Complexity, self-organization, #Change11 etc

 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:

Complexity, self-organization, and #Change11: reactions to Siemen's presentation on online courses - michael sean gallagher

• 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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Basic Blogging, #potcert11

Explaining how to get started blogging was on my mind before this course started: a friend asked for help with basics. I assumed (and we all know the cliché about how that breaks down) everybody taking the class would already be a blogger. So I thought, why not revise and repurpose for the class? Too basic, just ignore it: filtering practice.

Blogging is not that different from writing email. The compose screens are very similar. Instead of emailing to designated addressees, you publish - send it into cyberspace. A number of blogging platform offer post by email, making blogging even more like email. Compose in your email program and save in drafts. Alternately, you can compose in a word processing program and then copy paste into the message screen. Use WordPad and save to rtf because Word has too much hidden garbage code that may not transfer well 

Explanatory stuff + links below the fold. Looking over a few blogs about teaching and in your subject area will help you get a feel for blogging and the possibilities. Best advice: just do and figure out the details as you go along. Ask questions: anyone you know who blogs is part of your learning network.

"Integrate Technology in the Classroom"

Bookmark: https://sites.google.com/site/techintegrationsite/
Vanessa Vaile's notes: This site is setup to give you an overview of a book, "Great Ways to Integrate Technology in the Classroom-21st Century Curriculum: Activities That Will Keep Your Students Engaged". It is intended to help teachers integrate technology into their curriculum.
You can find more of Vanessa Vaile's bookmarks at
- http://www.delicious.com/vcrary
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Web Apps for Writers

100 Free And Useful Web Apps For Writers from The Presurfer by Gerard

No matter what you write, whether it's for a college class on creative writing or for a novel you've finally found time to get around to, having some tools to make the process a little easier is always a welcome prospect.

This list brings together a wealth of just those kind of resources, all found online and all free to use, so you can concentrate on being creative and producing the best writing you can.

coordinating networks

Cross-posting myself from my blog at the EVO Multiliteraces page on Ning. Evomlit, for short, is a workshop I am taking at the Electronic Village Online (the TESOL prequel)

Or drowning in them. Sink or swim: coordinate or drown? I just clicked Vance's overload article. "How can teachers deal with technology overload?" at http://multiliteracies.ning.com/profiles/blogs/how-can-teachers-dea.... As an example of overload, I started this post early in the first week, saved most of it to drafts without posting. We are now nearing the end of the second week, and, after over a week of "I'm going to finish that post today." That was then: today is today. Maybe this "today" is the day.

Overload: it's not just for the classroom. There are also personal networks, non-classroom professional networks, community networks, special interest networks, and so on. Nor are all networks separate, discrete and clearly delineating entities. They overlap, some more than others.

Vance addresses the challenge teachers face when they "need to master so many new skills" but also reminds readers (including me) that "these competencies have been needed since the turn of the century" with skill sets continually enlarging in this one. In order to survive in these waters, like sharks, we need to keep moving and feeding.

What do we need to be familiar with? Let me count the ways, tick them off the list of skills and concepts that Vance adapted from himself (adapted from Stevens, 2008). Yes, you can read them in the article but repeating is aide memoire for me as well.

1. Web 2.0 and social networking
2. RSS and feed readers
3. Podcasts (harvesting and producing them)
4. Microblogging (e.g. Twitter, Edmodo)
5. Distributed and personal learning networks
6. Aggregation and tagging
7. Digital storytelling and applications of multimedia to new literacies
8. Communities of practice and connectivism
9. Informal / just-in-time (JIT) learning
10. Synchronous communication tools such as: instant messaging, online presentation venues incorporating interactive whiteboard, voice, and video
11. Asynchronous collaborations tools such as: blogs, wikis, Voicethread, Slideshare, Google docs, etc.

Do you see the most common thread? Not time or immediacy (live feed and synchronicity hype to the contrary) but sharing. If we don't share, it's not communication. Dissemination, exchange, collaboration. If there is no exchange or dialogue it is not interactive.

Let's examine the list for familiarity levels: know about, consume, distribute or exchange, aggregate or collect to share, create. They won't be the same for each. Classification would be another category ~ not just how but where or in which networks do we use them? Bloom's Taxonomy comes to mind.

Another consideration: which applications will we use, find most useful? Realistically, we won't use all of them, but there is no way to know without test driving them. Another workshop goal is to learn more about familiar applications... not to mention that app we installed but have not gotten around to using enough to become more than superficially familiar with it.

I'm going to manage overload by not expecting to do everything and letting myself go off on tangents that catch my fancy ~ an distinct advantage to being more or less retired. As an aside, I am also looking at and weighing these applications from the perspective of networks and computer networking in other contexts: local community and action networks.