Group items tagged

"Social networking sites (e.g. Facebook), microblogging services (e.g. Twitter), and content sharing sites (e.g. YouTube and Flickr) have introduced the opportunity for wide scale, online social participation. Visibility of national and international priorities such as public health, political unrest, disaster relief, and climate change has increased, yet we know little about the benefits and possible costs of engaging in social activism via social media. "

This article reminds me to the activism of a Spanish councellor to promote activism through social net against the independence of Cataluña in Spain: http://www.elmundo.es/cronica/2014/10/12/54390135ca474179608b4571.html

Places the popular concept of the makerspace within the theoretical context of experiential education.

I have a 11-year old daughter, so a lot of the readings and activities we do in this course usually lead me to compare between how they apply to k-12 "fundamental" education and professional development. We are lucky in that some of her teachers are experimenting with flipped classroom and project-based learning. However, as a parent on the sideline, sometimes I wonder about their activities. How do I or anyone evaluate an activity to know that it is "educational"? This article gives a great definition, "...an experience is educative if it lead to further growth, intellectually or morally..." Another quote I like a lot is "learner to take initiative, make decisions, and be accountable for the results."

Good article on the Maker Movement, and references to the thinking of John Dewey. I hadn't realized some of the Maker Movement extends back to the 1970's. I had the chance to meet Sylvia Libow Martinez a couple of years ago (of Invent to Learn - http://www.inventtolearn.com/) and got a deeper insight into the power of the Maker Movement, Maker Fairs, and how sharing knowledge and collaboration is producing some amazing things in the realm of 3D printing, wearable technology, and changing paradigms for education.

Participatory media may still have a ways to go if the 1% rule is correct. That rules says that the consumption of online media runs along these lines 90% passive consumers, 9% participants; 1% initiators. This article provides three takes on the accuracy and relevancy of the 1% rule and provides a long list of resources to learn more.

As a rough guide this will apply to OKMOOC students as well. Two of the course instructors will be the most active on the Google+ group, Twitter and Diigo. The big question is not who will be the top creator in the class, but who can effectively transform ideas gained and relations builded in new productive and profitable off line activities. Studies show that out of 100 MOOC students eventually 2 will finish the course with credit.

"The Macaulay Library is the world's largest and oldest scientific archive of biodiversity audio and video recordings. Our mission is to collect and preserve recordings of each species' behavior and natural history, to facilitate the ability of others to collect and preserve such recordings, and to actively promote the use of these recordings for diverse purposes spanning scientific research, education, conservation, and the arts." A great example of what citizen science can build!

A book with ideas along the line of participatory culture, "panarchy"... The information revolution - which is as much an organizational as a technological revolution - is transforming the nature of conflict across the spectrum: from open warfare, to terrorism, crime, and even radical social activism.

Researching online often means leaving a trail of information about yourself, including your location, what websites you visited and for how long, with whom you chatted or emailed, and what you downloaded and printed. All of these details are all easy to associate with a particular computer user when insufficient privacy protections are in place.

Thanks for sharing this article. The right to electronic privacy is most important to me. It's frightening how 'big brother' can trace everything we do. I intend following up on the links and asking our local professional association to run a workshop on this.

Librarians in Massachusetts are working to give their patrons a chance to opt-out of pervasive surveillance. Partnering with the ACLU of Massachusetts, area librarians have been teaching and taking workshops on how freedom of speech and the right to privacy are compromised by the surveillance of online and digital communications -- and what new privacy-protecting services they can offer patrons to shield them from unwanted spying of their library activity.

This site brings the concept of participatory culture to teacher professional development. I see it as an aspect of citizen activism because it is essentially taking the old idea of "professional development" (US teachers are probably all too familiar with sitting in a room while someone from a publisher makes them go page by page through a binder of photocopiable worksheets) and turns it on its head. #2minpd is teachers creating the professional development and sharing it in a format that does not demean participants.

To watch the actual videos, go to YouTube and search for the project name (#2minpd).

More than just playing and making, be able to reflect after creating something new is what makes this new mode of learning different. One step further would then be "open to critiques", then learn from both peers and master. Seemly Brown also discussed a new "networked identity": based on what one has created and what others have then built on it. This is the idea of building new things from other existing things, but give credit to where credit is due. Provide one's creation or product openly so that others can remix/build something new based on this product. This would be how an ideal knowledge environment would grow and sustain.

A really like the sequence of events he mentioned at the beginning: Create, Reflect, Share. It is so simple yet can result in so much production! And of course, it all starts with imagination :)

Great video! It will be/ is becoming the new mode of learning. We collaborate to create an active knowledge environment. It's definitely a mode of open learning, which can benefit all of us.

In week 3 we've addressed how open knowledge can promote active citizenship. A pre-requisite for that is that individuals are equipped with the right set of digital skills. Being digital native does not necessarily imply that one is digital competent. The promotion of digital skills is at least as important as ensuring accessibility to technology. This document is a reference framework to identify what are the different elements of digital skills as these go much beyond than merely knowing how to use a computer. This has been developed by the European Commission, engaging several different stakeholders from several countries, and is being used as a support to strategies for the promotion of digital skills.

Dr Jane McGonigal (a professional game developer) talks about the time spent playing video games (which approximates to the span of human evolution), and that this time has to increase to make any major changes to the world. I have selected this resource partially in relation to week 3's Clarke's lecture (and others), which talks about using our idle time to do something meaningful - participate in citizen science games, for example. Dr McGonigal's talk very much illustrates this point - except that it talks about solving global issues through indirect games, e.g. a World Without Oil online game simulates a world in which you have to survive oil shortage. Creator's research shows, that people maintain the skills and habits they have taken up after playing this intense game, which include making better choices for our changing environment. The only difference here from actual citizen science games is that Dr McGonigal's games are fictional (rather than providing direct data / input for actual scientific research), however, they empower people to influence global change, which is the topic of the other lectures this week, especially Morozov's thoughts about the power of internet and connectiveness to create "revolutions". Although Morozov has taken up a rather critical view, suggesting only those who want it, take the best from the Internet, Dr McGonigal's ideas might be what bridges the two - taking games, which are integral part of many people's lives, especially in the younger generation, and turning them into real "life schools" may help more people get the idea and the essential skills to "fix" their environments. In all honesty, this is a video I would watch again and again, and recommend it to anyone who would listen (and that doesn't happen often for me).

Gamification for learning - using game elements - sounds very promising. Prior to the internet, technology, there were board games or hands on projects - all with the intent to engage and interact with each other. So it is no surprise to me given the appropriate design/project that students can learn and solve real world problems. Letting students choose their persona and role also allows them to make their own future and take ownership for how they want to participate. Just like the original promise of multimedia training that was purported to replace the traditional classroom events and enable getting the "best" teacher recorded for all to have the same experience...I believe it was then thought that the learning experience needs o be "blended". Different techniques - online, face to face, etc.. This is not my field of expertise so these are just personal opinions. If the online game approach can be combined with face to face and tactile/outdoor activities, aka a blended approach - I think that might be very useful. I do also believe that design solutions should be encouraging win win situations to reinforce collaboration and the feeling that all can succeed. One question I might have is how do you measure success in learning?

Gaming promoters unfortunately for me have a commercial agenda and its always difficult to make that balance of pure learning and commercialization aspect

A description of the future of libraries being makerspaces - centres of production as well as consumption.

Gracias por compartirlo, esta nueva tendencia de la BIblioteca como espacios de creación y producción es muy enriquecedora.

This video shows the possibilities for libraries: Encouraging users to create content in addition to absorbing it. Melanie Florencio provided excellent exemplars, spanning generations (the old and the young) and showing that all can participate.

In an age of proliferating media and news sources, who has the power to define reality? When the dominant media declared the existence of WMDs in Iraq, did that make it a fact? Today, the "Social Web" (sometimes known as Web 2.0, groupware, or the participatory web)--epitomized by blogs, viral videos, and YouTube--creates new pathways for truths to emerge and makes possible new tactics for media activism.

Two weeks ago, News Corp Australia's Miranda Devine published Wendy Bacon and comrades lay into Sharri Markson on Twitter in defence of The Australian's media section editor Sharri Markson, who had been criticised for a column she wrote about the dangers of mixing activism and journalism.

I totally agree from the point of view of this article related to learning and being a Journalism teacher. Just great!

This TEDtalk might not answer directly to open knowledge topics so far, however it speaks to some of the issues raised in this week's lectures: pop-culture and technology can and should be used to engage people into educational & social activities (especially evident in Dr Jenkins' talk). Here, Ali Carr-Chellman talks about issues boys face in school - basically, they just don't belong there, as teaching is usually brought about from a woman's point of view (most teachers are female) and boys are told to be girls. Eventually, they feel they just won't succeed and take up other things - e.g. video games. The speaker advocates that video games could and should be used as a valuable tool to reach boys. Providing more resources, games could become THE ultimate way to deliver important messages and to teach effectively. (This also speaks to the point in Clarke's lecture, that games can be made into powerful scientific and educational plarforms.)

This has certainly been the case with my 15 year-old, who through Minecraft has created extensive networks for exchanging ideas and interests that have turned into research projects for his debate class.

BioHacking, the next step in citizen science. Moving from mere participant to more active creator of knowledge.