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Connected Courses

Hyper-connected learning – using Diigo to share reflections on a post reflecting on another post

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Photo http://realidadestatica.tumblr.com/post/21361359191/roads

So I’ve been using Diigo for quite a few years now – especially to save and annotate what I’ve found online and want to keep, and to be able to find it again later and share it easily.

What I haven’t done very much is use the annotation tool to share with others in a group. I’ve shared things with groups but – you know how it goes, you’re in and out of groups over the years, so you’re not really a part of the group in a meaningful or ongoing sense.  I admit that I try to engage in too many things on too many platforms at the same time, and recently I’m feeling the loss of a network of people I connect with in a deep way.

Since joining Connected Courses, the excitement of finding so many interesting people thinking and writing openly in blogs and on Twitter has blown my mind a little, and I’ve spent a lot of time getting to know people in this way, saving their blogs to Feedly, following them on Twitter (#ccourses) while growing a larger network, and reading their blog posts about the why of teaching.

Today, while reading Maha Bali‘s response post, Why read this, why read that, to Mimi Ito’s post, Connected learning = abundant opportunity + terror + hard attentional choices + productive tension (brilliant title, don’t you think?), I was happily disappearing  down the rabbit holes of her hyperlinks, when I stayed a bit longer in her link to the Diigo group for #ccourses, and I had a forehead slap moment. I was reading and getting excited by what I was reading, highlighting what spoke to me, and annotating my thoughts in Diigo – to myself! D’oh! How absurd was this scenario? I was part of Connected Courses, reading the same things as the very large cohort – why wasn’t I annotating to the group?

Okay, so that’s been said and I’ve added some annotations to the group for this post. And now I wait until I feel a tug on the line I’ve thrown out, bearing in mind that most participants live in a different time zone, and the interaction may not be in real time.  But potentially, Diigo is another way to feel connected in sharing ideas about a post or article – apart from Twitter, of course.

So I’m thinking that it would be very cool if we could use Diigo for something meaningful at school. Although I’ve tried a couple of times to get teachers interested in Diigo,  and nothing came of it, I might have another go following my renewed enthusiasm. And I’d also like to use Diigo for a class of students to analyse a text in small groups. That’s the kind of peer learning we need more of.

In the meantime, I thought I’d use my highlights and annotations as a way to populate this post, to share parts of Mimi Ito’s post and my thoughts as I’m reading. So what I’ve done is opened the Diigo annotations tab in my annotated version of the post, and copied the transcript of what I’ve highlighted and commented on.  A pretty easy way to throw content into your blog post if you ask me.  I think it should make sense – if you realise that I highlighted phrases and not whole sentences, and in some cases just words.

Here it is – my highlights of Maha Bali’s post about Mimi Ito’s post. This kind of reading and annotation practice is very rich even though it might seem complicated. To give a bit of background, Maha Bali is remarking on Mimi Ito’s statement that she finds reading books easier than wading through tweets and blogs. My annotated comments are in green. There are too many highlights to include all of them, so I’ll be selective. I’m going to add some thoughts as I go and these will be in red. You would probably have to read both posts for the following to make sense.

  • that she found reading books (quickly, i assume?) easier than wading through tweets and blogs; whereas I clearly did the tweets/blogs things quite comfortably but found reading books “too much”
    • I feel the same as Maha, easier to read and respond to blog posts than read a book on my own – with nobody to talk to and no way of sharing my thoughts. Claustrophobic.comment byTania Sheko
  • Anyway, it made me reflect on why I, someone who LOVES reading by all accounts, have a strong preference for reading blogs/tweets over books/academic articles in MOOCs. There are many reasons,
    • This is something I’ve been thinking about for ages but feeling like I’ve failed in that I’ve lost the enthusiasm for reading books, or maybe don’t have the focus stamina any more. Thanks for writing this out, Maha, I might do my own blog reflection.comment byTania Sheko
  • Mimi’s point that a connected learning experience “welcomes people with different dispositions and orientations to learning”,

I love this aspect of online learning – it often reveals surprising treasures from students who are too shy to have a voice in class.

  • In terms of learning: Is the MOOC about experiencing connecting? Or about reading about it?
  • the MOOC is about reflecting on connecting,
  • My first PhD supervisor was big on encouraging me to read diverse articles not single-authored books

It’s the diversity of the ‘chaotic’ stream of shared information and ideas in Connected Courses that excites me.

  • My second supervisor (who replaced the first) was big on me reading original works by e.g. Marx, Foucault, etc.
  • I also find reading translated works really difficult and find it a better investment of my time to first read more contemporary (or at least, more education-focused) interpretations of the “greats” works, before reading the original. It helps me read it better

Thanks so much for saying this! I always feel guilty when I don’t manage to read a challenging book list. What you do is a much more productive way of managing things.

  • I do not value the book-authors more than I value the blog-authors
  • can interact with them more regularly
  • more accessible, easier to read quickly

We should revise our separation of authoritative information especially as many authors are also bloggers.

  • 2. Attention issues
  • Philosophical approach to reading
  • This is particularly funny because I keep not finding time to read the”attention literacies” part in Howard Rheingold’s Net Smart, as I get ‘distracted’ into reading different parts of it (i’ve probably read half the book already, just not in order).
  • And that’s why I voice these things in MOOCs, because I am pretty sure that courses about connection want ppl to feel they can participate.
  • So basically, I hope to engage with these readings “my way” (so not deeply with each entire book, unless it draws me in, but with parts of it)
  • hope that blog posts by other people & the hangout will fill me in second-hand (you see what I am doing here, don’t you?)
    • Very clever. I think this method wards away the guilts and also sustains engagement in the course. The alternative would be to give up and feel defeated if you couldn’t do everything.comment byTania Sheko
  • P.S. some ppl may say that w blog posts u have no guarantee of quality vs a book recommended by the facilitators. However, there are many ways to gauge a blog’s quality, incl knowing the person, seeing it retweeted often or with many comments – and it takes v little time to skim it to decide to read deeply;

I think that evaluating blog posts is an important skill, and definitely, with all the information online, some of it from experts who also publish in peer-reviewed journals, or books, that it is important to encourage students to discover what experts and professional people post online, and evaluate these as they would anything else.

  • lovely quotes from Mimi’s post:
  • Connected Courses is a veritable cornucopia of ways of participating with no central platform.
  • colliding through a loosely orchestrated cross-network remix, immersive theater where participants are all experiencing a different narrative.
  • hybrid network, more like a constellation that looks different based on where one stands and who one is.
  • a site of productive tension that is characteristic of connected learning.

I agree with Maha; these are exquisite quotes. 

  • Connected learning is predicated on bringing together three spheres of learning that are most commonly disconnected in our lives:
  • peer sociability
  • personal interests/affinity
  • opportunities for recognition.

That is, for us in Connected Courses:

  • our personal interests and expertise
  • reciprocity and fun in the social stream
  • institutional status/reputation

 

Thanks Maha and Mimi for your insightful reflections. I’ve had fun thinking about things in this connected way, and hope to make headway into a more connected way of reflecting using Diigo groups.

21st century learning, Education, networking, teachers, teaching, technology

Wisdom from the periphery

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As always, I’m amazed by the wisdom of the people who form my online network. My last post was written out of the frustration I was feeling when I was temporarily overwhelmed by a sense of isolation – it seemed to me that I was speaking a foreign language amongst many of those around me. It wasn’t long before I started to receive comments from other educators – intelligent, diverse and encouraging comments. My sense of isolation was short-lived. These people have become colleagues regardless of their geographical location. They have become valuable friends and colleagues, sharing their views based on experience and reflection. I feel inspired and supported by these people; thankyou to all of you.

I would recommend you read all the comments, and I’d like to take the opportunity to feature the last comment I’ve received so far, because it would be a shame to leave it buried. I admire Paul Stewart’s deep thinking, and I think he eloquently expresses what many of us can relate to:

A wonderful post. It’s a reminder that we’re not all on the same page. Teachers are an eclectic bunch, and this should be a good thing – I abhor homogeneity, as do kids – but I can appreciate your frustration that our differences result in division. Ironically, it is our diversity that should unite us – it’s what makes us interesting to our students.

That said, I find it difficult to understand how educators – people charged with the responsibility of extending our youth, could be so reluctant to understand the context in which today’s youth develop. These teachers often see school as separate to the world outside, rather than an essential part of it.

Now I don’t buy into the whole digital natives nonsense (now there’s a flawed concept that has got more mileage than it deserved) but I do believe it is the role of any educator to constantly seek out new ways to engage, stimulate and challenge their students. Educators should be provocative. They should be unsettling (but in a good way).

And students? Well, students should be constantly shedding their skin in a classroom. They should be pushed to embrace change by experiencing it.

Now of course, you don’t need to use technology every minute of a lesson to achieve such outcomes, but it puzzles me that some teachers can so easily dismiss the opportunities that lie in technology: the chance to produce rather than consume, the chance to collaborate across time and space, the chance to make a mark upon society without using a spray can. Technology gives students so many tools to analyse, design, produce and investigate and these should not be denied to kids simply because a teacher is unfamilar with such tools.

I added dumplings to a chicken curry I made the other day and one of my progeny stuck out his bottom lip and refused to eat. After much coaxing, he tried one, then two… Ten minutes later he stuck out his bowl for seconds. I was pleased but I wish it didn’t have to be so hard. It’s sometimes like that with teachers (and they do not have the defence of youth to excuse their reactions to new experiences).

Your post really made me think of how different people are. As I get older, I am increasingly aware that I am approaching a time when there will be fewer days in front of me than there are behind me, and that makes me want to pack in as many new experiences as possible. The thought of doing something the same way twice kind of depresses me. The thought of teaching the same lesson that I taught five years ago, ignoring all the incredible changes that have happened in the world, now that would lead to ennui so crippling, I wouldn’t get out of bed.

I don’t think you’re alone in getting frustrated in having to justify your position, but that’s the lot of innovative people. By pushing the boundaries, you (by definition) place yourself on the periphery. There will always be a need to supply justifications to employers (they have a right to ask) but I hope we can move to a place in education where the innovative and bold are not subject to the sort of scepticism you allude to in your post.

Thankyou for taking the time to reply so thoughtfully, Paul. This line made me sit up and take notice:

These teachers often see school as separate to the world outside, rather than an essential part of it.

How many of us have thought about whether what we do at school has anything to do with the outside world? That would make an interesting survey, don’t you think?

Education, photos, Web 2.0, writing

A picture’s worth a thousand words

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I found ‘A picture’s worth’ on the Learning technology teacher development blog. it’s a wonderful collective version of people’s stories behind their own photos – even more interesting as a kaleidoscopic collection. Starting as a personal project, ‘A picture’s worth’ has developed into a pictorial record of varied experiences and reflections. Submissions of photos and text between 300 and 1000 words are moderated, and copyright for photos and essay remains with the author.

Some authors will include website links, and a map showing where the photo adds to the authenticity of the story. I like this idea for the classroom. Rather than write the usual story about a personal photo, students can showcase to a peer audience, and the shared stories could trigger ideas. It’s always interesting to see what subject matter is chosen and for what reason. Here’s an example of someone who loves photographing little forgotten theatres. Some of these stories are more intimate than others. Here’s an intimate, emotional one about a family coping with a dying grandmother. Here’s a confronting, brave one about abuse called ‘Bruised twice’.

The picture inserted in this post is of my church in Brunswick, Melbourne, on Merri Creek, although it could well be in Russia. This church building houses many stories, from its inception which remained a dream for many decades, including the efforts of many people, some of whom never saw the completed project, to the present day. And it will be connected to many different families and individuals in years to come.

The picture below is the inside of the church looking up at the cupol.

art, Children's books

Coveting covers

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The Book Cover Appreciation gallery is for hardcore bookcover lovers. You can get into really heavy discussion about the details of the book cover. Clicking on the cover takes you to the comment page. The blog is updated several times a week.

Here’s an example of a comment about an Animal Farm book cover:
Although I have often conflicted about Shepard’s work and his source materials which could be debated as dubious. The propaganda style works especially since these are anti-socialist/communist novels. The Obey logo I find quite funny on the covers, how many designers have the balls or be allowed to put there personal logo on a book cover, the mark of an iconoclast

Can you get passionate about a book cover?

Web 2.0

Web 2.0 guilt

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WunderkammerJohn Larkin’s blog struck a chord with me when he talked about signing up for everything under the sun ‘in a drunken Web 2.0 haze’. Me too. My ‘registrations’ information word doc is now into its third page – yes, you heard correctly. But what am I to do!? There’s so much out there, and I’m like a child in a lolly shop. All the lollies are free, did I mention? As John says, ‘too much choice does create paralysis. Like the aisles in a supermarket. Too much choice is a legacy of the twentieth century I guess’. And I do love knowledge, discussion, recommendation, links to fabulous resources. And I love passing these on to other people. Still, this weekend I have done other things: boring house stuff, baked a blueberry crumble cake, helped my younger son with a project about earthquake-safe houses, bought a barbecue, watched an energizing Nigel Kennedy concert on DVD, had breakfast at Brunetti’s, visited Wunderkammer, read my older son’s year 12 psychology research essay, played with the dog…. so you see, it’s not that bad.
I loved one of the comments on John Larkin’s blog: ‘Set up a new group? What should we call it? “Clayton’s 2.0″? The group you have when you are not having a group?’