At the beginning of the 1st Meeting of TICS Virtual and teaching at the highest level UBA # UBATIC, I attended the virtual presentation [see video on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhz6ta0dLdU] bearing the title of this post by Alejandro Piscitelli – philosopher and specialist in Internet and digital media, university lecturer and author of several books and articles. In this video,  Alejandro exposes his concerns and experiences on the current scenario of teaching practices in the upper level ( in Argentina) reviewing theoretical notions (Piaget’s pedagogy of Paulo Freire, Lacan, structuralism, intelligence colectivaentre other), authors (Sherry Turkle, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Robert Putnam with Boiling Alone, among others) and collective learning environments (those created in Moodle, or experiences: COURSERA, OPNEN MIT courseware, etc …). Alejandro also invites new ways to think and perceptual horizons referred to the passage in the book culture to digital culture. Its premise is very interesting, and I recommend him fully because each may draw their own senses and questions.

In this regard, I am interested to highlight some issues and problems that are referred to the redefinition of the meaning of “education” that challenge cognitive monopolies. In particularly, in relation to the academy university (as traditional institution) to technological upgrading Internet (1st Revolution: writing, printing the 2nd, 3rd Internet):

• Permanent polarizations on internet (technophobia, technophilia)
• War by appropriating  sense spaces that challenge the notion of authorship and intellectual property
• The authorship of the book Culture versus the Culture Free or Open knowledge (Open Knowledge)
• Information access to closed and open access content
• Redefinition of the concept of personal subjectivity; emergence of collective intelligence
• Traditional and new pedagogies Pedagogy budding
• Revision of the authority over the “scientific”
• The manner and time in which communicates the knowledge is traditionally  imparted subverted by access (surf) to: you tube (each minute of video requires production 52horas one day 14,000 hours of video production), Facebook, twitter , etc.

 Alejandro ´s speech is interesting because it recovers debates and perspectives that open new horizons of thought to scenarios in which open knowledge, collaborative participation, collective decisions, social interests will permeate the sense of learning and experiences training and development for life. As quoted Alejandro Piscitelli, you can “pour mieux sauter reculer” (go back before the leap forward thimble) to, as does the American writer and anthropologist and ethnographer first communication Sherry Turkle in education who has the courage to review and critically questioned after a decade starting their grievances in his latest book – review, step back and see with a new perspective and future scenarios.

FUTURE: Is there life in the next stage of formal education?

In this regard, I find it interesting to connect the issues above exposed to those raised by Anka Mulder (*) who show possible answers in relation to the monopoly of knowledge in academic areas. These arguments are cited in the article by D. D. Guttenplan entitled “Open Resources: Knowledge Is Transforming the Way Spread, New York Times.

(*) Anka Mulder is Secretary General of the Technical University of Delft (UK) and made this presentation at the “Open Education Week,” an event held in early March (2012) on the campus of the University of California, Irvine, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology at the University of Cape Town, Leeds Metropolitan University in England, and the National Science Library in Beijing. I am interested in his approach and referred to the problems of the universities that are experiencing this “cognitive restructuring” to “open knowledge” within their educational walls.

Mudler highlights the importance of open resources and mentions five issues to be reviewing at universities:

-Teaching
-Space for social interaction and knowledge of students
Test-supply feedback in the form of ratings;
-How to maintain institutional reputation (being a good place to learn)
-How to certify what graduates know through accreditation

Mudler said also that:

-There is a kind of skepticism about the tendency to move content online;
-Economic issues is a barrier to the growth of open source;
-Completion rates of students in purely online programs are very low.
-The organizational-educational and research have to adjust their digitalization processes, management and reuse of knowledge objects to the extent that the process can become routine and less exepansive.
-Teachers and researchers will have to achieve a paradigm leap in the ability to acquire, assimilate, exchange knowledge.

Furthermore, Mudler highlighted three important technical aspects of law and society towards knowledge-based e-:

1) Maintain an open and widely accessible network worldwide.
2) Having the most powerful tools for knowledge extraction, which complies with “open” standard for data format and communication protocols.
3) Propose viable plans law to protect authorship.

Finally, several proposals Mudler presents:

• Foster the study of new technologies and methodologies for knowledge production simple, accessible and reusable, with special attention to issues of localization (translation).
• Encourage pioneering experiments, highlighting success stories and best practices.
• The establishment of a board of experts to gather, evaluate and maintain a repository of available technologies of open source software for creating and using knowledge objects and sessions management e-learning, also producing relevant documentation as necessary.
• Establishment of a Standing Committee and open to make the best ‘open’ licensing agreements for digital content, with particular attention to the international legislation
• A regional and inter-annual conference to disseminate achievements.

We could consider that the future scenario of the learning, as Alejandro Piscitelli said in the text quoted above, is to overcome the dualisms (a better to learning with or without ICTs) and polarized positions. Knowledge sharing is a fundamental condition of collaborative research and teaching and learning. In that sense openness to collaborative resources should be considered, also suggestions Ana Mudler-to enable the exchange of research and knowledge as well as their dissemination so as to facilitate their access by interested persons and that needed.

In my opinion, this process will be accompanied by a new media ecology and revision of beliefs and mandates of aspects involving traditional teaching will increasingly focus on education without borders or levels (as it is fragmented by academic years training), but in other more critical that contribute to meaning in life.

The word “wiki” is a short form of the Hawaian wiki wiki, which means “quick”. The well known wiki is Wikipedia, the most important site for educators that most represents the potential on collaboration on the web (All Wikimedia projects).

Working with wikis was one of the most rewarding experiences that I ever had. In my experience as a professor of Technology Information and Communication in a course at university (UCES), using eduwiki as a learning support tool- and a collection of new media tools like blogs, yahoo groups, social bookmarking- reused for educational purposes, changed my thinking about how students create contents. It is a very democratic process on knowledge creation. Students might generate contents based on their course reading and work.

This was an interesting opportunity to engaging student in participatory learning, with class generated lists of task deadlines and procedures. Using wikis at project teams was also a way to track their work.

In small groups of students, they interact editing their writings, publishing videos, and add tags and links to contextualize information, notes and associated commentaries about weekly thematic several topics from article readings for each weeks.

Anyone can add, modify, delete and re write information and resources (links to other sites, images, videos, podcasts, add pages, documents, etc..) there with several levels of permission to do this.(read only, read and write, read write and eliminate, all of them and administering the site; etc…)

How does it work?

Every page on a wiki has a link that allows edit the page, when clicking it takes you to the editor that enables you to make yours editing. There is a page history that allowed you to revert back to a previous version of the page. It shows you when the changes were made by whom and the content that was changed.

Wikis are next to open source ideal that the collectively production of knowledge is part of the process.

From my experience…

Wiki project was a learning support tool and, in order to let students be oriented to the whole process there were tasks and a timeline to the entire collaborative work. We must provide a training period in order to let them learn the tool -as a community developed resource- and provide learners guidances to clarify goals and of the project before commencing with it.

The whole class work consisted on co create a wiki source in wetpaint tool with contents of many of the concepts of the course program: papers with presentation of the theme, writings to sum up ideas and present cases as examples of applied those ideas, with link references to their blogs and other blogs to contextualize, videos produced by the students themselves with their arguments that support the creation and a glossary of the main concepts with links to this contents. All the entries have had references from the sites and books that were sources for their posts.

Every group of students had different tasks that rotates weekly, so at the end of the project, as they have already read, written, commented and evaluated others students work. So the wiki process had a collaborative revision in which students (while monitoring the progress and provide feedback) can see the evolution and recognize that could always be made better and there the students recognize that the collaboration itself made it a valuable resource.

In the end, in a special class, in groups they made a final presentation (in a PechaKucha style ) to the course (as an audience ) the topics that they co produced and share a synthesis of the learning experience. Some of the wiki experiences in which I participate are here .

What collaborative skills do students developed?

Once they learn how to edit entries and publish information, collaborative skills that students may develop in a wiki process may be: respect others ideas, negotiating with others to agree on correctness, meaning, relevance; etc.

Why wikis on peer learning?

Because wikis may contribute that students teach each other that includes active learning (reflexive, writing, reading, audio visual levels), student engagement, generating and participating learning, reading and writing in the web 2.0, appreciation of multiples perspectives. Appart from the benefits and limitations that mentioned Regis Barondeau, a french rechercher on wikis applied on organizations who takes part on a collaborative wikibook project (part of a collaborative experience in a Social Media Clasroom) coordinated by Howard Rheingold, wiki work is also an opportunity to introduce students to the concepts of open source software, community collaboration, intellectual property and public domain. It contributes to an activity that requires interweaving of thoughts and not as a result of individual thoughts and actions.

Can be applied in any learning environment (between pairs of students, teachers, researchers) and virtual or blended mode, to investigate, as a repository of links and references, as wikibook projects developed by a community interested in a particular idea or topic.

Wetpaint wiki in plain English, You Tube.

Wiki examples:

Wikiboo
Wiki Resources
Tiki Wiki
Media Wiki
Wikipedia
Wikiquote
Wikisource
Wikispaces
Wikiversity
Wikitionary

As a facilitator and professor at university, I am interesting on reflecting, reading and learning about learning environment and learning experiences, specially the ones that emerged through on line communities. That involves collaborative and cooperative work, sometimes in working groups, with dyads or many other ways.

Before I have reflected about Connectivism pedadogy theory in a MOOC by Stephen Downes and George Siemens. This experience was exciting and I have had learned a lot.

Today I am very grateful to contribute to help use a forum and wiki to start creating a Peeragogy handbook on Peeragogy Virtual Course by Howard Rheingold.  Regarding this,  I have the extraordinary opportunity to reflect and write about Peer-organized pedagogy (P2P). As it is a new term for me, I have looked for it:

“Peeragogy (which he refers to as “paragogy”), is a collection of “the best practices of effective peer learning.”

“It is also a theory of peer-to-peer learning and teaching that addresses the challenge of peer-producing a useful and supportive context for self-directed learning”.Charles Jeffrey Danoff 
“Peer to peer (P2PU)” Philipp Schmidt believes that a set of specific factors made space for initiatives like P2PU to come about: an abundance of high quality free content, the ability to connect with millions of learners on the Internet, and a series of challenges in higher education.

In the context to start creating a peeragogy handbook Howard exposed some main issues to think:

• What does a group of people who want to colearn a subject together need to know about methods, pedagogy, resources, tech to put it together themselves?
• To find, vet, prioritize resources, construct a syllabus and learning activities, and use online media to co-teach, co-learn- dividing the labor of facilitation?

Regarding the questions below, I consider that learning is a social phenomenon that happens on an personal and interpersonal level. In this regard, educational technologies can facilitate the content and make the learning experience a more meaningful and friendly, but only the student will develop their subject knowledge through practice, reflection and skills to get in game the time to learn.

Increased accessibility to information networks enable the development of collaborative learning. And networked people  group learning, can contribute in building knowledge collectively.

Collaborative work in an online group can help to develop skills and competences needed in a learning community.

With regard to the article:”Toward Peeragogy“, Howard wrote  his experience about an experiment peer-to-peer, in a global learning via the internet and social networks. On this article, Howard shared his insights based on his personal experience. I consider valuable that through collective discussion and argument, Howard explained how the tacit knowledge becomes explicit knowledge that he transmitted in formal language.

On the following I write some concepts from several ideas about Howard´s experience regarding Peeragogy that I found interesting because they reflects a self acknowledgment of this theory:

Sharing power (empowering students): “The more I give my teacher-power to students and encourage them to take more responsibility for their own learning, the more they show me how to redesign my ways of teaching”.

Sharing Interactivity & Collaboration “We had learned that learning to collaborate ought to be collaborative — the teams should interact with the other students in the class as co-responsible learners during the collaboration process, not just as an audience for the final product”.

Sharing responsibility: “I asked several students to take responsibility each week for conveying the main points of the texts and helping me to engage others in classroom discussions about the readings”.

Shared meanings: “Co-learners came into my vocabulary and practice when I started experimenting with my own purely online courses”.

Shared Knowledge: “…when I tell them I’m attuned to learning from them while they are learning from me”.

Clearly, Howard ´s experience revealed great flexibility and reflection in the pace of learning and his planning learning path. This had allowed further customization of the process and  resulted in increased motivation for students and Howard himself.

In Howard´s words: “It is a challenge teaching and workshopping participatory media literacy, to make sure we all know how to read and make the new media that we’re all creating together”.

The commitment of “creating together” assumes that collaboration peer to peer is the center of the educational peeragogy experience. That invites us to reflect out of the box from traditional learning.

I have had an experience on a MOOC by the end of July 2010 and it was about Critical Thinking. This concept involves  an essential personal skill that we must use to filter information and develop understanding. The experience was productive and an inner process. I learned in a new way to connect and collaborate to others. I think that “connecting  & collaborating” are challenges during the long life learning because of the complex of the learning environment which is open and always changing.

The characteristics of a MOOC are:

• Course Open
• Participatory
• Distributed
• Life Long Network Learning

I can agree with Jennymackness in that, in comparisson with CCK2010, this new Session CCK11 has a new distributed learning approach that facilitates learning autonomy. I can see that there is no central meeting place.

I order to be in touch and connected & collaborating:

I have a delicious account

http://www.delicious.com/marenas

My account in Twitter @maferarenas
My account in Facebook @ferarenas

I expect to experience learning connection and collaboration as Georges Siemens ´s  point of view of Connectivism as a Science of  Change.

Even though there is a link on the course web, I decided to post this video to share with the lecturers that describes what is and what is not a MOOC in an didactic way.

What is a MOOC?

Written and Narrated by Dave Cormier
Video by Neal Gillis

Massive Open Online Courses for Network Creation
by Davecormier

First week and the topic is to clarify the concepts of Personal Learning Environments (PLE) and Networks and to evaluate it against our own experience with the intent of developing a comprehensive understanding of them.

On the following, there is a Learning Design Diagram (hybrid abstract model) (1) that reflects the passage from Closed Models to Open Models of learning Design from my own experience.

Learning Design Diagram (by @maferarenas)

On the diagram above, we can see the changes that remain on Learning Models Design with the emergency of Web 2.0 environment.

Here are the main features:

1. From linear learning to interactive learning hypermedia (links + multimedia).

2. Instruction to the construction of learning and knowledge discovery.

3. Of learning focused on the expert teacher by learning focused on the learner.

4. Absorb the content and knowledge to learning how to learn, think critically and navigate.

5. Learning to learn mass customized.

6. Learning bored by inactivity to learning fun and challenging.

7. Of learning that define the teacher as a transmitter to learn that it is the teacher as a facilitator.

8. Of learning by interacting only with materials, to learn by interacting others also networked synchronously and asynchronously.

9.Traditional environment has changes to sensitive environments that influence on interpretation processes.

10. From consumption of information to User Generated Contents (CGU).

When reading from  the reviews, Ruth´s presentation(3), papers and diagrams about Learning Design Models, we can find different terms about them: Learning Management Systems (LMS) ,Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) (4), Content Management System (CMS), Personal Learning Environment (PLE) (5), Personal Learning Network (PLN)(6), Massive Open Online Course (MOOC), among others.

Different Paradigms as Behaviorism, Social cognitivism, Constructivism,Andragogy (Adult learning),  Connectivism, Design Based, Humanism and many theorists (B.F. Skinner, Jean Piaget, L. Vygotsky, Dewey, Vico, Rorty, Bruner Stephen Downes, George Siemens, Colin Milligan, Malcolm Knowles, etc…) try to name the learning experience and develop a model that represents accuracy the learning process. All of them are organized on  models from the epistemology that are reflected on their own field and language domain.

There were many efforts to offer a model and makes  a definition of the learning design. Many of the theories offers different ways in which conceptualize and discuss about the problems and benefits of Learning Design. Most of those ways, have a ‘pedagogy’ behind, comes from common places and beliefs about “Learning” and bring up new problems from other places. So, scientific theories have scientific vocabulary and language with wich they assign words to ideas. As we can observe from the papers of this week, there is a semantic difference among terms.

Apart from the differences of approach, most of the theories have a common way in which named their models.

The use of Metaphors to label models is the way in which perceptions, values and paradigms from theories are reflected. Metaphors show us the way in which we must understand concepts. So the more naturalized they are, the most efficient in their use.

But,  what are the reasons that make metaphors of Personal Learning Environment (PLE) and Personal Learning Network (PLN) effective? Which implicit values do they have to improve learning?

Regarding the first question, the transition to Web 2.0 makes the possibility to design learning centered on the learner. So Personalization is the main concept that reflect a change of model.

Environment and Networks are words that associated to the concept of “Personal” connote different senses.

PLE design is understand ” as if it were a category of technology in the same sense as the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) design, in fact we envisage situations where the PLE is not a single piece of software, but instead the collection of tools used by a user to meet their needs as part of their personal working and learning routine. So, the characteristics of the PLE design may be achieved using a combination of existing devices (laptops, mobile phones, portable media devices), applications (news readers, instant messaging clients, browsers, calendars) and services (social bookmark
services, weblogs, wikis) within what may be thought of as the practice of personal learning using technology” Dave Cormier (1).

So, I agree with Dave Cormier about the difference between PLE and PLN:

“The distinction,  is that the folks who talk about PLN are focusing on the people who make up the learning that they are doing and believe that the PLE people are mostly concerned about the technology that makes up the learning space. (blogs, wikis, webpages, forums, broadcasts etc…)” .

Which implicit values do they have to improve learning?

PLE and PLN are terms associated to interactions, to networking in which a learner is engaged to others on open environments, including education, work, and leisure activities.This terms reflect a new organization of the learning experience (for the longlife) where critical thinking, collaboration, and user content creation are main features.

Summarizing, as the scientific fields are discursive fields, in the evolution of the sciences and their epistemologies, appear new languages and fragments of the knowledge that makes new contributions to the disciplines. On Learning Design, we can identify this process and find that PLE, PLN concepts acquire new semantic dimensions that reflect a way to model the reality of web 2.0, the new subjectivity and social interactions.

……………………………………………………………………..

(1). Scott Leslie’s Mother of All PLE Diagram Compilation
(2). Personal Learning Environments: Challenging the dominant design of educational systems (.pdf)
(3). The Design and Development of a Personal Learning Environment
(4). Idem 2.
(5). EDUCAUSE: 7 Things you should know about PLE’s (.pdf)
(6) Developing Personal Learning Networks for Open and Social Learning (.pdf)

John ´s post motivated me to think on the debate about open and close education with emerging technologies that  is most understood by regarding formal and non formal way.  This is a duality that remains on the discussion of  learning with emerging technologies.

This question takes me back to the opposition (Pekka Himanen in his book  “Hacker Ethic“) of the concept of  the following models:  the Academy or Bazaar (open) and Monastery and Cathedral (closed). In the first,  students are treated as learning partners. Furthermore, there is a predominantly free access system, ideas are trusted and are exposed to the entire community for criticism and approval and the absence of rigid structures.  However, the latter models have a structure (organization) fixed and closed, the ideas are presented in finished form. The  traditional model of learning remains on the closed models, where  the teachers have the knowledge, and there is an  unidirectionally transference  to the student knowledge. This is the model that has prevailed since the nineteenth century. But context had change.

Since  I have been experiencing the course #CritLit2010 , I was able to reach many interesting information and papers that came from contributions to many colleagues that I could have never been able to reach and filter by my own. Most of this information had extraordinary value because it was elaborated, filtered and shared from them.
Some of these colleagues that enriched my experience came from the course and others emerged on the social network. So, how my learning experience could  had been if it was not in an open learning environment?.

The book I read today called “Learning Network Services for Professional Development” By Rob Koper (thanks to Giorgio Bertin)  gave  me more understanding about “close” and “open” education. Even though, to reflect about it, we can not avoid to questioning the semantic meaning of  “close” and “open” education and the paradigm from which we label in this way education. In the book,  Rob Koper (a scientific from Centre for Learning Sciences and Technologies  CELSTEC)  deepens on the concept of learning on social networks and explore the tension between traditional and  and non traditional education.

On the following I will develop the main ideas I extracted
from the book. In the end, there is a video made by Carl
Anderson that is a visual explanation about how to build
professional networks that I found funny and interesting for this topic. Hope you enjoy it and debate about agreements or disagreements  about  “Open or Close” that education is labeled. If this duality comes separated or we can learn from it.

by Mark Smithers

Learning from Social Network
By Rob Koper (compilator)

Learning networks has to bearing on formal learning at all.
That is because the initial education of children and
adolescents will be best served by a formal approach to it.

Indeed formal education attempts are being made to adapt the traditional push model and make it adopt features of the kind of pull model form Social Network.
Promoting a Pull model requires a rethinking of much conventional wisdom.

Learning networks allows us to break away from conventional wisdom, precisely because several of the traditional assumptions that one surrendipitiously makes, are abandoned or at leas questioned. The unconventional attitude which thinking in terms of learning networks requires that may teach us valuable lessons from learning as well.

Learning networks may not be equated as a kind of community. Learning networks can be understood as a collection of people that share interest and information in a particular topic about to further educate themselves. In terms of sociability they can´t be consider as a community if sociability emerges in an environment like a desert.

There is ample evidence that collaboration and social setting significantly improve learning outcomes.

Two kinds reasons for participating in a Learning network:

• It benefit you as a professional, prospective or actual
• It improves your learning as collaboration arise spontaneous.

Which are specific characteristics that professionals and non formal learning should take?

1. are self directed and take responsibility for their own learning process;
2. can participate, at the same time, in formal and non formal learning activities;
3. are heterogeneous respect to competences acquired and sought;
4. should be stimulated and enabled to project themselves and engage a community of common interests with the contacts they gather.

In conclusion, learning network is more about an open model than closed. This new point of view can awake a discussion matter about Pedagogical Principles, the benefits and the problems about formal and non formal education that remain since from many years of learning from a Traditional Paradigm.

The matter I consider important  in learning networks is to think about the complexity to develop learning objectives and the way the design of learning experience in those environments can contribute to the educational goals. There is another paradigm (constructivism, connectivism, among others) to understand learning network that confront form traditional educational principles which we should rethink.

“Emergence happens where the visible and the invisible meet”

By Michelle James on The Self-Organization of Creative Emergence (by Giorgio Bertini)

Here is  a video “Building Your Own Personal Learning Network” made by Carl Anderson about the  powerful idea emerging regarding using social media tools (web 2.0) to build personal learning networks. Hope you  enjoy it.

Building Your Own Personal Learning Network from Carl Anderson on Vimeo.

“Learning in social networks.
How can micro blogging help   participation?”

stumbleupon.com

My motivation to this post came from the topic of “Measuring the Unmeasurable: Digital Participation Seminar” that was developed by Steve  Mackenzie on his interesting entry named “Digital Participation, Digital Inclusion and Social Learning”.

I am interested on  micro blogging in a blended learning environment as a quick and easy medium for informal
communication. Since I began to use Twitter (this service of  micro blogging ), I discovered that apart from being in touch with people by telling them in 140 characters “What I am doing at anytime” , I found that Twitter can be an engaging tool for a community of students and teachers (and colleagues) that provides an opportunity of innovation on the (formal and informal) learning experience.

The purpose of this post is to give an overview of the
characteristics on  micro blogging, its contributions on
engaging learning, the critical literacies and the benefits
and problems. Finally, there is a reference to a Twitter
learning experience.

I will intended to answer the following questions in order to provide another framework when designing and implementing learning to engage participation:

1. Can tweeting help your teaching?

2. Why  micro blogging (Twitter) to social learning?

3. How to guide learners to engage on  micro blogging on-line learning?

4. Is there any micro blogging strategy for the blended classrooms?.

5. Which are the critical literacies on micro blogging?

6. Which are the benefits and the problems on micro blogging?

7. Is there any learning experience? … A Twitter Experiment.

Here are the answers:

1. “Can tweeting help your teaching?

“Twitter is a social network in which the members of a
community share their current activity by answering the question “What are you doing?” in 140 characters. This form of social interaction is called micro blogging.

Regarding this, I found an  article from National Education Association (NEA) that  answers  synthetically the above question.  It says: “Twitter won’t change your life, but it might make your job more fun and a little easier”. I will develop this topic in the following items.

2. Why  micro blogging (Twitter) to engaging social learning?

First of all, micro blogging tools motivates learners because of the sense of connections in real time. Twitter enables to post short ( sinchronic and asinchronic ) messages that are distributed within a learning community. It also  provides the opportunity to interact with others through certain topics  and interests, developing communicative and cultural competences.

Second, Twitter is accessibly from almost everywhere. So students can practice by posting and recieving messages from different ways: their mobile devices, a web page, from instant messengers and their  desktops. Students can also  decide how
much time they spend reading and writing messages.

Third, Twitter is suitable for integration.The use of Twitter as an online learning  community can help to integrate students in the community who could not attend classroom. This gives a closeness sense among them and teachers or facilitators.

3. How to guide engaging learning with micro blogging?

Engaged learning (Josey Bass; 2004) is a collaborative learning process in which the teacher and the student are partners in constructing knowledge and reflect about problems. Engaged learning may require a cognitive and affective learner connection with the strategy and the learning conditions. And Twitter provides an informal communication that most young students are familiar with. So most learners can demonstrate the skills required and are able to understand and adopt the strategy.

So, it is necessarily to set the  strategy ´s stage
appropriately. Then, we will see how you could do it

4. Is there any micro blogging strategy for the blended classrooms?.

As the classroom activities may include synchronic and asychronic way ( which are common on micro blogging), the most frequent Twitter usage types are: daily chatter, conversations, sharing information and reporting news.

In micro blogging strategy for the blended classrooms there are some tips to follow:

Firstly, the instructor will inform the students about the learning proposals and will give them the paper to work.

About Twitter

A. The instructor create a new and personal Twitter account.

B. The students  of the class (as homework) were prompted to  create their own account and to become “friends” with the instructor’s account as well as with the accounts of the other students.

C. Since each Twitter user receives the messages
of his or her friends, each student who followed the
instruction would receive the messages of his/her fellow students and of the instructor.

D. The students were then told to post at least a number of   messages a week and to  read the incoming
messages of their fellow students.

About micro blogging activities

E. Activities should be decentered and group dynamics should place more emphasis on student tweets rather than on teacher led tweets.

F. (Guideline) “Activities should take advantage of features like:

1. Backchannel
2. Hashtags
3. Synchronous capabilities
4. Add on “aftermarket” features like twit pages:  twitter scoop or Between
5. Collaborative process

Activities don’t have to take in all of the above to be
considered twitter efficient, but should include one of the core values or characteristics of the rubric”.

Some tips to take into account in a micro blogging  activity:

• Whether the  activity will contribute to the learning objectives of the classroom.

• How the needs of the learner will be met.

• If the  micro blogging will force to ideas to formulate them precisely.

5. Which are the critical literacies on micro blogging? (from Microblogging for Language Learning: Using Twitter to Train Communicative and Cultural Competence )

Twitter requires training of aspects of communicative
competence as well as cultural competence.

Communicative competence consists of  four components:

• grammatical competence (words and rules);
• sociolinguistic competence (appropriateness);
• discourse competence (cohesion and coherence),
• strategic competence (appropriate use of communication strategies).
• cultural competence

Grammatical competence (words and rules):
it involves the ability to use words correctly, according with grammatical rules.

Sociolinguistic Competence: is the ability to use and respond to language appropriately, with regard to the setting, the topic, and the relationships among the community. It includes the ability to express a specific attitude (courtesy, friendliness, annoyance).The overall atmosphere on Twitter was polite and friendly; consequently the main style was in general colloquial.

Discourse competence (cohesion and coherence): it refers to the ability to understand and construct several kinds of texts.

Strategic Competence: it refers to the ability to handle communication breakdowns. In the following, we focus merely on how the students react if they don’t know. Also, the ability to be concise which is important to a clear thinking and efficient communication.

Cultural competence: it helps people from different parts of the world to effectively interact across cultures.  It consists of four categories: awareness of one’s own cultural worldview, attitude towards cultural differences, knowledge of different cultural practices and worldviews, and cross-cultural skills.

6. Which are the benefits and the problems on micro blogging?

Benefits

• Mirco blogging applications (like Twitter) are simple to use, to formulate ideas precisely;

• micro blogging invites diversity and traffic;

• there is little expectation of a reaction on the part of the receiver;

• communicating in micro blogs is asynchronous in principle, a certain Synchronicity is given when participants directly to each other;

• twitter is not designed for conversations, but rather for updates. Still people engage in conversations which are markers of social coherence and community forming;

• conversations implicitly provide motivation through social  support by giving the individuals the sense of belonging to a group;

• micro blogging contributes to create a social network to share common interests and exchange information;

• is a media in which curiosity contributes to look into what others are doing;
• contributes to the human need of recognition, attention, respect;

• can be a tool to engaging learning in education institutions despite the reputation system need;

• provides an opportunity to reflect, collaborative work, share information and give points of view briefly;

• is a tool for brainstorming, keep links, take notes or communicate instantaneously to teachers, colleagues and learners;

• is a great instantaneity medium for sharing ideas and getting feedback.  Its speed means you can gather a range of  opinions and constructive criticism within minutes.

Problems

• A certainly a risk of distraction by micro blogs in learning and working;

• it can create conflicts and misunderstandings about the nature of usage (Twitter is not the most appropriate communication channel to the to agree on for the next term paper with a student);

• it works on the interaction of an amount of followers, friends and update frequency.

7. A Twitter Experiment.

This is about an experiment done by Dr. Monica Rankin, Professor of History (The University of Texas at Dallas School of Arts and Humanities).

The video describes how the micro blogging experience of using  Twitter with students helped the development of the class and the  interactions and communications among her and the them.

To have more details about the conclusions of that experience I suggest to take a look to “Some general comments on the “Twitter Experiment” .

Resources

Twitter widgets
Twitterfeed, Friendfeed feeds to twitter and facebook
Twuffer : allows the Twitter user to compose a list of future tweets, and schedule their release.
Twitterfox, Twhirl, TweetDeck: are desktop client that notifies you of your friends’ tweets on Twitter.
BackTweets: search for links on Twitter.
Tweetbeep, Between: track of information on Twitter.

Edutwitter: twitter wiki for education.
Twitteando: news from Twitter.
Twitter y su mundo: more information.

Sources:

• Using Twitter to Break Down Classroom Isolation by David R. Wetzel

• 50 ideas on using Twitter for education (2008),

• Has eLearning had its day? by Carol Coope

• Microblogging for Language Learning: Using Twitter to Train Communicative and Cultural Competence by Kerstin Borau, Carsten Ullrich, Jinjin Feng, and Ruimin Shen

• “Social networking support with micro blogs,Twitter”, by Kerres, M. & Preussler, A. (2009 )

• Twitter use in schools by Juan J. de Haro

Is it a way of thinking?.
I think it is a way of “thin slicing“.

May be you are wondering about what it is about the connection between Connectivism and Serendipity. I realize that there is much more among them than I believed, even more in the inmersive environments.

On the following of this post I will try to reply John Mak´s question posted a week before on Facebook: “How do you find serendipity?”

John gave the link to Wikipedia´s  Serendipity definition:

“Serendipity is a propensity for making fortuitous discoveries while looking for something unrelated”.

I would like to define Serendipity as

“the Gift of finding valuable and agreeable things we have not not sought”.

It is a paradoxic mixture of looking for and not looking for. As a metaphor, the way we interact in the semantic web among billons of links and posts is a kind of source of this phenomena.

I am gratefull to Ruth Howard for the link to the video“A story about the Semantic Web” by Kate Rate. (video transcription)

Serendipity is about what Tim Berners Lee said on the video “Everybody, different people found out about the web at different times. Or different people had this ‘aha’ moment at different times.”

Along the course CritLit2010 I could I see the way we posted about others findings or emerged ideas. Sometimes we look over all the posts and links provided without attention. It could be difficult and there could not be time enough to follow and look into all of them. But sometimes, we could find value on some of them and appreciate their meaning (thanks to folksonomies). In a complex system like semantic web feedback continues its loop, there are several interconnected parts which create links for additional information not visible before for us. As a result of interactions between elements, emergent properties, which cannot be explained by the same properties isolated appear. This is the way that I consider that connectivism can be a way to lead to serendipity.

Appart from consider it as a “gift”, I think that we could
understand it as

a learning capability of “thin slicing” of recognizing the possibilities to find out or became aware of something “meaningfull” on the caotic and random virtual environment.

Regarding this, we have the opportunity to develop it in the way we learn from each experience like this, to learn from each other, to interact in the way we can learn, to grow, listen to, lead and live with a creative attitude.

I consider that, even though we can met by chance on the web or outside it what we find “meaningfull” is inside us.It is an oriented attention towards to it.

Here transcript the pharagrahp of John Gardner, professor of Standford University that I find significant:

“The meaning is not something that we find by chance, as the answer to a puzzle or a prize in a treasure hunt. It is something constructed by oneself from our own past, affections and loyalties. From the experience of mankind which has been transferred from their own talent and understanding, the things we think, of things and people you
love, the values for which we are willing to sacrifice something. The ingredients are there.We are the only one who can keep them in that pattern that will be our life. That is a life with dignity and meaning for us”.

I wonder how much of the learning experience (and us as facilitators) can add more to develop this capability.

“The principles of connectivity state that as a system makes more connections to other parts of itself, the connectivity of that system increases in an exponential fashion to staggering levels.(1)”

Moebius strip by warwick

The story was about “the subway under Boston had been growing in complexity for years. It was so complex, in fact, that the best mathematicians could not calculate its connectivity” (*). It was like the phenomena I lived on  connectivism on CritLit2010. There was a subway “CritLit2010 Course” that let me to connect to many topics, contents and people that I could not imagine. And this experience, which is moving, is expanding  any time that I find a new connection.

Since I took part on the course, I experienced inter connectivism from different levels. I called this entry Moebius connectivity because of the similar effect of the experience on learning on  #CriticLit2010.That is because I passed from the inner  to the outside space. I connected from the private to the public place. I took part on the conversation that was on the multi dimension PLE.

I knew about the course  at a Conference Stephen Downes gave on May at Fundación Telefónica in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Alejandro Piscitelli who introduced Stephen Downes and commented about CritLit.  I realized that it was the opportunity to learn about connectivism. Then, I listen from him at his conference at Book Fair at BA.

Connectivity began when I knew about the CritLit2010 course at the conference and follow when, by change, I met Professor “Jorge Crom” who took part on a previous course CCK08 and encouraged me saying: “It was something interesting that you should experience”.

After submitting on the Moodle Course, I could see that connectivity experience was more off the platform than on it. In other words,there was two ways: a lineal or synchronic  mode  (on Moodle and   WordPress, Diigo, The Daily,etc.) and a  non linear or asyncronic mode (with Twitter, Facebook, etc.). So I had to manage the information to not to infoxicate (Alfons Cornella).
I had a summary it on my post “Managing connectivity”.

The experience of CritLit 2010 was interesting . I had  to use my technical skills and  to keep in conversation through different platforms. This is crucial to follow the move.

I think, there were different connectivity modes:

• CONNECTIVITY from a lineal discourse respecting the causality principles and relationships due to the connectivism. For example, the one established on Moodle Platform;
• CONNECTIVITY from a non lineal discourse. As participant  of the course I felt connected among the objects on the web, sharing  meanings. The interchange me had, went far than the concrete meanings we gave on what we wrote and said. It includes infinite social and technology semiotics.

On both groups we can find social interaction and collaborative work.

On the first group, we follow an order and structure. On the contrary, the interactions on the second group are aleatory and chaotic. They are established by the user itself and the possibility that provides folksonomy knowledge.

Moebius effect is on the constant movement from the inner to the outside place.It develops on different levels, especially on Connectivist Learning and Teaching (Stephen Downes):

• Public and private are mixed
• Self and common is a mashed up
• Subjectivity and objectivity depend on the point of view
• Map and territory are disolved: references changes
• Author y lecturer: mixed to a prosumer and collective production

In my opinion, Connectivity on CritLit2010 was the opportunity to learn to apply the Critical Literacy on distributed conversations that took part on the Personal Learning Environments.  I learned about Stephen Downes ´s Connectivist Principles:

• relevance: what it was relevant to me. I found interesting to follow The Daily, Stephens Downes halfanour, Moodle Contents and the Literacy provided. Also the posts from my colleagues blogs. I could not follow most of the course blogs -in fact I had to look for them with Google Alerts- but I choose some : Heli Nurmi,Steve Mackenzie, John Mak, Ruth Howard, Ulop O’Taat, George Siemens, Jenny Mackness, Dolors Capdet, Abdrahamane Traore,Claudia Guerrero , John King)
• interaction: the capacity to communicate with other people interested in the same topic or using the same on line resource. Human content + Human contact. I builded my own interaction on the distributed network (Moodle, wordpress, twitter,facebook, group on delicious, I tried Connectivism social net by John Mak,  etc…)
• usability: was a challenge to find consistency (clarify the principles, organizing my knowledge and summarized it) and simplicity ( to know how it works). After a while, I catched it since I opened my blog and began connected! I use RSS, hashtags, Google readers, Google Alerts, etc.

I found interesting the post from Ruth Howard who developed the meaning of “MEME” on his entry called: Is Critical Thinking a meme to counter memes? .In my opinion this relevant because it is what seems to remain on the course. It is any time you reflect about authors contents, do to find and establish relationships with people and collaborate to share meanings.New meanings emerge from the symbolic environment and we are the agents to connect it.

In the end, I think that PLE of CritLit2010  experience ( as immersive way to introduce myself and being one of the people characteristic of the community) is not complete at all. It can´t be concluded because it could be only in an actualization process, as a virtual experience.  That is why the topic of my post is called Moebius connectivity.

Moebius connectivity seems to be related to serendipity but,this is a topic for another post.

Different in interpretation of the world are based on linguistic differences, but rather in a particular way of seeing the world, which depends on the conditions under which life develops and culture of a community.

Do we only see the world that which is distinctly reflected in the syntactic and semantic categories of language?

It seems that semantic habits are associated with the usual form of organization of the experience (*).

In this matter of semantics, I find that the issue of culture is the foundation. Semantic dimension is closely related to the issue of perception of the world and how we encode the set of experiences linguistically. On the basis of that experience are beliefs. That is, we experience what we believe. In that sense, what we believe constitutes a sign, a credible speech.

If it were not for my belief in the possibility of searching certain information in Google and the believe of  what I get is based on my search criteria,I would not trust the search engine as a truthful tool. I will opt to other browser or I will go to a library as I used to do in the past. (I like libraries, and the Search engines do their work well)!

Words such as Google, Twitter, hashtag, widget, cooperation, partnerships, mailing, posting, list, labeling, forward, login, log out, surfing, blogging,microblogging, linking, hypertext, indexing, folksonomy, are discursive constructions with a semantic content in our culture digital.Most of these terms, until ten years ago did not even exist.

Immersed in a technological culture, I understand my virtual environment  #CritLit2010 community as a human group or network with which to exchange knowledge and information from shared beliefs. We all have common goals, wishes to meet and interact. We have something to share and reflect, despite the ones who  abandoned.

For those involved, the meanings of the objects or signs are shared. Internet and its various platforms (Moodle, Twitter, Facebook, Ning, Blogger, WordPress, Delicious, Friendfeed, etc …) is the descentralized network on which we interact continusly and discontinusly, we suspended “in air” in the ubiquity( Scott Lash) in generic spaces and scattered information. We started the course  with a notion of finite fragmented concept of time. Weekly reflection modules, distributed knowledge, subject to assessment, rationalization, peer verification.

What has previously expressed to see what the semantic dimension?

Linguistic peculiarities are related to the worldview of the culture itself. In CritLit2010 shared knowledge is linked with how to express or interpret reality in the community. This reflects a set of values and interests built.

Instead of this, what happens in other cultures?.

In the culture of native peoples, the notions of time and space have another semantic dimension. In considering the universe as a whole, these people do not make divisions between nature and humans. They have a holistic view of the universe,  a different view of the world.

For them “words” means nothing more than to any westerner would. The mode of transmission of knowledge is oral and takes place over generations. They live in a different world. It is not an objective world, but rather the result of a different interpretation and in that sense, is the result of the language they speak. The space is infinity. Material, time and energy are linked, connected.

However, these ethnic groups with strong cultural heritage community and different cultural symbolic domain are giving us a lesson. And in that sense Ulop return the comment that made me think about the possibility of participating observers of reality. Groups of native people, activists of the Free Software movement, we are showing how the union of diverse interests can be set to achieve the common good. This is an example of technological sovereignty and sustainable societies.

Ending this post, I wanted to write about it because the emerging semantic dimension (Emergent Semantics) configured as a virtual system of boundaries transformation . In that sense, again to configure an existing knowledge.
By the way…¿what am I taking from this course?

I’m taking from this course not only the experience of having deepened the complexity of the connectivity, but the possibility to reflect on my own practice that is interwoven with  others.

And although I did not participate in the reading of all blogs, not all were actively involved, it is significant to know that there is a community created with the same intention.

Besides the interesting postings of my colleagues and their feedback on the entries, I’ll rethink on CritLit connective knowledge by Stephen Downes, Steve Mackenzie ´s taxonomies  in Critical Literacies. I won´t forget Heli ´s self connection with emotions and  the integration with the world in unity (as Heli said she would reconnect to “Finnish spring” in pursuit of internal balance) as did Suifai John Mak on Facebook every time you wrote “I need a break” (and he knew, he should took it!).

The eclectic exchange on different platforms (I kept wanting to participate in the sessions of Elluminate) intermittent interactivity of synchronous and asynchronous,  was a learning experience. Learning to be a participant observer, is the message that Ulop who spent “shaking trees” (but what if the entities we are measuring don´t exist? S.Downes).

This experience led me to question, to wonder how much of this and learned knowledge helps me to participate in the world I live and the next?.

It may not be as little as I feel it but not much of that I suppose. Sure,  the critical path is to Critical Literacies, participation and observation.

I am grateful to Stephen Downes and Rita Kop too, for the possibility of  let me participate on this course. And to all the community of having traveled CritLit2010 this moving and inmersive experience.

(*)Pescador, José Hierro “Principios de Filosofía del lenguaje”. Teoría de los signos, Teoría dela Gramática, Epistemología del lenguaje. Cap V.”Ideas Nonnatas”,   Alianza Editorial. Madrid, 1980.