you might find this post and the previous one on the Pontydysgu blog quite useful and interesting: http://www.pontydysgu.org/2012/02/thinking-about-moocs/
How apropos for cluster.
See, I have been following, sharing, tagging, bookmarking, reading when time permitted, skimming when it didn't. I occurred to me that both recent "distractions" (however different from MOOCs as well as one another) involved projects that required me to orient, declare, network, cluster and focus. That and describing the projects would make good posts. Not just yet though as I am still in final wrap of one and waiting for the other (local) to unfold.
In the meantime, here is this whatever you call it, a Mindmap tool (or flash toy) from Mindomo, and I think a usable model for a PLN. Pop-ups could be replaced with links open in a new window. Surely there is free mind-mapping software that could be used. If not, then an old fashioned chart on a table would do. I did one, sunburst style, for local resources.
This is a good starter recording for Change MOOC at http://change.MOOC.ca: Dave Cormier on Nov 8, 2011 eliciting and discussing what aspects of education are meant to change as a result of the MOOC that goes by the name of CHANGE. Dave's topic is Rhizomatic Learning, which "has as its goal the creation of [digital] nomads." I added the word 'digital' - (sorry Dave, couldn't resist).
Dave's Elluminate show can be viewed here:
https://sas.elluminate.com/site/external/jwsdetect/playback.jnlp?psid=2011-11-08.0738.M.3A0EAE843895F0175E240FB3B50AA6.vcr&sid=2008104 or just but I simply downloaded the audio from EdRadio here:
and listened to it on my morning commute.
Nomads is a term coined by Dave for this presentation, and it just might stick. In comments here see if you can characterize what it means :-). To find out you'd need to start getting exploring Change MOOC. This is the big MOOC event that started so long ago its hash tag still appears to be #change11. When you visit its URL at http://change.mooc.ca you'll find an impressive array of recordings. These recordings are particularly impressive if you're going for a PhD at Athabasca University. But if you're a simple teacher ... well, you decide.
The point of this, though, is not the content, it's the NETWORK. That's this week's theme in EVO Multiliteracies. There haven't been a lot of ... well there haven't been ANY comments on the videos by George Siemens and Dave Cormier about this.
I wondered why. In an effort to include the links here,l I made a shocking discovery. The plugins to Dave's videos in our wiki portal had stopped working (I checked two computers, two different browsers, they'd died). I've just fixed them on these pages:
- What is a MOOC on http://goodbyegutenberg.pbworks.com/w/page/48178337/evo2012declare
- Success in a MOOC on http://goodbyegutenberg.pbworks.com/w/page/48177073/GettingStarted2012evo
- Knowledge in a MOOC on http://goodbyegutenberg.pbworks.com/w/page/48178424/evo2012cluster
OK, with that repaired, I'll leave it there. PLEASE watch these videos. Each lasts only minutes. They are extremely articulate, clever, and explain better than I could what I mean by MOOC.
If you want to try a real live MOOC, check out http://change.mooc.ca. If you can't enroll, don't worry about it, you can just dabble in it (and report back).
Then on Sat Jan Jan 28, 2012
Meanwhile on Sunday Jan 29
I'm planning to come online again at http://tappedin.org and Bb Collaborate / Elluminate at http://tinyurl.com/y3eh this Sunday. I'll try and get to TappedIn before noon GMT and stay there and at Elluminate to at least 1400 or 1500 GMT. Last week's event was quite F.U.N. (that's an acronym I invented) and was archived here:
http://learning2gether.posterous.com/learning2gether-with-evo-multiliteracies-beco
See http://learning2gether.pbworks.com/ for more details
Real life has a way of imposing on our virtual ones. These days there is much to impose on.
The latest rendition of the EVO Multiliteracies course for 2012 has been going on for more than two weeks now using http://goodbyegutenberg.pbworks.com as a portal. Participants oriented gamely in week 1, but were less outgoing about declaring, through declarations did trickle in in the form of web handles, and this is leading us into the Networking phase of our course.
Some participants filled in the form for the EVO 2012 session at
http://goodbyegutenberg.pbworks.com/w/page/45188877/2012participant_form
and this put their names and network handles in our datatbase here:
From this I've created a Skype list. It was tedious because first I had to add everyone listed to my contacts list before I could then add them to the EVOMLIT list, which I've now done for everyone who left a Skype ID. So far only Scottlo has responded on it. Meanwhile I've added everyone who gave a Twitter ID to a Twitter list here: https://twitter.com/#!/list/VanceS/evomlit. If you want to see if you are on it you can send a tweet with the hash tag #evomlit. Your tweet should appear in a search on tweets labeled evomlit; i.e. https://twitter.com/#!/search/evomlit as well as on the EVOMLIT list.
Whenever I can gather a group of participants I like to experiment to see how these things work because I like to use these techniques with my real live students, and of course the way WE learn about them is to try them out. How else would we learn such things, except through trial, error, and observation.
We have also held a couple of very nice live sessions, attended by a number of Multiliteracies participants:
One thing I've had decent success with is Posterous blogs. They are one of the best for group work (networking with your group). There are two dozen members here and all are contributors. If you want to join just go to http://multiliteracies.posterous.com and subscribe. When I see that multiliteracies participants have done that I'll promote you to contributor. Then you'll be able to post here, and other subscribers SHOULD get your post as an email. They can reply to the email to comment on your post. In practice this allows your class or group such as this one to hold conversations around blog posts. Again, you have to try it to see how it works.
I think this blog will be my ePortfolio for this course. There is one odd thing about posting here. Posters are not identified. So make sure you sign your posts, otherwise we won't know who they are from. This one is from -- Vance
Even if not specifically designated as such, thoughts on navigating chaos, an ongoing Multiliteracies consideration, shine through. Besides relevance, this sharing-as-post gives me the opportunity to a) post by email to posterous; b) autopost to CLW; c) get in the habit of using Diggo features; d) comply with MOOC tool building mission, even modest tools with less bling and glitz (and thankfully requiring less bandwidth); e) participate; f) contribute, however modestly, to artifact creation; g) and surely more
Quotes:
- presentation from George Siemens on Self-Organization in Online Courses (embedded below) that addressed some aspects of learning complexity (through the context of a MOOC)
- we need to sift through the chaos to create signal, perhaps even a pattern language
- I liken this process to language itself and the alphabet. The alphabet developed to take a series of meanings and weld it to one symbol (a process more pronounced in Chinese and ancient Egyptian perhaps) that everyone might recognize and accept.
- It reduces the complexity, yes, but more importantly it provides a starting point for a common process. Without it, we would be lost in theory.
- The same holds for learning to some degree. We look for structure, but if none exists on sight, we combine things until some structure emerges. That structure can be represented in a single symbol, but its foundation might shift as new understanding emerges. Occasionally, there is need to ditch the symbols or invent a new one altogether as emerging learning dictates. That is a healthy and complicated process. The MOOC captures this process a bit and adheres to an open structure to allow pattern language to emerge, a shared vocabulary, a knowledge construct (however ephemeral).
- Feedback as friction as forces interact. A spark, a collision, waste, and occasionally a nova. A big (learning) bang. This makes me think a learner's responsibility (among many others) is to be open to this collision of actors, agents, feedback, waste, noise, and then, ideally, pattern, understanding. The only way out is through.
- Disturbing- an ontological disturbance, an unknown, an uncanny sense of veering through uncharted, potentially treacherous waters. It is a good place to be as a learner, but it requires a strength and confidence that only an empowered learner could put forth. But in that disturbance, that mess, there is the friction, that meat-grinder of understanding.
- This is learning as curiosity and sometimes it can be quite scary.
- Often we seek knowledge for the sake of knowledge (anyone subjected to my endless banal history lessons will understand this), but I do believe that most learning is action oriented. To learn not only to get a job, to live in a world, to subsist, but rather for acting as best as we can. For improvement, for progress, for self-actualization.
- self-actualization (the development of self) can only be realized through sharing, group interaction
- disaggregated, emotive, functional machine of interaction. One that has to be tinkered with constantly.
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This is one of the readings for Week 4 of CMC11, Creativity and Multicultural Communication. Transliteracies sure sounds like Multiliteracies. Is there any significant difference other than the discipline of origin? More emphasis on sociocultural aspects? I vaguely remember related (internet mediated cross cultural or transnational communication) terms from the late 90's that seem to have all but disappeared from use. Are there other related terms?
Quotes:
- Transliteracy is recent terminology gaining currency in the library world. It is a broad term encompassing and transcending many existing concepts.
- Transliteracy is such a new concept that its working definition is still evolving and many of its tenets can easily be misinterpreted.
- Transliteracy originated with the cross-disciplinary Transliteracies Project group, headed by Alan Liu from the Department of English at the University of California-Santa Barbara. The main focus of that group is the study of online reading.
- The term has its basis in the word transliterate, which means “to write or print a letter or word using the closest corresponding letters of a different alphabet or language.”
- transliteracy is concerned with mapping meaning across different media and not with developing particular literacies about various media.
- interaction among all these literacies
- “the ability to read, write and interact across a range of platforms, tools and media from signing and orality through handwriting, print, TV, radio and films, to digital social networks.”
- working definition of transliteracy
- Basically, transliteracy is concerned with what it means to be literate in the 21st century.
- social networking, but is fluid enough to not be tied to any particular technology. It focuses more on the social uses of technology
- Transliteracy is very concerned with the social meaning of literacy.
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