At the recent etug conference, I attended a session where the idea about the difference between GIVING and SHARING was raised. I’ve been thinking about this a lot.

Giving, I think, is lobbing a bunch of stuff over the fence. Reams of content: there you go, there’s all our stuff -  have at ‘er.   This approach is what got this party started, and so this isn’t meant to be a disparaging comment. But I think we need to evolve the practice.

Sharing, I think, is making useful stuff available in a thoughtful, easy-to-access way. Thinking about what might be of USE to the broader community (what do we have in common?). Keeping it up to date. Including help/suggestions/ideas for implementation, pedagogy.  There are certainly people moving in this direction, and people like BC Campus who are supporting people to move in this direction in real ways. It makes so much sense.

Sharing is harder, of course. My hope for the future of OERs is we all share fewer, higher quality things well. Such loaded terms (fewer than what? what’s quality? what’s “sharing well”? ) I know, I know.  But it’s my hope, dammit. And I have faith that we can work it out.  We Education people are used to dealing in things that are not an exact science.

The etug conference was just GREAT.  The theme was “3 Cups of T: Teaching, Technology & Transformation”.  But I’ve been calling it “3 Cups of Awesome” because it just WAS.

And because I got distracted by a shiny thing or a comment from the audience while I was saying thanks and goodbye at the end, I want to give a special blog-o-riffic shout out to LEVA LEE, who is just the most talented, smart, knowledgeable, gracious, thoughtful and tireless wonder woman behind the scenes – Thanks Leva!

Not sure if  it’s because I’m a gardener or not, but gardening metaphors always seem so apt.   I’m thinking about metaphors for community right now because of an activity we’re doing in ISWO where we all gather images and words to represent community. I pushed myself past the first (garden-related) metaphor that came to mind, and came up with popcorn.

Now, first I have to tell you, I’m a traditionalist in the popcorn realm. No microwave bags in my house – it’s all about the pot, the oil, the cold naked kernels under a clear glass lid, and watching for the first brave ones to explode.  And then the satisfying cacophony as the rest of the kernels erupt into their potential.

That’s kind of what it’s like at this point in the course: we’ve laid the groundwork, provided  support  for people to get a strong jump on the course…and we wait perched over the glass lid.

And the first brave kernels are exploding already!  The course hasn’t officially begun and I’ve already been inspired this community in its very early days. There are new technology things I want to try, and new people I’m looking forward to getting to know better.

It’s going to be a great 4 weeks. Even if this metaphor takes corny to a new level. badum bum.

1. I am co-facilitating the ISWO (Instructional Skills Workshop Online) – it’s an intense, 4-week online course about online facilitation.  And this time, we’ve added a blogging component.
2. My copy of Digital Habitats has arrived!! Awesome! (See previous post – this could be on my list of Things Awesome:  “when amazon.com order arrives!”). Anyway, this book will give me lots to think about, I can tell already.

So, about the course blogging.  As an instructional designer who works for a university that has a LMS (Moodle) which has a lot of great tools to support a variety of learning activities (except the blog, unfortunately, is meh)  – why add an external blogging component?

There is lots written about this;  I don’t need to be convinced of the educational potential of blogging. It’s more the logistics.  There is an instructional design pro/con thing to weigh here – on one hand, blogs are a great tool for reflection, they have a life outside the course (i.e., the blog belongs to the blogger,  they can take it with them and continue engaging in reflective practice, it evolves as they do, etc), and hopefully, people will hook into and experience the benefits of the network as they connect with other bloggers.

On the other hand, they are outside the course. This means we all need to go find the blogs, and all the discussion/sharing no longer takes place in the course/forums. Part of me says, “so what?” This happens in f2f classes – people talk and think outside of class hours (we hope).  Still, the “one stop shop” argument is a strong one for busy people who want all the course stuff in one place.

However, I am confident for a few reasons:

• we have plans for making the blogs easy to find (Moodle rss block and a list)
• the blogging activity is framed as a tool for personal reflection and learning.  We ask for one reflective post about their learning per week, but aside from that, they are invited to do (or not) whatever they want. And there are forums, wikis, polls, surveys, quizzes, etc,  in the course for topic discussions/activities and practice facilitation by participants (the heart of the course) – so lots of reasons to be in the course.
• my experience with “required” blogging in a course (cck09) was really positive. I liked that I “had” to do it, and got a lot OUT of doing it. There is something powerful about publication of your ideas; you try a bit harder
• but MOST importantly, we have a dedicated blog steward.  A live person,  who is a passionate, dedicated educator who is excited and knowledgeable about blogging and PLNs, who will support the blogging activity running parallel to the course.

Can’t wait to see how it all turns out!

The “awesome” things are simple, free quirky little joys we can encounter every day (e.g., bakery air, putting on warm undies right from the dryer, picking up a Q and U at the same time in Scrabble).  Sure, it might seem corny.  But whatever,  we need stuff like this to balance out the endless barrage of bad news in the world.

But more to the point, it encourages us to be (optimistic) observers.  And grateful.

So, how can you lose? Awesome.

With respect to Virtual Worlds (in fairness, my only experience is Second Life), I’m in the Trough of Disillusionment, and don’t expect to see the Slope or the Plateau. I’m just not interested – neither for fun, nor learning.

However, I find it interesting to think of other technologies in terms of this Hype Cycle. For example:

Synchronous/Web Conferencing: Peak to Plateau?

At my institution, we recently got Elluminate.  It’s awesome!  My hope is, that with great support, training and modelling (for instructors/moderators, in particular…and we do have this in place), we’ll skip the sad Trough of Disillusionment altogether, and just go from the Peak of Inflated Expectations to the Plateau of Productivity.

Why I think this: Elluminate is obviously and immediately useful to people in our context.  It’s exciting technology, fun technology, it’s technology that brings people together. It’s not difficult to log in/participate or to moderate.  There are a lot of options, but you can start out small/simple.  It gets transparent pretty quick (ie., instructors can get on with designing useful/active sessions and stop worrying about buttons)

Google Wave: Perfect Example of Hype Cycle

Hey Kids! Remember Google Wave? Right. I forgot too, until someone mentioned it the other day.  So here’s a great example of the Hype Cycle:  Peak of Inflated Expectations? CHECK! Followed by the Trough of Disillusionment? Checkety Check.  Waiting (optimistically) for the Slope….Check.

Mobile Learning: TDB

I’ve got a toe in the Trough right now with respect to mobile leeeeearning. My research project is in its very early stages (TCB: Ethics Review, Lit Review…i.e.,  haven’t torn into the fun part yet).  This is probably a GOOD place to be starting a research project, actually (open-minded skepticism).

However, here’s what I notice in my own recent shift between being a Smart Phone “have not” to a “have”:   I love it.  Really. It’s fantastic for  productivity/keeping in touch. Love the apps.  But that’s personal/professional use…not learning/course use.  I find I generally/naturally avoid text heavy pages (i.e., lots of content, discussion forums…you know, typical course stuff). I don’t  “surf” or “read” much on my phone. That may just be me, we’ll see. Anyway, it raises questions about design for m-learning – it may not be enough to simply ENABLE m-access on your LMS (which is cool, and the point of the research). So, a toe  in the Trough for typical courses NOW. Still more in the Peak of Inflated Expectations in considering about what could be.

we've only known each other for 4 hours, but I love it....

So this came about due to an awesome initiative at Royal Roads University (for whom I work). There are tech grants available that are designed to get instructional designers and faculty working together on new/innovative uses of technology. Sure, we do this anyway (it’s our job), but the grants helped to nudge people into directions they may not have been able to pull off before. It’s been really effective – there are lots of neat projects in the works, with support from these grants for books, equipment, conference attendance, whatever.  So there’s a fun researchy buzz going on, and we’ll all get to learn about each other’s projects in the end.

So one of mine relates to m-learning. We are going to explore how courses can be accessed  on mobile devices. Years ago, when I first heard of the idea, I thought it was crazy. Who would want to read pages of course content on their phone?  I still think that, but my thinking has broadened somewhat. We’re going to start by looking at communication and content in an undergrad business course.  And I’m interested to see what kinds of mobile learning activities might emerge from this.

So for the next while, you can expect to hear about me becoming blackberry savvy, and how that project is coming along.

So far, I’ve got to say, the thing is wicked easy to set up. I just about fell over when the multiple email setup just worked and how you can delete messages from the phone AND your inbox.  I know, I’m an executive member of the Centre for the Easily Impressed…

A few things that worked really well about this:

• there was organization/facilitation, and a plan. Thanks Ulop O’Taat and Frances Bell
• sharing personal responses and experiences were encouraged (in fact, they were the point)
• student-led presentations designed to engage everyone – they were short and invited everyone to contribute to the whiteboard in addition to text and audio
• it was highly relevant and responsive to what’s been going on (lots of discussion around the topic of, “hey where did everybody go?”)

One thing (of many) we discussed was constraints and borders in Networks. It is easy to reject those on principle in striving to be open and free in a network. But one reason this session happened, I think, is because it was so needed - we benefited so much from this type of constraint (a scheduled time, a plan, facilitation). Networks typically have a large degree of freedom and lots of stuff going on in them. I find myself sometimes lost in the content (trying to scan the environment, catch up, whatever). Today I was reminded about how valuable it is to stop doing that and connect with people. As we have heard throughout the course, the learning is in the connections. Today was a good example of that, for sure. Thanks again, you guys!

Right now, we are deciding if our steering committee wiki should be open or closed.

Shouldn't some things stay closed?

• If open, we are practicing what many of us preach enthusiastically (open = good), and maybe (?) someone in the broader community of ed tech folks  in BC (e.g., the people who attend our events, read our news, etc) would be interested in seeing all the stuff that goes on behind the scenes to plan and deliver the stuff we do. Maybe seeing how we work would make them want to get involved with ETUG. Or maybe just seeing how we use a wiki would be of interest or use to someone.

• If closed,  we protect our privacy in ways that seem to matter (e.g., we write notes to each other like, “hey guys I am staying at X hotel during the upcoming conference, my cel number is ######, call me when you get into town and we can meet up at Y location at Z time to plan the bla bla”). Yes we could do this by email, but the point is to avoid that and do it all in the wiki: one stop shop. Another thing a colleague raised was the “reveal factor” – if it’s all open and we’ve planned this neato activity or experience for people at an event, we may diminish that by having it all out there (kind of like posting the punchline to a joke you’re going to tell later).

I guess if we go open, some questions are, do we leave it open but employ “security by obscurity”? Or do we PROMOTE it? and how/in what way? and will this change how we do things in a negative way? (there is a big part of me that can’t believe anyone cares to paw through our stuff, frankly)

I am all for open philosophically, but I guess I’m unsure there is value for it in this case. If it doesn’t matter, maybe keeping it closed makes more sense for the privacy reasons/to allow free sharing among our 15. But I feel like I’m betraying my commitment to openness somehow. And maybe missing an opportunity to explore this more, to experience unexpected benefits, and to walk the talk (lots of people thought MIT was mad, if you recall)

I find this question interesting because it’s not obvious to me that it’s good, and it hasn’t come up before. It’s not like the usual suspects of sharing completed things that someone might want to use (courses, code, texts, training materials, presentations, research, lesson plans, etc). It’s being open about planning and process.  Messy stuff.  I don’t have anything to hide (except my cel number), I just don’t know if there’s more value in sharing in this case than not.

We’ll see what the group decides.

Attended Elluminate session facilitated by Frances Bell:  Transparent Teaching and Learning: what remains when the teacher disappears?

Struck by a couple things:

1. the skillful way Frances created interactive opportunities for participants (which she attributes to Dave Cormier in the session blurb). This is kind of an aside, but awesome for me. One thing I’m working on right now is developing training for Elluminate moderators at my institution to do exactly this – consider ways of going beyond ppt+lecturing (which the s/w begs you to do) in these types of online sessions.  A couple effective strategies:  1. setting up “my talk”/”you talk” parts at the beginning, and getting us to throw ideas on the white board vs. in the text chat. So kudos and thanks there.
2. how much my views about the teacher role and the classroom community have apparently changed…and i’m not sure when or how that happened!  I think I’ve become kind of a hard-ass! Hmph. Ah well, I’ll get back to that…

Anyway, I think we agree that the teacher doesn’t disappear, but perhaps adapts in the “net” environment where there is SO much info and opportunity for learner expression. Frances notes that Network Teachers should make their own learning transparent; they should model their own technology-enabled learning. And she notes that a key skill is knowing when (and perhaps, how/in what ways) to disappear and re-appear in the network.

I agree. In cck09, we see George and Stephen (The Teachers) blogging, tweeting, Elluminating, being at conferences and generally “out there”, both showing us how they do it, and drawing our attention to issues and resources. And I like that. Appreciate that. Learn from it.  And we all (The Students) do it too. And we learn from each other.

But…this underlying idea of Net Pedagogy + Teacher Role feels familiar…it feels like we’re discussing teacher-centered vs. student-centered approaches. This idea (being student-centered) was “revolutionary” at one point, but has become part of the standard vocabulary/things we assume are “good”.

How’s that going for us?

Maybe here we have another instance where technology throws a mirror up and forces us to re/examine our practice and underlying assumptions.  Maybe revisiting this idea by way of considering “Net Pedagogy”, we can explore what/more can be done about “being student-centered”.  Can we come up with new (perhaps technology-supported) ways to go further than things like “letting” students choose their own topics or groups, doing their own research, inviting students to make learning personal, or to participate in assessment, and so on.  Could they be even more “in charge” of their own learning (and assessment)? How?

Professionally, I grew up in the belly of the beast, spending several years studying, teaching and working in a Faculty of Education and in its Teacher Education Program. There were lots of hugs and warm fuzzies and concern about community-building and “teaching people not curriculum” and honouring individual differences, and well, you get the idea. I’m not saying it was fluff and no substance – far from it. I’m saying that the culture was generally one (lead by teachers) of caring a lot about people and their human/social needs (first?). It had attributes of the “group” as Downes has described it.

Fast forward a decade plus, and I find myself now more relating – and wanting – to be part of a “network” than a “group” in my professional life (recall: Groups meet our need to belong and to survive, while networks meet our need to connect and learn and to know). If I’m involved in a working or learning thing (project, course, whatever), I want to, ya know, work and learn. Get stuff done. I see the other stuff as a means to and end, not so much the end in itself. (*crickets*)

When/did I become a hard-ass?

I guess it’s always somewhere in the middle (this is me hoping I’ve not become a Machiavellian cyborg).  We’ve discussed this earlier in cck09.  We need and want to be kind, respectful and encouraging of each other. Genuinely. So we can take risks (share).  And have fun.  But the end-goal is the learning/knowing, isn’t it?  Making friends along the way is a bonus. Did I just say that? But, but…I’m a people person!

In a practical sense, I have noticed, for example, in (smaller group) Elluminate sessions I moderate lately, that it pays off greatly to invest the first 15 minutes (even on an hour session) to get everyone in the room sharing (talking about) something that humanizes us at the other end of the mic. But that’s done in service of the connecting/learning/knowing.  Not especially for its own sake.