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there simply aren't enough expert teachers with enough time to bring every child along

If the 21th century is to be a time of progress, education must continue to expand. This makes it even more difficult to provide individual instruction for all the world's students.

That's the promise of the Internet, which excels above all else at scale: scale of information, social interactions, geographic reach.

The acid test I apply to every new initiative is: to what extent does it bring us closer to the old system of individualized, personal, expert instruction, except with scale?

Online tutoring is an example of a promising Internet-driven innovation. Companies like TutorVista and Smarthinking let hundreds of thousands of students get on-demand personal help in their homes at a reasonable cost.

online systems that can "diagnose" individual students' strengths and weaknesses and dynamically generate a tailored curriculum.

Other innovations lie somewhere in between the two

It's important to remember that many of the most important education innovations lie outside the Internet.

But the Internet will also disrupt. Textbooks, for example, can't continue in their present form

two principles: first, invest in Internet innovations that bring us closer to the vision of universal, personalized instruction; and second, champion those designed to complement, rather than replace, traditional academic institutions.

If you spend any amount of time using a wiki–or, for example, services such as Flickr or delicious, where you can tag and organize your material in a variety of different ways–then sooner or later entropy will tend to set in.  It can be hard to find things

If you spend any amount of time using a wiki–or, for example, services such as Flickr or delicious, where you can tag and organize your material in a variety of different ways–then sooner or later entropy will tend to set in.  It can be hard to find things

If you spend any amount of time using a wiki–or, for example, services such as Flickr or delicious, where you can tag and organize your material in a variety of different ways–then sooner or later entropy will tend to set in.  It can be hard to find thing

If you spend any amount of time using a wiki–or, for example, services such as Flickr or delicious, where you can tag and organize your material in a variety of different ways–then sooner or later entropy will tend to set in.  It can be hard to find things

If you spend any amount of time using a wiki–or, for example, services such as Flickr or delicious, where you can tag and organize your material in a variety of different ways–then sooner or later entropy will tend to set in.  It can be hard to find thing

If you spend any amount of time using a wiki–or, for example, services such as Flickr or delicious, where you can tag and organize your material in a variety of different ways–then sooner or later entropy will tend to set in.  It can be hard to find things

If you spend any amount of time using a wiki–or, for example, services such as Flickr or delicious, where you can tag and organize your material in a variety of different ways–then sooner or later entropy will tend to set in.  It can be hard to find things

If you spend any amount of time using a wiki–or, for example, services such as Flickr or delicious, where you can tag and organize your material in a variety of different ways–then sooner or later entropy will tend to set in.  It can be hard to find things

finally safe to proclaim, together, that the information age has officially arrived.

IBM uses "Second Life" to hold virtual meetings between people who live thousands of miles from each other. Each person at the meeting is embodied by a different avatar, and the participants end up feeling like they've met in person,

Overview of Personal Web Technologies

Visualization of a web-based Personal Learning Environment

PWTs allow learners to expand their capacity for knowledge by connecting to external resources (other people, online databases, reference sites, etc.). If individuals can sufficiently develop their ability to find, organize, and manage these connections, their available knowledge does not have to be limited by the confines of their own skulls.

To navigate the Internet more efficiently, individuals can assemble a virtual toolbox from an ever-growing list of free, and often open-source, technologies to aid in aggregating, organizing, and publishing information online.

Social Bookmarking and Research Tools Social bookmarking and research tools allow users to save web pages, articles, and other media (usually to an online storage location) and organize them in personally meaningful ways.

Personal Publishing Tools A variety of free and user-friendly tools are available to publish oneself on the Internet. Iskold (2007) sees the range of personal publishing options as a continuum, ranging from content-focused, formal blog posts to socially-focused, informal messages posted on social networking sites, with micro-blogging falling somewhere in the middle.

more than online diaries.

individualized content management system that publishes, organizes, and archives

easy to go beyond basic text and incorporate other media, such as photographs, videos, and audio

Micro-blogs,

'follow' other members to receive a stream of their posts

allow them to easily "ask and answer questions

Aggregators Individuals who follow multiple blogs and/or regularly visit news or media sites may find juggling the disparate streams of information overwhelming.

tools filter online information and collect articles, media, and conversations customized to the user's needs

Metagators, also called portals or start pages, can aggregate feeds, social networks, and widgets to create a central, personalized location for an individual's Internet usage

Two of the most popular metagators are Netvibes and iGoogle

Widgets are small, adaptable, programmable, web-based gadgets that can be embedded into a variety of sites or used on mobile phones or desktops

Using Personal Web Technologies to Create PLEs and PLNs

PWTs can be combined by the individual to make a personal learning environment (PLE) and to create and manage a personal learning network (PLN). Due to the fact that they are user-created, there is no exact definition of a PLE

Users can create an online PLN of colleagues and friends from around the world by joining social networking sites, following and commenting on relevant blogs, sharing resources on a social bookmarking site, or by using a micro-blogging platform.

Learning Applications of PWTs Because these are open-source, free, adaptable, and user-friendly, PWTs can be of great value to teachers, trainers, and students. However, there is a catch: PWTs may clash with traditional, linear, teacher-centered instruction

critical media and information literacy skills, so that students can effectively navigate the online maze and avoid being fooled by false or misleading information.

Five Potential Disadvantages of Using PWTs for Learning Although personal web technologies have the potential to support all types of learning, they also have potential disadvantages, ranging from distractions to security concerns.

Connection Addiction.

Work Interrupted.

Popularity Contests.

Echo Chambers.

Privacy and Security Concerns.

Conclusions When learners adopt personal web technologies, it enables and requires them to discard their roles as passive consumers of information and to take on new roles. To successfully use PWTs, learners must become editors who critically question content and sources, librarians who organize and archive resources, and also creators who add their voice to the online chorus by engaging in discussions, collaborating on projects, and contributing their own ideas and media

he true quality and effectiveness of a PLE or PLN depends on the learner him/herself

three issues that I find important in this respect.

1. Intelligent data connections are one exciting option for PLE development and networked learning,

Recommender systems of information, resources, critical friends and experts could form part of the access options

the challenges of an open online networked environment for learning.

The reality, however, is different and research is available to show that not all adult learners are able to critically assess what they find online and might prefer to receive guidance

difficult it is for anybody to reach and access a deep level of information by using search engines

need for critical literacies while learning informally on networks

3. Access to technology

trends in access and digital divides

reasons for their non-participation. Some are related to age and socio-economic group, but some are also related to relevance, confidence and skills set.

people least likely to use the Internet are also the least likely to participate in adult education.

What components would be needed?

1. A personal profiler that would collect and store personal information.

Each one of these services will import your current Delicious bookmarks. We’ve picked out five that we think you’ll love, and we’ll walk you through importing your links to each of them.

Xmarks integrates with your browser and helps you to keep bookmarks safely backed up –including Delicious bookmarks.  Xmarks can sync information across the following supported browsers; Firefox, Chrome, Internet Explorer and Safari.

Diigo is a bookmarking service and more. This service will allow you to highlight text and attach notes to webpages or create sticky notes.  And, it also gives users the option to import Delicious bookmarks.

import the html file or you can punch in your delicious account details and import directly.

two options here.

Pinboard is another great alternative to using Delicious. This service is a low-noise, simple, bookmarking site that will enable you to import your Delicious html file.  To do this just go to the settings in your Pinboard account and choose the file.

Mister Wong is a straight-forward bookmarking service to share and save websites. It imports quite a few different services and browsers including Twitter (links), Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, Opera and Delicious. Mister Wong gives you two options; upload the Delicious html file or directly import using your Delicious log in.

Historio.us is delightfully lightweight, simple, nothing fancy, many of the things that are beautiful about Pinboard, but it has the ability to bookmark in a flash and be able to search for ANY word in the pages you’ve bookmarked.

Export your delicious bookmarks as per the above instructions and then import the file into Historio.us by visiting settings, then import/export.

Faviki is a bookmarking tool that allows users to bookmark web pages using Wikipedia terms. With this service, all users use the same tags which makes searching bookmarks really easy.

PICK AND CHOOSE content that looks interesting to you and is appropriate for you

2. Remix Once you’ve read or watched or listened to some content, your next step is to keep track of that somewhere. How you do this will be up to you.

Here are some suggestions: - create a blog

- create an account with del.icio.us and create a new entry for each piece of content you access. You can access del.icio.us at http://del.icio.us

take part in a Moodle discussion.

- tweet about the item in Twitter. If you have a Twitter account, post something about the content you’ve accessed.

- anything else: you can use any other service on the internet – Flickr, Second Life, Yahoo Groups, Facebook, YouTube, anything! use your existing accounts if you want or create a new one especially for this course. The choice is completely yours.

3. Repurpose

We don’t want you simply to repeat what other people have said. We want you to create something of your own. This is probably the hardest part of the process.

What materials? Why, the materials you have aggregated and remixed online.

What thoughts? What understanding? Well – that is the subject of this course. This whole course will be about how to read or watch, understand, and work with the content other people create, and how to create your own new understanding and knowledge out of them.

the critical literacies we will describe in this course are the TOOLS you will use to create your own content.

4. Feed Forward

you don’t have to share. You can work completely in private, not showing anything to anybody. Sharing is and will always be YOUR CHOICE.

Critical Literacies 2010, the course about thinking

How this Course Works Critical Literacies is an unusual course. It does not consist of a body of content you are supposed to remember. Rather, the learning in the course results from the activities you undertake, and will be different for each person. In addition, this course is not conducted in a single place or environment. It is distributed across the web.

still a small percentage of folks out there looking for some amusement because they’re bored and they want to connect with randomness

a space where teens and young adults and the rest of us can actually interact with randomness again

randomness of the worl

“Students are expected to speak differently in school than they do at home,” she said. “What happens with teenagers in particular, but also young children, is that lots of times they grow up with a language at home that is very different than what they’re expected to use in school. Code-switching is teaching them how to navigate from how they talk at home to how they are expected to speak and write in school.”

“Students who text are actually using sophisticated speech patterns,” she said, “so if we can understand what those are, we can illustrate how they’re different than the patterns that are meant to be used in school.”

“It’s huge for adolescents, because what do teenagers want? They want to be part of a community of peers, but they also want their independence,” she said. “Digitalk allows for both. They can be part of a communications community, but they can manipulate the language in unique ways,” she said.

“Lots of times, English is taught in a very linear method: ‘First, we’re going to brainstorm. Then we’re going to draft. Then we’re going to revise. Then we’re going to publish,’” she said. “What we found was that students’ processes were extremely non-linear, and that they were actually mimicking the affordances that technology allows them,” she said. “Technology is very non-linear and interconnected. That’s why they call the Internet a web. So students move seamlessly back and forth between word processing programs and the Internet.”

This is important for educators, she said, because there is a disconnect when teachers ask students who are accustomed to working this way to prove what they know with nothing more than a pencil and paper. “Technology for writing and composition is a whole new ballgame. Teachers have to figure it out pretty quickly, because the students that we’re teaching are coming from a different place than we are,” she said.

Those relationships, as much as the bookmarks themselves, represent a common asset. Yahoo! doesn't own the relationships among its users, any more than a party host owns the relationships among her guests.

It's the bargain that underpins much of the social web. Twitter gives us 140 characters worth of storage and a killer API, and we fill it up with our latest thoughts and experiences. Foursquare gives us a nice way of converting GPS locations to actual intuitive locations, and we give it the scoop on where we hang out. Facebook gives us a way to connect with friends, and we tell it who we know and what we have to say to them. This bargain amounts to the world's most ambitious marriage of public and private value creation. On the one hand you've got private companies trying to monetize their social networks and web apps, generating at least enough revenue to keep the lights on. And on the other hand you've got individuals who voluntarily engage in the social production of common value:

It's that collectively created value that distinguishes today's social web from previous generations of on- and offline media.

the only imaginable reason to shut down instead of selling is to avoid offering a competitive advantage to another company, in a truly egregious example of placing competition ahead of customers.

countless blog posts about different ways to use Delicious

all those bookmarks! — add up to an investment

The investment of users like me is what makes Web 2.0 fundamentally different from Web 1.0,

ompelling affordances for group collaboration

Participants can sign up or sign in and set up profiles for any particular Ning, parts of which carry over to other Nings, achieving familiarity with minimal repetition of data entry

crucial components of many educators’ PLNs

Nings have c

Webheads in Action used to enroll participants in its free bi-annual WiAOC international online conferences in a Moodle, but for the last one, moved the community over to a Ning (http://webheadsinaction.ning.com/). This Ning now has over 350 members.

Because Nings were free and robust for collaboration, they were an ideal tool for educators seeking to jump-start communities on little or no funding.

Alec Couros sees this kind of thing happening more and more in the crystal ball future and suggests that schools and educators would be better off investing in self-hosting using FOSS, free and open source software (Couros, 2010).

general consternation

a number of issues

One is for how long Internet users can expect free services

other side of the coin is the nature of teaching, where hard-pressed teachers with little time and less budget tend to cobble together whatever resources they can muster

Monetization is rarely a consideration for teachers and educational technology specialists

, whose main aim is to find platforms that will support learning through sharing.

Pearson, who have offered to sponsor Nings for educators at the Mini level, the lowest level of Ning

almost all continents on the planet are excluded from the deal

Kevin Hodgson has been writing some interesting posts about the Ning thing.

the only reliable alternative to Ning is to host your community yourself, or at a trusted institution

http://tinyurl.com/alternatives2ning).  This document remains the most comprehensive source of advice on what to do about replacing Ning that exists anywhere on the Internet

Alec Couros (2010) decided to crowdsource some answers

back up your Ning

there are a number of sites offering Ning-like look and feel which will (attempt to) import your content, or some of your content, from Ning

designed to work as a social-network portal for Yahoo and Google Groups.

see: http://webheads.grouply.com/

A tool that works well for capturing blog content is Posterous

another free site that lets you set up a Portal with features similar to those of Ning.

another social networking portal which will do much the same thing

Other sites encourage you to restart your community afresh

Stevens, V. (2010). The Ning thing. TESL-EJ, Volume 14, Number 1. Retrieved on today’s date from http://www.tesl-ej.org/wordpress/issues/volume14/ej53/ej53int/.

Posterous Targets Ning

Siemens, G. (2004). Connectivism: A Learning theory for the digital age. Elearnspace. Retrieved June 27, 2010 from http://www.elearnspace.org/Articles/connectivism.htm.

Good, R. and Bazzano, D. (2010). Ning Alternatives: Guide To The Best Social Networking Platforms And Online Group Services. MasterNewMedia May 3rd, 2010. Retrieved June 27, 2010 from http://www.masternewmedia.org/ning-alternatives-guide-to-the-best-social-networking-platforms-and-online-group-services/.

If you wish to write anonymously on a Ning thing document, you can do so at Alec Couros’s crowdsourced Google Doc here: http://tinyurl.com/alternatives2ning

Multiliteracies

Even at a digital conference, it's ultimately the people that make that time worthwhile. 

The Future of Thinking: Learning Institutions in a Digital Age, by Cathy Davidson and David Theo Goldberg,

lateral rather than hierarchical modes of learning, individualized educational strategies, global vision, lifelong learning, and collaboration by difference. 

On my way home, I read William Powers' Hamlet's Blackberry: A Practical Philosophy for Building a Good Life in the Digital Age.  Powers argues that by living in a world where "everyone is connected to everyone else all the time," we become disconnected from our own self-awareness and inner depth. 

Today's digital technology explosion is no different from the advent of language, writing, mass-produced print or the telegraph

Seven Philosophers of Screens: Plato, Seneca, Gutenberg, Shakespeare, Franklin, Thoreau and McLuhan, who lived through other technological explosions

By following the lessons of these seven philosphers in "a tour of the technological past," Powers shows how we can combat "the conundrum of the connected life" with techniques he calls the "Walden Zone" and the "Internet Sabbath," sacred times and places to disconnect with the Internet and reconnect with ourselves and our loved ones.  Both of these books, like the P3 UnConference, celebrates technology not as an end to itself, but as a means to enhance the human experience.  And like the P3 UnConference, both value time away from technology as a way to enhance that experience even more. 

David Carr, writing in the New York Times has written an excellent article describing the growing impact of Twitter and explaining why it is set to become part of the infrastructure of the Internet.

If you’re interested in what’s new in your field, then Twitter is a great place to start.

When it comes to finding a tool to get a job done Twitter is without equal – Prezi, Animoto, Wallwisher, Glogster Edu, Dropbox – I got the tip about all of them first on Twitter

If you’re looking to integrate the Internet into your teaching, then your first port of call on Twitter is #edtech.

real-time search of posts about educational technology

The hashtag (#) is used by Twitter as a filter and will take you directly to current posts about that topic

the jewel in Twitter’s crown for educators is #edchat.

what failed this past week was not the Internet, but corporate and government agency websites. They’ve been rendered useless by this crisis because they operate under a no-fail rule: nothing can be posted on them unless cleared from above

By contrast, the networked public sphere of bloggers, friends and strangers grouping around hashtags and online social networks, has been doing what it always does: sharing information, offering support, highlighting problems and improvising solutions.

fluid, open and collaborative,

tug-of-war between our need for survival, which relies on safety and stability, and our desire to thrive, which engenders stimulation, exploration, and innovation.

The three affective foundations underpinning neophilia — surprise, curiosity, and interest — are referred to as “knowledge emotions,

why the filter bubble exists

why the Internet is wired to give us more of what we are already looking for, rather than surprise us with something we didn’t know existed but might find infinitely interesting