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diggiweb

3, ideas to re-motivate your teams! - DiggiWeb - 0 views

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    It's quite likely that at some point in your activities, your team seems to be demotivated for some reason. This will lead to a drop in production and the loss of sight of the main targets. So to re-motivate your teams, here are 3 ideas that have proven their worth.
Hanna Wiszniewska

edublogs: John Cleese on time, place and flow of creativity - 0 views

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    John Cleese provides a ten-minute insight into what many of us know already, but fail to acknowledge: 1. We do not know where we get our ideas from (but we do know we don't get them from our laptops). 2. Sleeping on an idea can help make its reappearance later so much better. 3. Ticking things off and keeping all the balls in the air means you will not have any creative ideas. 4. In our frenzied connected world we need to make some time to make some mood for creativity: a tortoise cocoon from which we can check it's safe to come out into a self-created oasis in our lives. 5. We need to set aside time and place where interruptions are not allowed - we need to create boundaries of space with a starting time and a finish time, separate from ordinary life, and only then creating a space and place where we can play. 6. The problem with some teachers is that they may not know that they are not very creative, and therefore they may not value creativity even if they can recognise it. 7. If those in charge are egotistical and wish to claim credit for the work of others, then they shall directly or indirectly discourage others from being creative.
nailmallpro

10 Electrical Safety Steps for Keeping you and your Family Safe - Professional Electric... - 0 views

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    When it comes to keeping your family safe from harm, you want to do everything in your power. Dealing with electricity can be a dangerous thing if you don't do it correctly. Teaching your family how to properly approach electrical problems can make a world of difference in their safety. Here are our top 10 electrical safety tips to help keep your family safe from harm. 1.) Avoid Overloading An Electrical Outlet And Power Strips Being in the technology age, it can sometimes be difficult to charge all of our mobile items. From your phone to your iPod, to your computer, you need to have a clear outlet space to do so. Many think the best solution is to simply add more temporary outlets to their existing hardwired outlets. This can be done with power strips and multi-outlet plugins. While these may seem convenient at first, they actually can cause major electrical problems. Overloading outlets can cause burnt plugs, and in more severe cases, full-on house fires. You should avoid using multi-outlet plugins as much as possible to reduce your family's risk of danger. 2.) Don't Yank On Electrical Cords It may seem tempting from time to time to pull on a power cord to get it out of the wall. Just because it saves you that short trip back down the hallway to unplug the sweeper, it's actually costing you more in the long run because of the wear it takes. Realize that by yanking power cords, you can damage the cord, the plug, and the actual wall outlet. In the event that your wall outlet has become loose due to being yanked on, we suggest calling a qualified electrician to fix the issue. 3.) Avoid Keeping Power Cords Near Water If you've ever noticed that the outlets in your kitchen and bathroom are shaped differently than the rest, you've seen a GFCI outlet. These are specially made to help decrease the likelihood of electrical shock in the event that water seeps into the outlet. You can do yourself a favor and protect you and your family from electrical shock b
Michael Johnson

Teaching in Social and Technological Networks « Connectivism - 17 views

  • The model falls apart when we distribute content and extend the activities of the teacher to include multiple educator inputs and peer-driven learning.
  • Skype brings anyone, from anywhere, into a classroom. Students are not confined to interacting with only the ideas of a researcher or theorist. Instead, a student can interact directly with researchers through Twitter, blogs, Facebook, and listservs. The largely unitary voice of the traditional teacher is fragmented by the limitless conversation opportunities available in networks. When learners have control of the tools of conversation, they also control the conversations in which they choose to engage. Course content is similarly fragmented. The textbook is now augmented with YouTube videos, online articles, simulations, Second Life builds, virtual museums, Diigo content trails, StumpleUpon reflections, and so on.
  • Traditional courses provide a coherent view of a subject. This view is shaped by “learning outcomes” (or objectives). These outcomes drive the selection of content and the design of learning activities. Ideally, outcomes and content/curriculum/instruction are then aligned with the assessment. It’s all very logical: we teach what we say we are going to teach, and then we assess what we said we would teach. This cozy comfortable world of outcomes-instruction-assessment alignment exists only in education. In all other areas of life, ambiguity, uncertainty, and unkowns reign. Fragmentation of content and conversation is about to disrupt this well-ordered view of learning. Educators and universities are beginning to realize that they no longer have the control they once (thought they) did
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  • I’ve come to view teaching as a critical and needed activity in the chaotic and ambiguous information climate created by networks.
  • In networks, teachers are one node among many. Learners will, however, likely be somewhat selective of which nodes they follow and listen to. Most likely, a teacher will be one of the more prominent nodes in a learner’s network. Thoughts, ideas, or messages that the teacher amplifies will generally have a greater probability of being seen by course participants. The network of information is shaped by the actions of the teacher in drawing attention to signals (content elements) that are particularly important in a given subject area.
  • While “curator” carries the stigma of dusty museums, the metaphor is appropriate for teaching and learning. The curator, in a learning context, arranges key elements of a subject in such a manner that learners will “bump into” them throughout the course. Instead of explicitly stating “you must know this”, the curator includes critical course concepts in her dialogue with learners, her comments on blog posts, her in-class discussions, and in her personal reflections. As learners grow their own networks of understanding, frequent encounters with conceptual artifacts shared by the teacher will begin to resonate.
  • Today’s social web is no different – we find our way through active exploration. Designers can aid the wayfinding process through consistency of design and functionality across various tools, but ultimately, it is the responsibility of the individual to click/fail/recoup and continue. Fortunately, the experience of wayfinding is now augmented by social systems. Social structures are filters. As a learner grows (and prunes) her personal networks, she also develops an effective means to filter abundance. The network becomes a cognitive agent in this instance – helping the learner to make sense of complex subject areas by relying not only on her own reading and resource exploration, but by permitting her social network to filter resources and draw attention to important topics. In order for these networks to work effectively, learners must be conscious of the need for diversity and should include nodes that offer critical or antagonistic perspectives on all topic areas. Sensemaking in complex environments is a social process.
  • Aggregation should do the same – reveal the content and conversation structure of the course as it unfolds, rather than defining it in advance.
  • Filtering resources is an important educator role, but as noted already, effective filtering can be done through a combination of wayfinding, social sensemaking, and aggregation. But expertise still matters. Educators often have years or decades of experience in a field. As such, they are familiar with many of the concepts, pitfalls, confusions, and distractions that learners are likely to encounter. As should be evident by now, the educator is an important agent in networked learning. Instead of being the sole or dominant filter of information, he now shares this task with other methods and individuals.
  • Filtering can be done in explicit ways – such as selecting readings around course topics – or in less obvious ways – such as writing summary blog posts around topics. Learning is an eliminative process. By determining what doesn’t belong, a learner develops and focuses his understanding of a topic. The teacher assists in the process by providing one stream of filtered information. The student is then faced with making nuanced selections based on the multiple information streams he encounters
  • Stephen’s statements that resonated with many learners centers on modelling as a teaching practice: “To teach is to model and to demonstrate. To learn is to practice and to reflect.” (As far as I can tell, he first made the statement during OCC in 2007).
  • Modelling has its roots in apprenticeship. Learning is a multi-faceted process, involving cognitive, social, and emotional dimensions. Knowledge is similarly multi-faceted, involving declarative, procedural, and academic dimensions. It is unreasonable to expect a class environment to capture the richness of these dimensions. Apprenticeship learning models are among the most effective in attending to the full breadth of learning. Apprenticeship is concerned with more than cognition and knowledge (to know about) – it also addresses the process of becoming a carpenter, plumber, or physician.
  • Without an online identity, you can’t connect with others – to know and be known. I don’t think I’m overstating the importance of have a presence in order to participate in networks. To teach well in networks – to weave a narrative of coherence with learners – requires a point of presence. As a course progresses, the teacher provides summary comments, synthesizes discussions, provides critical perspectives, and directs learners to resources they may not have encountered before.
  • Persistent presence in the learning network is needed for the teacher to amplify, curate, aggregate, and filter content and to model critical thinking and cognitive attributes that reflect the needs of a discipline.
  • Teaching and learning in social and technological networks is similarly surprising – it’s hard to imagine that many of the tools we’re using are less than a decade old (the methods of learning in networks are not new, however. People have always learned in social networks).
  • We’re still early in many of these trends. Many questions remain unanswered about privacy, ethics in networks, and assessment.
  • We’re still early in many of these trends. Many questions remain unanswered about privacy, ethics in networks, and assessment.
  • The tools for controlling both content and conversation have shifted from the educator to the learner. We require a system that acknowledges this reality.
  • In order for these networks to work effectively, learners must be conscious of the need for diversity and should include nodes that offer critical or antagonistic perspectives on all topic areas. Sensemaking in complex environments is a social process.
  • In order for these networks to work effectively, learners must be conscious of the need for diversity and should include nodes that offer critical or antagonistic perspectives on all topic areas. Sensemaking in complex environments is a social process.
  • In order for these networks to work effectively, learners must be conscious of the need for diversity and should include nodes that offer critical or antagonistic perspectives on all topic areas. Sensemaking in complex environments is a social process.
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    Discusses the role of teachers in the learning  process through social networks: He gives seven roles 1. Amplifying, 2. Curating, 3. Wayfinding and socially-driven sensemaking, 4. Aggregating, 5. Filtering, 6. Modelling, 7. Persistent presence. He ends with this provocative thought: "My view is that change in education needs to be systemic and substantial. Education is concerned with content and conversations. The tools for controlling both content and conversation have shifted from the educator to the learner. We require a system that acknowledges this reality."
titechnologies

Choosing the right Engagement Model for Business Software Development - TI Technologies - 0 views

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    Software Development has formed the economic and social face of the planet within the most recent 3 decades. What was once thought of gibber and kept to the elite minds that place humans on the Moon and cracked the German Enigma is currently a well-liked profession that has created landmarks just like the Silicon Valley and icons like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. With the spurt in revolutionary product ideas within the late 90s, the need to place those 'thoughts' into execution demanded the best development-skills, and this 'request' has been solely developing with time. This conveys us to an aspect of software development that has perpetually been a significant business call for companies - the foremost cost-effective engagement model. Here is what we think regarding selecting the right engagement model: Fixed Price Model Fixing the price is about fixing the project requirements, scope, as well as deadlines. This model can never work while not thorough initial planning, analysis, and estimation sessions. The more planning you do, the better the result. Why is the planning stage so important? The success of the fixed price project is directly proportional to the success of this primary phase. To have a superior control over a greater project, the engagement model may be somewhat changed with deliverables & milestones approach. A customer is charged because the in agreement milestones have come and deliverables are in situ. From that point forward, another stage with its own particular milestones and deliverables can start. For the majority of effectively fixed price projects, discovery phase fills in as the beginning point. Choose Fixed Price Engagement Model when: Requirements are clear, very much characterized and improbable to change You deal with a small or medium project which won't last for more than few months The Pros: It's well-defined and well-negotiated. There's no room for lapses. There is a push to get the total picture of the software even befo
nailmallpro

5 Ways to Know You Need A Plumber | U'GoPros Inc - 0 views

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    Plumbing Repair Are you looking for a qualified, professional plumbing service provider or emergency plumber near me that knows the latest technological processes for fixing leaks, repairing and replacing plumbing pipes and ensuring your plumbing system is clean and operating normally? If you are, we can help you find the right plumber for your needs. Signs You Need a Plumbing Repair Contractor in Space Coast Florida Plumbing systems in the homes and businesses of Brevard County are often overlooked until they fail and result in the need to shut off your home or business' water until a qualified plumbing contractor can be contacted to locate and repair the problem. Thankfully, there are some signs you can look for to determine if your plumbing system needs a plumber repair or service leak repair before it completely fails, potentially resulting in floods and backed up sewer lines. 1. You Have Limited or No Hot Water Hot water is essential for washing laundry, taking a shower and general cleaning around your home or business. When you don't have hot water or you have very limited hot water, it could mean that you have a problem with the gas or electrical connections to your hot water heater, the hot water heating elements have failed or the inside is filled with debris and corrosion. The good news is that one of our water heater plumbing professionals can diagnose the problem with your water heater and repair it or replace your water heater. 2. More than One Drain is Slow If just one drain is slow, it most likely means there is a clog in that drain that needs to be removed. Drains that commonly clog include sinks, showers and bathtubs, and typically, all it takes is cleaning the clogged drain out with a plumbing snake or auger. However, if you have multiple slow drains or your toilet is backing up into your bathtub, there's a good chance you have a sewer line clog that needs immediate attention. Sewer lines can be safely cleaned out by an experienced plumb
Susan Oxnevad

3 Free Cool Tools to Curate Content - 0 views

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    Content curation is a great way to find, organize and share useful knowledge efficiently. There are many free digital tools available to help manage web content in flexible ways allowing us to quickly share resources that are accessible online. Use of curation tools is social and will connect us to the ideas of others and help build our professional learning networks.
Barbara Lindsey

Jean Lave, Etienne Wenger and communities of practice - 1 views

  • Supposing learning is social and comes largely from of our experience of participating in daily life? It was this thought that formed the basis of a significant rethinking of learning theory in the late 1980s and early 1990s by two researchers from very different disciplines - Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger. Their model of situated learning proposed that learning involved a process of engagement in a 'community of practice'. 
  • When looking closely at everyday activity, she has argued, it is clear that 'learning is ubiquitous in ongoing activity, though often unrecognized as such' (Lave 1993: 5).
  • Communities of practice are formed by people who engage in a process of collective learning in a shared domain of human endeavour: a tribe learning to survive, a band of artists seeking new forms of expression, a group of engineers working on similar problems, a clique of pupils defining their identity in the school, a network of surgeons exploring novel techniques, a gathering of first-time managers helping each other cope. In a nutshell: Communities of practice are groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly. (Wenger circa 2007)
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  • Over time, this collective learning results in practices that reflect both the pursuit of our enterprises and the attendant social relations. These practices are thus the property of a kind of community created over time by the sustained pursuit of a shared enterprise. It makes sense, therefore to call these kinds of communities communities of practice. (Wenger 1998: 45)
  • The characteristics of communities of practice According to Etienne Wenger (c 2007), three elements are crucial in distinguishing a community of practice from other groups and communities: The domain. A community of practice is is something more than a club of friends or a network of connections between people. 'It has an identity defined by a shared domain of interest. Membership therefore implies a commitment to the domain, and therefore a shared competence that distinguishes members from other people' (op. cit.). The community. 'In pursuing their interest in their domain, members engage in joint activities and discussions, help each other, and share information. They build relationships that enable them to learn from each other' (op. cit.). The practice. 'Members of a community of practice are practitioners. They develop a shared repertoire of resources: experiences, stories, tools, ways of addressing recurring problems—in short a shared practice. This takes time and sustained interaction' (op. cit.).
  • The fact that they are organizing around some particular area of knowledge and activity gives members a sense of joint enterprise and identity. For a community of practice to function it needs to generate and appropriate a shared repertoire of ideas, commitments and memories. It also needs to develop various resources such as tools, documents, routines, vocabulary and symbols that in some way carry the accumulated knowledge of the community.
  • The interactions involved, and the ability to undertake larger or more complex activities and projects though cooperation, bind people together and help to facilitate relationship and trust
  • Rather than looking to learning as the acquisition of certain forms of knowledge, Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger have tried to place it in social relationships – situations of co-participation.
  • It not so much that learners acquire structures or models to understand the world, but they participate in frameworks that that have structure. Learning involves participation in a community of practice. And that participation 'refers not just to local events of engagement in certain activities with certain people, but to a more encompassing process of being active participants in the practices of social communities and constructing identities in relation to these communities' (Wenger 1999: 4).
  • Initially people have to join communities and learn at the periphery. The things they are involved in, the tasks they do may be less key to the community than others.
  • Learning is, thus, not seen as the acquisition of knowledge by individuals so much as a process of social participation. The nature of the situation impacts significantly on the process.
  • What is more, and in contrast with learning as internalization, ‘learning as increasing participation in communities of practice concerns the whole person acting in the world’ (Lave and Wenger 1991: 49). The focus is on the ways in which learning is ‘an evolving, continuously renewed set of relations’ (ibid.: 50). In other words, this is a relational view of the person and learning (see the discussion of selfhood).
  • 'the purpose is not to learn from talk as a substitute for legitimate peripheral participation; it is to learn to talk as a key to legitimate peripheral participation'. This orientation has the definite advantage of drawing attention to the need to understand knowledge and learning in context. However, situated learning depends on two claims: It makes no sense to talk of knowledge that is decontextualized, abstract or general. New knowledge and learning are properly conceived as being located in communities of practice (Tennant 1997: 77).
  • There is a risk, as Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger acknowledge, of romanticizing communities of practice.
  • 'In their eagerness to debunk testing, formal education and formal accreditation, they do not analyse how their omission [of a range of questions and issues] affects power relations, access, public knowledge and public accountability' (Tennant 1997: 79).
  • Perhaps the most helpful of these explorations is that of Barbara Rogoff and her colleagues (2001). They examine the work of an innovative school in Salt Lake City and how teachers, students and parents were able to work together to develop an approach to schooling based around the principle that learning 'occurs through interested participation with other learners'.
  • Learning is in the relationships between people. As McDermott (in Murphy 1999:17) puts it: Learning traditionally gets measured as on the assumption that it is a possession of individuals that can be found inside their heads… [Here] learning is in the relationships between people. Learning is in the conditions that bring people together and organize a point of contact that allows for particular pieces of information to take on a relevance; without the points of contact, without the system of relevancies, there is not learning, and there is little memory. Learning does not belong to individual persons, but to the various conversations of which they are a part.
  • One of the implications for schools, as Barbara Rogoff and her colleagues suggest is that they must prioritize 'instruction that builds on children's interests in a collaborative way'. Such schools need also to be places where 'learning activities are planned by children as well as adults, and where parents and teachers not only foster children's learning but also learn from their own involvement with children' (2001: 3). Their example in this area have particular force as they are derived from actual school practice.
  • learning involves a deepening process of participation in a community of practice
  • Acknowledging that communities of practice affect performance is important in part because of their potential to overcome the inherent problems of a slow-moving traditional hierarchy in a fast-moving virtual economy. Communities also appear to be an effective way for organizations to handle unstructured problems and to share knowledge outside of the traditional structural boundaries. In addition, the community concept is acknowledged to be a means of developing and maintaining long-term organizational memory. These outcomes are an important, yet often unrecognized, supplement to the value that individual members of a community obtain in the form of enriched learning and higher motivation to apply what they learn. (Lesser and Storck 2001)
  • Educators need to reflect on their understanding of what constitutes knowledge and practice. Perhaps one of the most important things to grasp here is the extent to which education involves informed and committed action.
Dennis OConnor

Martin Dougiamas Keynote at Moodlemoot Canada | Some Random Thoughts - 13 views

  • Martin Dougiamas presented the keynote at the Canadian Moodlemoot in Edmonton.
  • Martin updated us with the current stats on Moodle 54,000 verified sites worldwide. 41 Million users 97 language packs (17 fully complete, the rest are in various states) 54 Moodle Partners who fund the project and its going very well ensuring the project will continue into the future. (such as Remote-Learner who I work for) USA still has the highest raw number of installations and Spain has half of that with much less population. Brazil is now 3rd in the world and has overtaken the UK now in total installs. 3 of the top 10 are English speaking per head of population, Portugal has the largest number of Moodle installations.
  •  ”a lot of people find that giving students the ability to teach is a valuable learning process” – Martin Dougiamas.
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  • As many may have seen before, there are 10 steps of pedagogical usage of Moodle, which is outlined on Moodle Docs. It details the typical 10 step progression which looks like: Putting up the handouts (Resources, SCORM) Providing a passive Forum (unfacilitated) Using Quizzes and Assignments (less management) Using the Wiki, Glossary and Database tools (interactive content) Facilitate discussions in Forums, asking questions, guiding Combining activities into sequences, where results feed later activities Introduce external activities and games (internet resources) Using the Survey module to study and reflect on course activity Using peer-review modules like Workshop, giving students more control over grading and even structuring the course in some ways Conducting active research on oneself, sharing ideas in a community of peers
  • A lot of people want that secure private place in the LMS with big gates, with students needing to gain competencies and knowledge.  Many people really want this “Content Pump” focus, becuase it is what they need. Others use it as a community of practitioners, connected activities, content created by students and teachers alike and many methods of assessment. These are the two ends of the spectrum of usage.
  • Moodle has two roles: to be progressive and integrate with things coming up, and a drag and drop UI, with innovate workflows and improve media handling and mobile platforms to be conservative and improve  security and usability and assessment , accredition, detailed management tracking and reports and performance and stability
  • Since Moodle 1.9 came out three years ago,  March 2008 and most are still using the three year old code which has had fixes applied since then (1.9.11 is the current release.) The support for 1.9 will continue until the middle of 2012 as it is understood that it will be a big move to Moodle2.   “If you are going to Moodle2, you may as well go to Moodle 2.1 as it is better with 6 months more work” .
  • However, the ongoing support for each release will be 1 yr moving to the future. Moodle will be released every 6 months which enables the organisations to plan their upgrade times ahead of time.
  • What will be in Moodle 2.1? Performance Restore 1.9 backups Quiz/question refactor Page course format Interface polishing Official Mobile app (there now is a Mobile division)
  • HQ are working on an official app which uses Moodle 2 built-in web services. This provides a secure access to the data in Moodle 2 for people who have accounts in Moodle which greatly benefits mobile apps.
  • Moodle HQ has looked at what is Mobile really good at and identified them one by one and implemented them.  This includes messaging, list of participants in your course, marking attendence (in class roll call). This will be for the iPhone first and then someone will make it for Android so it will lag behind, but will be the same.
  • What is going to happen in 2.2 and beyond?
  • Grading and Rubrics Competency Tracking (from activity level, course level, outside courses to generate a competency profile) Assignment (planning to combine all 4 into one type and simplify it) Forum (big upgrade probably based on OU Forum) Survey (to include feedback/questionnaire – being rewritten currently) Lesson Scorm 2 Improved reporting IMS LTI IMS CC (although it is in 1.9 needs to be redone)
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    An important overview for any one using Moodle, especially useful for those contemplating an upgrade to 2.0 .  (I'll make the move when we have 2.1 or 2.2.)  
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