Group items tagged

Blog post by Lisa Lane early this month (November 2012 explaining to another online instructor how she built a system for aggregating students' blog posts that may be relevant to WLStudio series and "sharing" activities? She uses FeedWordPress. Excerpt: "Participants set up their own blog wherever. Then I need to get the feeds from those blogs into the Pedagogy First! aggregated blog, using FeedWordPress. I use the Add Link widget (yes, I know it's old) so participants can add their own, and have provided more extensive instructions for them about blogs and feeds. In particular, we want people who post on many subjects to not only use the "potcert" tags for their posts, but use the feed for that tag only. This is so only their class-related posts show up on the class blog. The back end of this process is a little more complicated. When participants enter their information in Add Link, it goes directly into the Blogroll. The Blogroll is what feeds into FeedWordPress as a default. I customize the titles of feeds and the names of participants to use their real names for everything. I change the titles of feeds by going into FWP's Syndication area and using Feeds & Updates. Using the drop down menu to bring up a particular blog, I change the title and click manual control so it doesn't revert back the next time the feed updates. When I do this, it seems to update automatically in the Links area. Then I go to Users and make sure their names are their full names by editing them individually."

Blog post by Chris Collison, , on why organizations don't value implementing in a more systematic way the documented learning. "In my experience, many organisations sometimes treat lessons learned like they are an end in themselves - as though the value has to remain in the document - rather than where possible leading to actions which embody the learning. These actions might include updating a process, policy, standard or system has been updated to incorporate the learning, which removes the need to promote the lessons or recommendations to future teams. So why do some organisations settle for a pile of lessons rather than a set of improvements? Some possibilities: It's much easier to write a document than see a change through to completion. It's too difficult to find the owner of the process which needs changing. I'm measured on how many lessons our project captures. We have invested in customizing SharePoint to capture lessons learned documents, and need to show that we're using it. Although I wrote the recommendation, I'm not 100% confident that we should change the process for everyone."

excellent article by Terry Anderson, Athabasca University--Canada's Open University, October 2003, IRRODL, on creating optimum learning conditions online. Makes me want to see an update.

Reactions to badges for the hyperlinked library MOOC by Brian Kelly. He found all the badges he was awarded for various tasks: join a tribe; send a friendship request, accept a friendship request, update his MOOC avatar, plus, another badge just for receiving 5 badges. He found all this badge awarding for these simple tasks "cheesy" and that the system was patronizing him. However, he does acknowledge that it may motivate others. He also brought up the issue of cultural diversity. This MOOC has participants from all over the world. How will they find badges?

Reactions to badges for the hyperlinked library MOOC by Brian Kelly. He found all the badges he was awarded for various tasks: join a tribe; send a friendship request, accept a friendship request, update his MOOC avatar, plus, another badge just for receiving 5 badges. He found all this badge awarding for these simple tasks "cheesy" and that the system was patronizing him. However, he does acknowledge that it may motivate others. He also brought up the issue of cultural diversity. This MOOC has participants from all over the world. How will they find badges?

Barbara Bray and Kathleen McClaskey of Rethinkinglearning have, with the input of those who took their Personalized Learning eCourse, revised the chart for the Stages of Personalized Learning Environments. They now have a chart for Personalization vs Differentiation vs Individualization, an adapted chart to transform learning to Personalized Learning, and the Stages of Personalized Learning Environments chart. This bookmark brings you to the page to download all 3 charts, as well as their report explaining the Personalization vs Differentiation vs Individualization chart.

Excellent catch, Lisa. I commented on Barbara's page about its utility and shared the cpsquare.org page with her on our inquiry last Fall and our use of Jane Hart's matrix on the evolution of the learning support professional's role.

Blog post by Barbra Gago, 9.14.12, on importance of individual information consumption/curation. Excerpt: "The future of knowledge management is about letting employees curate their own information consumption, empowering them to be in charge of their own learning and professional development. Conversations need to be indexed, but so do updates from processes, customer interactions, and news about related projects. External data needs to be brought in to enhance internal data, and people need to be able to act in real-time-not ask 5 different people for a file or wait until tomorrow because their manager is half-way across the world."

Wonderful interview with Don Tapscott done by McKinsey Quarterly in September 2012 on why social media needs to be used in organizations rather than email, published January 2013. Shows that leaders do not understand shift to collaboration/incubator transparency/forums to interact from email updating of team projects.

Howard Rheingold et al has created this Google Doc that is updated regularly with resources that help you detect "crap" onlline info. The resources are categorized into subjects: identity; political; consumer/business; medical, images; urban legends, hoaxes and emails; journalism; collective intelligence and user-based detection; academia and education; events; miscellaneous; web sites; web pages; twitter; video

This prototype WordPress website features a community and members are added somehow--I wonder if this page updates automatically as members join or if more management is required. Also wonder if the same tool would work for the learning directory (with a different profile to be completed)?

Did you notice how many members joined today (sunday)? If we could get that many member each day, I think we would be in heaven. I also like their focus on member profiles and member information. Good thing to remember.

If you've ever wanted to spice up your presentation with a free web 2.0 tool, you're in luck. Presentation tool Prezi has just unveiled some new information that may cause you to start thinking about trying it out.

blog post by Kurt Mackey at MongoHQ, a distributed company, on working remotely and how hard it is to come up with an effective system for engaging workers. It is a work in progress. Need firewalls between personal life and work life--sound has to be managed for one thing. Mentions the blending of in-office staff and remote staff and a 'standard' for everyone to use the same collaboration tools, be available via the same channels, and produce documentation of interactions that are important to share. Has a whole section on the practical (and the tools they use to communicate) prefer async communications! Have a central work tool (Compose to record what is being produced each day); day to day communication in Hipchat, use pre-reads to meetings on a Wiki that get updated on Hackpad during the meeting, open mailing lists, Sqwiggle for face time, and Google Hangouts, too. Final recommendation is to "keep iterating" to build a remote friendly culture.

Blog post by David Truss, Pair-A_Dimes, January 4, 2011, on learning at work by professionals, i.e., teachers. Has much more good stuff to say than this excerpt but I find this useful for Information Overload. Another term I ran across lately--practical obscurity--in relation to why we are now part of NSA's scope--because costs have fallen so low to monitor so much behavior online--voice and text--that what was once unavailable without a lot of costs is now quite feasible for someone to monitor, such as NSA, Google, Facebook, etc. Excerpt: "I read a post recently by Jeff Utecht, whom you have worked with, that said this: "Today at school I answered personal e-mail, updated my Facebook status, Tweeted, looked up flights for winter break, and even read articles that didn't pertain to school. And they say we're becoming less productive at work. What really is happening is the line between our work life and our social life is becoming blurred more and more every day." and he continues: "Sure I use some of my work time to do social things, yet I get home from work after 3pm and answer work e-mails, text faculty members about a computer problem, and work on lessons and things that need to be done. So it's an even swap. I'll use some of your time, you can use some of mine.""

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?

Great blog on website design--when to know it's done and requires only tweaking/updates by Pamela Wilson, March 2014. Emphasizes basics of home page, about page (which ours doesn't totally conform to), products/services (don't know anymore about how strong it is), and blog (credible job for us, I think).

Great infographic by Shea Bennett on December 16, 2013 on how to increase Twitter success Section on what to tweet is interesting, i.e., engagement is 200% higher for tweets with image links, 21% higher when you ask a question, 86% higher when you ask readers to retweet, and 17% higher if tweets are 100 characters or less. Another assertion: Get real followers. It's better to have 100 real followers who engage than 1000 random followers who do you no good. Real followers are more likely to buy from you, will want updates on products, will offer ideas and feedback, etc.

In June 2014, Jane Hart updated her social workplace learning chart with roles and activities, resulting in four social workplace learning models: Directed social learning model (what we did as facilitators to ensure that people participate and stay on track); Guided social learning model (guiding to encourage and support the conversation rather than enforce it) Continuous social learning model (championing the ongoing sharing of knowledge and expertise, encourage learning out loud, working out loud, collaborative working) Independent social learning model (advising individuals to develop the new skills to manage their own learning networks and bring insight/feedback into the organization)

from Te@chthought.com: Terry Hick updated the 2013 version of this infographic on 5/21/15. Mirrors Seek, sense, share and the digital literacies in Net Smart. Good site for teaching and learning, although k - 12 focused but relevant to most teaching, I think.

interesting article by Clair Jones on 8 technologies that Boomers need to succeed at work, December 7, 2014. I am not sold on all of them; maybe we should write our own list? 1. IFTTT- does simultaneous updating of all accounts; so? 2. Sunrise calendar--free app that combines google calendar with linkedin, Facebook, and other profile calendars to provide a comprehensive view of your day? 3. Google+ Hangtous and Doodle--yes, these are good. 4. Prezi (customizable templates) and Keepvid (for downloading videos beforehand and showing as desired)--yes, okay 5. Easel.ly--infographic templates--yes, okay 6. Evernote--yes to project file develoment and organization 7. LastPass--not as keen as I once was with this app 8. Pocket--saving media for later reading--Diigo goes same thing

"Updated February 2013 Adopted by the NCTE Executive Committee, February 15, 2008  Literacy has always been a collection of cultural and communicative practices shared among members of particular groups. As society and technology change, so does literacy. Because technology has increased the intensity and complexity of literate environments, the 21st century demands that a literate person possess a wide range of abilities and competencies, many literacies. These literacies are multiple, dynamic, and malleable. As in the past, they are inextricably linked with particular histories, life possibilities, and social trajectories of individuals and groups. Active, successful participants in this 21st century global society must be able to Develop proficiency and fluency with the tools of technology; Build intentional cross-cultural connections and relationships with others so to pose and solve problems collaboratively and strengthen independent thought; Design and share information for global communities to meet a variety of purposes; Manage, analyze, and synthesize multiple streams of simultaneous information; Create, critique, analyze, and evaluate multimedia texts; Attend to the ethical responsibilities required by these complex environments."

Talia Shani from 2010, Kissmetrics, writes about tools that enhance the Twitter reach: bitly, Buffer for scheduling and spreading out tweets, Cotweet for marketing, Hootsuite for managing multiple social media, scheduling tweets for later release, tracking results, and multiple collaborators. Paper.li for curating tweets into newspaper format. SocialOomph for scheduling tweets, tracking keywords, extending Twitter profile, and more. Triberr is an invite only community of like-minded bloggers. Tweetdeck--similar to hootSuite but now part of Twitter. Twitterfeed uses RSS feeds to automatically share your blog and others every time there is an update to them. Visibli shares any links you want along with custom share bar and ability to customize.