18
Sep 09

CCK09 – Connectivism & Connective Knowledge 2009 Begins!

Just catching up on the start of Connectivism & Connective Knowledge 2009 – a Massively Open Online Course (MOOC) being offered by George Siemens and Stephen Downes from the University of Manitoba.  (Search this blog for CCK08 to see posts from last year’s class.)

This year I am making a conscious effort to not feel pressured to participate in the synchronous components of the course.  If I can attend the synchronous meetings on the web or in Second Life, I will, but I want to experiment with taking full advantage of the flexibility of this kind of course format – can I get as much out of the class, and the connections with other course participants, in a mostly asynchronous way?  I think so!

This will be in contrast to the Second Life cohort I facilitated last year, we met weekly in Second Life to discuss the course readings and the mechanics of taking a MOOC, which was a new experience for most of us last year.  This year, Sharon Collingwood (SL: Ellie Brewster) from Ohio State University has taken over the SL Cohort, and she’s posted details on the course Moodle:

SECOND LIFE COHORT for CONNECTIVISM & CONNECTIVE KNOWLEDGE 2009

PRELIMINARY GET-TOGETHER & ORIENTATION SESSION, Sunday Sept 20
at 4pm Eastern U.S. time (1 pm Second Life time, as read at the top right-hand corner of the Second Life screen) This is bound to be inconvenient for some people, we’ll talk about meeting times then.

To get to the meeting, sign up for the Second Life group “Connectivism and Connective Knowledge”

– search menu, “groups” tab, find Connectivism & Connective Knowledge
– follow link, find group profile, click “join”
– be sure group is activated (>>edit >>groups)
– read previous messages (>>info >>notices)

IF YOU’RE NEW TO SECOND LIFE:

Check your system: http://secondlife.com/support/system-requirements/

sign up for Second Life: http://secondlife.com/

Become my friend big grin
>>>search menu >>people >>Ellie Brewster >>add friend

(Feel free to friend me in Second Life, too, my name there is Fleep Tuque of course.)  🙂

The introductory videos by George and Stephen are good starting points if you’re not sure what the course is, how it works, or what Connectivism is, and I’d highly encourage you to participate if you have any interest in education, learning theories, how technology is changing how we learn, or how large open distributed courses can be delivered on the web – it’s free after all and fun too!

George’s introduction video:

Stephen’s introduction video:


07
Jul 09

Reconnecting with Connectivism (CCK09)

Sign Up for Connectivism & Connective Knowledge 2009!

Faithful readers may remember a series of posts last year about a Massively Open Online Course (MOOC) I took called Connectivism & Connective Knowledge, taught by George Siemens and Stephen Downes through the University of Manitoba’s Extended Education program.

George and Stephen are offering the course again this year, and just like last year, it is completely free and open access to any and all who want to participate.   Here’s a brief course description blurb:

Connectivism and Connective Knowledge is a twelve week course that will explore the concepts of connectivism and connective knowledge and explore their application as a framework for theories of teaching and learning. It will outline a connectivist understanding of educational systems of the future.  The course will begin on September 14, 2009.

I highly recommend the experience to anyone involved in education in any capacity.   George and Stephen utilize the web, RSS, blogs, wikis, podcasts, tagging, and crowd sourced teaching and learning in a way I’ve never experienced in any other course I’ve ever taken, and the experience last year had a tremendous impact on my understanding of what a “course” is, is not, and what it CAN be in the future.  Sign up here to receive course information in preparation for this year’s course!

Connectivism Cohort in Second Life

Last year I facilitated the Connectivism Cohort in Second Life, an experience that also taught me quite a lot about using virtual worlds as a site for meeting, discussing, sharing, and building in the context of a MOOC like Connectivism & Connective Knowledge.  You can read more about my conclusions and experience as a facilitator (in addition to some stats about participation) in this post from last year CCK08 – Off the Wagon, But Not Off My Mind.

While I won’t have the time to be a main facilitator for a Second Life Cohort of the class this year, if someone is interested in taking this on, the Chilbo Community in Second Life can host the cohort’s meetings and work in the re-purposed Education Village.   The Connectivism Reading Room is still available for holding discussions, and the sandbox and houses/offices can be used again this year for anyone who wants to participate.

Interested in facilitating or using Second Life as part of the CCK09 class?  Let me know at fleep.tuque@gmail.com and I’ll do my best to help!


19
Sep 08

EDUCAUSE Review: Back to (Virtual) School

I’ve been a bit deluged this week with last minute preparations as the start of the new school year approaches, but I wanted to take a moment to post about the September/October 2008 issue of EDUCAUSE Review.

EDUCAUSE Review

If you have any interest whatsoever in virtual world technology and how it is being used for education, I highly recommend taking a look at this issue. I felt so honored to have been asked to contribute an article (Looking to the Future: Higher Education in the Metaverse), but feel even more so now that I’ve had a chance to read all of the contributions by my colleagues. They write about theoretical and practical questions we all should be asking, describe a wide variety of use-cases across many disciplines, and give us thought provoking glimpses of what the future may hold, as both teachers and students, individuals and institutions. It’s good stuff!

land iguana

I should also mention the web bonus section that includes several examples of works in progress, including a spot about the University of Cincinnati’s Galapagos Islands project in Second Life that I’m working on, as well as projects that I frequently tour with faculty in my workshops, such as the NMC Campus, Genome Island, and the University of Michigan’s Wolverine Island.

It’s really great to see the work of so many friends and colleagues highlighted – especially when I know how much effort, thought, and preparation has gone into their projects – and I hope it will inspire other educators to take the plunge into this fascinating and complex space.

Many thanks to all who lent their support and advice when I was wrestling with my contribution!

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22
Jul 08

SL Events: BlogHer, ISTE, & Virtual Policy 2008

So many things happening right now, I haven’t had time to even blog about them all! Two events happening today and one archived event below.. hope to see you in-world!

ISTE Speaker Series Event
Tuesday, July 22, 2008 – 6PM SLT/9PM EST

ISTE Auditorium

ISTE Speaker Series Event: Metanomics: bridging the virtual worlds of business and K-20 education
Location: ISTE’s new four-sim auditorium: http://slurl.com/secondlife/ISTE%20Island%203/17/237/25

Robert Bloomfield (SL: Beyers Sellers) is the host of Metanomics, a weekly broadcast (Mondays at Noon SLT/PDT) focusing on current trends and developments impacting vitrual worlds. Their archived events listing powerfully illustrates the depth and breadth of their weekly productions. ISTE is proud to be partnering with Metanomics to bring our audiences together in the hopes of facilitating dialogue, networking, information sharing, and join innovation in Second Life. Beyers will be joined by our very own Chris Collins (SL: Fleep Tuque, a correspondent for Metanomics) in a lively, open discussion surrounding the question, “How can Metanomics, and the Metanomics archives, inform K-20 educators, librarians and instructional technologists who would like to use information about business and policy in virtual worlds?” This will be a voice presentation, please be sure you have a working voice setup prior to the event!

Virtual Policy 2008: A conference on innovation and governance in virtual worlds
London, England – July 22 & 23, 2008

Virtual Policy 2008 in Second Life

SL Location – Serious Games Institute hosting on SGI Nexus island: http://slurl.com/secondlife/SGI%20Nexus/91/100/24
Schedule: click here

Virtual Policy 08 is set to be a land mark event focusing on global virtual worlds sited in a European legal and regulatory context. The key policy themes for this year’s event are:

• Intellectual property rights
• Financial transaction
• Child online & education
• Governance frameworks & Innovation

The event is targeted at industry representatives, legal scholars, policy makers and regulators from around Europe and the rest of the world and is a unique opportunity to interact directly with key stakeholders.

Virtual Policy is organised by the Virtual Policy Network (tVPN: www.virtualpolicy.net ) in conjunction with The Department of Business, Enterprise & Regulatory Reform with New York Law School providing program support.

BlogHer 2008

BlogHer08 - Education & Training in Virtual Worlds Panel

This past Saturday, I participated in a BlogHer panel in world. The conference took place in San Francisco and in Second Life and our panel covered Second Life as an Educational & Training tool. Scan the liveblog notes for the highlights on the panel.

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06
Jul 08

Peer Review in the Digital Age

In the last year, I’ve had my first “real” papers published. I’ve been surprised at the long lead times, and the even longer review processes, and even looonger publishing dates before these things see the light of day. In a time when I can publish the same material myself with the click of a button, and get nearly instant feedback from colleagues, and when technology, techniques, and tools seem to be changing so rapidly that what was news a year or two ago seems woefully out of date already, the publishing process seems.. convoluted and a little bit absurd.

A reviewer at the National Institutes of Healt...
Image via Wikipedia

I understand, of course, the importance of peer review, and the need for data to be verified, experiments repeated, and findings confirmed or rejected. I understand the long standing traditions behind academic publishing, and agree that there is a real need for quality control and qualified, expert evaluation of information. But is this really the best we can do in the digital age? I don’t think so.

I just read a paper today that talks about this, and I think it raises some interesting points.

Kelty, Christopher M., C. Sidney Burrus, Richard G. Barniuk. (2008) “Peer Review Anew: Three Principles and a Case Study in Postpublication Quality Assurance“. IEEE.

They identify 3 fallacies and 3 principles that should be applied to modern peer review, and from the article, I think this is really key:

..simply placing something on the internet is not the same as “publishing” it. [..] A key insight that governs all of these principles is that quality is not an intrinsic component of the content of a work but rather a feature of how that work is valuable to a specific community of users: its context of use.

This reminds me of Henry Jenkins’ talk from ELI earlier this year, What Wikipedia Can Teach Us About the New Media Literacies (it’s a good talk, worth watching the video archive). A given wikipedia article may NOT be high enough quality to serve as a reference for a chemist, but 9 times out of 10, it IS high enough quality to give basic information for the rest of us non-chemists. And it can serve as a useful tool for teaching students about how “knowledge” is created, disputed, transformed, and disseminated. Context matters.

And of course, when we talk about new digital media, we haven’t even gotten into how to do peer review of, say, learning objects in 3D worlds like Second Life. We’ve taken a stab at creating some criteria for the Second Life Education Community Conference 2008, but it’s a first iteration of something that I hope to see become much more refined, and evaluating the content without knowing the context makes the job that much more difficult.

This is a topic I’m just starting to explore, so if anyone has pointers or resources, I’d love to hear them.

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30
Jun 08

5 Minute University

Thanks to Harold Jarche for the link.


25
Jun 08

Personal Economics of Social Media

The Viral Professional Development that injenuity has been writing about and the EduPunk flare-up (EDUCATION IS SERIOUS BUSINESS YOU CAN’T PUT PUNK IN THERE!) got me thinking about social media both in the context of a learning tool, but also in the context of a business tool.

We all love free stuff, and I think my “viral professional network” includes some of the most creative, collaborative, and giving colleagues I’ve ever had the pleasure to work with, but at the end of the day we all have to make a living, and in these economic times, I want to know if living the networked professional life actually yields a better paycheck.

I’m already convinced that it leads to a much, much more fulfilling career, but as I start to feel the real pinch of all these increased prices, I also find myself forced to think in practical economic terms. I know money doesn’t buy happiness, but happiness doesn’t buy kitty food, either. 🙂

Social media, for me, is time intensive. Blogging, browsing, trying things out, keeping in touch with the network and trying to figure out how to do that when the network grows bigger than I’ve ever experienced before.. As I said on twitter the other day, some days it feels like the social media manages ME instead of the other way around.

And that time comes at a cost.

Formal Learning vs Informal Learning

While I was musing about this, I ran across Intellagirl’s recent slideshow about the differences between formal education in an institution and informal learning through social media. Check this out:

Her analysis really jives with my personal, lived experience of both completing a degree and being very active in social media in the last couple years. I got my degree after 7 years and finally had that stamp of approval, but at the same time, the work I’ve done in my online communities of interest has in many ways been far more important to my personal learning than my formal education experience.

I do feel a greater sense of accomplishment for my online work than for any of the tests or exams I took and scored well on, and through my online experiences I’ve become part of a wider professional community that seems far more relevant to me than, say, other UC alumni.

Social Contract with Social Media?

But then Intellagirl goes on to talk about the sort of social contract we make (Promise, Tools, Bargain) and that’s where I got hung up, because the bargain we make with formal education isn’t just credentials/reputation, it’s also dollar signs in a directly transferable sense. Get the right degree from the right institution and you’ll make more money, guaranteed. Get a degree from any institution and you’ll have a better shot at making more money than you’d make otherwise. That’s also implied in the social contract, leading to the stories I mentioned last week about so many completely un- or under- prepared students entering college.

So, I guess my question is, how does the informal learning through social media translate to better economic conditions, particularly when so many are working in companies or institutions that are completely ignorant of the social web phenomena? It isn’t as if you’re going to get higher marks on your evaluation because you twitter (though if you’re doing it right, you WILL do better at your job because of twitter). That is to say, the time spent on social media, for most people, is personal time, and even though it also benefits the workplace, or the institution, that benefit is not accounted for or rewarded explicitly, and often is actively blocked or sanctioned on work time.

Given this, and even though social media promises all sorts of wonderful learning opportunities, how can we ask our students, or our faculty, (or even ourselves) to keep up the time intensive pace of it all when they’re busy trying to raise a family or work a job that doesn’t have them at a computer all day? It seems that even though the formal educational model is rigid and top down and appears to be counter to what I’d consider a very valid and important form of learning, it’s the mode that pays the bills, and as long as that’s the case, that’s what people will do because they have to.

I don’t know. I feel fortunate that I’ve been able to so closely align my personal passions with my professional career, including social media, but when I’m up there in front of a room full of people who do not work at a computer all day, I want to make a compelling argument that convinces them to try it when they get home. It’s not just the educational or personal impact I’m wondering about, but also the economic impact of social media, and how that plays into the “education crisis” analysis.

If anyone has any thoughts, I’m all ears.

Speaking of Economics.. Metanomics!

Last bit, I’m delighted to say that I’ll be working with the folks at Metanomics as the Education Correspondent for the new season. Hosted by Cornell Prof. Robert Bloomfield, Metanomics is a weekly webTV program focusing on economics and policy in the “metaverse” of online worlds. I’ve been a fan since I caught some of their first episodes last season, and I’m very excited about the opportunity to cover education in virtual worlds and Second Life for the show. I’ve never been a webTV journalist before, so I expect to be learning some new technical skills in that arena (all from my social network!), and brainstorming about some good angles to cover.

If you want to have a look at my debut, see me make a classic newbie mistake by WRITING the script instead of TALKING the script. 🙂

Ah well, live and learn!

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21
Jun 08

Saturday: Caught My Eye

Here are some things that caught my eye today. Hit play on this video while you read the rest of the post, it’s such a sweet video.

Ok, now that we have some music…

Tools & Sites

I just installed a little map widget down in the lower right sidebar that shows a map of visitors. It’s a free download from ClustrMaps.com and tracks by IP address where in the world your readers are. Not sure how often it will update, but so far I’m big in the US and barely heard of in Europe and completely absent everywhere else. 😉 It’s going on data since this morning though, so we’ll see how it goes.

Next up is Freebase. I don’t know what it does yet, but their tagline is, “Freebase is an open, shared database of the world’s knowledge.” Hmmm. Definitely will check it out in a bit.

Last is a site that looks to be about teaching programming concepts to high schoolers, called Greenfoot. I’m already a fan of Alice, but might be of interest to those of you working with high school students.

Teaching & Learning

I dig this graphic, created by Bill Mosely (SL: Pirate Shipman), and winner of the NECC08 button contest. Great job Bill!

Poster: I am here for the Learning Revolution

And last, three essays that address the meta topic of college education in the US today:

If you only have time to read one, read the second one, and then Chris’ take on that article in 3rd link. I don’t agree with all of the positions taken, but as I try to imagine what education could be, it’s helpful to read critiques by others.

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