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A history of technology-mediated learning The following is a section from my PhD thesis. It is part of the "Past Experience" section of the Ps Framework. It aims to give a potted history of technology-mediated learning and show how it connects with e-learning. Since these terms are somewhat overused, it starts with some definitions. The plan is that this history will be used to identify lessons from history, which e-learning (generally) hasn't learned. I've been working on this for at least a month. I have been doing other work on the thesis, but the fact that this has take soooo long is not all the heartening. I think perhaps may sights are set a little high. The alternatives are that I'm either a crap writer or I'm currently not in the mood to write. We'll see where we go from here. The following has not been proof-read thoroughly. I'm leaving that for a later task. If you have any suggestions for improvement, fire away.

13 Twitter Tips and Tutorials for Beginners by Darren Rowse on April 18, 2009 in Twitter for Beginners Just starting out on Twitter? Looking for some Twitter Tips to get you started?

Changing Nature of Physical Spaces Each Saturday I meet my friend and colleague, Scott McDonald, at a local coffee shop for an hour or so to discuss some emerging research topics we're working towards. Each week we are amazed at the number of people in Saint's sitting on their laptops working - most of them are doing browser based work like google docs, Facebook, and the like. It is rare that I see anyone not using the browser as the primary mode of work. That is a big change from even a year or so ago. The same can typically be observed if you walk onto our campus and into the student union building. You see table after table of students on laptops, living in their browsers - Facebook, gmail, and ANGEL seem to be what I see. Rarely do I observe work happening in "real" applications. I am guessing that will only get more common as the Blogs at PSU gain wider adoption for writing and students begin to weave google docs into their daily workflow.

Edupunk rules: Technology I, II and 3 - understanding and improving the practice of instructional technology The following is a summary and perhaps a bit of a reflection on McDonald and Gibbons (nd). This is a journal article that has been accepted, but not yet officially published. It appears to be based on the PhD thesis of McDonald. The paper uses the criteria of technology I, II and III to examine differences between researchers description of a theory and how practitioners implement it. This identifies 3 reasons for technological gravity and 3 approaches to avoid it.

Professional Development Opportunities Over Video via the CILC The Center for Interactive Learning and Collaboration (CILC) is a great resource for not only identifying and/or announcing classroom collaborative projects, but also for finding professional development providers for your school and district who present over video. I'm pleased to announce that five of my educational presentations / workshops are now being offered over video (H.323, Skype, iChat or Google Video) via the Professional Development Marketplace of the CILC.

Voices Carry I was feeling really restless early last week about our ability to run and manage new and emerging services in a World where change happens at a pace that is nearly out of control. I thought my post, Why Run a Service would be a signal that I've come to a conclusion that there are real reasons to try and keep up. I didn't honestly expect it to strike the chord it did, but when you ask people interesting questions you sometimes get more interesting questions in return that demand to be explored. Lots of killer conversation going on in the comments of that post … one particular thread emerged about how encouraging open writing and blogging can generate greater depth of connections within our community. That last word is the really important piece to us - how we work to engage our community to embrace these emergent trends is what we think will ultimately make what we do more interesting and important. The more they participate, the more we can contribute opportunities to change teaching and learning.

As a follow on to the discussion of social learning and formal learning in Long Live … great post by BJ Schone - Have LMSs Jumped The Shark? I constantly hear people (across many organizations) complain about their learning management system (LMS). They complain that their LMS has a terrible interface that is nearly unusable. Upgrades are difficult and cumbersome. Their employees' data is locked in to a proprietary system. Users hate the system. It's ugly. (Did I miss anything?) We've recently seen LMSs shift to include more functionality, such as wikis, blogs, social networking, etc. I think they're heading in the wrong direction. I don't really understand why LMS vendors are now thinking they need to build in every possible 2.0 tool. If I want a great blogging platform, I'm going to download WordPress (it's free and has a huge support community). If I want a great wiki platform, I'm going to download MediaWiki or DokuWiki (also free and they have huge support communities). And when it comes to social networking, as a co-worker put it, "Do they really think I'm going to create a 'friends' list in the LMS? Seriously?"

Yesterday, I facilitated a session called Mapping Social Media to Strategy. Here's the description: The session will share an overview of why the sequence listen, learn, and adapt is critical to implementing a successful social media strategy. We'll take a look at how to use both qualitative and hard data points to refine and adapt your strategy as well as the role of continuous listening and learning through implementation of pilots. We'll examine what can and can't be quantified as well as various metrics and analytics tools. All this will be shared through a lively mix of discussion and case studies. Takeaways: 1. How to listen to improve the results of your social media strategy implementation 2. An understanding of the right metrics to use and how/when to incorporate qualitative information 3. An introduction to analytic tools and individual/team reflection processes

answers to questions from Twitter on teen practices Before I headed to Atlanta to do fieldwork, I asked folks who follow me on Twitter (@zephoria) what questions I should ask teens. Many of the questions that I received were more general questions about teens, rather than questions for teens. Still, I'm going to take a stab at very briefly answering some of the questions that I received based on what I know and what I learned. I am not answering the larger questions that would require pages and pages and my apologies if my short answers are not sufficient but I wanted to at least respond. Thank you all who contributed questions and my apologies if I didn't answer yours. To all who asked questions about Twitter: average teens don't use Twitter. They may in the future, but they do not now. Those who do are early adopters and not representative of any mainstream teen practice. Because of Oprah and celebs, some teens are starting to hear about it, but they don't understand it and they aren't using it.

I like telling stories. What sort of stories do I like to tell? Stories about days at school, life in the ANZ Bank, stories my father told me, historic sagas and the like. lots of links to digital storytelling later down on the page

I like telling stories. What sort of stories do I like to tell? Stories about days at school, life in the ANZ Bank, stories my father told me, historic sagas and the like.

"Mobile Learning:Transforming the Delivery of Education and Training Download the eBook"

"How I create and publish podcasts posted in open source, podcasting | Jason Kern recently asked me to share information about how I create and publish podcasts here on "Moving at the Speed of Creativity," and rather than send that info to just him I thought I'd create a post to share these links and procedures. Since I've developed these procedures over time it's entirely possible there are much better ways to do this, so if you have suggestions and input on alternative podcasting possibilities I'd love to hear it. I published my first podcast on August 3, 2005, and since that time have utilized a variety of different podcasting tools and websites. Rather than share an exhaustive list of all those links (some of which are included in my Intro to Educational Podcasting wiki page and Intermediate/Advanced Topics in Podcasting page) I am going to attempt to share briefly the software, websites, and other resources I utilize now to podcast, as well as an outline of the steps I follow in podcasting today."

Part 3 of Tony Bates' series of posts on his vision for the future of HE

"I have just read Lisa Lane's article in First Monday entitled "Insidious pedagogy: How course management systems impact teaching". I really liked her paper, not least because it raised some issues that I hadn't considered before regarding default settings in an LMS and the idea of opt in and opt out learning management systems. It also described the way many academics use (or don't use) the web in their work or play and how this effects their ability to use some of the more 'advanced' features of an LMS that go beyond an instructivist model of delivery. Perhaps most importantly of all it discusses the importance of emphasising pedagogy before 'features and tools' when working with web novices."

I liked the opt-in opt-out ideas. The issues raised about the contstraints imposed when customising or installing a cms are timely for us in terms of our new cms and in the light of the impending VLE review. Good food for thought here! The terms novice vs advanced instructors would make some for good debating. Who decides?

"Many universities are currently, or have recently, reviewed their enterprise LMS including my own employer. Unfortunately we haven't made our review process public but many universities have been generous enough to provide information about their reviews. The following list are some of the publicly available LMS reviews that I have found. These were really useful in developing and informing our own review and I hope that by bringing them together in one place it will be useful for others. I have provided links to each institutions review documents and a quick summary of their process. I have included the eventual choice of LMS but of course this is a very small sample and shouldn't be taken as being indicative of any particular trend in LMS selection. The list is not presented in any particular order. If you know of any other publicly available LMS review documents please let me know and I will add them."

"ast week, one of my media course (ed PD) classmates talked about the ongoing struggle to help students make sense of the flood of information online. She cited a negative experience with wikipedia, which resulted in an energetic exchange about the merits (and challenges) with open online content. It's not about "authority" nor should it be As a long time defender of the open web and open content, I wanted to point out that the educational bias towards "authoritative" or "received" sources, though relevant, is also highly political/ideological - especially in relation to emergent sources of knowledge (i.e., Open Content). Ideological in the contexts of: 1) who has access or control of the means of knowledge power and production 2) who endorses or authorizes those voices and 3) "what" forms are accepted as "valid"."

What will Higher Education look like in a 2050 -80% +2c 450ppm world?

"Twittering the News: The emergence of ambient journalism My paper looks at new para-journalism forms such as micro-blogging as "awareness systems". For this I have drawn from literature on new communications technologies in computer science to suggest that these broad, asynchronous, lightweight and always-on systems are enabling citizens to maintain a mental model of news and events around them, giving rise to awareness systems that paper describes as ambient journalism."

"One of the top 10 questions in social media marketing asked is "How do we kick start our community?" This post aims at providing some resources for brands that are preparing their community strategy. The old adage of the field of dreams isn't true -if you build it-they won't neccesarily come. Brands must have a kick start plan to be successful with their community. Below, I'll list out some practices I've heard from companies that have had successful communities, and I'd ask you chime in and add more ways, let's get started, I'll be as specific and actionable as possible."