Teaching Carnival 4.8

(Blogging) carnie barker ProfHacker at The Chronicle welcomes you to Teaching Carnival 4.8. I've seen other blog carnivals, including more than a few teaching ones, mostly subject and K-12, but somehow missed this one. Fits right in with writing/blogging about teaching, computers, languages, writing, MOOC, multileracies. Other carnivals feature teaching blogs for K-12 and ESL/EFL/ELL. Visiting a carnival is good way to check out teaching blogs and pick new ideas.

ProfHacker has become the permanent home of the Teaching Carnival, so each month you can return for a snapshot of the most recent thoughts on teaching in college and university classrooms. You can find previous carnivals on Teaching Carnival’s home page.

Technology in the Classroom

• Shaun Huston at A Weird Fish experiments with using Storify in the classroom. With many of the same capabilities as a blog, Storify offers unique opportunities to facilitate student learning.
• Kathryn Crowther, writing for TECHStyle, a forum for digital pedagogy hosted by Georgia Tech, has some suggestions for Steampunking your pedagogy. Also for TECHStyle, Leeann Hunter describes the semester wrap-up of some collaborative work in her classroom
• The Worst Professor Ever also weighs in on digital pedagogy. She’s good for some bummer thoughts to harsh your digital humanities mellow. After that, she takes on the question of what Blackboard can’t do for you.
• Gordon Watts describes some of the possibilities inherent in the move to digitize ever-larger portions of our books.
• Finally, Richard N. Landers at Neo-Academic considers the correlation between Twitter, student engagement, and grades and asks us to consider the relationship between succeeding at a learning game and enjoying one.

[Image by Bill Wolff and used under the Creative Commons license.]

This ProfHacker entry was posted in Teaching and tagged teaching carnival (in case you want to find more of them right here) Posted via email from Mooking About

belated

Indeed, almost a month between posts, of listening and reading more than "speaking" (CCK11 on Facebook excepted). There's a lesson there. There's always a lesson somewhere, everywhere ~ up to us to make connections, analyze the information, draw and apply conclusions, taking note but not worrying overmuch when conclusions don't match those of cohorts or even guides. Information, however, should not ramble too far off the reservation. Presumably, we are all working with the same or at least similar information. Conclusions will vary but, adjusted for purpose, perspective and other parameters, should not be wildly inconsistent.

Translated that means (among other things), briefly, not all of us are here for the same purposes and hence will not take away same resources, not use MOOC, analytics and connectivism lessons or data for the same purposes. My interests are not the same as administrators or IT managers. Theirs are not the same as mine. They may not even the be same as most teaching co-participants. None of the preceding takes listening to, following coversations, reading, sifting ideas and sharing resources off the table.

image from a connectivism wiki

Remember the admonition: follow according to your focus/interests and take what you can use. Share and collaborate with all, regardless of their focus. It's a network, not a group; networked, not hierarchical.

 

So where have I been coming from (not to mention where headed)? I am not an administrator, manager, IT designer. Retired, I am not even a full time educator any more. I remain a learner with PLN, a volunteer, an activist, a community networker and interested in both education and online learning as they applies to all of the preceding. 

And what am I doing with, how do I hope/intend/plan to use, all this? Can't say for sure just yet but creating public self-regulated learning programs for open community access is part of it. This grows out of community blogging and volunteer teaching ESL online. It is as nourished by IRL experiences and networks as it is by the online. 

ANT links

Behind blogging your MOOC? Don't be bashful ~ just jump in anywhere.

ANT... for Actor Network Theory. I look at the acronym and think, "not another learning theory!" NALT. I could feel my eyeballs starting to roll back in their sockets, just like the reaction to analytics, just as confusing but not as useful. Persistently (and sometimes perversely) self-regulated learner that I am, off I went looking for more about ANT. See cross-disciplinary selection below, faves highlighted.

• LaaN vs Actor Network Theory
• Space and Culture book review (actor network theory and urban studies)
• Presentation on Actor Network Theory (UCB, sociology and CS)
• Actor Network Theory (ANT), from "Thoughts, writing & snippets" blog 
• Actor Network Theory in Plain English [video]
• Network theories for technology-enabled learning and social change: Connectivism and actor network theory (pdf)
• When all that is theory melts into (hot) air (pdf)
• actor-network theory and a composition program
• Why did actor network theory run out of steam?

I'm not the only one wondering "why ANT?" My mind went on a different track to get to my own "ANT,OK" moment, taking me through a variety of familiar disciplines, several I would not have thought to ANT up. Making connections, get it. 

Reading that Greimas influenced LaTour made yet another connection, a major aha moment at that to connect or at least associate the Greimas Schema as a structural tool for viewing schematics of linked networks. Sometime back, I was trying to do the same for urban chaos as expressed in literature. I used the schematic to organize the jumble of seemingly contradictory metaphors for the city across multiple literatures (a comparatist thing) from earliest literatures through contemporary cinema, from the Aeneid to Bladerunner. Familiar chaos... 

Semiotics, semantics, semantic web, metaphors and more.

Posted via email from Mooking About

Book Review: Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age

Although not immediately relevant to specific topics, assignments, etc on any MOOC, massive or modest, that I am currently following (albeit in a distracted, scattered fashion), this review and its subject is relevant ~ highly "connectible" ~ to data, multiliteracies, connectivism, networks (virtual and IRL). 

Popular culture is another rich source of data about cognition, learning, social behavior, crowdsourcing and networking. Connectivism on the hoof. 

More on social media theorist Clay Shirky in his own write:

• writings about the internet
• here comes everybody (2008 blog about book of same title)
• blog
• TED profile
• "Does the Internet make you smarter?" ~ WSJ review of Cognitive Surplus

reviewed by Nabeel Ahmad — January 05, 2011

Title: Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age
Author(s): Clay Shirky
Publisher: Penguin,
ISBN: 1594202532, Pages: 256, Year: 2010
Search for book at Amazon.com

Citizens across the world watch an average of 20 hours of television per week, adding up to trillions of hours each year. The interest in this fact is not that we have this free time – or Cognitive Surplus, as author Clay Shirky describes – but how we choose to expend our most valuable resource. Shirky argues that our creativity and willingness to share in this connected world – the book’s subtitle, even on a miniscule level and especially through the Internet, can have great impact. Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age succeeds in getting us to think about how we can better understand this phenomenon by dissecting numerous examples and threading them together into a smoothly read piece.

Doing (multiple) MOOCs + Multiliteracies

I am currently registered in and trying to follow one online workshop and two MOOCs. Vance Stevens, who is conducting the online workshop, (TESOL's EVO or Electronic Village Online Multiliteracies , responded that he was considering designating Multiliteracies a MOOC or Miniscule Open Online Course. Comparing the courses, finding connections, is as much my goal and ongoing blog topic as surviving the experience without my head exploding. 

All three are populated with repeaters. The light finally went on. Since these are networks are part of my immediate (maybe longterm) learning network, I should draw on them, ask who else is in multiple open courses and how they handle them, navigate the chaos. What strategies, tools, practices, tips can they (YOU) share?  

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 Hi there ~ I know a number of evomlit-ers (or however we designate ourselves) are taking one or more concurrent MOOCs, in addition to Multiliteracies?

I've been wondering:

A PLN Blueprint in 5 parts

The 2011 MOOC (Massive Online Open Course) season is upon us. This time I'm enrolled in two in addition to Multitliteracies, aka #evomlit, at EVO (Electronic Village Online, Tesol's annual pre-conference). Evomlit is not a MOOC (in massive sense) but is both open and online. They are all also free and self-paced.

With these courses comes PLN-OCD. Following (or actively participating in) MOOCs (aka "mooking about") is saturated with PLNs. The the activities seem inextricably intertwined. Workshops still spend time defining and describing PLNs, differentiating them from PLE's. Something "meta" is definitely meta going on here. 

Tom Whitby blogs on PLNs, clarifying what should have been clearer from the outset, 

This was one of my early posts explaining how I became involved in Social Media and the idea of a Personal Learning Network.It seems to be a topic that needs to be continually explained because of the growing number of educators who continue to enter the world of social media for educators. 

Part 1
One of today’s educational buzzwords, or fad terms is the PLN.  For my purposes it stands for Personal Learning Network. Others call it a Professional Learning Network or Community or even Environment. That would be PLN, PLN, PLC, or PLE. Many educators today are involved understanding and developing their own PLN’s. Everyone has one, and each is different and as unique as a fingerprint. Some employ technology, and others dwell in faculty rooms across the country and around the world.