Observations about learning, knowledge and technology

Recent #MOOC & #PLE research from Rita Kop: publications on Massive Open Online Courses and Personal Learning Environments. 


Rita (ur-moocquette or mooc wonkette? Maybe both...) writes...

People interested in Massive Open Online Courses will probably be aware of the research by Helene Fournier and me on Personal Learning Environments and MOOCs. We carried out research in the MOOC PLENK2010 (The MOOC Personal Learning Environments Networks and Knowledge that was held in the fall of 2010). The data collected on this distributed course with 1641 participants has been massive as well. Its analysis has kept us and some fellow researchers busy over the past year. The research has resulted in a number of publications and I thought it might be useful to post links to all of our journal articles, conference papers and presentations that were published in relation to PLEs and MOOCs in one space. Each publication looks at the data from a different perspective, eg, requirements in a PLE, self-directed learning, learner support, creativity.

Read the rest at Observations about learning, knowledge and technology: Research publications on Massive Open Online Courses and Personal Learning Environments (and save the links)

'via Blog this'

GeoTrio: another tool for your PLN

GeoTrio lets you create a virtual tour of just about anyplace on a map. You type in addresses or locations and easily create multiple “stops” that show the Google Street View snapshots of the area. You can also upload your own images.

But that’s not all.

What really makes GeoTrio stand out is the ability to easily make an audio recording for each stop on the map.

In many ways its similar to Tripline, which you can read about on The Best Sites Where Students Can Plan Virtual Trips (I’m adding GeoTrio to that list, too). Tripline is “slicker” and lets you grab images off the Web. However, it does not have the ability to provide audio narration.

via larryferlazzo.edublogs.org

Assignment for students:

Use this to plan a trip to someplace you've always wanted to visit or create a presentation to show your online friends about your home town or some place special to you.

Other: teaching, presentation, marketing, even site development tool

Posted via email from Meanderings

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.

PLN Competencies

“All learning begins when our comfortable ideas turn out to be inadequate.” – John Dewey


from the blog Ponderances of Steve (Steve LeBlanc). PLN Competencies is not about language or writing but does clarify PLN vs PLE nicely, emphasis on the human connections, including potholes. Not a stretch I think to apply it to collaborative and other writing groups. 

Filed under: Coaching,MOOC — Steve LeBlanc @ 1:28 am 

You don’t have a strong PLN (Personal Learning Network) the moment you show up at the right group, even if it is the perfect fit for your particular interest. Admittedly, finding a group of folks who share your passions can offer support, guidance and quick tips for simple challenges. For example, finding the right quilting group for a lone quilter can be a dream come true...But what if your passions are not so neatly contained? What if your interests are broad and interdisciplinary? Specifically, what if you just can’t find a group that shares your varied interests? You could join different groups for your different interests or even create a new one. That works fine for discrete fields, that is, until you start to ask cross-cultural questions no one else in that group is interested in.

What is made of a network depends more on the user than the network. Skills and habits (and yes, related to using social media):

1. Contribution
2. Great Questions
3. Feedback
4. Evaluation
5. Humble Boldness
6. Basic Computer Skills
7. Celebrating Aloud
8. Remixing
9. Leaving the Virtual

You'll have to read Steve LeBlanc's post to fill in the rest (including more about list items). The closing?

Extra Notes on Competencies and Literacies

Competencies and literacies are fairly new constructs in learning theory, and not yet well agreed upon, not even on Wikipedia. The Washington State Department of Personnel defines competencies as, “the measurable or observable knowledge, skills, abilities, and behaviors (KSABs) critical to successful job performance.” I like acronyms.  And Microsoft offers a dizzying array of competencies here, with rubrics for measuring Basic, Intermediate, Advanced and Expert Proficiency Level on each.  It seems that competencies have more to do with actions, and literacies have more to do with thinking and understanding. Rita Kop cites research that people might not necessarily have the critical literacies (thinking skills) required to learn and search independently, suggesting the need for some level of training or coaching. 

Here are Howard Rheingold‘s 5 Literacies: Attention, participation, evaluating credibility or critical consumption or “crap detection”, cooperation or collaboration and network awareness. He defines literacies as skills plus community (social media).... In a SlideShare called Digital Tribes and the Social Web, Steve Wheeler identifies what he calls the Digital Literacies: Social Networking, Transliteracy, Privacy Maintenance, Identity Management, Creating content, Organizing content, Reusing/Repurposing content, Filtering and selecting, Self presenting. Others include taxonomies, social tagging, and collaboration.

So what do they have to do with writing and  language learning? 

more literacies, networks, knowledge, etc

I'm doubling up on PLN related open / online courses. Too tired to come up with a name both right and clever. Do enough and I may even get a handle on them - if only on the acronyms. 

Platforms are another issue. I remember D2L from when it was a study skills and how to learn site. LMS (Learning Management Systems) are becoming increasingly complex and admin oriented, more about micromanagement and surveillance. I first used WebCT (if memory serves) around 2001 or 2002, creating and loading most of my own course materials, all of which went into the belly of the beast. Course back-ups only opened in WebCT through the university account. You leave, your course material stays. 

Now the trend is for colleges and universities to subscribe to WebCT pre-loaded with course materials as well as automatically upgraded, adding (imo fake) "social media" features. Why would an informed student want to keep a private personal blog shared with not just instructor and classmates but sysadmin to boot?


LMS can be seriously clunky, some more than others. The more intrusive, the clunkier. UC Davis' course listserv did everything I needed, and the Tech in Teaching program was developing a nimble LMS DTA or Distance Teaching Assistant, designed for flexibility and customization. Now they've gone to one of the commercial systems.

I still think online and hybrid classes could run just fine on a collection of free applications, e.g. a blog, a web based/archived email group, microblogging for short notices, document sharing, chat for office hours. That opinion also has more than a little to do with edu punk leanings, which is why I'm giving all this a spin, including the PLN/PLE. Forget e-portfolios though. No more evaluations, which is what that particular artifact is for. I prefer the network approach because it can allow weaving in community, academic advocacy, learning materials (whether for local or global users).

My current, sort of related project (obsession) is filling gaps - teaching materials, course pages - as best I can. Portfolio but as memoir and biography.  An electronic CV for someone no longer on or in the market, which means I am free to do it my way. If it the self-paced study group works, I'll think about putting up something self-paced (that I already have material for) for community use.

navigating chaos

"Managing chaos" is an oxymoron. I'm changing out the expression for "navigating chaos" or "chaos coping." A colleague uses "intuitive chaos navigation" (suggestive of Dune's blind navigators on spice), but I'm not ready for that yet. The intuiting part not the spice. Wondering about the chaos part? Look at the tags.

How much mail and such can I wade through this morning before ordering groceries and calling the electric company about billing (autopay fell off the wagon)? I do seem to be handling mail more efficiently thanks to tips from the EVO (Electronic Village Online, pre-TESOL Annual Conference) multiliteracies workshop. I really fell behind this year, but feel I am getting much more out of this year's workshop than previous ones.

That's one prong of the forking pathways of retirement interests. It would be less confusing if they did not keeping crossing one another, economies of scale not withstanding. The workshop is online and covers/involves web 2.0 tools and social media.

As the workshop comes to its end-game, we are to construct either ePortfolios or PLN (Personal Learning Networks). PLN can evolve into a Personal Knowledge Management Plan.I think this is where I'm headed but my conceptualization (mental grasp still exceeding reach) has yet to gel coherently. 

Unlike the other workshop participants, I am retired from active teaching, on line or ground ~ or some mixture thereof. Yet I remain ed involved with an adjunct advocacy group and by volunteer teaching ESL online. The former deals with academic politics and issues; the latter with pedagogy. Both involve social media and have blogs.

See the social media and CMC (computer mediated communication) connection? The thread in the maze that will lead me out and away from the minotaur... or take me down his maw. 

So what about the rest of it? Bear with me, I'm getting there. I blog, not just here. A lot and about all these threads. I figure the "Knowledge Management Plan" will help me keep threads straight, in hand and untangled. It's worth a try.