Multilitteratus Incognitus

Alright, I guess it's time to start really committing some braincells (and time) to DALMOOC, the Data, Analytics, and Learning MOOC that started last week on EdX.  I wasn't going to attend this MOOC, to be honest about it, but seeing that George Siemens was behind this, I knew that there was an experimental aspect to it. Learning analytics is not new to me, my first MOOC (cMOOC) in fact was LAK11 (Learning Analytics and Knowledge) which I jumped into right after I finished my Applied Linguistics studies. So, now that I have cleared my plate of a number of coursera MOOCs (decided to give myself the "audit" status and just download the videos for later viewing - maybe in January or something), and that most of my assignments are done for EDDE 801, I can devote a little more time to writing in the open web about academic stuff and ponderings about academic stuff. So, what brought me to DALMOOC? The first thing that brought me to it is this xMOOC/cMOOC structure tha...

This semester I am helping out a colleague, and current M.Ed. student on the topic of MOOCs. He is taking a few MOOCs as part of his trying to grasp what it means to take a MOOC in order to create a MOOC.  Unsurprisingly, as is the case with most people, he's having some issues with Connected Courses because cMOOCs require the knowledge, and utilization of, certain literacies that we don't necessarily teach, or practice in school, even as graduate students. So, in brainstorming with him over the past couple of weeks I've been  thinking a lot about the phrase: The Medium is the Message †.  One of the main pitfalls of instructional designers and instructional technologists, especially those who are currently going through their studies and are novices in the field, is that they tend to think of technology first, and everything else later.  This is true with MOOCs as well, especially people who've been enculturated to think that MOOCs are of the xMOOC variety, that ...

Τις περασμένες δύο εβδομάδες είχαμε ως θέμα μας, στην ενότητα του connected courses, το τον ιστό, και συγκεκριμένα τον ιστό ως πλατφόρμα, και ως κουλτούρα . Τα κείμενα που μας έδωσαν ως αρχική ύλη ήταν πολύ βασικά για εμένα.  Πριν από αυτή την ενότητα δεν το είχα σκεφτεί πως είμαι στο ίντερνετ σχεδόν είκοσι χρόνια.  Όταν επέστρεψα στην Αμερική κάποιος φίλος τις οικογενείας, βλέποντας πως είχα αφίσει όλα τα φιλαράκια στην Ελλάδα, μου πρότεινε να τους βρω στο ίντερνετ. Κάπου τότε άρχισα να μαθαίνω τι σημάνει διαδίκτυο, και τα έμαθα χωρίς βιβλίο. Έτσι την κουλτούρα του ιστού, και την τεχνογνωσία που χρειάζεται κάποιος, την έμαθα μέσα σε 20 χρόνια, γνωρίζοντας πολλούς και διάφορους ανθρώπους από όλο τον κόσμο. Τώρα το θέμα μας είναι πως μπορούμε να διδάξουμε εμείς αυτά τα πράγματα σε λιγότερο χρονικό διάστημα στους φοιτητές μας, έτσι ώστε να μπορούν να χρησιμοποιήσουν αυτές τις γνώσεις, αυτή την τεχνογνωσία, και να μπορούν άνετα να κινηθούν στον χώρο αυτής της νέας κουλτ...

Here we are, week 2 of module 3 (so week 6) and half-way through the formal run of connected courses.  I spent most of last week catching up with stuff that was piling up in my Pocket account from previous weeks. In all honesty I wasn't quite sure what to make of this module.  Pretty much all of the things that were readings failed to spark my imagination, given that I had either read similar things in the past, or I had actually lived through them.  The thing that really started to spark my a few things was Mozilla's Web Literacy white paper. Then I was having a conversation with fellow MOOCer Luis , in real life, about literacies and then it hit me.  How do people engage on the web, in a cMOOC? Luis was telling me about issues with engaging with a cMOOC and fellow participants out on the web, and how the other two xMOOCs he is following along with seem much more engaging.  I think that this is because they have a form and format that graduate students know t...

My own doctoral journey may have just started, but it's been a meandering path to even get to the start.  It's not the destination after all that matters but the journey. Eventually all doctoral journeys culminate in a dissertation.  For the longest period of time this type of writing was a bit intimidating.  After all, who's got the energy to sit down and write a document that's 100 pages long and that few people will read. I challenge you to go ahead and look at academic articles that cross your path.  How often do you see people citing someone's dissertation in their citations?  Not that often, eh? So, this gets me to this blog post.  I was reading M aha's blog post this morning on the way to work about her experience with her dissertation and her defense, and I was prompted by the #digiped questions she reposted.  This really got me thinking about my own path and what it's leading me to. about a more responsive, and perhaps more accurate, fina...

Some Friday homework posted here.  I was listening to Audrey Watters's keynote address at CETIS a few weeks ago and I thought this would make some good material for thinking and a critique - so here it is.  Your thoughts? Watters, A. (2014, June). Un-Fathom-able: The Hidden History of Ed-Tech. Keynote presented at the 2014 Center for Educational Technology, Interoperability and Standards Conference. Bolton, UK. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vo2Q06Cczkk This review focuses on Audrey Watters’s keynote address at the CETIS 2014 conference. There are a number of elements that intrigued me enough to make it the focus of my second review.   This keynote is about the history of educational technology, but it artfully weaves together three distinct but related areas: First, Watters talks about prevailing narratives in the US-centric technology industry; secondly, she discusses Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and their historical antecedents; an...

Είμαστε λοιπόν κοντά στο τέρμα της δεύτερης μονάδας του Connected Courses, ένα ανοιχτό διαδικτυακό μάθημα (OOC) και η θεματολογία αυτής της μονάδας είναι η εμπιστοσύνη στον χώρο του διαδικτύου και η διαδικτυακή ευχέρεια των μαθητών, αλλά και τον καθηγητών. Το θέμα της εμπιστοσύνης μου θυμίζει κάτι παλιά podcast από Έλληνες, όπως ο vrypan, κατά το 2005-2007 όταν είχαμε αρχίσει να γράφουμε όλοι στο διαδίκτυο με τα μπλογκ μας και να τουιτάρουμε εντός τον γνωστόν μας δικτύων. Θυμάμαι τότε πως ο Παναγιώτης (vrypan) είχε δημιουργήσει έναν aggregator ο οποίος είχε μια γενική λίστα των ελληνικών μπλογκ και αν θυμάμαι καλά έκανε aggregate και ένα μέρος από την ανάρτηση για όσους ενδιαφέρονταν να δουν κάτι περιληπτικό πριν αποφασίσουν να πάνε να διαβάσουν το μπλογκ. Εμένα αυτή η υπηρεσία μου άρεσε αρκετά επειδή ήθελα να βρω άλλους Έλληνες στο διαδίκτυο και να έχω κάποια επαφή με ελληνικό περιεχόμενο που με ενδιέφερεε και που δεν ήταν από εφημερίδες. Μερικοί όμως είχαν πρόβλημα με το aggrega...

Siemens, 2014 It seems like Connected Courses is the cMOOC that keeps on adding while we are in the process of conducting the course.  I think, based on my own personal experience, that this (the addition of "features" as the course is in progress) is a hallmark of cMOOCs ;-). Anyway, Discussion forums have been added to  Connected Courses , and a discussion cropped up on whether students can opt out of the open course if you are teaching in an open environment.  If they are not comfortable with open, is there an option for them to participate in a closed version, which I guess is similar to an a traditional online course through an LMS.  I am not sure how much I will participate in the forum, so I thought it would be an interesting though exercise to post some initial thoughts on here and have a discussion about the topic on here (or via a network of blog posts) since it connects with what I might be doing as an experiment for my dissertation. So, really qui...

I suppose that it's not quite random, it's actually part of the work I am doing for my first doctoral course.  That said, I thought I would post this here (now that its been submitted) to see if others have read this particular article and what they think :) Power, T., & Morven-Gould, A. (2011). Head of gold, feet of clay: The online learning paradox. The International Review Of Research In Open And Distance Learning , 12(2), 19-39. Retrieved from http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/916/1739 The article’s thesis is that the paradox of online learning is this concurrent appearance of a boom and a bust. Since online learning, like any other complex system, is multifaceted this seems plausible. This piece has three main sections: (1) a literature review on attitudes toward distance education spanning 1999 to 2009; (2) a description and reconceptualization of the iron triangle which has three constraints cost, quality, and access; and finally (3) a propo...

On the web, not one knows you are a ____________ (fill in the blank).   Connecting with the previous elements of trust , I am continuing my opening exploration of this module's second topic: Network Fluency.  The introductory chat is available as a YouTube video, and the discussion is on the topic of Social Capital and Personal Learning Networks . This subject of Network Fluency (or Network Literacy as was discussed on Rhizo14†) has come up many times, both in various MOOCs I've been a part of (mostly cMOOCs as it turns out), and in the contexts of instructional design. There is some desire by faculty to include more networked (dare I say "connected") elements in their courses, however the biggest concern is access. Will learners have access to the required technology? Will they want to use this mode of learning? Will they have the skills to use what they need to use? And, when skills come into question, it's been my observation that the skills that pop into m...