Group items tagged

Lowering communication costs doesn’t just lead to more communication, it leads to qualitatively different behavior by web users.

Lowering the interaction costs of communication leads to perhaps the most important feature of Web 2.0: its inclusive, collaborative capacity. The new Read/Write web is allowing people to work together, share information, and reach new and potentially enormous audiences outside some of the traditional structures of power, authority, and communication in our society. The social developments that have resulted from the Web 2.0 phenomena are best understood through a lens of democratization, but we must keep in mind the caveat that democracy means many different things in many different places (Haste and Hogan, 2006).

Web logs, or blogs

you need a mixture of materials, you need a collection of different perspectives, different points of view, in order to come to any new understanding.

Communities have to be open, they have to have some source of new material coming in, whether its raw material, resources, ideas, etc., and then they have to have some place where they can send their creative product, the things that they make, the ideas that they have.

A third criterion that distinguishes a community defines as a network from a community defined as a group is autonomy. And what that means is that each of the members of that community are working toward their own sense of values, their own sense of purpose, their own goals or endeavours.

Sharing content is not considered unethical; indeed, the hoarding of content is viewed as antisocial [9]. And open content is viewed not merely as nice to have but essential for the creation of the sort of learning network described by Siemens [10].

In a nutshell, what was happening was that the Web was shifting from being a medium, in which information was transmitted and consumed, into being a platform, in which content was created, shared, remixed, repurposed, and passed along. And what people were doing with the Web was not merely reading books, listening to the radio or watching TV, but having a conversation, with a vocabulary consisting not just of words but of images, video, multimedia and whatever they could get their hands on. And this became, and looked like, and behaved like, a network.

Blogging is very different from traditionally assigned learning content. It is much less formal. It is written from a personal point of view, in a personal voice. Students' blog posts are often about something from their own range of interests, rather than on a course topic or assigned project. More importantly, what happens when students blog, and read reach others' blogs, is that a network of interactions forms-much like a social network, and much like Wenger's community of practice.

Try and find that balance between learning and living. Understanding that you can not know it all, and begin to understand that you can rely on your network to learn and store knowledge for you.

Global, online learning communities offer an unprecedented opportunity for teachers and students to follow and connect around their passions. But they also challenge almost every aspect of traditional schooling as we know it. The Powerful Learning Practice cohort model offers a unique approach to introducing educators to the transformative online technologies that are challenging the traditional view of teaching and learning. A PLP cohort for professional development is an ongoing (7-8 month), job-embedded opportunity built around emerging social Web technologies. Each cohort connects: 20 school or district teams from around the state (or world) 5 educators (administrators/teachers) from each school 10- PLP Fellows (Champions) selected from participating districts Within these cohorts, participants are supported in an intensive community building process online and in person by an passionate team of experienced educators. Outcomes for participating Administrators and Teacher Leaders By participating, you can expect your team and your leadership to gain: Knowledge: An understanding of the transformative potential of emerging technologies in a global perspective and context and how those potentials can be realized in schools Pedagogy: An understanding of the shifting learning literacies that the 21st Century demands and how those literacies inform teacher practice. Connections: The development of sustained professional learning communities and networks for team members to begin experimenting, sharing and collaborating with each other and with online colleagues from around the world. Sustainability: The creation of long term plans to move the vision forward in participating districts at the end of the program. Capacity: An increase in the abilities and resources of individuals, teams and the community to manage change.

we shouldn't consider someone literate if they can consume but not produce media.

The literacy of the future rests on the ability to decode and construct meaning from one's constantly evolving environment -- whether it's coded orally, in text, images, simulations, or the biosphere itself. Therefore we must be adaptive to our social, economic and political landscape. Those of us living in this digital age are required to learn, unlearn and learn again and again.

But writing assignments are not just exercises in grammar and grading. They are exercises in learning

Psychologists and other cognitive scientists know so much about psycholinguistics, language, and memory that they should well understand the close link between composition and knowledge. Yet many view writing as only a means of assessing a students' understanding of course material, and overlook the profound impact that the writing process has on understanding itself

The act of writing is an act of thought

You get no credit for asserting the existence of something we already know exists.

You must shape and focus that discussion or analysis so that it supports a claim that you discovered and formulated and that all of your discussion and explanation develops and supports.

In that sense, you might state the point of your paper as "Well, I want to show/prove/claim/argue/demonstrate (any of those words will serve to introduce the point) that "Though Falstaff seems to play the role of Hal's father, he is, in fact, acting more like a younger brother who . . . ."" If you include in your paper what appears after I want to prove that, then that's the point of your paper, its main claim that the rest of your paper supports.

MOOCs reduce barriers to information access and to the dialogue that permits individuals (and society) to grow knowledge.

Knowledge is a mashup. Many people contribute. Many different forums are used. Multiple media permit varied and nuanced expressions of knowledge. And, because the information base (which is required for knowledge formation) changes so rapidly, being properly connected to the right people and information is vitally important.

MOOCs share the process of knowledge work – facilitators model and display sensemaking and wayfinding in their discipline. They respond to critics, to challenges from participants in the course. Instead of sharing only their knowledge (as is done in a university course) they share their sensemaking habits and their thinking processes with participants. Epistemology is augmented with ontology.

you can easily adapt the project for any students and class.

Be sure that the writing prompt you choose require a personal response.

Remember that writers have more authority when they can choose a topic that they are comfortable with.