"where most participants were involved with blended education, Ms. Joosten was shocked to learn that only about 20 percent had faculty development.)"

As usual, Godin offers plenty to think about. Blog: 5/16/11

"Unlike most traditional academic conferences, sessions at an unconference don't consist of one or three or five people delivering papers to an audience. Instead, they might feature project demonstrations, discussions, creative work sessions, or other formats that build on the knowledge and expertise of whoever attends. For the Texas THATCamp (and I think this is fairly typical at others), participants posted session ideas beforehand on the website, followed by a 45-minute scheduling process as THATCamp began. Topic headings generated by those initial session ideas were posted on the walls of a large meeting room, and participants circulated through the space to meet up with others interested in similar topics. After some productive chaos (which admittedly tested my structure- and schedule-loving personality a bit) the group developed a schedule of sessions that represented not only a variety of interests but also the desire to cluster certain topics into tracks. Like any conference, I frequently wanted to be in two places at once - which I see as one marker of the event's success."

Very interesting experiment by Packard Foundation to create a '"see through"filing cabinet' wiki open to the world.

Essay by Enrique Murillo Department of Business Management, Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México, Mexico City, Mexico, March 2011

Very interesting stats on education--check out Education 2.0, how technology enhanced learning, etc. Socrato! website

Chapter 19: Evolving a "Third Way" to Group Consultancy: Bridging Two Mode3ls of Theory and Practice, Jean E. Neumann, Evangelina Holvino, and Earl t. Braxton, Group Relations Reader 3, pp. 421-441. Interesting study on bridging NTL (individual, interpersonal style of facilitation) and Tavistock (group as structural unit) practices. Need to read slowly with pen in hand to begin to apply to our online facilitation work.

This is a good intro/rationale to have people work in a supportive, online setting to get a sense of what it is like to work on something meaningful without resorting to a workshop or lecture about the benefits of communities of practice.

I am into my work because the following excerpt says so much to me..."goal state is initially only partially described" (every time!); the need to "scaffold the work of leaders" while "making a more improvisational style of collaboration possible". These phrases express truth and learning goals for me. "Her research on leadership in creative collaboration online explores how people can collaborate across distance on projects where the goal state is initially only partially described. Amy and her students are creating tools both to support existing creative collaborative practice by scaffolding the work of leaders, and also to try to transform that practice by making a more improvisational style of collaboration possible."

Headed by Amy Bruckman, Associate professor at Georgia Tech, this Electronic Learning Communities center engages Ph.D. level students in studying the application of constructionist social learning online. They are doing some fascinating work, such as developing software to support leaders of learning communities, offering young A-A males the chance to be game testers and to use that experience credential as a route into computer science studies and careers, etc. These are but two research examples; there are more.

Apparently, crowdsourcing of scholarly work requires support just as online networks/communities require assistance for 'voluntary' members to identify desired outcomes within a fleshed out change model; design and rollout processes and collaborative technologies; sometimes analyze content generated, provoke movement or change in tactics, etc.

Article by Amy Cavender on issues and gains from using eportfolios with college students. Mentions several eportfolio possibilities in article and in comments, such as Google Sites, Mahara, Yola, Weebly, or WordPress.

TED has set up an education Brain Trust of short lectures that it says anyone may contribute to. Should be fascinating.

This research is why I was encouraging host ambassadors to upload their pictures and profiles--they can be far more successful than I at engaging their peers in Polilogue-learning prior to the Conference.

excellent introduction to what the alliance does. see description below: Business or Operational Model: how the initiative fits into the organization's ecosystem. 2.Social Architecture: how collaboration is facilitated and what aspects should supported, such as performance support; communities of practice; knowledge management, informal learning or distributed work teams. 3.Technology Platform: identifying and implementing technologies that are best-suited for the organization's business and collaboration objectives and how they can be integrated within existing constraints.

I like his division of services into business or operational model, social architecture, and technology platform

Excellent video on how businesses need to redesign their systems to support listening, learning, sharing--more people you know, the more things you can do--"next practices" drawn from Jarche's blog

Very interesting yet short video on social learning as it relates to business but at first glance, they seem to apply to nonprofits/educational groups, too.