CCK001B From the Outside Looking In

I became much too busy to take on the Connectivism course with George Siemens and Stephen Downes; nonetheless I'm still interested in understanding more about the theory and so I took on some of the learnings for week one as well as creating a mind map using Cmap tools which was the recommended software to use. My understanding so far is somewhat limited as I haven't read about many of the referenced theories in many years. I looked over the text for week one's title of "What is Connectivism?" Instead of trying to stumble through writing text that did not appeal to me at all. I thought I'd use some of the words that occurred from Connectivism:
Learning Theory or Pastime of the Self-Amused?
which was one of the required readings. And after creating a wordle I input the common words into flickrCC.

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What my Tagging Habits have Taught me

I think I'm beginning to realize a few of the differences between the way I should be tagging and the way my mind is inclined to tag. Folksonomy to me has become as much about learning how my mind tends to organize information as it is about how I was taught and trained to use information as say it is organized at a library. I wonder what will the long term consequences be of letting students organize their own metadata versus those of us who are older and were taught the Dewey Decimal system of organizing. When I think about how my books or music were organized I tried several ways over the years. Once I organized my records alphabetically and that didn't suit me for finding my current set of music. I've always tended to let a more organic approach dictate where something went for the physical objects around me. I tend to want what is current to be in the front and yet I like to periodically have surprises come before me. Somehow I've always cherished the idea of serendipity coming between me and the resources online. I've noticed with my delicious/Diigo accounts that I've created broad categories which only need to be reworked when they grow too large. Over time I do need to go back to redraw how bookmarks are organized. There is a dynamic way to organize and I've not gotten there yet. I like that my Diigo account  will tell me when I've already bookmarked a site so I don't have duplicates at a glance. There are so many web sites being shared that I'll bookmark something say during an Edtechtalk show and forget to go back to it at a later date. Typically I'll end up with so many tabs open that I never want to reboot and close them unless I have too. Speaking of tagging, here's my blog's front page as a wordle, seems I'm always looking for a pretext to use it.

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Here Comes Everybody

Having been to NECC and Edubloggercon in San Antonio this year I had many varied experiences and connections. The first day for Edubloggercon I sat in on a discussion of the book Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky. A group of educators sat in a circle with Will Richardson facilitating the discussion. Many voices were heard in that short period of time and the most powerful ones were by educators I was not familiar with. Comments by those who were more well known were not as powerful as others. A large part of the discussion was addressing elements of the book and how it should impact our teaching and classrooms. The group who participated included many leaders in the implementation of 21st century tools. Many of them had laptops, cell phones and were well versed in all the vocabulary and experiences that Web 2.0 has to offer. Dean Shareski put together a compendium of video images composed of friends within his PLN from amongst those gathered. One interesting result of what Dean uploaded to Youtube was a repurposing of this home movie of friends as a foundation for a blog post by Mathew Tabor of why he doesn't or wouldn't go to the NECC. It was amazing and somewhat disturbing to see his argument by manipulating what was never intended as a documentary of the event but more of a home movie.

At NECC I even later saw a flash mob in the main area of the conference hall but did not understand what it was for at the time and although it was enjoyable to see a group suddenly freeze with my background in art history and performance art, I didn't realize what it represented.

When you look at Shirky's steps of building community from first sharing, to cooperation, to finally collective action. I would say the edtech community is built around sharing and the level of cooperation is what is seen as individuals and classrooms create temporary projects together but there is really no long term or sustained participation. When I think in terms of the edtech community, what do I really mean? Certainly someone such as Stephen Downes has well reasoned arguments for why there is no community per say. But could there ever be a point in which collective action could be possible. Why haven't we heard of anyone out of such a vocal group that has created a community or new school outside of Chris Lehmann and the SLA?

Of some of the other points the book was making that caused me to reflect back on my PLN and my relationship to it would be the idea of "connectors." These are the people who join together separate networks or groups. I think these are always the people I try to have as part of my network on twitter for example. I wonder though say on twitter if I look at TweetWheel if I can't find visually find connectors within my own Tweetwheel group but also by following certain people begin intersecting networks myself.

Lastly, the idea that struck me in relation to students was that of failure and the "power law distribution." When and how do we share this with students. How do we make them aware without taking away their motivation to challenge and change the status quo with their ideas? I thought of those individuals who can withstand continuous failure for an occasional success versus those awkward and uncertain students just learning to take risks and are sensitive to failure. Would one solution be to use the video game experience of repetition and relentlessness in order to achieve the next level in some game?

When I came home, I left a few days later for China and I decided I needed to read the text and see if it was as important for me as everyone talked about. I purchased the book and started to read it on my flight over to China. As I've slowly learned about the Chinese culture I've been amazed so far at the high level of organization with in the social groups that are formed around family and friends. Just as we've heard the discussion of our children maintaining connections even after individuals leave organizations such as high school, the same is true for most of the individuals I met in China. What I would like to understand better is what organizing principals or structure was in place before the wide spread distribution of the cell phone. This is most peoples primary tool to connect. As where now when someone in the US who is a savvy user has a problem they may first get online and try and search for a solution. For a well connected Chinese individual it is more a matter of making phone calls moving from the small network to a connector until a solution is found. With a lower standard of living most people cannot yet afford a computer so it will be interesting to see how social networks build up around cell phones.

When I sat in the train station to begin my journey home and was reading, I realized that not only is this mode of transportation quite common. It also to me represents a way of living that I experience so little of here in the US. I've ridden my share of public transportation while I lived in San Francisco and didn't have a car. But these days by and large I am driving by myself or with my family and don't have the direct experiences of others that I experience when I'm in China. It makes me wonder if my experience of my PLN has the same sort of separated or indirect experience of other as opposed to sitting on a train and having so much direct experience. I may ask of my Twitter network how to solve a problem, but for my wife she begins with calling close relationships and slowly if an answer is not found does she shift to more of a superficial connection. Is this natural way of connecting with others a better way to organize a social network?

If the majority of Chinese are coming with their cell phones, then what effect will this have on how Web 2.0 social networking sites develop. Certainly for those cites such as photography or music sharing they've had to spend a great deal of effort in trying to uphold copyright laws and distribution laws. There are no such restrictions in China, and people there are used to accessing music, movies, pictures for free, without any compunction. We have the luxury here of being able to afford the access to media. What will happen when more people participate that feel it is their right to have access whenever and wherever without giving thought to who should receive compensation. If in this time of micro-markets and the tiniest of margins a group doesn't even participate in fair use. How will the issue of DRM and other failures of the media companies be dealt with in light of the large groups of users who only believe in free?

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ILC Day Two

For the second and last day I attended the ILC, or Innovative Learning Conference there were three very good presos.

The first very early session was with Chris Walsh who shared reasons why our and our student's learning is moving from a temporary place driven context to a 24/7 environment. Or in other words, "learning extending beyond the classroom." He shared numerous examples in which the student is shifting their focus into a multi-media, mash-up, mixing creation driven world. He ended by sharing his new venture Brightstorm which will be launching shortly.

The next session was done by Ted Lai, (here's his blog post with links for the preso including slides). He shared many examples of very creative podcasts and iMovies in which the students showed their understanding of content through a means which is more natural to their learning. Ultimately, he also acknowledged that many of the sites that teacher's work at are still organized along more traditional styles of teaching. His steps to be successful in creating a 21st century classroom were.

1. Start small
2. Be a partner in learning
3. Add a twist of creativity
4. Practice flexibility
5. Publish the work to celebrate success

The last session in which I was able to focus was with Gary Stager. His fiery rhetoric made for an interesting explosion of ideas and the exhortation to change the classroom into a suitable and more effective learning environment for children. His focus was on ways to use a laptop in order to create such an environment.

Overall the level of presenters was good, and I hope the Innovative Learning Conference continues next year. As was my experience at the NECC it was just as much about the conversations outside of the presos as it was about the content being shared formally. It was great to meet Twitter friends again and some for the first time.

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Innovative Learning Conference 08

Yesterday was my first day of attending the ILC the Innovative Learning Conference in San Jose marking its first year of returning to Northern California.

The first session I was able to attend was Colette Cassinelli's session on VoiceThread including her wiki with lots of great resources. She also gave access to her presentation slides on Google so that there was an open chat with people outside the conference participating. She did a great job of stepping the audience through the process of creating a Voicethread along with the resources necessary to use copyright free pictures to incorporate.

Next session I attended was by Aaron Sams a Colorado educator teaching High School AP courses using vodcasting. The model involves using previously recorded screencasts being accessible via the web and as DVDs that the students can take home.

The last session I went to was by Gail Lovely on using Web 2.0 tools with elementary age students. The wiki she created has some excellent links to various examples and tools. One tool that is a web version of a tool many of us use is an online version for Inspiration.

Similar to the NECC conference I attended in San Antonio this year it is as much about meeting educators from my PLN network as it is about listening to presenters. Overall the conference is smaller in scale than the CUE conference or NECC but the quality in level of presenters so far has been just as high.

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