Palloff, R. M., & Pratt, K. (2007). Building online learning communities: Effective strategies for the virtual classroom. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Chapter 2 discusses community building in online classroom environments.Extending their analogy, Walden is our community, our specializations are our neighborhoods, and our specific class / courses are the blocks on which we live for the duration of those courses. Your thoughts, colleagues?

I wrote on a pyramid of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs which "hat" a manager wear's for employees at the different levels. For the bottom, I didn't think any hat applied, since those are basic survival, met by having a job in the first place. Employees operating at the safety level need managers wearing the "leader" hat. Employees operating at the belonging stage need managers wearing the "counselor" hat. Employees operating at the esteem level need managers wearing the "coach" and "motivator" hats. Employees operating at the self-actualization level need managers wearing "developer" and "risk-taker" hats. What do you think?

While reading the Kohlberg article, I took some notes:
Kohlberg's levels:
Level I. Pre-Moral Level
Type 1. Punishment and obedience orientation. - Motive => Punishment by another.
Type 2. Naive instrumental hedonism. Motive => Manipulation of goods, rewards by another.

Level II. Morality of Conventional Role-Conformity
Type 3. Good-boy morality of maintaining good relations, approval of others.
Motive =>Disapproval by others.
Type 4. Authority maintaining morality Motive => 1. Censure by legitimate authorities followed.

Level III. Morality of Self-Accepted Moral Principles
Type 5. Morality of contract and of democratically accepted law. Motive => Community respect
Type 6. Morality of individual principles of conscience. Motive => Self condemnation


"A moral principle is an obligatory or ideal rule of choice between legitimate alternatives, rather than a concrete prescription of action" referenced Dewey & Tufts 1936

Moral principles are principles of "conscience", and Type 6 children tend to define moral decisions in these terms.xx

While reading the article, I took some notes:
Module 3 Shaver notes

Attachment as measured by the AAI (Adult Attachment Interview) , changes over the lifespan. Highly predictive of infants attaching to parents, but teens tend not to be so closely attached, and seniors are more attached to God.

Coan connects attachment theory with brain functions. He coined the term Social Baseline Theory referring to human reliance on others, in other words, humans are wired to depend and rely on one another.
Attachment security may protect against resource depletion when people are in stressful situations.

Researcher [ Feeney and Van Vleet ] have concluded that a certain amount of ironically, allows a person to become more autonomous and selfconfident !

Notes on Palloff Chap 2
Stages of Collaboration
* Set the Stage
* Create the Environment
* Model the Process
* Guide the Process
* Evaluate the Process

Tools for Collaboration
* Explanation of Collaboration Importance
* Guidelines/Expectations
* Agreements - Team Charter
o Charter headings
 Our purpose is to …. (one sentence total)
 Our deliverables include…(wiki + video artefacts)
 Operating Guidelines…(5-7 statements each beginning with the word "we")
* Buy-in

Week 2 Notes EDUC8841
8 main types of diffusion research:
1. Early knowledge about innovation
2. Rate of adoption into the social system
3. Innovativeness
4. Opinion Leadership
5. Diffusion networds
6. Rate of adoption across social systems
7. Communication channel usage
8. Consequences of innovation
(Rogers, 2003, p.94-100)
Major diffusion traditions:
* Anthropology
* Early sociology
* Rural sociology
* Education
* Public Health/Medical sociology
* Communication
* Marketing
* Geography
* General sociology
(Rogers, 2003, p.101)

Nature vs Nurture -> Identical Strangers
http://www.npr.org/player/v2/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=15629096&m=15636545

Isn't this so very unethical! But they make an interesting point, that environmental influences make us who we are in conjunction with what nature has given us. We will never know what we could have been had our influences been different, whether we are a product of a multiple birth or not. "Support a human fully, then they can become who they really are" says the doctor in this interview. Is he not referring to self-actualization, described by Maslow.

Week 2: Rubric for Defense of Innovation for Multimedia Presentation
You identify and describe one innovation, including its potential use and benefit to your industry, as the topic of your course project. Consider 4 main elements that influence the spread of a new idea (the innovation, communication channels, time, and a social system) and your innovation's potential for success.
You justified the selection of this innovation over the other two innovations you considered.
You supported your selection of an innovation, citing one diffusion study on that innovation, with proper APA formatting for your citation and references.

Reading Bruner interview in Nucci p.102:
Aristotle claimed that stories begin with what is ordinary in the world and then there is something that intrudes upon the ordinary, some dissonant event. Jerome Bruner said that stories like this prepare us for the unexpected, like a mental rehearsal for inevitable cultural change.
Rogers said that innovators are able to deal with more dissonance than others. Are story tellers innovators who thrive on dissonance?
Reference
Jerome Bruner: Reflections of a Developmental Psychologist. (2008). Human Development (0018716X), 51(1), 101-103. doi:10.1159/000113159
Rogers, E. M. (2003). Diffusion of innovations (5th ed.). New York, NY: Free Press

Which came first, the chicken or the egg? This week we focus on the developmental influences of nature and of nurture. What are your opinions?

I'm filling in a critical thinking chart from EDUC8112 to organize my thoughts. It is originally from Paula Dawidowicz.

Week 1 Dsc. Task: Conduct some research about the various innovations that have been introduced into your field of work.

Week 1
Possible innovations:

* Geocaching in schools - unsuccessful at my school
* Podcasting - unsuccessful at my school
* Online newspaper - unsuccessful and reverted to paper version
* Whole language approach to reading instruction


* Flat screen monitors - successful
* Charter Schools - successful
* Homeschool - successful and more so each year
* Private schools making digital footprints with social networking tools (Twitter, FaceBook) to draw additional clientele -> some hire consultants just to create the networking tools for them.

I feel exceedingly ignorant of the fads they mention. Anyone else feel this way? https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-JYFlacckuDFs_gQTL8ce0S8k-3xCGirN5NOumqqTcw/edit?hl=en

How does your definition of educational technology reflect the times in which you live?

What would happen if we compared ARCS with Hunter?

I think we all are familiar with Madeline Hunter's Lesson Plan Format. How does her lesson plan template compare with Keller's ARCS model?

Connectivism involves
1. Ability to find information
2. Ability to evaluate that information
"The ability to know is more critical than what is known" which is the polar opposite of traditional education where the test is on what is known.

Learning in a complex, chaotic system is not cyclical nor is it linear. The learning brain, i.e. any alive brain, resembles a jungle -> from Caine & Caine way long ago in undergrad work and I since lost the article.

Would Sputnik have been such a wake-up call to the nation if Dewey's ideas had not become so widespread in public education?

I urge you all to thoughtfully listen to Steve Hargadon's Keynote for the reform symposium virtual conference last July while you consider the disruptions that have occurred in our epistemological, experiential, communicative, and political assumptions. His keynote is at -> http://reformsymposium.com/blog/2010/07/27/opening-keynote-steve-hargadon/
I found examples of disruptions in all these assumptions that Steve gave in his keynote. Which ones resonate with you?
Hargadon, S. (2010). Opening keynote. Proceedings of the Reform Symposium, http://reformsymposium.com/blog/2010/07/27/opening-keynote-steve-hargadon/
Tyack, D., & Cuban, L. (1995). Tinkering toward utopia. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Lisa Durff
Scenario 2, in which Bernie and Rita Turner founded Walden in order to provide a graduate education to people not economically able to seek doctoral degrees at traditional brick and mortar institutions requiring a year of residency, is an example of positive social change. By enabling people from other developing and developed nations to obtain doctoral educations the Turners widened the network of scholar- practitioners engaging in critical discourse at a graduate level. Such discourse involves dialogue about epistemological, experiential, communicative, and/or political questions, which as Brookfield (1995) suggests, are questions that frame how we view the world. By becoming critical Brookfield (1995) further suggests, we are able to put names to what we do, break through the walls of isolation and substitute for colleagues who are not in face-to-face dialogue with us. By thinking more critically we are pushed beyond our comfort zones and forced to consider the big picture or the social context of our local dilemmas.

Deliberately creating a change, whether negative or positive, in one small aspect of society produces change across that society. By affecting social change through creation of Walden, the Turners have affected global doctoral education. This action took into account innovative delivery of doctoral education but not necessarily innovative teaching methods. To sustain success into the future, Walden could strive towards more innovative teaching methods, similar to the Siemens and Downes course in 2008. Learning was spread across networks, including Diigo, a wiki, a blog, Second Life, and Twitter. Content was gathered using aggregators and tags, much like a library gathers similar content using the Dewey Decimal system.

Lack of access to education for all by excluding working class people from obtaining a doctoral education limits the numbers of people using critical thinking to affect social change in their slice of the world. By working to change that, the founders of Walden are affecting social change around the world. I have affected social change by contributing to the work of CURE International at their hospital in Kabul, Afghanistan to provide pre-natal and post-natal care as well as delivery to mothers in that locale. Without support, mothers would not have access to pre- or post- natal care or access to safe deliveries. Mortality rates are affected by such social change and make clear that a positive change is taking place in that locale.

Brookfield, S. D. (1995). Storming the citadel: Reading theory critically. In Becoming a Critically Reflective Teacher (pp. 185-206). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Social change is demonstrated through the change in public schooling from the pre-Civil war era to the late twentieth century. It is remarkable that such change in the way schools are organized took hold so quickly across a large country and has persisted as the expected organizational pattern. According to Tyack and Cuban (p.86) this social change made the life of the teacher easier, although it did not make the life of the student better or easier.
Periods of social change in education happen during eras of unrest or "crisis" as Tyack and Cuban (p.43) refer to them. During these periods, national politics reacted by elevating educational discussions above the local and state level to national platforms. Public concern over schooling preceded these national conversations. The societal change in the pre-Civil war era was the upheaval caused by the industrial era. The Civil war brought public education, especially in the southern states, to a stand-still and shut down many schools. During the era of Reconstruction following the Civil war more national concerns produced changes in public education. These changes became so entrenched in the American mindset that the schools we now have are known as "real schools", fit into the society's grammar of schooling, and are resistant to change, even though the paradigms have changed.
One of the key problems of involving conversations surrounding the education of the nation's children on the national level is that politicians ultimately reduce these conversations down to winners and losers. This competitive spirit creates polemic platforms based on test scores, economic viability, and comparisons with the international community.
Another key problem with associating educational reforms with political platforms is that educational reforms move on a different timetable. While it cannot be disputed that the schools of the twentieth century were different than the on-room schools of prior periods, one must remember that one political party at one particular time was not responsible. The social change that took place was a reaction to many different social problems, including providing compulsory education for all, educating Blacks, women, and the handicapped, the need for factory workers to man the industrial age, economic disparities between the different regions of the American nation.
Americans have seen the obtainment of future success of the nation coming through education. At this point in time, new challenges to perceived American supremacy have appeared. Outsourcing of American factory jobs, increased movement of goods and services across national boundaries, and the expectation of increasingly differentiated education for each child. Will these factors together be enough to produce a change in the school-grammar of this nation? If the economy recovers, I don't think so.
Tyack and Cuban discuss school reform as useless, not because reform changes schools, but because schools change reforms. In other words, any reforms are molded into the existing grammar of schools, assimilated into the status quo, and become no reforms at all. They name the examples of the Dalton plan and the Eight-Year Study. Our present grammar of school has been shaped by politicians able to legislate support, economic forces that shaped curriculum, and teacher unions that appreciated labor-saving same-age groupings.
I also consider reforms to be useless. To redo the grammar of schooling, the entrenched model must be destroyed and only then can a new grammar be built. A social change of this magnitude will follow a period of cultural crises involving economic, artistic, educational, political, and religious factors.

References
Christensen, C., Johnson, C. W., & Horn, M. B. (2008). Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns . McGraw-Hill, 1 ed.
Tyack, D., & Cuban, L. (1995). Tinkering toward utopia. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Would mixing the behaviorist theory with Driscoll's definition of a learning theory give one a theory of learning which involves an observable and persistent change? Is there more or less to it?

Does our knowledge truly reside in the connections we form http://www.connectivism.ca/?p=116

I am posting documents in my Walden group. Feel free to peruse or join. I also tend to take notes on pages with stickies. You can see these if you join Diigo. Feel free to peruse these and join in the discussion. The learning is in the connections!