michael's posterous

Taking time to reflect

I have to admit, there are times in my life when I feel overwhelmed and I just wish there were time reflect on everything that is coming in and really make sense of it. I'm bombarded with articles, blog posts, and short bits of wisdom through twitter, Facebook, Google +, etc. work is increasingly busy and more complex leaving less time to engage in professional development. So the time to reflect would be nice, but would I use it effectively if it were really available?

I know for the most part I would have to answer probably not. But I'm going to try to find ways to do better.

So I pose the question? How do you find time? How do you make sense of all that is going on in your field? With your interests, etc? Comment below and let's help ECG other out! Thanks!

The Roles We Play in Learning Networks

George Siemens (http://twitter.com/gsiemens) posted sometime back (Feb 16, 2010 to be precise) on the roles that teachers play in a networked world (http://www.connectivism.ca/?p=220):

1. Amplifying
2. Curating
3. Wayfinding and socially-driven sensemaking
4. Aggregating
5. Filtering
6. Modeling
7. Persistent presence

These are some great ideas/roles. I have tried to do so for my students. It has occurred to me that these are the same roles people play for each other in our learning networks. Some call these personal learning networks, but I believe that if they are functioning correctly they are really community learning networks (a combination of a network of people and a learning community) we all learn from and with each other. As a community of learners we should be playing these various roles for each other. Sometimes we are the amplifier, curator, aggregator, model, etc. and other times we are the beneficiary of others playing these roles for us.

I thought of a couple of other roles that we, as a community of learners, play for each other (and that might also apply to instructors in networked world, since they apply to teachers in a non-networked world as well).

The first is the learning network as cheerleader or motivational speaker. We all need encouragement and positive feedback. In a #edchat tweetup I participated in last year, the topic was on teacher morale. Several of the other participants talked about how their PLN’s (insert here CLN) provide them a much needed morale boost. I think this is in part because learning in a rejuvenating activity, but also because we need people to appreciate us. Members of a learning networks can provide this for each other (as can instructors for their students).

The second additional role that occurred to me it that of sounding board. Our connections can be a source of vetting our ideas, thoughts, and skills and receiving some feedback. I don’t know if I can count the times I have seen people asking for feedback on a proposal, a blog post, or simply asking a question seeking ideas. I have benefited from others’ sage advice and have tried to pay that forward where I can.

A possible third, inspired by Jeremy Browne’s response ( http://brownelearning.org/blog/?p=797) to my last blog post ( http://michaelcjohnson.posterous.com/the-give-and-take-of-learning-in-networks-why), is that of devil’s advocate. I certainly don’t mean to suggest that we antagonize each other but providing other/differing perspectives is one way we can enrich the learning of the members of our learning community/network. Jeremy actually suggested that we seek out those who don’t always agree with us to form part of our learning networks, but as an extension of the sounding board role, it behooves us to occasionally ask the tough question and help others think more deeply about their views.

What other roles do you see? What other ways can we help (and be helped by) those in our learning networks. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

The Give and Take of Learning in Networks: Why Do You Follow Who You Do?

Why do you follow someone on twitter? I've thought about that a lot as I have made decisions about who I should follow and who I won't follow. Usually, I am quite liberal in following people who follow me. If they have similar interests then I figure we might be able to help each other out. They may share things that interest me and viceversa. Also we might be able to give each other feedback on our own writings and thinking.

Yet when I have seen other posts in the past on this kind of topic, it is usually very focused on self interest. Advice on who to follow is mostly based on looking out for number one, figuring out what is in it for you, etc. I don't think we can be completely alturistic, but at the same time is self-interest the one or most important factor. Yes, our time, like our money, is a limited resource. Yes, we want to get the best value we can (most bang for the buck or meat for the minute, as it were). But does that always come from what others can do for us? I think we can get a lot more out of our relationships and our learning networks if we focus on what we can give than what we can get... As we share our learning with others, help someone in need of some feedback, share our thoughts in answer to an inquiry, give of ourselves, we'll ultimatley get more out of our learning networks. In other words, you get more from what you give than what you take.

If we don't have a more other-centric view of learning in networks, I don't think it will work the way we planned. Just as in any relationship, if all we do is take then soon there won't be anybody there for us to take from.

If you stumble upon this post and have read this far, thank you for your time. I apologize for a bit of a rant. But I'd love to hear your thoughts. Why do you follow who you do? How do you contribute to make your network followers and friends better for having followed you?

Happy Holidays (of which Christmas and Thanksgiving are my favorites)!

The Danger of Automaticity

I just listen to Andy Gibbons (@andygibbons) speak about skills. He, in essence, said that to improve the skill that we acquire, we need to practice consistently, purposefully, and thoughtfully (not his exact words, but you get the idea). Additionally, we need others to give us meaningful feedback on our performance. Often the more people do a task, the more it becomes automatic. At one point in my career I believed that automaticity was a goal of skill learning. However, Andy pointed out in his speech that as automaticity sets in performance begins to decrease (I guess we can see this in the way some of us drive). I guess this means that we do need to be reflective and thoughtful practitioners as Schon suggested (see Educating the Reflective Practitioner, 1990). Andy then went on to encourage graduates to apply this idea to their lives, including their spiritual lives, and not go into auto-pilot in things that are most important.

Although life might be too hectic to always be thoughtful (in some thongs we may need to be automatic), I think Andy's advice is important. In things that matter, we need to be purposeful, thoughtful, reflective, practice our guts out and get feedback from trusted sources. This applies to all aspects of life. Don't live on auto-pilot!

Sent from my iPhone

#TTIX10 Photos and Info

Sights and sounds of TTIX 2010. This year they held it at the University of Utah.

Tin Angel post #ttix10: Updated!

I have been challenged to post two paragraghs from the Tin Angel
restaurant. I am not sure why. However, it will help me with the Grand
Poobah of Social Media competition.

The dinner has been fun so far. Suzy Cox let me use her iPhone to post
this. That was really cool of her. A lot of us are doing dumb things
to earn points in the competition. What fun!

__________________________________________________________________________

Update: I got to sing La Bamba with the band Rockatonga at the restaurant tonight... a video might be forthcoming!

Also, as you can see below, I was chastised for not making a meaningful comment about the dinner at Tin Angel.

Well, now I am. The food was awesome! The people were great. I made a lot of connections with people and got to know others better. As I said, others were really helpful with my quest for Social Media Grand-Poobah-ness.

Conferences are fun, but I find that it is meal time when you have a chance to make connections that last! I have connections with people from TTIX and other conferences that have really been beneficial (hopefully mutually). Without TTIX for example, I wouldn't know Marc Hugentobler (the chastiser). And he's got a great hair do!

For me connections is just as important a part of conferences as the actual sessions and keynotes. Maybe more important. And trying to attend social events is a great way to make those connections (though if you aren't sharing significant stuff in the conference then something vital is missing).

 

My #TTIX10 Recap for June 10, 2010

Finally, the day is winding down... I was up until 4:00 last night putting final touches on my TTIX presentation for today. It was a fast paced 55 slides in 25 minute affair. But that was kind of on purpose. I wanted to present a lot of ideas to get people thinking. I wanted to help them see that there really are "moral consideration when teaching and learning with technology". I have posted my slides on Slideshare.net and am embedding them here (I've already posted the video of my presentation):

Nancy White was the key note address and she presented on some deep issues related to learning as individual and in communities and groups. She discussed the implications of these different approaches or views of learning in an interesting way, I wish I could capture it better. If you want to see her address, check this out: http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/7565443

I attended Jeni Gubler's session (not just because it was right before mine. She spoke about students' perspectives on technology use and how practice using technology changes the focus from teachers to students. Her presentation can be viewed here: http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/7566730

I should have gotten more out of it, but I was a little preoccupied (since I was next up to present). People loved her presentation, however. She took more many questions from the participants than I did.

After a fun lunch with friends and colleagues, I attended a session on Google Apps for education by James Covili. It was a good session, most of it I was already familiar with, though I didn't attend the second hour only because I wanted to attend the session on TwHistory, which I did. To view this session, go here: http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/7569622

The session on TwHistory was conducted by Tom Caswell, Marion Jensen, and Rob Barton. They have passion for their work and it shows. We helped participate in a Twitter reenactment of the sinking of the Titanic. We did a little bit of research and then wrote s few tweets and used socialoomph (http://www.socialoomph.com/) to schedule tweets. I knew services like this existed, but it was fun to actually use it and participate. I missed the first session where they explained the background, but you can view their Prezi presentation here: http://prezi.com/vyozk6gzgnd1/twhistory-ttix-2010/. Also, they have  site http://twihistory.org/ and twitter account (http://twitter.com/twhistory). You can see the recording of their presentation here: http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/7569687

There were a bunch of other sessions that I want to catch up on, you can check them out from here: http://www.ustream.tv/user/ttix/videos 

Great conference so far, and best of all it is Free!

Moral Implications of Education in a Digital World #TTIX10

Here is the video of my presentation this morning at TTIX 2010

If you have problems viewing this, here is a link to the video on uStream:http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/7567030

If you have a chance to watch, let me know what you liked and what could be improved.

Twiducate -- A Great Idea or the Lesser of Two Evils?

I was reading the following post on Twiducate: http://cyber-kap.blogspot.com/2010/06/twiducate.html by David Kapuler (@dkapuler) and I got to thinking, is Twiducate a good idea?

• What are the costs of a "closed network"? Do students miss out on the richness of interacting with those outside their usual circles (I hear stories all the time of students blogging about a book or article only to have the author comment on their post... in a "closed" network things like this don't happen. Also, students we have surveyed like the idea of gleaning from and contributing to their field of knowledge, do we lose that?)
• Perhaps it is a great idea for elementary or middle schools but are we just avoiding the security, privacy, safety, and other related issues to working on the networked world if we are in a "protected environment" in high school or post secondary settings for students to deal with when they are on their own?
• Do FERPA issues come into play that make this a good idea despite other costs (loss of the benefits of open networks)

A couple of friends and colleagues Jon Mott (@jonmott) and Dave Wiley (@opencontent) wrote about the potential for a combination of cms's and open networks that allow institutions to control information that needs to be private and open up everything else (see http://ineducation.ca/article/open-learning-cms-and-open-learning-network), would that work?

I certainly see Twiducate as a huge step up over banning social media outright, which occurs or is being considered in some school districts. For some great posts on this issue see "Deal or No Deal?" by Tom Whitby (@tomwhitby) and "Banning is the Easy Way Out" by Eric Sheninger (@NMHS_Principal), but is there still a cost? Is the cost too high? I'd love to get more informed opinions, so please comment below!

Honestly, I applaud the efforts of Twiducate for trying to solve some very real problems... I am just wondering out loud.

Some Possible & Unfortunate Similarities between Multi-Level (Network) Marketing and Networked Learning

It occurred to me today that there maybe a connection and a problem with networked learning that may be very similar to the problems I have seen with network marketing. To be clear, I am not talking about marketing through social media channels, rather I am talking about multi-level marketing or idea that some companies have where you not only sell their product but you recruit other people to be a part of your sales organization, as you do so you get a portion of the profits those in your organization bring in. If you can recruit enough people to your organization some of these companies promise wealth untold (I am not naming names here, but they know who they are). I am not an expert on this, but the problem I see is that within a very short period of time and within a few levels of doing this you either run out of resources (the profits are spread too thin), you run out of people to sell to, and/or select few are overly compensated for the work of many (but that happens all over the place). 

If everyone were in a social network, could it truly be sustainable. Usually a few people in your network will look over something you want feedback on, but as the network grows larger will they have time. Another possibility is that you personally will feel overwhelmed by the amount of stuff to read, view, respond to, etc. that you cannot find the good stuff. Will a small number, because they produce the best stuff or were more established in the network and so forth, benefit from the network while late comers and/or those needing more help and encouragement not get the help they need due to the limited human resources and over abundance of work produced in the network.

I am an advocate for learning networks. However, I also want to be able to see and understand the potential pitfalls or challenges so we can work overcome them.  The above contains a couple of issues (overload of info and people to provide feedback to, etc.) are some that I see. If someone has successfully address these concerns, please let me know. I would love to hear your feedback on this post! Also what other challenges do you see people facing when trying to learning in a PLN?