Sharing Resources With Colleagues at ELCC: Start the Video

I love attending the Colorado E-Learning Consortium Conference, now in its 23rd year. This is a great
peer teaching conference. My session explored multiple sites with great academic video, how to use bookmarking to track those finds, and what opportunities there are for involving students. Many of the related sites for this session are bookmarked here: http://delicious.com/constantlearningorg/start_the_video.

Video Title "What is Curation?" Invites a Question about Audience

As I opened the weekly update from Brainpickings this morning, I saw this delightful video on curation
which has been on my mind ever since I read about the concept in  Gregory Ulmer's book ten years ago.



What is Curation? from Percolate on Vimeo.

Brainpickings notes this is the first of a series of videos on curation from this group. I think a key takeaway from this video is that we may select things for ourselves, but thinking about audience is key to understanding how it may be of interest to others (like ourselves, or our customers as the case may be).

I would say that my audience is others who are studying the e-age for the sake of learning that will allow us to work and live smarter --looking forward to more of these videos.

In Addition to the Western World View: Talking to Rocks

A number of events this week remind me of the world of multiple perspectives. One was a post-graduation survey I took from the last institution I attended asking whether diverse cultural perspectives were present in course readings, discussions, and assignments. Then this afternoon I was talking to a colleague who is advising on a science curriculum that also includes cultural competencies.

As synchronicity would have it, a past student posted this video on her FB page today. It added to my memory of a Vine Deloria, Jr. book that talked about the Lakota description of rocks as envoys between the earth and other beings. Albert here also takes the discussion to what it is to a being in the Lakota culture in contrast to the Western explanation.

Rocks are Relatives from Jennifer Page on Vimeo.

"A Manifesto for Teaching Online"

Looking at the related site for this video, I am so pleased to see these tenets come forward. It articulates many of the really critical ideas, beginning with the very statement that online is not lesser, but a "difference of location."

Ever since I first learned about Moore's definition of distance as a 'psychological construct," I thought about how a person could as much experience distance in a physical classroom, let alone online. And this is only the beginning of all this manifesto expresses.

Also memorable is the tenet is that "Each course design is the expression of a philosophy and practice."

I found this next statement to be quite provocative: "Teaching should not be downgraded to facilitation." I've been calling what I do facilitation in that it describes a guide role rather than the traditional instructor at the front. Yet this statement surfaced something that has really been part of my practice--to bring resources and opportunities to the online course in response to learning needs, interests, and requests. And the flexibility to do so can happen if course elements are not locked down.

Originating from the University of Edinborough, "It is a series of brief statements that attempt to capture what is generative and productive about online teaching, course design, writing, assessment and community."


A manifesto for teaching online from Jen Ross on Vimeo.

I encourage you to visit the accompanying website. Visiting the site will provide more information on its intention--to forward dialogue about these ideas: http://www.education.ed.ac.uk/swop/manifesto.html

First Day Review ala Speed Dating

Creative Commons Licensed Work by MikeCrane83
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

My friend Roy just shared an opening day exercise with learners in the second course of a two-course sequence, based on the speed dating model. He said most of the students already knew each other from the other class and he wanted them to review some material as they entered the second term.

So he had them pair off, then gave them a question to discuss for three minutes. After the first three minutes, one of the pair would move on to discuss the next question with another person. He used 8 questions this time out, and said students asked to do that activity again.

The move and talk model not only keeps the interest going. His take was students were not only teaching each other and uncoving misconceptions, but "switching-up voices" provided another way of explaining the concept, possibly making it more clear than an earlier explanation.

Thanks, Roy! I love that you keep sharing these energizing practices.

Jan. Apple Announcements: The "Digitization of Education"

Between 8 and 9 am yesterday, a colleague wrote to me w/ the link to the live announcements Apple was making in NYC about their new interactive book and authoring products, asking if I was tuned in to the event. The channels have been on fire with remarks, including my email response to her:

I spent some time looking at the IBookstore and IBookAuthor and the Twitter counter from the creator (earlier Apple Engineer) of Push Pop Press, http://pushpoppress.com/ourchoice/, which Facebook bought earlier

this year, saying Apple's product looks likes his re-branded.

I loved the products and still can't help but think about the competition between good inventions and intentions with market share (vendor bondage). This continues to raise the question of technology and privilege.

On the positive side, I've been watching custom publishing since the around nineteen ninety and also think about how we tried to get publishers working with CCCOnline to consider books as only one of their digital assets. And now the devices have added a twist once again. 

Last, I intend to carefully read Apple rights to the books created with IAuthor. I'm not clear on that yet.

Great Post: "Learning a New Language 140 Characters at a Time"

What a fabulous way to engage language learners in a language class. The students were asked to find and follow a person on Twitter who writes in the language being studied.
The student is not only stretched to learn more language to understand the tweets, but has a personal, real-life context.


http://hastac.org/blogs/coryduclos/2011/11/10/learning-new-language-140-characters-time