electro-textual

The fabulous choc-o-Nancy White was speaking about all manner of things today, including:

• how to facilitate in a massive online course, and the implications of trust in large networks;
• the range of identity and boundary from the personal, through communities to networks;
• new and emerging roles and practices;
• the value of “appreciative change”, which is related to the appreciative inquiry championed by Marie Jasinski and Maret Staron in ‘07 research. Recognise people’s strengths as a starting point for the learning process.

Ideas came up around the responsibility of adult learners in a course such as this. In small groups teaching adult literacy, for example, we might gradually teach people how to become more responsible for their own learning, through explicit instruction, groupwork activities and reflective discussion.

But here, in a massive course involving educators, there was a suggestion earlier that participants would already have the skills of self-directed learning. Is this true, and would it change the demands on our facilitators? Of course it would .. in this environment you model other ways to cross-connect, eg forums, comments on blogs, using the chat in live sessions etc ..

Here are Nancy’s slides:

Christy Tucker posted her summary of the earlier session;
and so did Diego Leal.

Thanks to all these people for sharing their knowledge ;-]

Link : CCK08: Power and Auto-Subscribe (the connectivism forums, week 08).

In week 08, Stephen decided to exert his power over the masses of people involved in the massive OOC known as connectivism 08. Through the flick of a switch, he drew many back into public conversation.

People who know the forum software called “Moodle”, will know that you can “force” your enrolled students to receive copies forum posts via email. Stephen flicked this switch, and hundreds of people around the world started to experience Inbox Pressure from all the messages. (ironically many of the messages were complaining about the inbox pressure, while adding to it  ;-]

“Moodle offers me the option to ‘force everyone to be subscribed to this forum’. Given that this week we are talking about Power, Authority, and Control… what did you think about that?” Stephen’s keyboard boomed into inboxes around the world.

The pressure for some was too great. He was accused of abusing his power, of being evil, a trickster. Some people decided then and there to leave the course.

Others appreciated the humour of the initiative (a game-like foray into how power works in teaching and learning), and some even said they would switch on their own subscription. i was among this crowd, partly because i always set my Moodle forum email options to Full Daily Digest, which protects me from inbox flooding.

Michael Coghlan offered his perspective .. on how he uses Moodle with his classes.

a) first include people (via “Auto-Subscribe”), then
b) empower them to understand and change their settings if they will.

i never thought to Force Subscribe, but i might just try michael’s approach next time ;-] A judicious use of power.
—————————————-

Recently in our intranet i’ve started setting people’s email to Full Daily Digest as default, when i first join them up .. because most people get annoyed if they receive a single email per forum posting.

i find it easier to do that for them, than to experience their annoyance and then explain how they have the power to change .. (Yes i have the power to include that option when i bulk subscribe new users.)

kind regards, michael

*(ooc = open online course)

photo credit: tom.arthur

So it’s week 6 already, halfway through the course, and i must sheepishly admit i’ve been ignoring my responsibilities as a student.

i’ve been following some of the forum discussions, and some of the connected bloggers, and Stephen’s dailies .. i’ve even made some notes and saved up a few delicious bookmarks.

But i haven’t posted any reflections or readings here on the blog. Oh blimey.

So i’ve listened to some audio/video recordings, i’ve read a couple of articles, i’ve finally made it into the forum areas .. and most importantly, i’ve put myself on the map.

Rodd (the Clever Sheep ..from Canada i think) set up a shared map within the google-o-sphere, and created a neat screen cast to show the rest of us how to join in. Yay Rodd. (Yes i did have to watch the video to work out how it is done.)

A few fellow Australians already there, including Howard Errey, Alison Miller .. but strangely enough people who posted at different times appear on different “pages” of the map. So Clint Smith is on page one, but others of us are on page three. Still can’t quite get my head around it ..

But for some reason, wordpress won’t let me embed the map on this page. Such irritating behaviour from a renowned CMS .. i had expected better.

Well this is extraordinary. Nearly two thousand people involved in a massive online course on Connectivism; a course that will go from now until November-ish, and takes place on thousands of different sites around the world. Have to join in, don’t i!

Stephen and George are among my favourite writers, and yes, i’ve missed a couple of courses i wanted to attend this year (eg Leigh on facilitating).. so it’s time to dive in and experience.

Got no idea what connectivism is really .. well it’s somewhere in there with Social Constructivism and Post-Structuralist, De-Constructionism .. Let me see if i can say:

Connectivism is all about the networks. Internal neural networks, and external social networks.

Apparently, we make sense of the world through our frameworks and structures, and knowledge is negotiated through socialising in our distributed networks. Connection creates meaning, the mind is a patterning agent, and all this takes place within increasingly complex spaces involving more and more technology.

(Mind map above links to full version.)

i may have heard someone say that knowledge resides in the network. Provided your network is working properly that is .. how many organisations suffer when key personnel depart?

It’s only day one, and already the goog has over 6000 links to CCK08+Connectivism.
Some of the many course links:

• wiki (week one),
• blog for regular updates,
• pageflakes (collecting all resources),
• getting started presentation,
• twitter for micro updates,
• Stephen’s Daily,
• people introduce themselves in moodle,
• Stephen’s intro on the Ustream TV site.

i wonder how long before i’m completely overwhelmed  ;-]

Yep, already.

image and photo credits: licensed under creative commons at flickr:
Thanks very much: fdecomite