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Contents contributed and discussions participated by Tania Sheko

Tania Sheko

Connected by Design - YouTube - 0 views

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    "In this session Kim Jaxon, Jaimie Hoffman, Danielle Astengo, Jeremy Wallace, and Jim Groom will be discussing various approaches to building a connected courses infrastructure for individual assignments, or an entire course. This session will showcase various sites faculty and graduate students have created over the semester, and hopefully inspire others to create their own connected course hub."
Tania Sheko

A human OER | doublemirror - 6 views

  • 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
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  • 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”.
Tania Sheko

Abbott government to overhaul crowded curriculum - 1 views

  • Overcrowding in the curriculum was the main issue of concern raised by principals, teachers and parents during the review conducted by education consultant Kevin Donnelly and academic Ken Wiltshire.
  • The reviewers said they were not saying there was no place for inquiry-based learning but that caution should be exercised to ensure it did not become the prevailing orthodoxy.
    • Tania Sheko
       
      What does that actually mean? Inquiry learning should be exercised with caution? "There will be no inquiry in mathematics!"
    • Tania Sheko
       
      In which country does this not happen? (That's not rhetorical).
Tania Sheko

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.
  • encouraged me to keep thinking in public
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  • 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.
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    #ccourses Unit 2 Trust
Tania Sheko

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. 
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  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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?
  • 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.
Tania Sheko

Leveraging your "Why?", in answer to Mike Wesch. « PHONAR - An open undergrad... - 2 views

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    Jonathan responds to Mike, and we should annotate the response, right?
Tania Sheko

BBC News - Photography and open education - 0 views

  • Yet there is another way - open learning, where the majority of the students interact online with the face-to-face course being taught in a more traditional manner. With this comes a chance to share in the knowledge being offered by a wide range of tutors, photographers and others in the industry.
  • "I'd had to rethink what my product was as a photographer - I'd grown up thinking it was my images, but digital cameras meant everyone was a potential image maker. So I had to think why it was that I'd been successful in the past and I found a number of strands which proved very fruitful. That's the stuff we talk about in class."
  • I realised the real thing of value was not the knowledge but the learning experience.
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  • He uses Creative Commons licenses (CC) for his classes. "I'd always been an avid All Rights Reserved user but it just stopped making sense. The open classes can only work with a CC license, which was a big deal for the university because it turns out education establishment are avid All Rights Reserved users too. Much like me thinking I was just an image maker, the uni thought its product was 'knowledge' and their old business model relied on keeping a tight grip on that.
  • Worth's classes live on blogs and on Twitter (hashtag #phonar), and are proving a popular resource amongst photography enthusiasts and professionals alike.
  • accessible nature is appealing
  • list of contributors impressive.
  • Through my work with #phonar I have learnt the world is filled with lots of different people and we all think and learn differently. Coventry University has shown me it doesn't matter what disability you have, anything is possible.
Tania Sheko

Why Read This, Why Read That?Reflecting Allowed | Reflecting Allowed - 1 views

  • that she found reading books (quickly, i assume?) easier than wading through tweets and blogs; whereas I clearly did the tweets/blogs things quite comfortably but found reading books “too much”
    • Tania Sheko
       
      I feel the same as Maha, easier to read and respond to blog posts than read a book on my own - with nobody to talk to and no way of sharing my thoughts. Claustrophobic.
  • Anyway, it made me reflect on why I, someone who LOVES reading by all accounts, have a strong preference for reading blogs/tweets over books/academic articles in MOOCs. There are many reasons,
    • Tania Sheko
       
      This is something I've been thinking about for ages but feeling like I've failed in that I've lost the enthusiasm for reading books, or maybe don't have the focus stamina any more. Thanks for writing this out, Maha, I might do my own blog reflection.
  • Mimi’s point that a connected learning experience “welcomes people with different dispositions and orientations to learning”,
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  • In terms of learning: Is the MOOC about experiencing connecting? Or about reading about it?
  • the MOOC is about reflecting on connecting,
  • My first PhD supervisor was big on encouraging me to read diverse articles not single-authored books
  • My second supervisor (who replaced the first) was big on me reading original works by e.g. Marx, Foucault, etc.
  • I also find reading translated works really difficult and find it a better investment of my time to first read more contemporary (or at least, more education-focused) interpretations of the “greats” works, before reading the original. It helps me read it better
  • I do not value the book-authors more than I value the blog-authors
  • can interact with them more regularly
  • more accessible, easier to read quickly
  • 2. Attention issues
  • Philosophical approach to reading
  • This is particularly funny because I keep not finding time to read the”attention literacies” part in Howard Rheingold’s Net Smart, as I get ‘distracted’ into reading different parts of it (i’ve probably read half the book already, just not in order).
    • Tania Sheko
       
      I can relate to this behaviour.
  • And that’s why I voice these things in MOOCs, because I am pretty sure that courses about connection want ppl to feel they can participate.
  • Taking steps: Conceding Having said all this… I went into unit 2 of #ccourses today and did the following
  • So basically, I hope to engage with these readings “my way” (so not deeply with each entire book, unless it draws me in, but with parts of it)
  • hope that blogposts by other people & the hangout will fill me in second-hand (you see what I am doing here, don’t you?)
    • Tania Sheko
       
      Very clever. I think this method wards away the guilts and also sustains engagement in the course. The alternative would be to give up and feel defeated if you couldn't do everything.
  • P.S. some ppl may say that w blog posts u have no guarantee of quality vs a book recommended by the facilitators. However, there are many ways to gauge a blog’s quality, incl knowing the person, seeing it retweeted often or with many comments – and it takes v little time to skim it to decide to read deeply;
  • lovely quotes from Mimi’s post
  • Connected Courses is a veritable cornucopia of ways of participating with no central platform.
  • colliding through a loosely orchestrated cross-network remix, immersive theater where participants are all experiencing a different narrative.
  • hybrid network, more like a constellation that looks different based on where one stands and who one is.
  • 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
  • opportunities for recognition.
  • reciprocity and fun in the social stream
  • our personal interests and expertise
  • institutional status/reputation
Tania Sheko

Settings for Trust in Connected Learning: an interview with danah boyd | HASTAC - 0 views

  • 1. What about our contemporary moment makes understanding trust important?
  • The public projects a lot onto technology. It is seen as both the savior of our current economy and the destroyer of our cultural fabric
  • organizations that are building or employing new technologies are rarely local or connected deeply to the communities that use them.
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  • 2. How are you thinking about trust in regard to connected learning?
  • When we talk about connected learning, we're implicating a whole host of different actors to enable learning - educators, parents, students, librarians, administrators, government agencies, technologists, learning companies, etc.  
  • 4. Do you know of any tools, procedures, apps, and/or systems enabling or disabling trust? How are they doing this? What do these  tools, procedures, and/or systems change how learning can happen in connected learning environments?
  • But trust starts from collectively recognizing that we're all working towards a desirable goal of empowering learners and realizing that getting there will be imperfect and require iteration.
  • 3. What are some of the biggest challenges to engendering trust you see in connected learning?
  • The other core issue is that people's failure to understand technology's strengths and weaknesses mean that the public often has unreasonable expectations regarding technology and its application.
  • understand, respect, and trust one another.  And then we need them to help bake trust into the systems that they build - technological, social, and governmental.
  • So a huge part of the process of building and sustaining trust is to plan for what happens when things go wrong.  We do this all the time in education - think about fire drills - but we don't realize how important this is when we think about technology.
  • . What are some of the literacies you think are required for learners to  have a digital “trust literacy”?
  • think that people need to understand how data is collected, aggregated, sold, and used in the process of enabling all sorts of everyday services.
  • How did Amazon decide to recommend that other product to you?
  • Why do you think you got the results you got on Google?
  • Why are you seeing the ads you're seeing on your local newspaper's site?
  • What happens when you Like something?
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