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Vanessa Vaile

What is the unique idea in Connectivism? « Connectivism - 0 views

www.connectivism.ca/?p=116

connectivism Siemens #evomlit #evomlit11 #CCK11 multiliteracies mooc web2.0 education technology

shared by Vanessa Vaile on 20 Jan 11 - Cached
  • what is the unique idea in connectivism?
  • a new idea is often an old idea in today’s context.
  • what is the new idea in constructivism? That people construct their own knowledge? Or the social, situated nature of learning? Or that knowledge is not something that exists outside of a knower? (i.e. there is no “there” out there)
  • ...30 more annotations...
  • 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
  • concept of rhizomatic knowledge and community as curriculum
  • Stephen Downes’ work on connective knowledge valuable.
  • Dave Cormier has been advancing the
  • 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
  • Concepts like small worlds, power laws, hubs, structural holes, and weak/strong ties
  • Networks are prominent in all aspects of society, not just education. This prominence is partly due to the recognizable metaphor of the internet…but networks have always existed. As Barabasi states, networks are everywhere. We just need an eye for them.
  • 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.
  • 1) cognitive grunt work in creating and displaying patterns
  • 2) extending and enhancing our cognitive ability
  • 3) holding information in ready access form
  • 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.
  • These elements are prominent in constructivism, to a lessor extent cognitivism, and not at all in behaviourism.
  • But in connectivism, we argue that the rapid flow and abundance of information raises these elements to critical importance.
  • Connectivism finds its roots in the climate of abundance, rapid change, diverse information sources and perspectives, and the critical need to find a way to filter and make sense of the chaos.
Vanessa Vaile

Education and the social Web: Connective learning and the commercial imperative - 0 views

firstmonday.org/...2718

technology PLENK2010 multiliteracies evomlit resources tools

shared by Vanessa Vaile on 08 Dec 10 - No Cached
  • I argue that commercial social networks are much less about circulating knowledge than they are about connecting users (“eyeballs”) with advertisers
  • not the autonomous individual learner, but collective corporate interests that occupy the centre of these network
  • business model restricts their information design in ways that detract from learner control and educational use
  • ...54 more annotations...
  • Just as commercialism has rendered television beyond the reach of education, commercial pressures threaten to seriously limit the potential of the social Web for education and learning.
  • Web 2.0 and online social networking have been the subject of sustained and lively interest among practitioners and promoters of educational technology
  • what is seen as the radical potential of these services
  • Social networking is so central to these new versions of education that a new “connectivist” theory of learning has come to be closely associated with them
  • a theory in which “knowing” itself is seen to be “defined by connections” making “learning primarily a network forming process”
  • described in terms of the liberation of learners from traditional constraints, as allowing them go beyond the classroom, to network “with peers worldwide,” and ultimately, to “take control of their own learning”
  • These visions are above all associated with the “personal learning environment
  • The personal learning environment is envisioned as a set of applications and services — to a large extent, logos and brands — organized around a single user, according to his or her learning and informational preferences and needs.
  • Through these services, the user is to be connected with teachers, mentors and other learners
  • some advocates of these approaches to learning have been raising concerns about the commercial nature of many of these services.
  • “You are not Facebook’s customer. You are the product that they sell to their real customers — advertisers. Forget this at your peril”
  • “This simple reality underlies almost all considerations having to do with these tools,
  • To use these tools is to reinforce, however indirectly, the ‘advertised life,’
  • The question is whether there is a role for higher education to promote ‘safe spaces’ free of this influence.”
  • the business model of commercial social networks is based on advertising, assisted by the data collection, as well as powerful tracking and analysis capabilities.
  • powerful surveillance functions
  • theories of media ideology and hegemony developed some time ago by Raymond Williams and Todd Gitlin
  • constraints presented by commercialized forms and contents rendered educational television a failure decades ago
  • similar structural issues threaten to sharply limit the potential of much newer social media for education and learning
  • Facebook, Google and other Web 2.0 and social networking services are making enormous sums right now from the users and advertisers they attract, and they are in aggressive competition to do this more efficiently
  • The absence of references to advertising (and also to tracking and analysis) in many discussions of the personal learning environments is surprising given the proliferation of logos and brands of commercial services
  • Because advertising is the raison d’être of services like Google and Facebook, it also provides the basis for the design, organization and maintenance of all of these other services and functions.
  • This way of understanding advertising and Web 2.0 draws on critiques of television (and the role of advertising in it) that were articulated decades ago.
  • the goal of these media organizations, he says, is to sell a product, and the product that “the networks sell is the attention of audiences; their primary market is the advertisers themselves”
  • One thing that is different today is that there is no one monolithic audience that forms a generic product to sell to advertisers.
  • An obvious objection to be raised at this point is that Facebook or Google, unlike television, do not have significant control over the content that is used to assemble audiences for advertisers
  • users have a clear choice regarding the kinds of content that they wish to view and disseminate
  • complex and subtle but very effective ways in which advertisers’ interests shape online social contexts.
  • Raymond Williams’ 1974 critique, Television: Technology and cultural form.
  • Williams’ text requires only minor revision to speak to the situation of commercial Web services today:
  • whether there is a role for higher education to promote ‘safe spaces’ free of this influence.”
  • Williams is making the point that the relationship between content and advertising is subtle and insidious, and that it is slightly different in the case of content “made for TV” than for its non–commercial counterpart.
  • “a dominant cultural form;”
  • what is important for the similarly non–commercial content of the social Web is informational design, architecture, and algorithm.
  • operation in otherwise non–commercial programming is registered in terms of sequence, rhythm and flow
  • Users of Facebook are sure to have been struck by the numerous and varied ways in which it cultivates gregarity and interaction, the way in which it relentlessly structures and supports sociality and connection
  • It is common to observe that the term “friend” itself is emptied of meaning by this incessant use and quantification;
  • Facebook exemplifies a way of generating and circulating information that encourages the expansion of interconnections between users
  • The controversy arises from the possible addition of a corresponding “Dislike” button.
  • lowers the psychological barrier to connecting with commercial entities
  • Gregarious behaviour is rewarded on Facebook
  • approval of a resource will draw ever more attention to it.
  • To provide the option of expressing dislike for a brand like Coca–Cola or to disapprove of a newspaper report or an article like this one is contrary to Facebook’s business interests
  • The dynamics here are rather reminiscent of what television of a bygone era had to offer: In both cases, you can either watch (i.e., “Like”) the products and lifestyles being showcased, or simply walk away.
  • “Like buttons” similar to many other connective features of social networks, “are about connection; Dislike buttons are about division.”
  • Similarly, other services will also systematically exclude possibilities for the expression of dissent and difference.
  • Despite the current prominence of social–psychological and connectivist theories, it is easy to make the case that learning is just as much about division as it is about connection.
  • In fact, the consistent pattern of suppressing division, negativity and interpersonal dissent that is central to the business model of social networking services runs counter to some of the most common models and recommendations for online student interaction and engagement.
  • Opportunities for social selectivity, discretion, privacy and detachment are an important precondition for the acts of disclosure and mutual critique, falsification and validation central to these models
  • selectivity and discretion — the “safe spaces” hoped for by Lamb and Groom — are rendered structurally impossible in convivial, commercially–contoured environments
  • Knowledge is not exclusively embodied in ever growing networks of connection and affiliation, and it does not just occur through building and traversing these proliferating nodes and links
  • Education is clearly a social process, but it is probably much closer to an ongoing discussion or debate than an extended feast or celebration with an ever-expanding network of friends.
  • advertising, tracking and analysis functions of commercial social media present, as Raymond Williams says, “a formula of communication, an intrinsic setting of priorities”
  • It only remains to be seen whether this dynamic renders commercial social networking services as fully unsupportive of educational ends as commercial television has long been.
  • Vanessa Vaile on 08 Dec 10
     
    In recent years, new socially‏oriented Web technologies have been portrayed as placing the learner at the centre of networks of knowledge and expertise, potentially leading to new forms of learning and education. In this paper, I argue that commercial social networks are much less about circulating knowledge than they are about connecting users ("eyeballs") with advertisers; it is not the autonomous individual learner, but collective corporate interests that occupy the centre of these networks. Looking first at Facebook, Twitter, Digg and similar services, I argue their business model restricts their information design in ways that detract from learner control and educational use. I also argue more generally that the predominant "culture" and corresponding types of content on services like those provided Google similarly privileges advertising interests at the expense of users. Just as commercialism has rendered television beyond the reach of education, commercial pressures threaten to seriously limit the potential of the social Web for education and learning.
Vanessa Vaile

#cck11: Connectivism and Social Constructivism - what's the difference? | Life through ... - 0 views

lindsayjordan.edublogs.org/...ructivism-whats-the-difference

cck connectivism constructivism evomlit multiliteracies education theories

shared by Vanessa Vaile on 04 Jul 11 - No Cached
  • what distinguishes a connectivist perspective from social constructivism
  • similar principles
  • complexity
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • technology
  • ‘complex’ phenomena as different from ‘complicated’ phenomena
  • Connectivism acknowledges the complexity of knowledge and learning in a way that social constructivism cannot. A central tenet of social constructivism is the definition of knowledge as the result of consensus. The connectivist perspective allows for a greater diversity of opinions, and acceptance of transience and unpredictability of knowledge.
  • dependence on a large number of ‘weak ties’ in knowledge networks
  • connectivist notion of knowledge and learning existing outside the individual human brain
  • web of nodes and connections
  • Bonkers.
  • transient content
Vanessa Vaile

The Hidden Center of the "Gutenberg Galaxy" - 0 views

www.fiu.edu/...Gutenberg_Galaxy.html

evomlit evo2010mlit Gutenberg Galaxy

shared by Vanessa Vaile on 28 Jan 10 - Cached
  • McLuhan and the Gutenberg Galaxy
  • What if the social changes that result from these technologies are intended , rather than unintended
  • Marshall McLuhan wrote a good deal about the "Gutenberg Galaxy" - the 'constellation' of changes wrought on European society after the German of that name figured out how to turn a winepress into a holder for movable type - in other words, a printing press - in the 15th century.
  • ...33 more annotations...
  • changes in the political, religious, and social landscape.
  • Gutenberg's press also made possible the Protestant Reformation - because, as Martin Luther came to realize, the wide translation and printing of the Bible meant "every man be a priest."
  • It's certainly hard to see how any of the changes which followed
  • could have occurred without the widespread literacy and education that the printing press made possible
  • what is now happening to our society in our second "Gutenberg revolution" - namely, the rise of electronic media
  • But what if there were a hidden center to the "Gutenberg Galaxy?"
  • fostering our current phase of technological change
  • cultural determinism of technology
  • And then, the Renaissance
  • The Dawn of Writing
  • obvious changes made possible by writing
  • technology of writing was ascribed to some mythic "culture-bringer" - Ogham, Thoth, Quetzelcoatl, etc
  • Most people are not aware, however, what writing had undone.
  • writing may have destroyed man's own prodigious mnemonic talents
  • Art of Memory also involved using tools and images
  • The written word makes possible the autonomous survival of knowledge - with an oral tradition, it disappears when the oralists have all been killed
  • The spoken word is intimate
  • writing is impersonal, does not carry emotional intonations
  • earlier technological revolution - one that occurred perhaps five millenia ago - the birth of writing
  • throughout the great breadth of the Dark and Middle Ages, literacy was not very widespread.
  • Was the printing press purely serendipitous? It does seem to have arrived at the right place at the right time.
  • mysterious traditions of the printers' and papermillers' guilds
  • heretical content of many of these watermarks
  • Bayley suggests it was Huguenot refugees that brought papermaking and the printing art into England
  • "Gutenberg revolution" as quite a Gnostic coup - destroying the literacy monopoly of both the Catholic Church and the feudal state
  • Today, the Arrival of the Electronic Word
  • any people are openly saying it: print is dead, the era of the printed word and the book is fading, and thus a new kind of literacy - "teleliteracy," ("the grammatology of video,") the reading of the moving image and multimedia barrage before us - is being propagated
  • death of civilization itself, since in their eyes we seem to be leaving the printed text behind and returning to the moving image or fetish
  • immediacy, presence, and participation lost through writing and print
  • whether some of the changes electronic media will bring were not intended,
  • would not think for you, but would help you think better and function as a "Knowledge (gnosis? ) Machine."
  • hypertext meant that the world's knowledge could be seamlessly woven together, much like the integrated unified system of knowledge imagined by the mystic Ramon Lull.
  • could be used to facilitate "Community memory" and community activism. It meant access to information
  • Vanessa Vaile on 28 Jan 10
     
    shades of Dan Brown!
Vanessa Vaile

The Multiliteracy Project - 0 views

www.multiliteracies.ca

evomlit multiliteracies education

shared by Vanessa Vaile on 10 Feb 10 - Cached
  • esponsibility to not only educate the minds, but also the hearts of my students
  • I want my students to look at knowledge in a connected and ethical way
  • personal self-understanding on an intellectual and emotional level
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • higher level thinking skills
  • encourage students to attain greater self-understanding
  • The Multiliteracy Project is a national Canadian study exploring pedagogies or teaching practices that prepare children for the literacy challenges of our globalized, networked, culturally diverse world. Increasingly, we encounter knowledge in multiple forms - in print, in images, in video, in combinations of forms in digital contexts - and are asked to represent our knowledge in an equally complex manner.
  • ighlight two related aspects of the increasing complexity of texts
  • (a) the proliferation of multimodal ways of making meaning where the written word is increasingly part and parcel of visual, audio, and spatial patterns; (b) the increasing salience of cultural and linguistic diversity characterized by local diversity and global connectedness .
  • Maria Rosario Di Mónaco on 10 Feb 10
     
    A research collaboration of students, educators and researchers
Vanessa Vaile

Half an Hour: What Connectivism Is - 0 views

halfanhour.blogspot.com/...what-connectivism-is.html

connectivism #evomlit multiliteracies mooc social-networking #CCK11 #evomlit11 web2.0 technology education

shared by Vanessa Vaile on 20 Jan 11 - Cached
  • in connectivism, there is no real concept of transferring knowledge, making knowledge, or building knowledge.
  • a pedagogy that (a) seeks to describe 'successful' networks (as identified by their properties, which I have characterized as diversity, autonomy, openness, and connectivity) and (b) seeks to describe the practices that lead to such networks,
Vanessa Vaile

Complexity, self-organization, and #Change11: reactions to Siemen's presentation on onl... - 1 views

michaelgallagher.posterous.com/-organization-and-change11-rea

MOOC evomlit complexity change11 navigating chaos tools self-organization

shared by Vanessa Vaile on 02 Oct 11 - No Cached
  • presentation from George Siemens on Self-Organization in Online Courses (embedded below) that addressed some aspects of learning complexity (through the context of a MOOC)
  • we need to sift through the chaos to create signal, perhaps even a pattern language
  • I liken this process to language itself and the alphabet. The alphabet developed to take a series of meanings and weld it to one symbol (a process more pronounced in Chinese and ancient Egyptian perhaps) that everyone might recognize and accept.
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • It reduces the complexity, yes, but more importantly it provides a starting point for a common process. Without it, we would be lost in theory. 
  • The same holds for learning to some degree. We look for structure, but if none exists on sight, we combine things until some structure emerges. That structure can be represented in a single symbol, but its foundation might shift as new understanding emerges. Occasionally, there is need to ditch the symbols or invent a new one altogether as emerging learning dictates. That is a healthy and complicated process. The MOOC captures this process a bit and adheres to an open structure to allow pattern language to emerge, a shared vocabulary, a knowledge construct (however ephemeral).
  • Feedback as friction as forces interact. A spark, a collision, waste, and occasionally a nova. A big (learning) bang. This makes me think a learner's responsibility (among many others) is to be open to this collision of actors, agents, feedback, waste, noise, and then, ideally, pattern, understanding. The only way out is through.
  • Disturbing- an ontological disturbance, an unknown, an uncanny sense of veering through uncharted, potentially treacherous waters. It is a good place to be as a learner, but it requires a strength and confidence that only an empowered learner could put forth. But in that disturbance, that mess, there is the friction, that meat-grinder of understanding.
  • This is learning as curiosity and sometimes it can be quite scary. 
  • Often we seek knowledge for the sake of knowledge (anyone subjected to my endless banal history lessons will understand this), but I do believe that most learning is action oriented. To learn not only to get a job, to live in a world, to subsist, but rather for acting as best as we can. For improvement, for progress, for self-actualization.
  • disaggregated, emotive, functional machine of interaction. One that has to be tinkered with constantly. 
  • self-actualization (the development of self) can only be realized through sharing, group interaction
TESOL CALL-IS

hrheingold: How I use Twitter, search, Diigo Delicious, DEVONthink, Scrivener to find, ... - 0 views

www.screenr.com/rNl

adult_learners teachers digital_literacy teacher-training mind-mapping writing research

shared by TESOL CALL-IS on 13 Jul 11 - No Cached
  • TESOL CALL-IS on 13 Jul 11
     
    "How I use Twitter, search, Diigo Delicious, DEVONthink, Scrivener to find, refine, organize information -->knowledge" A nice illustration in a Screenr screencast of how a Stanford professor uses various online tools to organize Internet information. Focuses on vertical (deep) learning, rather than horizontal (social) learning. Created for his students to demonstrate how to organize Internet resources efficiently.
Vanessa Vaile

Why We Seek the New: A History and Future of Neophilia | Brain Pickings - 2 views

www.brainpickings.org/...winifred-gallagher-new

history future brain knowledge learning curation filter information management

shared by Vanessa Vaile on 24 Jan 12 - No Cached
  • how hard-wired our affinity for novelty is
  • explores the evolutionary, biological, psychological, and cultural forces that drive our deep-seated neophilia
  • how our ability to respond to change saved us from extinction some 800,000 years ago to neophilia’s basic mind-body mechanisms to the profound ways in which the information age has altered our relationship with novelty
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  • 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
Maria Rosario Di Mónaco

Individual Knowledge in the Internet Age (EDUCAUSE Review) | EDUCAUSE - 0 views

www.educause.edu/...202336

knowledge learning educause education collaboration

shared by Maria Rosario Di Mónaco on 25 Jun 10 - Cached
  • Maria Rosario Di Mónaco on 25 Jun 10
     
    a must-read article
Vanessa Vaile

The Technological Dimension of a Massive Open Online Course: The Case of the CCK08 Cour... - 2 views

www.irrodl.org/...1402

#PLENK2010 multiliteracies evomlit education mooc connectivism

shared by Vanessa Vaile on 26 Oct 10 - Cached
  • Abstract In 2008, a new term emerged in the already crowded e-learning landscape: MOOC, or massive open online course. Lifelong learners can now use various tools to build and manage their own learning networks, and MOOCs may provide opportunities to test such networks. This paper focuses on the technological aspects of one MOOC, the Connectivism and Connective Knowledge (CCK08) course, in order to investigate lifelong learners’ attitudes towards learning network technologies. The research framework is represented by three perspectives: (a) lifelong learning in relation to open education, with a focus on the effective use of learning tools; (b) the more recent personal knowledge management (PKM) skills approach; and (c) the usability of web-based learning tools. Findings from a survey of CCK08 participants show that the course attracted adult, informal learners, who were not concerned about course completion. Time constraints, language barriers, and ICT skills affected the participants’ choice of tools; for example, learners favoured the passive, time-saving mailing list over interactive, time-consuming discussions forums and blogs. Some recommendations for future MOOCs include highlighting the purpose of the tools (e.g., skill-building) and stating clearly that the learners can choose their preferred tools. Further research on sustainability and facilitator workload should be conducted to determine the cost and effectiveness of MOOCs. Investigation is also necessary to understand MOOC participant profiles as they relate to course outcomes and retention and whether terms such as course and attrition are appropriate in this context..
Vanessa Vaile

Weaving a Personal Web: Using online technologies to create customized, connected, and ... - 0 views

www.cjlt.ca/...257

#PLENK2010 evomlit multiliteracies education

shared by Vanessa Vaile on 21 Oct 10 - Cached
  • Abstract: This paper explores how personal web technologies (PWTs) can be used by learners and the relationship between PWTs and connectivist learning principles. Descriptions and applications of several technologies including social bookmarking tools, personal publishing platforms, and aggregators are also included. With these tools, individuals can create and manage personal learning environments (PLEs) and personal learning networks (PLNs), which have the potential to become powerful resources for academic, professional, and personal development.
  • This paper explores personal web technologies (PWTs) and their learning applications.
  • Connectivism and the need for continuous learning In today’s world, learning needs extend far beyond the culmination of a training session or degree program. Working adults must continually update their skills and behaviours to conform to the constantly changing demands of the workplace (Lewis & Romiszowski, 1996). In times of rapid change, it is not always prudent or possible to offer formal training for each individual’s every need, and some needs may best be addressed by the individual him/herself. Using freely available personal web technologies, employees can create a personal learning environment (PLE) to manage their own learning resources; whether these are wikis, news feeds, podcasts, or people.
  • ...34 more annotations...
  • 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.
  • Tools that are geared more towards social bookmarking (e.g., Delicious, Diigo, and Twine) place greater emphasis on features that allow users to easily share their bookmarks with friends, colleagues, or the public
  • Tools that are geared more towards academic research, such as Zotero or Connotea, include bibliographic features, such as citation generators and reference list management.
  • 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.
  • blogging offer learners the opportunity to explore topics in depth and reflect, while the speed and simplicity of micro-blogging lends itself more towards posing questions and collaborative brainstorming
  • 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
  • In general, a PLE is the sum of websites and technologies that an individual makes use of to learn. PLEs may range in complexity from a single blog to an inter-connected web of social bookmarking tools, personal publishing platforms, search engines, social networks, aggregators, etc.
  • 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
Beatriz Lupiano

Living with ASD | The Librain - 0 views

librain.edublogs.org/...living-with-asd

Asperger disability explaining ASD

shared by Beatriz Lupiano on 16 Jan 10 - Cached
  • Beatriz Lupiano on 16 Jan 10
     
    The Human Boy and the Martians - living on the Autistic Spectrum, by a Martian Mummy and Knowledge Guardian Jamie, a human baby boy, is born into a Martian
Vanessa Vaile

Reflections on the Knowledge Society » Gravity rules the MOOC LAK11 - 0 views

145.20.173.188/...wordpress

#evomlit self-paced learning learning #CCK11 #LAK11 mooc social-networking tools education online conference technology multiliteracies web2.0 #evomlit11

shared by Vanessa Vaile on 19 Jan 11 - No Cached
  • Discussions spread in ever-which way. Participants migrate between discussions and platforms (or shall we say “bounce”?).
  • ‘open space’ conference
  • A MOOC follows the same principles but is entirely virtual.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • impossible to follow every discussion
  • gravitational fields that people follow, and where they group together
  • Centres of gravity are: platforms (Facebook, Netvibes, Moodle, Twitter, Diigo, and many more), topics, and people (certain people attract a greater following simply by being there).
  • fluidity of people between nodes
  • fixed points of stimulating weekly keynote presentations
  • strategy to manage my approach of accessing the knowledge spread across the course.
Vanessa Vaile

Reflections on Open Courses: Curation, Ombuds, and Concierges | Learning and Knowledge ... - 0 views

www.learninganalytics.net/?p=89

#evomlit #evomlit11 analytics siemens learning mooc #LAK11

shared by Vanessa Vaile on 13 Jan 11 - No Cached
  • Part of the focus in LAK11 is to explore how we can better use data to make sense of complex topics such as:
  • How students interact
  • patterns of activity
  • ...31 more annotations...
  • How knowledge is “grown” as individuals interact with others
  • How individual learners develop their conceptual understanding of a topic
  • How teams solve complex problems
  • tools and activities that are most effective
  • How individual learners “eliminate” unneeded or irrelevant ideas and concepts
  • explore various methods for analyzing data
  • tools that aid that analysis.
  • limitations of an algorithmically-defined world of education
  • Google’s search algorithm has been ruined
  • Reflections on Open Courses: Curation, Ombuds, and Concierges
  • focus in LAK11 is to explore how we can better use data
  • methods for analyzing data produced by learners and numerous tools that aid that analysis
  • Google’s search algorithm has been ruined argues
  • What’s the solution? Well, a return to curation, of course.
  • What does this have to do with LAK11?
  • over the last five years, social networks and social media have taken over the web
  • Google is driven by the mission to organize the world’s information. Facebook is driven by the mission to “help you connect and share with the people in your life”. The two companies are on a collision course: is the future informationally or socially based? Eventually, social bleeds into informational. And vice versa.
  • We trust people we like, people with whom we feel a connection
  • All social interactions are information. Many information interactions are social.
  • urators – they present their views and spin existing stories within the framework of their beliefs
  • “temporary centres”.
  • problem of how to create temporary centres
  • ome commentary or facilitator posts
  • LAK11, we’ve taken a different approach. We’ve retained similar course design elements to previous open online courses (OOCs – I’m starting to think that M=Massive part of MOOCs is misleading or even off-putting
  • What we gain in our decision to run this course on various sites, using more or less accessible tools, is the demonstration that anyone with an interesting topic/idea and a willingness to experiment can open up a course for a broader audience.
  • What we lose – and I’m still uneasy about this trade off – is the integrated archive of activity in the course.
  • Complexity cannot be understood solely through algorithms
  • Curation is an important component in the process
  • data mining, visualization
  • wayfinding and sensemaking in social systems
  • human aspect of data, sensemaking, curation, and trust
Vanessa Vaile

How This Course Works | Critical Literacies Online Course Blog - 0 views

ple.elg.ca/course

literacies critical courses evo2010mlit evomlit blog-post

shared by Vanessa Vaile on 03 Jun 10 - Cached
    • Vanessa Vaile
      Vanessa Vaile on 03 Jun 10
       
      critical literacies similar to multiliteracies but not as multi
  • This type of course is called a ‘connectivist’ course and is based on four major types of activity: 1. Aggregate
  • wide variety of things to read, watch or play with
  • ...16 more annotations...
  • 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.
Vanessa Vaile

Whither the Wikis? - Inside Higher Ed - 0 views

www.insidehighered.com/...wikis

wikis web2.0 higher education evomlit tools multiliteracies technology

shared by Vanessa Vaile on 14 Jul 10 - Cached
  • higher education’s relationship with wikis — Web sites that allow users to collectively create and edit content — has been somewhat hot-and-cold
  • tolerance, even appreciation, of Wikipedia as a useful starting point for research
  • using wikis to pool human knowledge of various topics into single, authoritative accounts falls into the “not” category
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • professoriate is too entrenched in traditional publishing
  • one of two things to happen before wikis can take hold in scholarship
  • “Either senior, post-promotion faculty will need to lead some successful wiki-based projects, or there will need to be an overhaul in the way we think about publication.”
  • highlight individual voices
  • open peer-review — another concept that has struggled to get traction.
  • blogs as a new-media invention that satisfies the scholarly desire for attribution
  • Scholarpedia, meanwhile, only lets selected experts play in its virtual sandboxes, making it more like a traditional journal or encyclopedia than a true wiki
  • Discipline-specific wikis might have an easier time building a community
  • A wiki might also garner more use if it focuses on a relatively young discipline
  • The greatest contributions wikis have made to academic research can be found not in actual wikis but in collaborative tools built on a similar model,
  • “Whether it’s the idea of user-generated content, or inviting many eyes onto a project (e.g., CommentPress), or, tools that facilitate collaboration, such as Google Docs or Zoho Office, wiki-like ideas are increasingly important to the scholarly community.”
  • the areas where they have gotten the most play in higher education seems to be in classrooms and various administrative apparatuses
  • wikis have become popular vehicles for class exercises
  • Vanessa Vaile on 14 Jul 10
     
    on the use and future of wikis in higher ed
Vanessa Vaile

What is a PLN? Or, PLE vs. PLN? : open thinking - 0 views

educationaltechnology.ca/...1156

evomlit #PLENK2010 multiliteracies pln ple socialnetworking twitter

shared by Vanessa Vaile on 23 Sep 10 - Cached
  • I have used the term Personal Learning Network (PLN) dozens of times over the last few years, and have seen it mentioned countless times in blog and microblog posts, and other forms of media. However, I cannot seem to find a solid reference or definition for the concept of PLN.
  • I thought it was appropriate to ask the question to my PLN (or what I perceive as my PLN) via Twitter. I asked if anyone had a definition for a PLN, or if they knew the difference between a personal learning network and personal learning environment (PLE). I received varied responses, and the majority of these are pasted below. To make more sense of this conversation, read these from the very bottom to the top as they are in reverse chronological order.
  • From a simple question on Twitter, I received dozens of twitter replies, direct messages, and email responses. While I am still having trouble defining exactly what this is, I know that what I observe to be my PLN has dramatically changed the way I view teaching, communities, and the negotiation and formation of knowledge.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • 32 Responses to “What is a PLN? Or, PLE vs. PLN?”
Vanessa Vaile

A special report on managing information: Data, data everywhere | The Economist - 3 views

www.economist.com/...displayStory.cfm

evomlit technology information management information overload "big data" report

shared by Vanessa Vaile on 01 Mar 10 - Cached
  • the world contains an unimaginably vast amount of digital information which is getting ever vaster ever more rapidly. This makes it possible to do many things that previously could not be done: spot business trends, prevent diseases, combat crime and so on. Managed well, the data can be used to unlock new sources of economic value, provide fresh insights into science and hold governments to account.
  • also creating a host of new problems
  • the proliferation of data is making them increasingly inaccessible
  • ...15 more annotations...
  • Scientists and computer engineers have coined a new term for the phenomenon: “big data”.
  • Epistemologically speaking, information is made up of a collection of data and knowledge is made up of different strands of information. But this special report uses “data” and “information” interchangeably because, as it will argue, the two are increasingly difficult to tell apart.
  • business of information management
  • Chief information officers (CIOs)
  • statistician and storyteller/artist
  • many reasons for the information explosion
  • technology
  • digitising lots of information that was previously unavailable
  • access to far more powerful tools
  • many more people who interact with information
  • shift from information scarcity to surfeit has broad effects
  • “Data exhaust”
  • in aggregate the data can also be mined
  • In a world of big data the correlations surface almost by themselves.
  • The way that information is managed touches all areas of life. At the turn of the 20th century new flows of information through channels such as the telegraph and telephone supported mass production. Today the availability of abundant data enables companies to cater to small niche markets anywhere in the world.
Vanessa Vaile

Getting Students to Do the Reading: Pre-Class Quizzes on Wordpress - ProfHacker.com - 1 views

www.profhacker.com/...pre-class-quizzes-on-wordpress

evomlit web2.0 tools education multiliteracies blogs wordpress reading technology resources students

shared by Vanessa Vaile on 27 Mar 10 - Cached
  • learning as a two-step process: First there’s the transfer of information (from a source of knowledge, like an instructor, to the student), then there’s the assimilation of that information by the student
  • students need to have their first exposure to the course material happen some other way—like reading their textbook
  • in all fields, there’s still the challenge of motivating students to actually do the pre-class readings
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • 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
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