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Vanessa Vaile

The Ning Thing.docx - 0 views

docs.google.com/...pub

evomlit tools multiliteracies technology ning

shared by Vanessa Vaile on 06 Jul 10 - Cached
  • good source for information on Ning: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ning_(website)
  • Ning was a free-form platform for the development and hosting of open-source social applications
  • Ning pricing structure is three-tiered, as explained here: http://blog.ning.com/2010/05/introducing-ning-pro-ning-plus-and-ning-mini.html
  • ...40 more annotations...
  • ompelling affordances for group collaboration
  • Participants can sign up or sign in and set up profiles for any particular Ning, parts of which carry over to other Nings, achieving familiarity with minimal repetition of data entry
  • crucial components of many educators’ PLNs
  • Nings have c
  • Webheads in Action used to enroll participants in its free bi-annual WiAOC international online conferences in a Moodle, but for the last one, moved the community over to a Ning (http://webheadsinaction.ning.com/). This Ning now has over 350 members.
  • Because Nings were free and robust for collaboration, they were an ideal tool for educators seeking to jump-start communities on little or no funding.
  • Alec Couros sees this kind of thing happening more and more in the crystal ball future and suggests that schools and educators would be better off investing in self-hosting using FOSS, free and open source software (Couros, 2010).
  • general consternation
  • a number of issues
  • One is for how long Internet users can expect free services
  • other side of the coin is the nature of teaching, where hard-pressed teachers with little time and less budget tend to cobble together whatever resources they can muster
  • Monetization is rarely a consideration for teachers and educational technology specialists
  • , whose main aim is to find platforms that will support learning through sharing.
  • The immediate concern following an announcement such at the one issued by Ning April 16 is simply preservation of content stored at the free site
  • sponsorship is available only for “Ning Networks focused on North American K-12 and Higher-Ed ... including Ning Networks that facilitate learning in a classroom, best practices, educator-to-educator collaboration, or parental support,”
  • Pearson, who have offered to sponsor Nings for educators at the Mini level, the lowest level of Ning
  • almost all continents on the planet are excluded from the deal
  • Kevin Hodgson has been writing some interesting posts about the Ning thing.
  • the only reliable alternative to Ning is to host your community yourself, or at a trusted institution
  • http://tinyurl.com/alternatives2ning).  This document remains the most comprehensive source of advice on what to do about replacing Ning that exists anywhere on the Internet
  • Alec Couros (2010) decided to crowdsource some answers
  • back up your Ning
  • there are a number of sites offering Ning-like look and feel which will (attempt to) import your content, or some of your content, from Ning
  • Grou.ps
  • Grouply
  • designed to work as a social-network portal for Yahoo and Google Groups.
  • see: http://webheads.grouply.com/
  • A tool that works well for capturing blog content is Posterous
  • Spruz
  • Wackwall
  • Good and Bazzano (2010) have a good rundown of many of the options listed here
  • another free site that lets you set up a Portal with features similar to those of Ning.
  • another social networking portal which will do much the same thing
  • Other sites encourage you to restart your community afresh
  • Stevens, V. (2010). The Ning thing. TESL-EJ, Volume 14, Number 1. Retrieved on today’s date from http://www.tesl-ej.org/wordpress/issues/volume14/ej53/ej53int/.
  • Posterous Targets Ning
  • Siemens, G. (2004). Connectivism: A Learning theory for the digital age. Elearnspace. Retrieved June 27, 2010 from http://www.elearnspace.org/Articles/connectivism.htm.
  • Good, R. and Bazzano, D. (2010). Ning Alternatives: Guide To The Best Social Networking Platforms And Online Group Services. MasterNewMedia May 3rd, 2010. Retrieved June 27, 2010 from http://www.masternewmedia.org/ning-alternatives-guide-to-the-best-social-networking-platforms-and-online-group-services/.
  • If you wish to write anonymously on a Ning thing document, you can do so at Alec Couros’s crowdsourced Google Doc here: http://tinyurl.com/alternatives2ning
  • Multiliteracies
Vanessa Vaile

Google News Adds Personalized Story Tracking - 0 views

www.readwriteweb.com/...google_news_starred.php

evomlit new news-tracker personalized tagging aggregator web2.0 tools

shared by Vanessa Vaile on 02 Feb 10 - Cached
  • Want to track a hot story being covered by multiple news outlets?
  • story clusters
  • fully customized news tracker.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • automatic summary technologies
  • There are a wide variety of ways that news could be served up to people in the future.
  • syndication and subscription approach
  • Vanessa Vaile on 02 Feb 10
     
    fully customized news tracker ~ could be used to track key phrases as well as stories as they appear in news
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

Twenty-First Century Literacies | HASTAC - 0 views

www.hastac.org/...wenty-first-century-literacies

education evomlit multiliteracies cognition literacies

shared by Vanessa Vaile on 13 Feb 10 - Cached
  • What cognitive skills are crucial for educators to attend to in our digital age? Media theorist and practitioner Howard Rheingold has talked about four "Twenty-first Century Literacies"--attention, participation, collaboration, and network awareness
  • see http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/rheingold/category?blogid=108&cat=2538
  • Futurist Alvin Toffler argues that, in the 21st century, we need to know not only the three R's, but also how to learn, unlearn, and relearn.  Expanding on these, here are ten literacies that seem crucial for our digital age.  
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • Attention:  What are the new ways that we pay attention in a digital era?
  • Participation:  Only a small percentage of those who use new "participatory" media really contribute.  How do we encourage meaningful interaction and participation?  What is its purpose on a cultural, social, or civic level?
  • Collaboration:   How do we encourage meaningful and innovative forms of collaboration? 
  • methodology of "collaboration by difference"
  • Network awareness: 
  • how we both thrive as creative individuals and understand our contribution within a network of others
  • Design:   How is information conveyed differently in diverse digital forms? 
  • Narrative, Storytelling:  How do narrative elements shape the information
  • Critical consumption of information
  • Digital Divides, Digital Participation: 
  • Ethics and Advocacy:
  • Learning, Unlearning, and Relearning:
  • trying to unlearn ones reflexive responses to change situation is the only way to become reflective about ones habits of resistance.
Vanessa Vaile

Twitter as a Personal Learning Network (PLN) | - 0 views

whatsnewintheworld.net/...comment-page-1

twitter pln evomlit web2.0 education multiliteracies

shared by Vanessa Vaile on 27 Feb 10 - Cached
  • Personal Learning Networks are all the rage at the moment. As with a lot of “modern” things, they’re existed for a long time but have now got a snappy new name.
  • these people are, in Web 2.0-speak, friends.
  • A PLN can take advantage of lots of different services – Facebook is perhaps the best-known, Ning is also very popular
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  • 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.
  • Vanessa Vaile on 27 Feb 10
     
    from What's New in the World? Blog and Podcasts for ELT professionals
Vanessa Vaile

Personal Learning Environment (PLE) Project - 0 views

ple.elg.ca

PLN PLE evomlit edtech

shared by Vanessa Vaile on 03 Jun 10 - Cached
  • Vanessa Vaile on 03 Jun 10
     
    The National Research Council of Canada's Institute for Information Technology (Learning and Collaborative Group) has started a research and development project exploring the Personal Learning Environment. The project researches how new technologies can be used in a personalized informal learning environment and focuses on two dimensions. The first dimension is the pedagogical: given the new affordances offered by web technologies, how can access to a wide variety of learning opportunities best be managed in an online environment? The second dimension is technical. Given a set of desired types of connections, what technologies can be assembled to best provide seamless access to a large variety of educational resources and services? Existing learning management technology (such as the Learning Management System) is centered on the institution that owns and operates it as enterprise software. With the increase of lifelong and student-centered learning, individuals are more frequently enrolling in learning opportunities from multiple institutions and have a need to manage their learning through an entire career. Thus there is a need for a type of application that is centered on the learner and would constitute the person's personal learning record, portfolio, business and educational contacts, communications and creativity tools, library and resource subscription management, and related services.
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

Marginal Revolution: *You are Not a Gadget* - 0 views

www.marginalrevolution.com/...you-are-not-a-gadget.html

evomlit technology internet culture

shared by Vanessa Vaile on 18 Jan 10 - Cached
  • humanist critic of how the internet is shaping our lives and cultures
  • Of all the books with messages in this direction, it is the one I would describe as insightful.
  • I disgree too. I was there for the good old digital days, and I don't miss them a bit. Web 2.0 is far more inclusive than anything that has come before.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • I disgree too. I was there for the good old digital days, and I don't miss them a bit. Web 2.0 is far more inclusive than anything that has come before. The unwashed masses are welcome, I say.
  • having to manage one's reputation via a website seems very preferable to having to do so via fist fight, church and family proxies.
  • Countless hives permeate the net.
  • Vanessa Vaile on 18 Jan 10
     
    new book by Jaron Lanier, a humanist critic of how the internet is shaping our lives and cultures and providing a new totalizing ideology. Plus reviews & comments
  • Vanessa Vaile on 18 Jan 10
     
    Graff wrote of teaching and the culture wars, "teach the differences"
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)
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  • 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.
TESOL CALL-IS

Addition in Adelaide - A New Maths Map | edte.ch - 0 views

edte.ch/...on-in-adelaide-a-new-maths-map

very_young_learners google web2.0 geography content-based ESP teachers young_learners VSL

shared by TESOL CALL-IS on 27 Aug 11 - Cached
  • TESOL CALL-IS on 27 Aug 11
     
    "I have begun a new Maths Map in Adelaide focusing on addition ideas that can be seen or referred to on the map. It would be great to have your contributions it is very easy to do:" This doesn't have to be just in Adelaide--use Tom Barrett's ideas for a Google Maths Map in your local area. There are math activities for K-5--it's fun, too!
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

News: Technologically Illiterate Students - Inside Higher Ed - 0 views

www.insidehighered.com/...techliteracy

technology evomlit multiliteracies education highered technological literacy

shared by Vanessa Vaile on 17 Jul 10 - Cached
  • definition of technological literacy needs updating. In the 1990s, she explained, the U.S. Education Department defined it to mean the ability to operate a computer. These days, computers are so user-friendly that being capable of operating one does not say much about a person’s competence.
  • a line between computer users who can handle only basic programs such as word processors and search engines, and those who understand the structures and concepts that underlie modern technology, and how to think critically within them
  • less about who has hardware, but who has access to information; who has those problem-solving skills
  • ...14 more annotations...
  • sumption that today’s student are computer-literate because they are “digital natives” is a pernicious
  • task-specific tech savvy
  • tech-skeptical
  • not mean tech-negative
  • critical capacity to glean the implications, and limitations, of technologies as they emerge and become woven in
  • ethical use of technology
  • instructors might try to do their best to integrate discussions that might improve students’ tech literacy into existing units in the syllabus
  • more collaborative work
  • source-checking websites
  • real-world examples to support their idea
  • meta-discussions about the limitations of technological tools
  • Arguing that there should be new standards for tech literacy and that most students don’t meet them implies a third piece -- one that is likely to make course designers hem and haw: You need to teach them.
  • filtering the pertinent from the misleading
  • critical thinking skills that enable them to use various technologies wisely
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
jennifer verschoor

MIT TechTV - The New Media Literacies - 0 views

techtv.mit.edu/...shighlightmediaspan-literacies

evomlit web2.0

shared by jennifer verschoor on 16 Jan 10 - Cached
  • jennifer verschoor on 16 Jan 10
     
    The new media Literacies
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
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • 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
TESOL CALL-IS

Infographics & Data Visualizations - Visual.ly - 1 views

visual.ly

visual_literacy multimedia tools content-based project-based adult_learners academic ESP science history culture VSL

shared by TESOL CALL-IS on 26 Dec 11 - No Cached
  • TESOL CALL-IS on 26 Dec 11
     
    "See the best data visualizations on the web all in one place." Mainly infographics--charts and informational maps. Students could upload their own graphs, et al., for comment and feedback, and the site purports to be creating new data visualization tools.
TESOL CALL-IS

Electronic Village Online / Call for Proposals 2011 - 2 views

evosessions.pbworks.com/Call-for-Proposals-2011

EVO Electronic_Village_Online online_learning teachers pedagogy VSL

shared by TESOL CALL-IS on 09 Aug 10 - Cached
  • TESOL CALL-IS on 09 Aug 10
     
    "The CALL Interest Section of Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, Inc. (TESOL) offers language teachers world-wide the opportunity to participate in the Electronic Village Online (EVO), a professional development project and virtual extension of the TESOL 2011 Convention in New Orleans, LA, USA. The intended audience for this project includes both TESOL convention-goers and those who can participate only virtually. Interest Sections, Affiliates, E-groups, and other member groups of TESOL in particular are invited to sponsor sessions related to the convention. "
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

Personal Learning Networks Are Virtual Lockers for Schoolkids | Edutopia - 0 views

www.edutopia.org/l-learning-networks-technology

#PLENK2010 evomlit multiliteracies pln ple socialnetworking edutopia technology education web2.0 rss

shared by Vanessa Vaile on 27 Sep 10 - Cached
  • A PLN becomes a student's virtual locker, and its content changes based on the student's current course work. When I assign them a term paper, the students comb the Web to sign up for information that will feed into their personalized Web page to construct a PLN for that topic. When they get a new project, they assemble another page.
  • Perhaps the most telling response on the subject of PLNs is from my student Hope, who says, "My iGoogle page is very helpful and helps me keep things organized. It lets me know when my agenda changes." The fact that a ninth grader would talk about her own research agenda gives a glimpse into the power of the PLN; she is using a term here that is often reserved for grad students.
  • Constructing a PLN is the essential skill that moves my students into the driver's seat of their own learning. It helps them sort through and manage the proliferation of online materials that jam the information superhighway. It is also indispensable to our project-learning curriculum
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Tony Wagner, from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, lists assessing and analyzing information as one of the seven survival skills in the new world of work. I think the ability to create a PLN is a fundamental information-management skill that will help my students succeed in the future.
  • An RSS reader is a Web site that puts together all this information in an easy-to-read format. Google Reader, netvibes, Pageflakes, Bloglines, and my preferred reader, iGoogle, are all examples of sites providing RSS readers. The RSS reader is the raw material for building a PLN.
  • Vanessa Vaile on 27 Sep 10
     
    Can't resist the title ~ YES ~ my virtual cloud locker, no heaving lifting involved
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