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Information about the upcoming conference on networked learning in higher education and lifelong learning

"World's largest private nutrition R&D network..."

"The Global Development Network (GDN) is a leading International Organization of developing and transition country researchers, policy and research institutes promoting the generation, sharing, and application to policy of multidisciplinary knowledge for the purpose of development. "

by Derek Bruff, November 6, 2011. The best justification of the Innovation Lab premise that I have seen. "Sharing student work on a course blog is an example of what Randall Bass and Heidi Elmendorf, of Georgetown University, call "social pedagogies." They define these as "design approaches for teaching and learning that engage students with what we might call an 'authentic audience' (other than the teacher), where the representation of knowledge for an audience is absolutely central to the construction of knowledge in a course."" Often our students engage in what Ken Bain, vice provost and a historian at Montclair State University, calls strategic or surface learning, instead of the deep learning experiences we want them to have. Deep learning is hard work, and students need to be well motivated in order to pursue it. Extrinsic factors like grades aren't sufficient-they motivate competitive students toward strategic learning and risk-averse students to surface learning. Social pedagogies provide a way to tap into a set of intrinsic motivations that we often overlook: people's desire to be part of a community and to share what they know with that community. My students might not see the beauty and power of mathematics, but they can look forward to participating in a community effort to learn about math. Online, social pedagogies can play an important role in creating such a community. These are strong motivators, and we can make use of them in the courses we teach.

This site, a favorite resource of KPI staff, is billed as "Australia's free online network for educators." The site also offers a great e-newsletter.

OTAN--Outreach and Technical Assistance Network for adult educators may offer ideas for KPI to consider in working with national membership organizations of educators.

Tagline: Data sharing & collaboration made easy. Buzzdata allows users to share data sources, either within their own private network or more publicly. This data can then be used with other data (mashups) or for visualizations, or analyzed by journalists/academics.

By M. Ginsburg and S. Weisband, Proceedings of the 37th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences - 2004. Written in 2004, this article is somewhat dated (e.g. before the notion of the "social network" really took hold). That said, the article looks at a subscription-based virtual community, the Internet Chess Club, and finds that the real key to success is a carefully structured 3-tier approach to volunteering. Some volunteers help/coach new users; others are available to handle administrative tasks and volunteer managers run on-demand tournaments. Volunteers gain status and recognition, as well as the benefit of a private sub-community in which they can communicate with each other. NOTE: As of Jan 2012, the club is still in existence.

Librarian notes: While much here does not apply to the current manifestation of our e-communities, the structure and function of the various volunteer roles is very interesting, as is the "communication segmentation strategies" to filter out information overload. An impressive database of the community's work (in this case chess matches) is discussed as well.

A Social and Professional Networking Site for Teachers and Educators

Posted by Clay Johnson, 10/25/2011 on ExpertLabs In the context of experts' conversations with government, the author of this post argues that tools such as IdeaScale, Google Moderator and UserVoice are useful for brainstorming but not the best method for a true dialog. These tools give government an excuse to "not" participate with people where they are. The comments on a government site, i.e. the dialogue on evolving data.gov (via IdeaScale) shouldn't replace "participating with practicitioners," which should happen where they are. (i.e. in a Jam, I.F.) Expert Labs aims to get more people involved in order to make policy better. Expert Labs publishes reports, constantly updates their blog and has developed a tool, ThinkUp, that enables users to automatically archive data and communications across Facebook, Twitter and Google+, encouraging engagement on these networks.

By Laura S. Quinn, Idealware, January 2012. Looks at a variety of software tools that can support program evaluation. Report includes a category on Analyzing and Displaying Your Measures, which might be most relevant. There are recommendations for report builders, tools that help create data visualizations, both quantitative and qualitative analysis tools, and dashboard recommendations.  Also reference to an organization called Innovation Network, which might be of interest.

According to the About page, Tagasauris helps it's user-clients to generate metadata for their photos and other "knowledge-work." Users upload photos and a distributed network of Tagasaurus on-demand employees generate the metadata. Users are charged a fee for this service.

As of Sept 2012, video & audio are "coming soon." I'm not sure if they are yet equipped to handle "knowledge work." Also unclear where true crowdsourcing comes in. It sounds like they provide the (selected) crowd, rather than this being a platform one can employ to open work to the larger crowd.

NADE's Math SPIN (short for Special Professional Interest Network) facilitates interaction and sharing opportunities for developmental math faculty. There is an occasional newsletter (published here) as well as links, resources, and best practices.

Quia is short for Quintessential Instructional Archive. It provides instructional tools including: templates for creating online activities, online testing tools, access to over 3 million online activities and quizzes, a schoolwide network to promote collaboration, a centralized classroom management system, a class Web page creator and online surveys for gathering student and teacher feedback.

Guest post by Karen Schweitzer On Mission to Learn blog.

on YouTube. Steven Weber talks "about the implications of the network paradigm for democracy, private property, and international relations."

By Leon Benjamin on KnowledgeBoard, July 1 2009. Recommendations about using social media within a company (or organization) and not just to network with the outside world.