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short, online reading quizzes consisting of open-ended questions that are due several hours before class starts to do the job.  Most of the quiz questions are meant to help students focus on and make some sense of key concepts

Students submit answers to these questions online before class, and I grade their quizzes on effort.

pre-class reading quizzes allow me to practice what is often called “just-in-time teaching.”

pre-class reading quiz questions as a clicker question during class,

how do I implement these quizzes?

local course management system, but I found the system to cumbersome

I find it much easier to post course documents to a WordPress blog, and I like that it makes my course more open to those not enrolled in it. 

I create a Facebook fan page for each of my courses

that pulls in the course blog content via RSS

So I now post my pre-class reading quizzes on my course blogs, tagged with a “PCRQ” for easy locating

default comments feature on WordPress to have students reply to them.  This meant that students could read each other’s answers, which, for these questions, only enhanced the learning experience

So I looked around for a way to have students comment on posts semi-privately—where I could see their comments but they couldn’t see each other’s comments.  I found a WordPress plug-in called, appropriately, Semi-Private Comments!  (Plug-ins—yet another reason I prefer WordPress to a course management system.) 

he main limitation is that it doesn’t help me grade those quizzes

What is new with constructivism today is that these principles are being (have been) coupled with existing calls for educational reform

calls for increased learner control

From whence does connectivism originate?

1. Tools augment our ability to interact with each other and to act.

“carriers of patterns of previous reasoning”

all technology carries an ideology.

2. Contextual/situated nature of learning.

3. Social learning theory

4. Epistemological views: all learning theory is rooted in epistemology

5. Concept of mind.

6. We also find a compatible view of connectivism in the work of new media theorists such as McLuhan

7. We also find support for connectivism in the more nebulous theories of complextiy and systems-based thinking

8. Network theory

The Unique Ideas in Connectivism

1. Connectivism is the application of network principles to define both knowledge and the process of learning.

2. Connectivism addresses the principles of learning at numerous levels – biological/neural, conceptual, and social/external

3. Connectivism focuses on the inclusion of technology as part of our distribution of cognition and knowledge.

4. Context. While other theories pay partial attention to context, connectivism recognizes the fluid nature of knowledge and connections based on context

5. Understanding. Coherence. Sensemaking. Meaning.

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.

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. 

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

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.

“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,

Does this idea of having students frame questions about their papers and writing offer a solution? The faculty who tried the approach found that students struggled mightily with the task

It’s pretty easy to understand why students would find this task challenging. Most (especially beginning students) have little or no experience assessing their own work and then to have to frame a question that would elicit feedback helpful to improving your next paper—that’s a pretty complicated task. But it’s such a good one.

I wonder if there might be some ways to reframe the task that would make it easier initially. Maybe students need guidelines early on: Identify the part of the paper you had the most trouble with and ask a question about it. Identify the part of the paper you think turned out best and explain why you feel good about it

a potentially promising idea with the dual benefits of developing a great self-assessment skill and directing feedback

The 5 questions that I ask are: 1) What are you trying to say here (what's the thesis/main point)? 2) Why is what you are trying to say important? 3) What is working in the piece and why? 4) What is not working in the piece and why? 5) What questions do you have for me?

If students feel that they are graded on the writers that they currently are rather than the writer that they are trying to be, many will be hesitant to open an honest dialogue.

dialogical cover sheet dates back to the expressivist movement in composition studies in the 1980s. I first came across it through Peter Elbow's writing

scaffolding the feedback process by offering students the opportunity to identify aspects of the paper or parts of the paper they would like their instructor to respond to is empowering pedagogy