Group items tagged

Great talk by Stephen Downes about personal learning in a networked world: what it is, what it is not, the difference between collaboration and cooperation, and how trends by younger students are driving change. He poses that there is no one model that is successful - it is up to the learner to devise their own purpose and methods.

Presentation by Stephen Downes to the London School of Economics, pretty ironic for Stephen to give a lecture on how learning is different now, August 2014. "People are looking for learning that isn't so much the repetition of their professors' ideas, but learning that they can apply, that is a part of their life, whether it's part of their life in work, part of their life in their hobbies or their avocations, or part of their life just in what interests them. They expect universities to be flexible."

Stephen Downes's keynote to the World Congress on Continuing Professional Development, San Diego, CA from May 19, 2016 He begins with the assertion that learning is personal - based on personal practice - then put into practice in a learning network. Progress and evaluation through practice is based on performance in authentic communities. Contains slides, audio, and video

Social media's erosion of ability to concentrate and investigate in-depth, based in part on Nicholas Carr's book vs. Stephen Johnson's take on new technology's impact, relates to attention--focusing

Compelling blog post by Stephen Downes on free vs. not free resources, especially the distinctions made by educational institutions and OERs, November 27, 2012

article in Academic Matters, the Journal of Higher Education, by Stephen Carson and Jan Philipp Schmidt, May 2012 issue. Excerpt: "Expertise will be earned and maintained through ongoing lifelong education, not conferred once and good for life. Open learning systems offer the possibility for the kind of continuous lifelong learning that will be necessary as the pace of technological and scientific knowledge development increases. Like athletes, learners will not just learn once, but will maintain a level of performance ability in their chosen field through ongoing study and participation in learning communities."

Facilitating life long learning should be the goal of every teacher. I think that sometimes it is so cumbersome - passing tests, etc., that the fun part of learning is lost.

Blog post by Stephen Downes exploring what a MOOC does and does not do--it does not replicate or build on past failed educational pathways where a person--adult or child--is not motivated enough to invest time in his/her own learning path. He mentions that online gaming is the best pre-MOOC and equivalent to MOOC for young people. Makes me wonder about my addiction to WordsFree and Scrabble on my iphone and desire to beat the computer again and again. Or enrolling in a MOOC where the opportunity to connect with smart, similarly-quested learners/achievers/doers must motivate me to overcome challenges of schedule, technology, serendipitous approach to learning, self-expression, etc. The MOOC is simply a much bigger playground where my motivation and my two feet (or eyes!) rule my behavior .

Premise(?) for WL Learning Studio from Harold Harche's blog, February 23, 2012 Excerpts: "Those specialized departments of the 20th century need to engage in social learning, by modelling behaviour and continuously developing next practices to adapt to changing conditions. This is the challenge to remain relevant in the 21st century workplace. Learn or die." "This isn't the Information Age, it's the Learning Age; and the quicker people get their heads around that, the better - Prof Stephen Heppell" "It boils down to the fact that in the network era, value is derived from workforce collaboration, where you are either contributing to the network, or you are no longer required."

Research study by Gloria Mark, Stephen Voida, and Armand Cardeno, 2012 on impact of work with/without email "ABSTRACT We report on an empirical study where we cut off email usage for five workdays for 13 information workers in an organization. We employed both quantitative measures such as computer log data and ethnographic methods to compare a baseline condition (normal email usage) with our experimental manipulation (email cutoff). Our results show that without email, people multitasked less and had a longer task focus, as measured by a lower frequency of shifting between windows and a longer duration of time spent working in each computer window. Further, we directly measured stress using wearable heart rate monitors and found that stress, as measured by heart rate variability, was lower without email. Interview data were consistent with our quantitative measures, as participants reported being able to focus more on their tasks. We discuss the implications for managing email better in organizations" CONCLUSIONS Our study has shown that there are benefits to not being continually connected by email. Without email, our informants focused longer on their tasks, multitasked less, and had lower stress. It is an open question to what extent the effects we found in our study might be sustainable. How the benefits of reduced email usage might outweigh the known benefits of email in reaching larger numbers of people rapidly with information is not clear. What our study suggests is that the tradeoffs among email usage, work pace, stress, and collaboration need to be more closely explored. There will always be new "zombies" lurking with advances in information technology, and we must continue to be vigilant in assessing the human costs that are incurred when these advances are adopted in the workplace.

Updated blog post by Linda Stone on screen and email apnea, Huffington Post, May 7, 2012. Eighty percent of us seem to have it. I broke the story about it in early 2008 on the Huffington Post, and called the phenomenon, "email apnea." Later in 2008, in talks and interviews, I referred to it interchangeably as "email apnea" and also, as "screen apnea." Definition: Shallow breathing or breath holding while doing email, or while working or playing in front of a screen. Excerpt: Recently, researchers, Gloria Mark, Stephen Voida, and Anthony Cardello, have made headway into formally validating the impact of email, using HRV. Why are we doing this? Our posture is often compromised, especially when we use laptops and smartphones. Arms forward, shoulders forward, we sit in a position where it's impossible to get a healthy and full inhale and exhale. Further, anticipation is generally accompanied by an inhale -- and email, texting, and viewing television shows generally includes a significant dose of anticipation. Meanwhile, the full exhale rarely follows. The stress-related physiology of email apnea or screen apnea is described in some detail in my 2008 post, linked to above. What's the remedy? A new way of interacting with technologies that I call: Conscious Computing. Technologies like the Heartmath emWave2, Huffington Post's GPS for the Soul, and a variety of optimal breathing techniques, can support us in using technologies in healthier ways. Instead of sending an email, call or walk over to your colleague's office. And there's always that other possibility: every now and then, just turn everything off. When you text or use email on your smartphone, when you check and respond to your email, are you breathing or do you hold your breath? Is it worse when you're using a laptop vs. an iPad? How might you incorporate some of the remedies?

Stephen Downes presentation that draws the distinction between personalized learning and personal learning from the AMEE 2015 conference in Glasgow, Scotland. 78 Slides with audio

George Siemens does "quit Lit" to explain his move into something else that's not yet defined. Stephen Downes cites this blog post approvingly on Twitter.

From the Atlantic July/August 2013 edition by Stephen Marche "Men's absence from the conversation about work and life is strange, because decisions about who works and who takes care of the children, and who makes the money and how the money is spent, are not decided by women alone or by some vague and impersonal force called society. Decisions in heterosexual relationships are made by women and men together. When men aren't part of the discussion about balancing work and life, outdated assumptions about fatherhood are allowed to go unchallenged and, far more important, key realities about the relationship between work and family are elided. The central conflict of domestic life right now is not men versus women, mothers versus fathers. It is family versus money. Domestic life today is like one of those behind-the-scenes TV series about show business. The main narrative tension is: "How the hell are we going to make this happen?" There are tears and laughs and little intrigues, but in the end, it's just a miracle that the show goes on, that everyone is fed and clothed and out the door each day." He goes on to criticize Sheryl Sandberg for perpetuating an outdated model of women acting like men to get ahead. Marche advocates for a new paradigm of family friendly policies that reflect the reality of today - couples making decisions based on economic and social factors, not whether they will get to the C suite.

Continuous acquisition and application of knowledge, skills, and beliefs by individuals, teams, and the whole enterprise is an essential aspect of high performance organizations. However, barriers to this learning are common in organizations. These barriers must be overcome in order for organizations to have long term success. Stephen Gill has identified 12 common barriers to learning in organizations: Program focus; Limited resources; work-learning dichotomy; passive leadership; non-learning culture; resistance to change; not discussing the un-discussable; need for control; focus on short-term, simple solutions; skilled incompetence; blame-not gain language; selective attention.

a designer with a molecular biology degree designs animated GIFs for infographs. Pretty amazing. ID by Stephen Downes for me.

Stephen Downes on what learners need and want in a networked world. Although he does go on in his usual way, this is a really interesting take on current educational models vs. what students want and need, and are beginning to access themselves.

Interesting and tied to online leadership, I think. Haven't read the whole thing yet, but it is a interesting perspective.

In this blog Jarche combines his work, David Ronfeldt's work, Stephen Downes work, and Dee Hock's work to look at how work gets done in various traditional, and also new networked ways. Good diagram of collaboration and cooperation from Goal-oriented to opportunity-driven (serendipitous)

Clear blog on cooperation trumps collaboration in networked working and learning

got to this through Stephen Downes's Daily. This blog by Tim Rayner makes a distinction between sharing and gifting on social networks. He considers gifting as sharing with a purpose. Mindful sharing as opposed to sharing for sharing's sake. His argument is that gifting is the real power of social networks.

blog post by Stephen Downes, April 12, 2010 on differences between collaboration and cooperation, group collaborates, network cooperates with much greater freedom for the individual

great article on how to overcome organizational silos by Zhecho Dobrev, 4/15/2013