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Vanessa Vaile

P3 Conference 2010: Or, How Attending a Digital Humanities Conference Helped Me to Valu... - 1 views

  • P3 stands for Peer-to-Peer Pedagogy
  • ethics of using digital tools.  "Its not about homogenizing difference," she said; "its about making space for difference." 
  • P3 reminded me that it's not about the technology--it's about the people who create it, collaborate on it, and question it. 
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  • 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. 
  • "technology is not just software and hardware.  It is also all of the social and human arrangements supported, facilitated, destabilized, or fostered by technology." 
  • 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. 
Valentina Dodge

the online magazine of our lives: share your stories - 3 views

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    The YouTellYou magazine is a tool you can use to create on online magazine about your life. It is organized in pages and can be shared.
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    Interesting tool, perhaps a project we could work on ?
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    I agree. It would make a really nice project. Do you have any specific ideas?
Vanessa Vaile

Life Under An #Ashtag: Online Networking My Way Home From Europe | techPresident - 0 views

  • I don’t feel like a displaced person, but more like a ball being buoyed by an invisible network of friends and strangers, all connecting to me and with each other via the Internet.
  • Does it make sense to rely on one’s online social network in times of crisis?
  • But at every moment, whether I was hearing from friends or strangers, I was comforted knowing that people were looking out for me. And I got a lot of useful answers when I needed them.
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  • 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,
TESOL CALL-IS

Life Feast: Draw and record your voice - 0 views

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    "Drawing and recording your voice is not an easy task. What I've discovered is that once you start drawing, and your focus shifts to the image, there are few barriers to speaking. "The tool I'd like to share today is EDUCREATIONS (http://www.educreastions.com). I haven't explored it to its full potential but what I've seen so far is good enough. The free tool allows you use your mouse or your finger (ipad) to draw stick figures while you record your voice. You can also upload an image and draw and record your voice at the same time. Once finished, look at the right side below the twitter and facebook buttons for the URL and the embed code which allows you publish the recording."
Vanessa Vaile

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

    • Vanessa Vaile
       
      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
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  • 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

The Souls of the Machine: Clay Shirky's Internet Revolution - The Chronicle Review - Th... - 1 views

  • the goal is to study technology and society by making gadgets that challenge assumptions of how machines fit into daily life and get people interacting
  • as Web sites become more social, they will threaten the existence of all kinds of businesses and organizations, which might find themselves unnecessary once people can organize on their own with free online tools
  • Who needs an academic association, for instance, if a Facebook page, blog, and Internet mailing list can enable professionals to stay connected without paying dues?
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  • those who make playful social networks improve society more than all those now-unnecessary offline organizations.
Vanessa Vaile

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

  • 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
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  • 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.
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    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

The PLN Staff Lounge - 2 views

    • Vanessa Vaile
       
      OK most points but re pt #: I need to clean up follower list & boot off spammers. which is better, checking as new followers sign on or schedule regular list purging sessions?
    • Vanessa Vaile
       
      next thought. question I could use feed back on: how to use a twitter account for multiple purposes, e.g. professional (whatever that is for someone retired), community, personal, special interest (advocacy, avocation research), etc. Not including elements of personal in "professional" affects voice, makes it too institutional. Tweets are a writing genre and voice counts. 
  • 5) You only ever tweet stuff about your daily life
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  • how to use it to build a PLN (personal learning network)
  • My Top Ten Twitter Turn-Off's
  • 1) No profile, or profile picture
  • Your profile tells people who you are
  • If you decide to add a link to your profile, make sure it is not a dead link, an under construction page, an affiliate shop, or a page which launches pop up windows
  • 2) No tweets
  • 3) Hiding your tweets
  • 4) You have lots of spammers following you
  • 10) Being overly-self promotional
  • "Cliff Notes" version of advice for Twitter newbies
  • 7) You are mainly using Twitter to sell or promote something
  • 8) You don't tweet any links
  • Check out some blogs and online newspapers for topical or interesting stories, and use a url shortener such as bit.ly, (http://bit.ly/)
  • Searching for twitter hashtags (#)
  • Some examples
  • 9) You don't interact with other users, or re-tweet other people's posts
  • Twitter is a social media tool
  • collaboration, discussion, and sharing
  • 6) You mainly tweet stuff about yourself
  • the 80/20 ratio (i.e. 80% of your tweets should be about something other than promoting yourself or your blog
  • Karenne Sylvester wrote a great article a while back about how a you can tell a lot about people from what they tweet and how they conduct themselves on Twitter.
  • part of your Digital Footprint
Mariel Amez

sing your life - la la la - 0 views

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    A teacher involved in personal development through PLN reflects in her blog.
Vanessa Vaile

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

  • 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
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  • 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

"Digital Nation": What has the Internet done to us? - 0 views

  • My bosses at Suck.com, meanwhile, accurately predicted that the Web would soon become something between a gigantic mall catering to the lowest common denominator and an infinite tabloid echo chamber. Their mantra: Sell out early and often. Why? Because those of us musing about murderous robot showdowns (or scratching out angry cartoons under a pseudonym, for that matter) would all go back to grabbing ankle for The Man sooner than we thought. What they didn't know, and never could've predicted, was that the Web would also transform itself into an enormous, never-ending high school reunion (See also: hell).
  • My bosses at Suck.com, meanwhile, accurately predicted that the Web would soon become something between a gigantic mall catering to the lowest common denominator and an infinite tabloid echo chamber. Their mantra: Sell out early and often.
  • What they didn't know, and never could've predicted, was that the Web would also transform itself into an enormous, never-ending high school reunion (See also: hell)
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  • finally safe to proclaim, together, that the information age has officially arrived.
  • futuristic "Blade Runner"-esque digital dystopia
  • Douglas Rushkoff is currently reconsidering his unconditional love for new media in Frontline's "Digital Nation" (premieres 9 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 2, on PBS, check local listings), an in-depth investigation into the possibilities and side effects of our digital immersion.
  • how are we changing what it means to be a human being by using all this stuff?"
  • Dilbert-meets-Derrida perspective
  • "Most multitaskers think that they're brilliant at multitasking," says Stanford professor Clifford Nass. But "it turns out that multitaskers are terrible at nearly every aspect of multitasking."
  • 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,
  • Can we hold our Salon meetings this way, and can my avatar be an enormous roach that occasionally hits other people over the head with a crowbar?)
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    from I Like to Watch - Salon.com: internet criticism + review of PBS series on internet use
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    sharing this Luddite moment w/ Webheads... can you smell the irony in the air
Vanessa Vaile

adVancEducation: Modeling your PLN: Backchanneling with Students - 2 views

  • PLN, or Personal Learning Network
  • what we envisage involves colleagues sharing information in a social network or community of practice
  • Scott Leslie's nice collection of PLE diagrams: http://edtechpost.wikispaces.com/PLE+Diagrams
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  • one of the ten paradigm shifts that I think educators must make as they move into facilitating learning in the 21st century
  • we should be teaching as 21st century life skills: creativity, communication, collaboration
  • The problem is where networks might collide
  • distracting clutter
  • LISTS
  • Edmodo
  • Edmodo
  • Etherpad
  • why we'd want to backchannel with students
  • a classic: http://academhack.outsidethetext.com/home/2008/twitter-for-academia/
  • This post therefore is yet another example of how a PLN works
Beatriz Lupiano

click! Photography Changes Everything - 2 views

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    Part of the Smithsonian Photography Initiative: a collection of essays and stories about how photography helps to shape our culture and our lives
Vanessa Vaile

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

  • 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
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  • 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

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

  • what distinguishes a connectivist perspective from social constructivism
  • similar principles
  • complexity
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  • 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
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