about this new shape for information literacy? Moreover, can we use the traditional CMS to share thoughts and practices about this topic?
  • The internet of things refers to a vastly more challenging concept, the association of digital information with the physical world. It covers such diverse instances as RFID chips attached to books or shipping pallets, connecting a product’s scanned UPC code to a Web-based database, assigning unique digital identifiers to physical locations, and the broader enterprise of augmented reality. It includes problems as varied as building search that covers both the World Wide Web and one’s mobile device, revising copyright to include digital content associated with private locations, and trying to salvage what’s left of privacy. How does this connect with our topic? Consider a recent article by Tim O’Reilly and John Battle, where they argue that the internet of things is actually growing knowledge about itself. The combination of people, networks, and objects is building descriptions about objects, largely in folksonomic form. That is, people are tagging the world, and sharing those tags. It’s worth quoting a passage in full: “It’s also possible to give structure to what appears to be unstructured data by teaching an application how to recognize the connection between the two. For example, You R Here, an iPhone app, neatly combines these two approaches. You use your iPhone camera to take a photo of a map that contains details not found on generic mapping applications such as Google maps – say a trailhead map in a park, or another hiking map. Use the phone’s GPS to set your current location on the map. Walk a distance away, and set a second point. Now your iPhone can track your position on that custom map image as easily as it can on Google maps.” (http://www.web2summit.com/web2009/public/schedule/detail/10194) What world is better placed to connect academia productively with such projects, the open social Web or the CMS?
  • imagine the CMS function of every class much like class email, a necessary feature, but not by any means the broadest technological element. Similarly the e-reserves function is of immense practical value. There may be no better way to share copyrighted academic materials with a class, at this point. These logistical functions could well play on.
 Lisa Durff

Here we are…there we are going « Connectivism - 0 views

  • Learning consists of weaving together coherent (personal) narratives of fragmented information. The narrative can be now created through social sensemaking systems (such as blogs and social networks), instead of centrally organized courses. Courses can be global, with many educators and participants (i.e. CCK08). Courses, unlike universities, are not directly integrated into the power system of a society. Can decentralized networks of autonomous agents serve the same function as organized institutions? But who loses, and what is lost, if the teaching role of universities decline?
    •  Lisa Durff
       
      So learning is developing a story from one's schema of a thing!
    •  Lisa Durff
       
      "But who loses, and what is lost, if the teaching role of universities decline?" My concern surrounds the word teaching. Who said that is their primary role? Isn't it licensing, formally sanctioning persons so they can enter the world of work with the "proper" credentials? Did you learn anything in your college days?
    •  Lisa Durff
       
      So what really needs to change is not the university, but the culture it serves...
  • The virtues that a society finds desirable are systematized in its institutions. However futile this activity, it helps society, and media, to hold people accountable, to devise strategies, and create laws so people feel safe. Similarly, results that are desirable (financial, educationally, etc) are systematized to ensure the ability to manage and duplicate results. I shared some thoughts on this systematization last year as a reason for the currently limited impact of personal learning environments (PLEs). Quite simply, even revolutionaries conserve.
  • Teaching is what is most at risk. Can a social network - loosely connected, driven by humanistic ideals - serve a similar role to what university classrooms serve today? I hope so, but I don’t think so. At least not with our current mindsets and skillsets. We associate with those who are similar. We do not pursue diversity. In fact, we shy away from it. We surround ourselves with people and ideas that resonate with our own, not with those that cause us stress or internal conflict. Secondly, until all of society becomes fully networked (not technologically networked, but networked on the principles of flows, connections, feedback), a networked entity always risks being subverted by hierarchy. Today, rightly or wrongly, hierarchy holds power in society.
    • Gina Minks
       
      What if the social network serves to exlude information from other groups? Who can fight against disenfranchisement if no one can see it any more because its filtered away?
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    Oh, George, so gloomy!
Ed Webb

The Dirty Little Secret About the "Wisdom of the Crowds" - There is No Crowd - 0 views

  • Wikipedia isn't written and edited by the "crowd" at all. In fact, 1% of Wikipedia users are responsible for half of the site's edits. Even Wikipedia's founder, Jimmy Wales, has been quoted as saying that the site is really written by a community, "a dedicated group of a few hundred volunteers."
  • I think your headline is misleading and Vassilis Kostakos should read the book before poking holes. Surowiecki is very clear about the conditions necessary for a wise crowd to prevail and those conditions are: 1. Diversity of opinion 2. Independence 3. Decentralization 4. Aggregation If your crowd possesses those qualities then it is wise and then it will be better at making decisions under Surowiecki's paradigm. The crowds used in the research (and the crowd in general) doesn't possess those qualities and therefore is an unfit data set. We should be trying to create the ideal crowd before we can obtain superlative results and not try to get good results from any random crowd.
  • Limitations in predictions market are well documented (and include Muhammad's points above), and constrain their practical application to a well-defined number of situation. Crowdsourcing suffers from the same limitations, which is not a problem, as long as you limit its application correspondingly. The problem occur when you stretch it outside the required constraints and yet present the results as "scientific", i.e. as a good proxy for what the crowd thinks. That's what professor Vassilis Kostakos's theory ultimately comes down to (or should - I don't know, I haven't read his report). Apps like Digg or Amazon's review are not scientific applications of crowdsourcing, and thus their results should not be seen as precise representation of our collective thinking.
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  • Wisdom of Crowds is a crypto-fascist idea; there is no objective truth, there are no facts, truth is what "the crowd" decides it is. You get these unhealthy echo chambers of "activists" setting the agenda. This article said it best, over three years ago: DIGITAL MAOISM The Hazards of the New Online Collectivism By Jaron Lanier
  • What I'd like to see is non-fakeable metrics on ecommerce sites: return rates or reorder rates (as appropriate), for example. Or for apps, how many times users open the app per day/week or whatever.
  • the research is interesting if linked to ideas of unrepresentative or illiberal democracy, as posited by Fareed Zakaria that suggests small interest groups can hijack democratic systems.
Ed Webb

Filtering Reality - The Atlantic (November 2009) - 1 views

  • Nearly every communication method we invent eventually conveys unwanted commercial messages. AR systems will be used for spam too, whether via graffiti-like tags, ads that pop up when you look too long at a shop, or even abstract symbols stuck to a wall or worn on a shirt that, when viewed through an AR system, turn into 3-D animations. Fortunately, just as Web browsers have pop-up blockers, AR systems will filter spam. Moreover, they’ll likely be able to filter out physical ads, too, such as billboards—a capability that many opponents of visual clutter will find deliriously attractive.
  • Conceivably, users could set AR spam filters to block any kind of unpalatable visual information, from political campaign signs to book covers. Parents might want to block sexual or violent images from their kids’ AR systems, and political activists and religious leaders might provide ideologically correct filters for their communities. The bad images get replaced by a red STOP, or perhaps by signs and pictures that reinforce the desired worldview.
  • It won’t take a majority of people using these filters to poison public discourse; imagine this summer’s town-hall screamers on constant alert, wherever they go. Yet this world will be the unintended consequence of otherwise desirable developments—spam filters, facial recognition, augmented reality—that many of us will find useful.
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  • The harder answer, but ultimately the correct one, would be to strengthen our society’s ability to tolerate diverse viewpoints—to encourage not muddy centrism, but a basic ability to hear out, and to see, fellow citizens with a measure of respect.
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