Multilitteratus Incognitus

It's week 2 in FSLT, and the topic of this week is group participation. One of the things mentioned this week by the facilitators are the roles that people take in group work , which was quite interesting, as I could see  people in my past group work experience taking on those roles consciously or subconsciously. In the MOOC forums there is quite a lively discussion this week (as there was last week), which got me thinking. One of the things that I've been pondering is the mode of participation.  In MOOCs like Change11 and CCK11 the main mode of participation seems to have been Blogging, and aggregation of those blog posts through a daily newsletter.  Other modes included tweeting, posting on delicious, and using the basic commenting systems on gRSShopper.  It is true, at least for me, that in these two MOOCs I did not miss the discussion board element and I fully embraced blogging (and commenting on other people's blogs) as a way to participate and follow the learning ac

Change11 is over...but the discussion is still going ;-) I was reading this post here by Jaap today and I started thinking (some more) about the subject.  Here are some questions (incomplete as they may be) to Jaap's questions: Do schools have a property right on educational materials that is made by teachers? (law) I am of mixed opinion on this.  In the beginning I thought YES ! Of course they do! Schools are hiring instructors/professors to teach certain topics, and when certain topics don't have materials, the instructor needs to create them (otherwise they are not an effective instructor).  Now, a a couple of years after I think that NO , the institution does not have property rights on the materials created by the teachers. The teachers, in most cases, are hired to teach, and not to develop materials.  If teachers are required to develop materials due to the inadequacy of the materials that they are provided with, they have no legal or moral obligation to submit th

For my inaugural "assignment" post for #fslt12 I thought I would use one of the reflection templates, specifically the "areas of expertise" one. It's interesting to think about my teaching experience thus far. Initially I was tempted to say that my teaching experience extends back to February of this year; this is when I started teaching a college level course (graduate level) in research methods for instructional design. Thinking about it a bit harder though, my teaching experience goes back further. A couple of years ago I volunteered to guest-host a learning module on communities of practice for one of the courses that a friend a colleague teaches. Sure, it was uncompensated, but it was a teaching experience nevertheless. This learning module was for graduate students in instructional design as well. I've also taught non-credit workshops when I worked for the library (Microsoft office, RefWorks, and on rare occasion how to use the to do library research

This morning, before I left for work, an article caught my eye in my RSS reader from Inside Higher Education (amazingly, they gave me enough of a blurb to want to read the article - usually they don't!).   The article is about an Italian University that is going English-Only for their instruction . This article is an interesting read (I can't wait until the comments start coming in). My initial reaction was one of being taken aback.  Why the heck would a national university use a language for instruction that IS NOT the language of the country?  My secondary reaction was one of opportunity (Imagine old style cartoons with dollar signs in the character's eyes ;-)  ).  Since English is a language that I understand very well, and obviously use on a daily basis, I thought that this is an opportunity for people like me to work in other countries and at the same time not have to worry about attaining an Academic Language Proficiency in the national language.  After all, my long

Το Change11 έχει σχεδον φτάσει στο τέλος. Αυτή η εβδομάδα είναι η τελευταία, και το θέμα είναι η Ανοιχτή Έρευνα και η ανοιχτή διανομή αυτής της έρευνας (open publishing). Η περασμένη εβδομάδα όμως ήταν αφιερωμένη στις ψηφιακές ταυτότητες - το ποιοί είμαστε στο διαδίκτυο. Μερικοί από εμάς γράφουμε επώνυμα...άλλοι γράφουμε ανώνυμα, και άλλοι έχουν δύο ή παραπάνω διαδικτυακές ταυτότητες. Αυτό το είδαμε λίγο με τις έρευνες του Τζώρτζ Βελετσιάνος πριν από καμιά εβδομάδα. Αυτό που ήθελα να μας προβληματίσει λίγο είναι όχι μόνο οι ψηφιακές ταυτότητες μας στο διαδίκτυο, αλλά και τα καθημερινά μας περιβάλλοντα που μας επιτρέπουν λίγο ή πολύ να έχουμε μια επώνυμη παρουσία στο διαδίκτυο. Για παράδειγμα, εγώ διατηρώ παραπάνω από μια ταυτότητα στο διαδίκτυο. Η μία είναι για τους γνωστούς και τους φίλους και είναι διαθέσιμη μόνο με πρόσκληση, ενώ αυτή εδώ η ταυτότητα, σε αυτό το μπλόγκ είναι δημόσια. Όποιος με βρίσκει με βλέπει, και βλέπει τι γράφω. Για αρκετά χρόνια ήμουν σε μια θέση εργασίας

It seems like things have shaken out a bit on #bonkOpen for week 2. There seems to be way fewer threads in Week 2 as compared to Week 1. This isn't a big deal for me, my initial plan of looking for 10 interesting threads and following and replying to them is still intact. Now, if in Week 3 (this week) we have fewer than 10 threads...then I will have to re-think my initial strategy for participation. Week 3, instead of readings, has a number of videos by Curtis Bonk. Each video is about 10 minutes, and there are five or six of them - so you could just seem them all in about an hour. I've gone through half of them thus far. This is making me wonder two things: Were the videos planned as part of Week 3 from the get-go? Or were they a change of strategy once some people complained about the amount of reading that they had to do (by taking part in this voluntary learning opportunity!) The other thing that it makes me wonder is this: In Week 1, the synchronous session seem

Είμαστε τώρα στην 34η εβδομάδα του change11 και μαζί με την συρρίκνωση των συμμετέχωντων· τουλάχιστον απο πλευράς μπλογκ και απο τα πόσα άτομα δημοσιεύουν μπλογκ με κάποιο τακτικό και συνεπή ρυθμό. Κοίταξε, δεν παραπονιεμε γιατί και εγω έχω πέσει λίγο έξω, άρχισα να βαριέμαι γιατι το MOOC ήταν λίγο μακροχρόνιο. Σαν μια ταινία στο σινεμα πουλάς να την δεις και αναρωτιέσαι ποτέ θα τελειώσει (λολ). Το θέμα αυτού του δημοσιεύματος όμως δεν είναι το αν μας άρεσε ή αν δεν μας άρεσε το change11, αλλα η γλωσσική ποικιλία σε αυτο το μάθημα. Ενταξει, ολοι οι επόπτες του μαθήματος είναι αγγλοφωνοι,και η έρευνες στα θέματα παιδαγωγιας και τεχνολογίας στον χώρο της εκπαίδευσης είναι στα αγγλικά, οπότε δεν περίμενα και πολυγλωσσία ως ένα απο τα θέματα του MOOC. Στο παρελθόν, και στις αρχές αυτού του μαθημάτος είδα μερικούς να δημοσιεύουν μπλογκ στα Γερμανικά, στα Ιταλικά, και σε λιγότερο βαθμό Ολλανδικα. Και εγω με την σειρα μου είπα να κάνω μια αρχή να γραφω στα ελληνικά, και να κάνω λίγη εξάσκηση

I was reading Lisa's response to #bonkopen the other day. Both the post and the comments were quite interesting. One of the issues is blackboard as a platform. OK, sure, LMS in general stink - regardless of whether it's Moodle, Bb Learn, Bb Vista (formerly WebCT, ANGEL and so on.  Lisa does prefer the distributed mode of communication which is typical in MOOCs like Change and CCK, but despite the fact that Lisa and I prefer blogs to LMS, it doesn't mean that those modes are best for everyone.  One of the big hurdles that many of my acquaintances had with MOOCs as the distributed nature. They didn't have one spot to go to (i.e. the LMS) to check to see what's new. Sure Bb Learn 9.1 is the same ol' blackboard but with better UI...but UI does make a difference! Some things still stink, but on the whole I think that version 9.1 isn't bad.  That being said here are some of my responses to a couple of the comments on the blog (too many comments to go through a

One of the things that participants need to do in #bonkOpen in order to receive a badge for being part in this MOOC, was to attend (or view the recording of) each weekly live session. I've said it before, and I will say it again: I am not a fan of synchronous conferences; I just don't like sitting there for an hour...or two...or three...listening to people do their thing.  I prefer my visual channel to be better engaged when listening to mostly audio information, and most synchronous conferences are just powerpoint, powerpoint, powerpoint...yawnnnn.  At least in class (face to face) you have body language, movement, people coming and going, neighbors and so on. In any case,  with the help of a piece of software called Elluminate Publish (thank you Blackboard person on Twitter!) I was able to download the recording in video format (just a bit over 130MB if I recall correctly) for the entirety of the two hours.  It was a nice presentation, nothing good, nothing bad - just n

Well, the Bonk MOOC (Instructional Ideas and Technology Tools for Online Success) is almost at the end of Week 1.  There certainly is  A LOT of discussion going on, with more than 3000 registered participants; at least that was the number at last count. I honestly would LOVE to see the analytics at the end of the MOOC.  That would certainly be some cool data to crunch (and perhaps write an article about). In any case, both on #bonkopen and in other MOOCs, there has been a sentiment made clear by some participants that they feel like they are drinking from a firehose.  If you are a traditional learner (as in you come from a face to face course environment, or a traditional online course environment) you may feel like there is too much information. Some people want to create smaller cohorts, after all Blackboard Learn supports groups.  I don't mean to be insensitive when I roll my eyes at comments like this; I am sorry if I offend anyone - this is not my intention. I think that t

This past week in Change11 we had George Veletsianos as the facilitator.  It was a pretty nice week, I really enjoyed the three articles he posted as readings. It seems like most of the posts in the daily (the few posts) were about MIT and Harvard and EdX....yaaawwwwnnnnn.... Seriously, isn't EdX just a continuation of the OpenCourseWare movement that MIT started?  Let's just call it OpenCourseWare 2.0 and move on.  I'll have to read some more reactions about EdX in order to write a more cogent and informed response, so I will quit my ranting about it right...about....now! So, back to Change and Veletsianos.  The readings were quite interesting.  What really stood out for me was that faculty aren't luddites; some are, but in general they are not - they are curious.  They are cautious about the use of SNS, and how the Home/Work/Professional environments collide.  I know many people that don't care about the Home/Work/Professional collisions and meshing, but this

I have come out of Change11 retirement (lurking status) this week (and probably the next few weeks).  I was reading the Change11 daily yesterday when I noticed that George Veletsianos was facilitating the topic of Scholars' online participation and practices . I've been following George for a couple of years now, and I was really looking forward to this week, so I am back! I download the articles he has as reading, and I will get to those in a few days once I read them.  At the moment I want to tackle the Del.icio.us vs. Academia.edu issue. George point out that (some) have said that Del.icio.us is where links go to die , and asks us whether Academia.edu is where articles go to die. By the same token, someone might ask is Scridb where documents go to die? To be honest, I had never thought of delicious as the place where links go to die, but in my own practice it's where they go to be frozen in carbonite . In the pre-google days and pre-RSS days, I did use bookmarking