Skip to main content

Home/ Ccourses/ Group items tagged co-learning

Rss Feed Group items tagged

swatson217

Mimi Ito - Weblog: Connected Learning = Abundant Opportunity + Terror + Hard Attentiona... - 7 views

  • Most were reluctant
    • Terry Elliott
       
      Learned behavior, learned mindsets. Unlearning is the devil's own.
    • Terry Elliott
       
      Reminded of my first attempts with zeegas--unclear, uncertain
    • Kevin Hodgson
       
      And we learn in those uncomfortable moments, including how to create our own agency with technology. With Zeega, you've pushed the boundaries in many directions, Captain Zeega.
    • Tania Sheko
       
      It's scary at first but once you get used to it, it's easier than F2F in my opinion.
    • Maha Bali
       
      I think I now find it easier than f2f too... That probably requires elaboration, though :) as I know it's not intuitive. I wonder if it is a phase everyone goes through to finally reach that comfort, or if it is just something some people are more disposed to enjoy/be comfortable with, while others not (like intro/extroversion)
    • anonymous
       
      with an online comment/post, there is no interruption, no direct contact to 'see' how others take what you say or do, and this can make it easier- or at least appear 'safer' on a personal front - esp. considering the teens Mimi was talking about... but, there is also a sense of permanence when people write and put something out there, whereas in f2f, what you say is gone in that moment. When something is written, people (potentially anyone) can come back to it, and this can be perceived as a threatening sort of exposure, perhaps even the person writing it might not want to have to see it again... so it is both easier and harder at the same time for different reasons for different people.
  • Despite the encouragement of local mentors, they didn’t see themselves are part of that world and ready to contribute, at least not yet.
    • Terry Elliott
       
      Schema. Or as max Stirner calls them,"wheels in the head".  Wheels in the head are any ideas that the mind cannot give up.  For example, I am not an artist/creator/maker,  I am a consumer.
    • Maha Abdelmoneim
       
      How do we decide who's enthusiastic? What is being Net Savvy? The difference between introversion, extraversion and the level of ease a person finds in company of others for whatever reason. Are all modes of communications comfortable to everybody and why? On a personal note: I am not comfortable writing at all but I can talk for hours when it comes to f2f :)
    • Terry Elliott
       
      I totally admire your English.  It's way better than my Egyptian. ;-)
    • Maha Bali
       
      I've experienced Maha's talking firsthand via phone and it's awesome :) But I like her writing too, even if she doesn't feel comfortable with it. So cool to have you here in Diigo Maha!
    • Maha Abdelmoneim
       
      I'll graciously accept your kindness, both of you /curtsy (a WoW emote, if you're wondering) :) But seriously, I've had managers and even senior mangers who would sit very quietly, apparently (stress on apparently) reluctant to contribute to a conversation/discussion in a training situation. I used to catch myself making assumptions as to why (won't go into that here, too long) then see them fully engaged in an exercise where they had to sit on the floor and use Lego pieces. When I tried different approaches they did join A conversation, not necessarily mine, not necessarily with me watching, but they learned and contributed to the learning. hmmm now I'll start editing myself /lol so better stop and hit post. .
    • Terry Elliott
       
      Yes, I have this problem all the time in the classroom where my expectations get in the way of reality. Trying more to be mindful of this blindspot in my teaching.
  • Help! How do I know what to pay attention to?
    • Kevin Hodgson
       
      A good reminder that everyone has their own thresholds for navigating the flow in a "space" like #ccourses, and that even the most savvy will miss a whole lot of the interactions. That's OK.
    • Terry Elliott
       
      This also raises one of the essential questions of connected learning:  what do we attend to and how?  We have to have a basis for filtering (another name for attending).  Some of these filters are very fine and designed to have potable water as their product, but most are very porous screens designed to get the big rocks out so that we can build meaning with them.  And the ability to switch out filters should be one of the hallmarks of a capable person in digital systems.
    • Terry Elliott
       
      Thresholds were originally a barrier to the grain escaping from the threshing room floor and out the door.  It was intended to prevent waste.  We don't have the same kind of scarcity in a connected space.  We can't be concerned about "waste".  Instead we have to be obsessed with making sure that we have the best grain in the mill so that we can have the best flour.  Maybe we need one out of a hundred of the grains in order to have the very best flour.  You don't get that with a threshhold.  You get it by finding a way to sort and winnow the best from the rest and not just the wheat from the chaff.
    • Tania Sheko
       
      It's difficult to break out of the traditional concept of following a defined sequential path and instead dip into the stream.
    • swatson217
       
      Yes, #clmooc was my first nonlinear course, and it was a learning curve to grasp the webbed nature of participating - but once I did, it was such a beautiful thing!
  • ...29 more annotations...
  • Quiet
    • Kevin Hodgson
       
      Still on my reading list ...
    • Terry Elliott
       
      Check out the TED talk above for the tl;dr version.
    • Tania Sheko
       
      That book helped me and others I know to realise that being an introvert was not a weakness, and to accept ourselves and not push against who we are.
  • “xdogx”
    • Kevin Hodgson
       
      See: https://flic.kr/p/p7rUiM  for my comic response (of sorts)
    • swatson217
       
      great comic response :)
  • In many ways these different forms of participation fit into what Internet product people might call an > engagement funnel where newcomers and the less net savvy like me march steadily from awareness to engagement to becoming active contributors and content generators.
    • Kevin Hodgson
       
      Yes, and we need to value all levels of the participation, too. Us loudies need to make sure we are inviting, not shouting so loud that others feel they can't contribute, or feel guilty about not contributing. Now that I think of it, my own appeal for more facilitators to get involved in the social media spaces of CCourses runs into conflict with that very statement. Dang it.
    • Terry Elliott
       
      No, I think it can be reconciled,Kevin. If other step up, you can step back or shout in a different direction or encourage and cajole in different spaces. Or just chill and observe and report back.
    • Maha Abdelmoneim
       
      @Kevin I don't think there's a conflict. More involvement is not equal to shouting so loud. May be we need to think of being more inviting in more ways?
    • mitomimi
       
      I also don't see a conflict but I do think the question of what the right invitations are is crucial. Having the "loudies" (lol) to keep modeling high engagement is essential and I at least have appreciated the individual pokes and invitations from this same core group.
    • Maha Bali
       
      Love this thread, and thank you Maha and Mimi for letting us know that we "loudies" (cute term, will adopt!) are not shouting too loud for you (though we may be too loud for others)
    • swatson217
       
      I never thought of myself as a loudie, and am on the introvert-side of the continuum for sure, but the folks at #clmooc taught me that exponential things happen when you jump in.  Thise who are "too" quiet may not know what they are missing.
  • colliding through a loosely orchestrated cross-network remix
  • constellation
    • Kevin Hodgson
       
      I am big on the constellation metaphor -- the stories that emerge when stars are connected by imagination.
    • Maha Bali
       
      Made me think of u immediately, Kevin, that thing u did for #clmooc - the word constellation evokes that for me now
  • This heterogeneity can feel like chaos and collision of competing styles and expectations, but I also see it as a site of productive tension that is characteristic of connected learning. Connected learning is predicated on bringing together three spheres of learning that are most commonly disconnected in our lives: peer sociability, personal interests/affinity, and opportunities for recognition. In kids’ lives these are friends, interest-based activities, and school. In connected courses, this is the reciprocity and fun in the social stream, our personal interests and expertise, and institutional status/reputation.
    • Kevin Hodgson
       
      Dang. She hits a home run with this paragraph!
    • Terry Elliott
       
      Simon Ensor's Clavier Project simplifies this to providing an interesting space so that interesting people can do interesting 'things'.  I admire the abstraction here and would love to see the practice in the previous paragraph.  Phonar/clmooc/ds106/diy.org/kqed's do now/Paul Allison's Youth Voices. This is where this theory tears into the road and the rubber either stays on the tire or you get new tires.
    • Maha Abdelmoneim
       
      I am not sure how are they disconnected? I see them as intersecting. Take the example of someone playing a team sport that they love. All spheres are represented and interconnected almost merging together. School and work can be sketchy where, depending on teachers,managers, colleagues, available choices etc, some spheres become larger or smaller and affect the balance of the picture.
    • mitomimi
       
      Maha that must mean you are a connected learner :). Sadly I feel a lot of kids are "learning" just for the grade and they don't see it as part of what they are interested in or what they are socially connected to.
    • Maha Bali
       
      Maha's and Mimi's responses are a good reminder about how connection is not just about online or tech. It should be obvious but we can sometimes forget that!
    • swatson217
       
      I am still struggling to get teachers to see the value of this connecting.  I know, it's a marathon.
  • We are still struggling with how to capture some of the complexity of the activity of connected courses.
  • neck and neck race
    • Kevin Hodgson
       
      And what is interesting -- most of their tweeting has been making connections together (I think -- no data to back that up. Jamieson?), as Simon and Maha work magic in the social media sphere.
    • Maha Bali
       
      Yeah, what is more interesting is the amount of UNHASHTAGGED tweeting between us (Simon, Kevin, Terry, Susan) as well as other stuff where i stop using the #ccourses tag... I sometimes do it on purpose to reduce my noise; other times to just squeeze a few extra chars in, and sometimes for semi-privacy. Until recently, Alan and Mariana were top tweeters, too. Tho i find the majority of their tweeting "supportive" as in, helping others, which i love about them both, whether it is official or unofficial
    • swatson217
       
      I admittedly get caught up and forget to hashtag.  :)
  • We can see that so far about half our visitors are new, and that the spikes, again come with the live events
  • I hope that we can continue to embrace the abundance and diversity of forms and intensity of engagement while also guiding each other to try something new, to slow down or speed up our default metabolism, or appreciate a new perspective or geekdom.
    • Kevin Hodgson
       
      and the unexpected ...
    • Maha Bali
       
      Definitely the unexpected :)
  • Quiet: The Power of Introverts
    • Terry Elliott
       
      Ito's listing here is important.  They are all examples of the social craft of connecting which is a subset of the discipline of teaching and learning.
  • co-facilitators
    • Terry Elliott
       
      One of those filters is the folk and all manner of them, expert and otherwise.  The lived experience of the folk is one of the most profound filters we have.  Books are another.  The idea of ideas is another.  Metaphor and figurative language in general are others.  I think the notion of love is one of the most profound filters there is.
    • mitomimi
       
      My team had a motto back in the early days of Internet studies: "The best search engine is a well-informed friend." I am probably defaulting to this as my filter strategy. Not sure if this is the right one given the opportunity for new encounters on ccourses though.
    • Maha Bali
       
      Well, Mimi, you can add to your list of well-informed friends as you go :) that's how it works for me, a few key people connect me to everything and everyone else, then i'll meet a new person who becomes "key" coz i love what they help me connect to... And so on :)
    • swatson217
       
      Love as a filter- yes, yes.
  • ruminating on the implications for Connected Courses
    • Terry Elliott
       
      This would be a very profound filter to read about. Not what Ito found in her research but how she mucks about it, how her ruminations follow and work.  Her discoveries on how she filters the great steaming compost of her research from start to intial finish. 
    • mitomimi
       
      I wish there was more conscious method to the madness... It's not that I don't have any systematic process, but I really rely on having mental space for pattern recognition to happen over time and that's why I think I'm challenged by the pace of ccourses. I do like the metaphor of filtering that you're bringing to this. I find the thought that good filters might exist to be comforting. But I don't have them! I tend to rely on immersion more than filtering as a method I guess. Which is anthropological... but at some point, yes, one does need to make some choices!
    • Maha Bali
       
      This is all getting me itchy to read about Mimi's work on researching connecting learning for several reasons: 1. I want to know how she researched it when she's not comfortable on twitter (haha) 2. I am interested to know about research methodology 3. I fell in love with Mimi reading this post and I want to immerse myself in her work and anything she writes!!! Strange how seeing Mimi on hangout for a few mins did not give me much insight but this post was like..wow... I can't explain the profound effect it had on me, both for my own reflections but also how it made me feel and think about Mimi.
    • swatson217
       
      I hope Mimi is reading these comments :)
  • the most awesome staff
    • Terry Elliott
       
      Yes, how have the staff been involved.  How are they filtering and testing and adjusting and doing?  They are deep in the mill, grinding the wheat, keeping out the chaff.  
  • feeling the pull of the fragments of notes
    • Terry Elliott
       
      If you are feeling the pull of the notes you should succumb to their siren call and gives us those unpolished notes.  Just let us know that they are just that.  Let us filter them if they really are pulling at you. 
    • mitomimi
       
      I suppose I could think aloud on twitter more. It's hard to find time to find the quiet time to pull together a blog post. Or maybe I'm setting the threshold too high on blogging :)!
    • Maha Bali
       
      I love what Tania Sheko has done: put together her annotations into a blogpost. I understand that not all people can blog as often and not all feel comfy with unfinished thoughts being out in the open. It's a risk, and i regret it sometimes. But i think there is a middle way for people like Mimi who can blog such awesomeness but feel they cannot do it as frequently. One really useful way of blogging is to curate what you've been reading. I do it sometimes to help me organize my thoughts, and also to let people know i appreciate their work. Mimi's post we are annotating here did so much of that for me and did not feel long at al actually. It was v engaging and full and rich.
  • social stream that I know I’m missing.
    • Terry Elliott
       
      Yes, you are missing something.  I take solace in the disturbing fact that almost every stream of infor mation you might have received was only so much noise.  It is only when you drink it in that it becomes signal.  Your signal and your meaning. The faith we need is that our system of connections is robust enough to be trusted.  So...the system of connections both digital and actual is what is 'holy'.  It is what we do to honor that web and remake that web that is our greatest task.  Connecting is a social craft.  It is time we started honoring it as such.
  • I’ve so appreciated observing and learning from my more experienced online co-facilitators as they surf the rapids;
    • Terry Elliott
       
      I have spent the better part of the last two summers internalizing and then externalizing your research into connected learning--the values and principles you have so carefully drawn out of your research.  We are surfing the rapids on the kayak that you and your researchers designed especially facilitators from #clmooc.
    • mitomimi
       
      Thank you for this Terry and for your courage in surfing the rapids!
  • I don’t even know what to say about @cogdog Alan who apparently can comment on blogs and make a GIF while hosting a live event.
    • Terry Elliott
       
      I think that praise is due here to Alan,  but I would like to remind you that there is a web of unsung and unheralded and unknown that are yet to be uncovered.  it is our work as facilitators and helpers and participants to tease and ease them onto the dance floor.  God knows they can boogie better than I can if we can just get them onto the floor and teach us how to juke.
  • “legitimate peripheral participants,”
    • Terry Elliott
       
      Actually I prefer descriptions of what people do when they legitimately and peripherally participating.  The abstractification of digital space I think is the occupational hazard of researchers.  it is my job to shout out that the emperor has no clothes.  What is legitimate and what is peripheral and how is that different from marginal and what constitute participant membership?  No...freaking...clue.  
    • Terry Elliott
       
      cornucopia/distributed network/cop/ cross-network remix/immersive theater/funnel/community/hybrid/constellation/stances. I am confused. Good.
  • or that the delicate social machinery we’ve stitched together is going to fall apart
    • Terry Elliott
       
      The only way it will fall apart is if you don't trust the users to pick up the slack in the web.
  • Living at the collision of multiple CoPs, funnels of engagement and streams means that we can all find a way to succeed!
    • Terry Elliott
       
      Reminds me of a pinball.
  • mmersive theater where participants are all experiencing a different narrative.
    • swatson217
       
      This is interesting to try to visualize; it takes my mind into photos of intertwined galaxies.  I wonder sometimes "how" different the narratives are that we each experience.  Perhaps the similarity fades as you move away from each rhizome that you participate in.  Of course, our perception of our narrative is crucially affected by our lens, our filter(s), our biases.
  • sequentially by different facilitators
    • swatson217
       
      I am curious how different facilitators will dip in differently...
  • pulled together some stats
    • swatson217
       
      I am glad you pointed this out - I had no idea these were on the CC site!
  • Our “open” rate on the emails to subscribers is a whopping 50.7% compared to the industry standard of 16.7%
    • swatson217
       
      interesting...I had no idea.
  •  
    Wow -- this piece by Mimi Ito deserves the full annotation/comment of the group. Let's get into it!
  •  
    Wow -- this piece by Mimi Ito deserves the full annotation/comment of the group. Let's get into it!
Terry Elliott

Mimi Ito - Weblog: Trust Falls and My Whys for Connected Courses - 1 views

  • o although I am one of the hosts/facilitators I am doubly a n00b in the connected courses sense - new to cMOOCs as well as new to course design. Which means I am thoroughly enjoying taking the plunge as a learner in all of this and muddling through the why of my teaching as I go.
    • Tania Sheko
       
      Nice acknowledgment
  • best kind of trust fall exercise for someone who is used to pausing and polishing before sharing.
    • Tania Sheko
       
      Thinking in public = trust exercise. Excellent observation.
    • Terry Elliott
       
      Lowering of boundaries is often not encouraged in traditional academic structures.  Too bad.
    • Terry Elliott
       
      And so glad you are taking the risk and jumping through the ether into you know not what.
  • encouraged me to keep thinking in public
  • ...25 more annotations...
  • I feel very much buoyed by generous ways in which the connected courses participants have responded to the inevitable glitches in facilitating this course, and my thinking aloud in public as we go.
  • we are all bringing our heterogeneous whys to this experience.
    • Tania Sheko
       
      Love: 'our heterogenous whys'.
  • he other is the connected course that I am designing together with other DML colleagues.
  • there can’t be a singular why for connected courses
  • Even with different dispositions that pull in different directions, I like that connected courses is pushing us both into productive discomfort and growth.
  • ach facilitator brought a different angle and expertise, and we wanted to honor that and give people space to stretch out and develop their own whys.
  • For the mission statement, first there is the what:
  • he why more broadly
  • ur goal is to build an inclusive and expansive network of teachers, students, and educational offerings that makes high quality, meaningful, and socially connected learning available to everyone.
  • Our goal setting out was to provide a professional development opportunity for faculty who are setting out to teach a connected course
  • the why that we may have set out with as instigators of the course is not the why that all participants bring to the course.
  • And this is a feature of a connectivist experience that should be embraced.
  • every co-learner is facilitating by participating.
  • So if I take off the organizer hat, as a co-learner my personal why is that I want to experience and learn more about the cMOOC approach
  • Connected courses is my first time living through this kind of learning with my own professional community.
  • So as a learner, I guess at least some of my why tracks to the explicit learning goal that we set up as organizers when we started out.
  • newly emergent whys
  • building more ties between educational practice and research
  • I’m starting to geek out on engagement metrics for the course, and thinking through how we can track the cascading effects of an experience like connected courses as it influences educator practice and in turn shapes student experiences.
  • How can we better tell a story through research and evidence about why these kinds of connected learning experiences are important?
  • And can we mobilize our networks to tell this story in a way that supports the diverse collectives that are intersecting here?
  • issues that @mdvfunes and Jenny Mackness have raised on the “tyranny of the open” and the pressures of normative expectations of participation
  • it seems worthwhile to reflect on these more pervasive kinds of risks or exclusions, silencing and just feeling plain old overwhelmed
  • I like this idea of “heterotopia” that Ferreday and Hodgson suggest as a way of charting a pathway through these dynamics.
  • I may be idealistic about this, but I do think it is possible avoid the tyranny of the majority and support and value multiple forms of participation and the varied whys that each co-learner brings to this network.
  •  
    #ccourses Unit 2 Trust
  •  
    #ccourses Unit 2 Trust
swatson217

Chicken/egg reflections on intercultural maturity, criticality, & open-connectednessRef... - 1 views

  • Then again, it might just be because I now know them enough to understand their humor
    • Tania Sheko
       
      Me too, born in Australia but from Russian and German background - both parents born outside Australia. I've always felt that I am both and neither.
  • I still feel kind of hybrid)
  • our ability to share humor might be a function of how well we know each other
    • Tania Sheko
       
      Yes, there is the connection between friends who respond to the same humour and share interests, but there is also the shared history that allows common responses. 
  • ...29 more annotations...
  • Then this got me thinking about the difficulty of sharing humor not only across cultures, but online
    • Tania Sheko
       
      Because, of course, open online environments do not discriminate on the basis of race or anything else.  Humour is such a tricky thing. You can live in the same house for decades and still not get somebody's sense of humour. It's almost a language in itself.
  • And some “i have nooo idea what you’re talking about” things
  • It’s interesting to study the effect of this on how well creative brainstorming works…
    • Tania Sheko
       
      What do you mean by that, Maha, your point about creative brainstorming?
  • how I never got the refs to Greek mythology
    • Tania Sheko
       
      Me too, and at Uni I studied literature, and was too busy to catch up on all the reading I needed to get the references. So when my first son proved to be a big reader, I made sure he read a lot of the mythologies - Greek, Roman, Norse, etc. I'm sure that kind of roundedness helps with self confidence. There's so much referencing - how much of our culture is referenced from history!
  • In my PhD research, I ask a chicken-and-egg question about intercultural maturity and critical thinking.
  • empathy
  • is likely to be open-minded, curious, willing to question one’s own views, interested in understanding different world views – all of which mean this person is likely to behave positively in an intercultural learning experience
  • A good critical thinker
  • intercultural
  • exposure to diversity
  • But how to develop these characteristics?
  • If you’re closed minded and not curious, you’re unlikely to seek intercultural exchange
    • Tania Sheko
       
      Can you change students from being closed minded to open minded? I hope so, because otherwise education is a waste of time. But sometimes I meet teachers who are so closed minded (in terms of trying new ways of teaching) that I give up hope.
    • swatson217
       
      Can you change teachers fro being close minded to open?
  • So which comes first?
  • But if you have never been with people different from yourself, how do you learn to behave in these situations in such a way that helps you learn from it?
  • and so you keep finding yourself in situations and you take advantages of opportunities to connect openly, and then you reap the benefits of that, which fuels you further?
    • Tania Sheko
       
      This is such an important question, and one I've been thinking about over the years. Do I give up with certain people and just focus on convincing those who are open? My job as a teacher librarian depends on convincing teachers that it's worth collaborating with me. Otherwise I can't work with students apart from traditional resourcing.
    • swatson217
       
      yes yes yes
  • how do you get someone into intercultural experiences
  • Is it that you start out as someone who loves openness and connection
  • Same questions could be asked of open/connected learners
  • how do you develop critical thinking needed to develop intercultural maturity without being in an intercultural experience;
  • But how would you “get in” if you don’t already have that attitude?
  • That question plagues me with reference to whether we can actually draw people into open/connected learning
  • Like Laura Gibbs, i’d take curiosity over security any day.
  • A lot of people are monuments/avatars/objects before we decide to engage
  • Someone said her students were shocked when a book author (Howard Rheingold) replied to their tweets. As in, they had not before really thought of him as a real person. Funny.
    • Tania Sheko
       
      Yes, my students are confused and very surprised that a 'real author' would even consider connecting to them online. Once an author was involved in my students' blog comments, and one student said he would rather not know him as a real person because he wouldn't be able to live up to his 'imagined' persona (my words).
  • is it possible for someone to get interested in open and connected learning, to become a connected educator, without first experiencing the beauty, the potential of that, if they are not originally of open/connecting attitude? Or not digitally literate, even.
    • Tania Sheko
       
      I still wonder if what I experience as an enjoyable connective experience is unique to me and those who have chosen to participate. Maybe some teachers wouldn't find this kind of thing interesting or enjoyable.
  • How do you draw them in to try? If you give a workshop on it, hands-on, will they come? Will it sound like gibberish and feel overwhelming?
    • Tania Sheko
       
      And how do you sustain that even if the workshop is successful?
    • swatson217
       
      I struggle with this with my teachers.
  • about how joining an academic conversation midway feels? It’s the same for joining an open online community or finding oneself in a new culture
  • It takes time to figure out where to start, whom to talk to, how to talk, how to engage in culturally acceptable ways, etc.
    • swatson217
       
      Maha, this is a great question!
Tania Sheko

A human OER | doublemirror - 6 views

  • the web does ‘make sense of what we are doing and where we individually fit in’.
    • Terry Elliott
       
      HIve mind? Collective unconscious? Zeitgeist?  Not sure there is anything alive that can see more than what we hope is a fractal piece of the "Web".
    • Kevin Hodgson
       
      But it is how we pull those fractals together that pushes us to consider/reconsider emerging literacies
    • Terry Elliott
       
      I think what I mean is that no one sees it all. Just like no one can manage chaos. It doesn't mean that we can't grasp for a piece of the meaning, and maybe it is fractal, by getting a piece we might have access to a quick glimpse of it all. So many unknown unknowns and so many folk claiming to have figured it all out. Unless of course you give the classic Socratic cop-out of "I know that I know nothing." Yeah, that sucks.
  • see pattern
    • Terry Elliott
       
      humans as pattern makers even where there is none or even where they might be
    • Kevin Hodgson
       
      Trusting our "gut instinct" about the viability of an online space ... will I belong here or not?
  • They are a marker of belonging as much as a marker of exclusion.
    • Terry Elliott
       
      Boundaries are rigid, permeable, and semi-permeable in nature.  Are they such in our social constructs?  Is this just another pattern seen in a metaphor that extends just far enough to trip us up?  Well...I hope not. I kinda like it.
  • ...25 more annotations...
  • All of this has felt quite unsatisfactory to me as I reflect on how to engage those people who have not made the transition to working in the open web
    • Terry Elliott
       
      There are lots of assumptions packed into the acronym soup, one being that they aren't just another example of the 'rich' getting richer.
  • Who am I in this meditated world that is the open web?
    • Terry Elliott
       
      An essential question for anyone working on the web.
    • Kevin Hodgson
       
      Agreed
  • I want to be part of the larger whole, not just the subset.
    • Terry Elliott
       
      There is a web, whole and entire that subsumes every living being on the planet. In every important way we already are part of the larger whole.  I am drawn once again to James Scott's idea of legibility.  Great summary of idea in one picture on this website: http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2010/07/26/a-big-little-idea-called-legibility/
  • a significant part of earth does not have a presence on the web
    • Terry Elliott
       
      About 60% do not have access according to this source: "Key ICT indicators for developed and developing countries and the world (totals and penetration rates)", International Telecommunications Unions (ITU), Geneva, 27 February 2013
  • am full of wonder about the kindness and gentle nature of the people in my network
    • Kevin Hodgson
       
      Love the poetic ideal here, and I think it is this element that brings us back into a space to connect with others.
    • swatson217
       
      I have been struck by the same thoughts
  • My ‘hashtag home’
    • Kevin Hodgson
       
      This phrase is so interesting to me in a lot of ways ... a hashtag both stands by itself and is connected to other posts/ideas with same hashtag. Is it just Twitter-centric? It hints at the larger architecture of our experiences in online spaces, of lifelines that we throw out to others in hopes that our words/ideas won't stand alone in silence.
    • Tania Sheko
       
      It's interesting that hashtags - similar to the traditional keywords used for online search (markers) - have become communal 'spaces' or 'homes'. When we create a hashtag, are we trying to build 'homes' to invite people in? And if we use a hashtag only understood by few, our invitation is selective.
  • The tension between freedom of speech and member equality plays out in a more or less explicit way always.
    • Kevin Hodgson
       
      And here we have one of the central points of being in online spaces. Is it a "true space" where things can go awry? (as in real life beyond the screen). Or do we want those with opposing views filtered out from the start?
  • people who I respect do tell me consistently that the language used can feel unwelcoming at the start.
    • Kevin Hodgson
       
      Really? Interesting .... I have not heard that from anyone but I can see how someone might feel like it was an exclusive party of makers and less an inclusive party of "everyone." I guess ... truthfully, I never felt that with DS106.
    • Tania Sheko
       
      All foreign language feels excluding.
  • Norms self-organise as people do, they are implicit. There is no explicit contracting upfront and no consequence for non-compliance that I have found in any of the MOOCs I have joined.
  • What prompted this post was a small realisation that has helped me keep the baby and let the bathwater out. May be we are overlaying the wrong construct on our online lives. May be this is not ‘a classroom’ and I am not ‘a teacher’ or ‘a learner’. May be I am just a human being using a technology to interact with other human beings  for a variety of purposes – one of which can be learning to make art, to knit or to be a good digital citizen.
    • Kevin Hodgson
       
      I love this realization, and agree with it. Her thoughts help connect beyond the learning itself (no matter the platform) and into the act of being a human whose part of the fabric of the world (not to get too corny about it)
    • Terry Elliott
       
      Yes, doing much the same with my seed sharing project.
  • As a participant I can choose to be part of disturbing and ambiguous spaces.
  • For me this is about sharing ideas, it is about knowing a person not what she/he can do for me, it is about having fun together exploring stuff and not being afraid to disagree with each other and ourselves regularly.
    • Kevin Hodgson
       
      Me, too.
  • live life as inquiry
  • Innovation may occur where people are creatively engaged, but it cannot be dictated and it cannot be planned, it must be found from the emergent actions of people who are struggling with a task. “
  • As we struggle with the task we follow a set of norms and learn something off-book – how to live and learn on the open web.
  • This is in the background not the foreground and I think this matters when I compare it with other experiences
  • power dynamics exist in the shadow of groups perhaps too often. These get played out covertly, unspoken and our options when we do not like it are limited. Stay and comply or leave.
  • This sorting process, by definition, includes some people and excludes others.
  • In online learning communities, it seems to me, we are using hashtags as our ‘brand’.
  • It creates a mantra, the chanting of which identifies you as a member. People who are ‘in’ are quite willing to surrender to this higher authority. People who are not ‘in’ are ‘out’ and are subject to various sanctions from the group, including hostility.
  • A reviewer to one of my papers said  ‘that the practice that many share in virtual courses is just studying online and that in less structured communities people just end up talking about their experience of studying.’
  • the task is coming together online and this leads to a bias towards consent not dissent. This is problematic for diversity.
  • You need only scan how people wear their cMOOC attendance as an online resume or badge of honour
  • The hashtags are created to stand for something and as with any collection of individuals who identify with something, the quality of the interaction can ‘go south’ as people find their feet and implicit norms a majority share evolve. This is what happens when a group is left to self-organise.
  • People interact in dysfunctional ways if left to their own devices more often than not. Online it seems a ‘escape clause’ for making any behaviour acceptable  is “it is not real, it is the internet”  and “you can always move on if you don’t like it”.
Terry Elliott

touches of sense...: The first click. - 0 views

  • What drove the settlers to the 'new world'?
    • Terry Elliott
       
      They were holy hell angry and generally flaming mad for freedom.
  • What were their dreams?
    • Terry Elliott
       
      There were some seriously bad-assed marketers in those day, i.e. liars of the first order.
  • co-learning perhaps?
    • Terry Elliott
       
      For me an mine it is time to get together and swap notes about the world as it is--i.e. stories that define and stories that push the bounds.
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • I agree with Laura
    • Terry Elliott
       
      But whose bricks?  
    • Terry Elliott
       
      That brick metaphor is cock-eyed.  The problem being that we assume it has to be a brick.  It is this straightedged linear hierarchical nonsense that is the bane of modern architecture.  It is the Frank Geary/ Frank "Loud" Wright brand.  I ain't buyin' it.  In fact most of the things of the world don't require anywhere near the amount of topdown brick-headed, lego instructive bs than we think.
    • Terry Elliott
       
      ok
  • education for freedom.
    • Terry Elliott
       
      democracy schools
  • on the cheap.
    • Terry Elliott
       
      not hardly
  • I think of profit margins...
    • Terry Elliott
       
      the bottom line...is a guillotine's blade
  • Is education about serving industry or about safe-guarding some sort of freedom?
    • Terry Elliott
       
      Where I live education is a business inspired by desparate dreams and harnessed by professional despots both for-profit and not for profit.  I will sell you a dream not your own.  I am little George against that dragon, Smaug.  And not the Benedict Cumberbatch voiced dragon either.  
    • Simon Ensor
       
      Desperate or disparate dreams?
  • unbundle
    • Terry Elliott
       
      nononononon a thousand times no.  If anything we need to be making our own bundles not someone else's fasces.  We all know where using someone else's bundle leads.
  • Second life anyone?
    • Terry Elliott
       
      Not on your second life.
  • We are connected by more than a few bits and clicks.
    • Terry Elliott
       
      Connected in our heads, in the connections we share with other folks heads, by the universal experience of power and lust and empathy and fear and joy and oblivion.  I know how you connect because I do so in much the same way.  I recognize you in me and me in you.  Self same same self, mirrored and beaming out of that glass like the blooming idiots that we are.
  • (The audience claps)
  • "To build the house, you have to lay the first brick."
    • Terry Elliott
       
      This is my anathema.
    • Terry Elliott
       
      The map is the brick.  The map and the brick as dominant metaphors is the problem.  They should serve us,not master us.  Expertism is rampant and everything I have ever learned well has been when they have served my curvilinear, my randomized, my self-serving chaotic self, not vice the versa.  Lest we forget, we have changed the temperature of the oceans by building with bricks and maps.
1 - 6 of 6
Showing 20 items per page