Multilitteratus Incognitus

For the past semester I've mostly ignored synchronous learning on coursera.  Instead of consuming materials as they are released, I log in once a week, download the videos for the course, and I keep them in my video library.  If there are textual materials available as well, I donwload those, but I tend to focus more on video materials. When inspiration (or curiosity) strikes, I dive into the specific course of interest and have a video play.  At the moment I tend to play lectures in chronological order, the order that they were listed in - in the course I got them from. So, why not use coursera as "intended"?  Well, the predominant reason is the lack of time. These past two semesters have been quite busy for me and I don't have the time or inclination to do things as they are released by content providers (yes, I know - the noun used was quite deliberate).  There are also a lot of interesting courses being offered, not just on coursera, but also other MO...

It's been a few days since I started writing about the various reactions I had (and started noting in the margins ;)  ) to a recent article from fellow MOOCers and MOOC researchers Frances and Jenny . I cut my previous post a bit shorter than I intended because it was getting long, and I didn't want it to go on and on. So this is a follow-up blog post t o that original post with some reactions, or thoughts, about what seemed to be to be underlying assumptions about what comes as part-and-parcel for education.  The article seemed to make some assumptions about education, and MOOCs in specific, that I thought should be addressed in some fashion: It is the responsibility of the convener/instructor of the course to play cop... ... be this a traffic cop who directs the flow of the course and "re-centers" it when it gets off course, a dispute cop who gets in between parties who are arguing about a certain topic, and a jail cop for people who don't observe the ...

With coursera MOOCs kind of slow this time of year, I decided to try out a MOOC on the subject of "Open" on P2PU. After my first P2PU course, #rhizo14, I thought I would flex the mental muscle a bit and get some P2PU experience.  The topic of this week asks us to ponder what Openness means to us as individual participants.  To be honest I haven't really sat down to write up what I think of Openess.  I've certainly discussed the topic with colleagues and friends over beer or coffee, but it's been on specific topics, like MOOCs.  Many in the xMOOC arena consider "open" to mean "free".  The previous post I wrote should have you convinced, to some degree, that Open isn't free. There is some cost associated with it whether or not you get it gratis . That said, for me Open is about a philosophy.  It may mean a number of things: 1. free-of-cost :  In some instances, such as all those free MOOCs that you can sign up for (even this one!) you ...

The cone of silence ;-) In most cMOOCs I attempt to go back and respond to fellow participant's posts after something has provoked some thoughts.  If I am less busy, I tend to blog more, if I am more busy, I tend to leave more comments.  I guess this semester I am sort of in-between ;-) In any case, from week 1 of the #rhizo14 MOOC here are some things that have piqued my interest: From Jenny comes to the following quote: For me, learning isn’t so much about what we do – cheating or otherwise – but more about who we are and who we become – and as such is associated with ethical and moral dimensions. Does living in a digitally networked world, a world of rhizomatic learners change what we commonly understand to be the basic moral principles that govern behaviour between learners? This was quite interesting, and something that made the gears in my head turn. If I had to discuss learning, especially the learning that happens in MOOCs, I would say that learning is abou...

This post is going to be badly formatted because I have yet to find an Android client for blogger that it as nice as BlogPress on my iPhone. <br> While on vacation, and on a train, I was able to catch up on the news in academia. One thing that came up, among the oodles on MOOC news is the question of whether MOOCs are just online courses (see here: http://www.thegoodmooc.com/2013/06/are-moocs-becoming-just-online-courses.html?m=1 ). <br> It's an interesting question and the answer, at least for me, is: "it depends". One off the big questions is how many people are active in the course, or in other words "how maybe is massive?" The design of a course will differ based on how many people actually participate. You could have a MOOC that resembles a traditional online course, you could have a MOOC that resembles a self-paced course and you could have a MOOC that resembles any one of the many existing field of instruction. <br> The underlying ...

It's week 7 in OLDSMOOC, and as we are windowing down we are tackling the topic of Evaluation . I will be switching tracks again, from the Blended Mobile Learning course (that I've been working on for a while), and going back to the idea of offering the course as a cMOOC. Going through OLDSMOOC I've gotten some good ideas about how to implement my own cMOOC.  I've been thinking a lot about the recommended paths that are available in some weeks (the short and the long path). This, in combination with badging, and deliverable, is making me think about the assessment aspect of the MOOC; but let's not get sidetracked, let's talk about evaluation. In terms of evaluation decisions, what immediately comes to mind are these: Should the content for this learning design be expanded, reduced, or remain the same? One of the tricky things about MOOCs is that you will always have critics, since there will be instances (many of them) where the MOOC does not hit the sweet sp...

So... week 1 of OLDS MOOC is about to be done! When I signed up, I wasnt' sure what my participation level would be (so I didn't set hard objectives for myself). I did want to work on the MOOC as much as I could, given the constrains of every day life.  Week 1 wasn't bad.  I did create a cloud in CloudWorks to consolidate my own learnings and interactions in the MOOC in one easy to find place. Supposedly this will come in handy, as well, when the organizers are deciding whether someone's participation is badge-worthy :-) I must say that CloudWorks was a bit confusing in the beginning, but I think I have gotten the hang of it.  The one issue I still have is how to remove a cloud from a cloudscape after you have added it!  For example, my main cloud (the one where I am keeping track of my own participation) is also in the Dreambazaar. This was done by mistake, but I don't see a way of removing my cloud (and this keeping the dreambazaar clean).  Oh well, live ...

Yesterday I was reading the materials for Week 2 of BlenkKit , which are adapted from Handbook of Emerging Technologies for Learning by George Siemens and Peter Tittenberger†.  While the entire reading was quite interesting, what I latched onto were the roles of the educator in this chapter which consisted of: Atelier Learning (Seely Brown, 2006) Network Administrator (Fisher, nd) Concierge Learning (Bonk, 2007) Curatorial Learning (Siemens, 2007) From the experiences I've had in my own personal background I can say that Atelier Learning and Curatorial Learning are what appeal to me as roles for an educator, not separate, but some combination of both.  Think of a museum and an a master artist's workshop. An apprentice might be in an artist's workshop (atelier), but at the same time, some curated work needs to be available for the apprentice to reference and learn from. This way you have some examples  but you are not constrained by them . This Week's questi...

With the course almost over, I decided to undertake the OpenEd Evangelism badge. The requirements for the OpenEd Evangelist badge are: OpenEd Evangelist  (Journeyman level, complete for 1 topic to earn the badge) Construct an argument by which you could persuade someone to adopt the topic as an ongoing practice. Your argument should include at least five elements (kinds of evidence), with references.Write a blog post describing your argument in detail.  Have a conversation with a faculty member in which you use your argument to try to persuade them to adopt the topic as an ongoing practice.  Without revealing his or her identity, write a blog post describing your conversation and the reactions, responses, counterarguments, and concerns of the faculty member and announcing your intent to have completed the badge. Here are the reactions I got from a fellow colleague (on the previous Formulation post): I must admit that my formulation wasn't completely new...

It's open data week on #ioe12 ! That being said, I am not sure that there is much to write about ;-)  I've heard of Open Data before, on the context of OpenStreetMap  and Data.gov .  In principle I do agree that data should  be open because this does enable people who want to use it in new and creative ways. It also allows for participation in creating better  data.  For example, if you have census data you can (and should ) open up the data to everyone via the web, so that people don't have to go to a stuffy room, in a specific village in the old country to work on their family tree.  This open data also allows crowd-sourcing of transcription and metadata generation.  This can be a time consuming, and expensive, task.  However, if you harness the power of volunteers all over the world who might be looking to piece together their family history, you can transcribe those sensur records that were done in hurried cursive writ...

One of the things that we need to do for #ioe12 ( to earn the "researcher" badge ) is to provide some additional resources for three topics. This week I will be contributing some resources for the Open Licensing portion o f the course. Scholarly Resources Sawyer, M.S. (2009). Filters, Fair Use and Feedback: User Generated Content Principles and the DMCA. Berkeley Technology Law Journal. 24. pp 363-404. If legal articles don't scare you away, this might be a good one to print out (or just download and read on your eReader) if you are interested in copyright and fair use. The article is sectioned off into four sections, giving the reader some background on the DCMA, fair use and two versions of the Fair Use Principles of User Generated Content, as well as presenting the view that technological solutions that prevent copyright violation don't work because they err on the side of copyright holders and violating the fair use rights of everyone else. Reading this remind...

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 t...

I came across this article a while back on TechDirt (quite a few comments on the techdirt take!) Now the idea here is that any material or intellectual property created by a district employee, with either indirect or direct support from the district, would belong to the district. This may sound like a good idea, but it is an inherently bad idea - and it's bad on so many levels. From a philosophical point of view, knowledge should be freely available. Our libraries are here to safeguard that. How one helps others gain knowledge should also be available free of charge. Great ideas come from collaboration, and being able to freely exchange materials with fellow professionals improves the creation and refinement of great products and methods. Second there is the whole issue of tax-payer dollars. The school, be it K-12 of Higher Education is getting money from the state and probably even the federal government. If the school is private it probably is a not-for-profit and (if I am n...