There are three benefits to KM Certification:

- Setting yourself up as a certifier to get money ($1K per student in some cases) or ensure your future employment/funding by making folks come to you for certification

- Looking good to your friends, neighbors, future employers, or anyone else who is clueless as to real Knowledge Management

- To make you seem as if you are an expert in something for your own self-assurance

This is what I call the Wizard of Oz effect. The WOO (no accidental acronym, that) is an “expert” with zero qualifications as a wizard except to convince others of his own expertise. As gifts to those seeking a brain, a heart, the “noive”, he gives trinkets that do nothing else other than reassure them and empower them to use what they already know. But awards tarnish, clocks stop, and degrees tatter and decay. Click your ruby slippers three times and you’ll find that you’ve outgrown them after all and true KM has more to do with Thomas Wolfe than Kansas.

As to actually gaining knowledge through the certification process, if those who are certifying you were real Knowledge Management experts they would get the knowledge out to you by other means. The point of KM isn’t to “certify” and establish elitism and knowledge hierarchy, but to democratise information flow so that anyone, anywhere can know what you know when they need to know it…and not at a price.

This is my response to Jenny’s interesting post on Group Think

Hi Jenny and Carmen, I love to join your conversation. @Jenny, as posted here http://suifaijohnmak.wordpress.com/2009/10/06/cck09-emotional-intelligence-in-online-and-community-learning/ I have been studying, researching EQ for more than a decade and am still intrigued by its application and implication. I always referred back to Gardner’s multiple intelligence to start with, followed by Daniel Goleman when thinking and applying EQ in education. What I found was that many educational leaders have deep interests in this “niche” area and thus got training in it. However, the implications are: They are going back to their workplace and “mentor” their “subordinate” or peer educators. The educators have since been so accustomed to the “closed door” policy and “autonomy” regime in teaching. Since a coaching or mentoring approach starts from the coachee or mentee’s needs and wants to improve and develop, if the educator doesn’t see the need to be involved in the “team improvement process or COPs” or “mentoring process either individually or in a group”, what happens? Nothing? So, the result is: “Silence” is golden on both ends”. Training and development completed on a “one stop” workshop with theory only will be hung on the wall as certificates of competency, or even hall of the fame, but not much might have happened in the workplace. What happened next? Community of Practice approach (Ning, SL, wikis, twitters, face-to-face COPs across schools or universities, on the other hand, have appealed to a lot of educators, as there would be less conflicts, when working with educators in other schools, other sides of the communities. The issues are the security, trust, autonomy, and “intrusion” of privacy as perceived by educators when surfing on net.

Besides, the self awareness, self control aspects of EQ are really personal, and not too many educators/learners would like to share their results online. Also, empathy is far from easy to fully understand, especially when people are “packed” with emotions or overly critical in heated debates, conversations or interactions online. So EQ is still a ‘myth” to many educators, and cannot be “easily introduced” IMHO.

More research is needed to unfold the realities. I have once suggested Assumption Theory (see my post on this in http://suifaijohnmak.wordpress.com ) as we have often made lots of assumptions in social networking and online learning, which would later found to be doubtful or false. I couldn’t find any significant research on this “Theory” except the one by Stephen Brookfield: The Getting of Wisdom: What Critically Reflective Teaching is and Why It’s Important I would surely look into Carmen’s reference.

@Carmen: I agree with your conclusions. It is too easy to assume in an education/teaching/learning situation. I would like to explore with you two about the implications of EQ in online learning. I would compose some more posts that relate to my experience about team working, individuals, EQ and learning. My previous experience with EQ, team working revealed that EQ could have a great impact on learning. However, it seems that the more EQ one has, the more “power” and “control” it could exercise on others – “silence” is the most powerful influence on others….

There has been a few researches done that correlate EQ with online learning. The findings were that those with high EQ would be more successful in online learning. This sounds like common sense, but is interesting. Is high EQ required in MOOC or MOON? How could we evaluate it? What are the measures of EQ in MOOC or MOON?

Thanks Jenny for your insights. And Carmen for your interesting comments.

John

Enjoy this Next Generation Learning Space, though it was more than 1 year old, and there has been a lot of changes.

Comments?

This “Designing New Learning Spaces” sounds interesting.

Comment?

David Wiley discusses openness, disaggregation and the future of education in this video

In this ten years of Open Content by David Wiley, he highlights:

History of Open Licence, open content, open education.

Some problems ahead

• License compatibility – How can we re-mix?
• Noncommercial

Opportunities ahead

• CCPlus is done
• CCO is close
• On the education side – Open High School of Utah – Public, online completely open curriculum

What are the implications of open licence and open content on higher or open education ?

How do people keep blogging when they have their fingers in so many pies. I just can’t seem to do it.  The more I have on, the more difficult it becomes to blog. Where should I focus?

Recently I have been:

• keeping an eye on CCK09 and trying to keep up with how CCKo9 participants have been taking learning into their own hands
• tutoring on two online courses – one an international course and one a course for company graduates
• working to support eight JISC projects
• posting to the http://www.networkedlearningconference.org.uk/ Hotseats
• attending (albeit as a lurker) the JISC online conference - at least two great keynotes in this
• working with a colleague from Birmingham University to develop an online resource to support working in communities of practice
• attending CPsquare online research Fests to see how ‘people out there’ are working in CoPs.

And all this doesn’t include listening to, supporting and learning from my three grown up children in all their wonderful projects and interests, visiting my 84 year old mother and hoping that I take every opportunity to keep close to her and learn from her  in her declining years, keeping contact with my wider family and all their interests, keeping connected to my friends and ensuring that I don’t let these connections lapse, keeping connected to my wider interests which are mainly to do with art, choral music, gardening and travel.

Am I alone in wondering how I can keep up with all this? Recently I have felt that there is so much going on out there amonst so many really talented people, that I’m not sure what I could offer?

I thought the most recent CCKO9 participant Elluminate event (I didn’t attend  – but listened to the recording), organised by participants, was a wonderful example of how a diverse group of people from across the globe can come together, share and learn from each other. Thank you to Frances, Ulop, Roy, John, Leila, Ailsa, Heli, Eduardo. I learned a lot from this session.

Still trying to work out what I am learning from all this – but I feel as though the fog is lifting slightly!

This is a response to the posting by Frances on Moodle – Comments and Reflection on Elluminate Session

Great ideas Frances,

1. Self-organised study groups -

Following CCK08, we have formed the Connectivism Ning Community Network and many of the CCK08 participants have joined it.  Every one in CCK09 are invited to join.  There is also a Connectivism wiki that participants could consider.

2. “Moving on Connectivism” workshop could be organised after CCK09, using various social media. We could use the Connectivism Ning Community Network to organise such workshops, with Elluminate run on a need or regular basis.  

3. We have got distributed networks on Facebook, Twitters (tagged under #CCK09), CCK09 Ning, Diigo #CCK09, Connectivism Research Google Group , Delicious/tag/cck09, Friend Feed, various wiks – wikispaces on PLE/N, WordPress (tagged under #CCK09) for us to consider….

Would a list of the links help? 

Would you mind to include your links in subsequent threads?

That’s my 10 cents worth

What do you think?

This post will attempt to cover what I think I understand about connectionism, connectivism, personal learning, emotion, visibility & invisibility and extreme activity (assuming for this post that as a human I am capable of personal thinking and understanding). I have not yet looked at the links on Eduardo’s emotions post and some of the neuroscience posts from Suifaijohnmak’s blog but this where I think I am at today –  am sure to get in a mess but will have fun trying to write. After spending the weekend looking at connectionism and connectivism, I realised that I needed to explore the difference between intelligence that can be computed and intelligence whilst using a computer or other technology. Got into a fair amount of knots, but found an end of the string via a Dave Cormier post – more on that below. Going to use a somewhat odd referencing because want to show exactly where I read or saw something that made some kind of connection (hopefully will make sense along the way).

I first saw this video on diary of a martial artist in a discussion about fear. Without watching it, I looked at the still image and thought – is that a personal learning environment – I can see an environment and I can see a person – so far so good ! I can also see a rope, is that a possible tool?

How did he learn?

• Maybe he didn’t learn at all, just placed the rope and walked across it.
• He has unique physical characteristics which do not get affected by what we understand as gravity.
• He is a human with genetically modified monkey / cat / squirrel characteristics or a reincarnated one in human flesh.

Alternatively it may have been in phases – like climbing trees – starting lower and gradually getting higher.

How could I learn?

If I am older than e.g. 11 – I may be limited in my movements because core parts of my physiology are formed. I could start with a rope and walk across, if I fall off, I experience pain, but what is sensation? I am in an environment and doing something which as a result of observing my actions, my behaviour might change. Future attempts may be based on my experience of the the first one in a view of behaviourism from Skinner (1974, via Siemens, 2007). Based on my understanding of neuroscience these attempts would be based on patterns of connections being formed by dopamine neurons which may predict either outcome and produce the relevant sensation.

Is that all of the learning process?

Assuming I am in good enough physical condition to continue trying do I just get back on the rope, fall off, get back on – make small adjustments, fall off as if I am continually walking into a door or similar, like a robot whose programming has malfunctioned (or occasionally half awake human wandering around the kitchen before breakfast not looking where she is opening cupboards). Making adjustments – may involve thinking – reviewing the initial experience, receiving information about the sensations and translating those into perceptions such as falling off = sad, making it across = happy. Are the resulting small adjustments based on processing that information internally so that every time a different outcome happens this has to be reviewed against the information already processed, maybe as per Piaget’s state of equilibrium (1918, via Siemens, 2007 ).

What about fear?

This seems to be the strongest emotion when attempting to walk across the rope which appears to be both cognitive and affective:

“it’s difficult to combat animal instincts of fear of falling and self preservation: all his fibres in his body screaming at him to stay on the ledge and not venture out. the pay off of course is the feeling of being alive upon arrival on the other side…”

In neuroscience, the area of the brain that triggers responses is the amygdala:

“As Dr. Goleman explains, the amygdala is the emotional center for the human flight/fight/freeze response…If during an amygdala hijack the right lobe of the PFC becomes heavily engaged, a person is likely to fall into a state of depression, anxiety, fear, or panic. On the contrary, if the left lobe is utilized, they will feel in control, centered, focused, and confident. The left hemisphere has natural amygdala inhibitors which regulate input and allow a person to behave much more effectively.”

Is the amygdala processing affective or cognitive or both? Either way this may lead to different reactions, perceptions of whether to continue more attempts at crossing the rope so motivation, and perceived self efficacy about the chances of getting across may be affected (Bandura, 1994). So the presence of perceptions appears to take it beyond simply getting back on, falling off and the resulting sensations. According to a neuroscience study “behaviour is a product of the orchestration of many brain areas, the aggregation functions of these areas leads to emotion & cognition” (Pessoa 2008)

Is emotion information or a set of physical connections?

My understanding of connectionist theory would say that all of this happens through processes where connections are weighted, numbers of connections/ties evaluated according to strength, where each set of neuronal connections form different patterns – organising brain circuits (Raymond, 2009 via Suifaijohnmak, 2009)

So developing emotional intelligence – by changes in emotional states and perceptions could maybe be learning, based on the connections between the different brain regions at multiple levels, but more on that later.

Do the patterns created by neurons in my brain, reflect the patterns viewed through my retinas?

I.e is there a link between patterns inside my brain and patterns outside of my human physical structure. Roel Cantada put this beautifully when describing red

“I can’t shake of the idea that to say color “red”, the brain would have to fire connections between the neurons that are working on the electrochemical signals from the retina, with the neurons connected to the ear that remembers the activation of the sound “red’, and then so on and so forth connected with red until quiesence. Does the brain contain only what to me are settings of the sense organs (e.g. excitation due to a certain pattern of light frequencies). And that all these primitive settings/memory emerges into let’s say a child pointing to a new object as red? (is this behaviorism in the level of neurons?”

With human movement, as previously explored , at the moment we can generate images and graphics using paint, pens or computer graphics using software but are limited to representing much of this as a series of dots because as humans we can’t paint in molecules or atoms or anything smaller as yet undiscovered. A dot is a static entity just as maybe the perception of a colour is perception of a static pattern. However, stepping onto the rope – neurons will not just be static even if they were capable of being so – your head is moving around whilst you attempt to balance and head moving = brain moving = neurons moving.

Would we all see these patterns in the same way?

Our reactions are not all going to be the same, we may never step out in exactly the same way as anyone else. The majority of us would experience sensations of extreme discomfort or fear when walking out into the air. This is similar to the rock bit of canyonying – you literally have to step out – off a rock, looking forward, not down. If you could take a running jump off a rock, you would experience other sensations, build up momentum and move more quickly. Literally walking off a rock is – disturbing – there is no rope but on the first try even though you can’t see anything there, you feel like there should be and put your feet out as if on an invisible line.

Trying to tie together physical and emotional connections is really complex as in the video. You have a physical image in front of you, your previous experience of attemps to walk, emotions generated by the sensations of these attempts and all of these have patterns of connections in your brain as well as the patterns that you perceive in your visual environment. You do not have photographic images in your head (Downes, 2009). Just like an athlete who visualizes a sprint down the racetracks, the experience of visualizing how to better attempt to walk across the rope is not a static image.

What does this have to do with knowledge and networks?

A way of understanding how different areas of the brain are linked is by viewing as network topologies which forms the networks for creating connectionist, and with the development of more advanced computing technology-  artificial intelligence (in a long line including Thorndike, Bush, Turing, Minsky, Chomsky, Papert, via Siemens, 2009), computational neuroscience. The behaviour and function of different regions are similar to behaviour in a technological network with features such as clustering, frequencies, channels, paths (Sporns, Honey, 2006). This research is starting to explore environments outside of the brain where both might be connected via networks. As per patterns mentioned above, this is not easy to define between what we see and what is inside our head.

Going back to the video, if you took the rope away, how would you get from one rockface to the other – fly (not in this post!), jump, hop? If you had to walk in the air and there was no rope how would you decide what path to take? You could plot out a possible path based on your perception of space and distance. Just as data travels across a network, we could also go along an invisible path – without a rope, we would fall, which is similar to data dropping in a phone call or online interaction – when data doesn’t make it across from one node to another.

The rope could be an item that connects one side of the rockface with the other. Something which helps us visualize how to connect, doesn’t have to be a technology as in an appliance (Siemens, 2004, 2005, 2008). It can make an invisible path visible, helping with our awareness of our environment. Most of us would need additional tools, climbing gear to help us cross over, not just a single rope.

Am speeding through…

What about personal?

So far, have looked at a person connected to or with objects and space. As I have been writing this post, I have been using quotations and references from other people and there are thousands of years of people talking and writing, as well as thousands of years of people experiencing fear and other emotions.”Everybody relies on everyone else” (Siemens, 2009). So is any of this unique to the multi-connected form that appears to be my human self?

In a reply to a fantastic description by Roy Williams who used a metaphor of wired soup on the CCK09 forums; I looked at form and formlessness which brings me in another circle back to defining what is personal:

“Form inevitably creates narrative, disclosing the intent and the hand of the author. Whether linear or non-linear, any narrative contains a particular point of view. On the other hand, formlessness allows for unencumbered individual interpretation. I think of formlessness in its purest state as randomness. The only true opposition to structure, it gives equal importance to each structural entity. It is the only truly democratic (objective) view of information.”

So anything I create is personal but is ultimately connected, maybe explicitly through links, or more tacit through reflection, to thousands of other ideas and people. The connections I make between difference sources of information be it online or offline have a unique context (unless I am a clone or a dream – apologies to the dreamer if so!), so I have a potentially different meaning to others based on the associations I have made to it from other connections. Other people may have made the same connections but not in the same time, place, space, environment, feeling the same way that I did, however if I can’t make these patterns explicit in a form whilst being connected to being formless then how can I explain what is personal and what isn’t?

“I’m saying that in a connectivist model, as i understand it, the learning (and i would argue knowledge) lives in the network, it lives in the connections that are part of each thought and idea. In the print world, we have an amazing maze of interconnections in references and works cited pages that go back (in some way or other) thousands of years, one cannot speak of ‘knowledge’ as being separate from that historicity nor of ‘learning’ any part of it without it being part of the whole. One of the prime affordances we have at our fingertips with the web is the ability to create these connections very quickly, and very complexly, we can also see far larger chunks of the network at any one time.

The Personal Learning Environment may simply be a misnomer. If it is, as (i think)Chris suggests, a fancy way of talking about a medium of publication, then it is more like a “Snapshot of my personal thinking platform” (SOMPTP) if it is, however, as Pat suggests, a place where my personal knowledge lives or, say, a place where my personal learning happens, then I’m thinking that it might disagree with the ‘non-individualistic’ nature of connectivism.”

As above, have mentioned many different people, but if I haven’t spoken directly with them, could they be a part of my learning network? Maybe we don’t have an environment – we do just walk through the air, take some tools which aid us in doing some activity but maybe not actually learning. I see Eduardo do this all the time, he sends me ropes & branches in the form of delicious bookmarks, to my inbox and he is very clear in his understanding of what a personal learning environment is – however for me, I need to understand more about a) physiology, b) physical environment c) associations which form categories d) attributes and then maybe I will get there. Either way, I will continue to enjoy the adventure!

Littlefair C (2009) Walking in the Air, Diary of a Martial Artist, available at: http://diaryofamartialartist.blogspot.com/2009/10/walking-in-air.html

Ikigai M (2009) An Exploration of the Traditional Martial Arts Mind, Ikigaiway.com, available at: http://www.ikigaiway.com/2009/an-exploration-of-the-traditional-martial-mind/

Bandura, A. (1994). Self-efficacy. In V. S. Ramachaudran (Ed.), Encyclopedia of human behavior (Vol. 4, pp. 71-81). New York: Academic Press. (Reprinted in H. Friedman [Ed.], Encyclopedia of mental health. San Diego: Academic Press, 1998). Available at: http://www.des.emory.edu/mfp/BanEncy.html

Pessoa L, (2008) On the relationships between emotion and cognition, Perpectives Neuroscience Reviews, Nature (Vol. 2,pp. 148-58), Nature Publishing Group, Available at:  http://www.indiana.edu/~neurosci/Recent%20Publications/28534410.pdf

Raymond J (2009) Building a Circuit Diagram for the Brain, Stanford University on YouTube, via http://suifaijohnmak.wordpress.com/2009/09/30/connectivism-building-a-circuit-diagram-for-the-brain/

Cantada R (2009), What is the distinction between connectionism and connectivism, CCK09 Moodle Forum, available at: http://ltc.umanitoba.ca/moodle/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=2248

Downes (2009), Connectivism Week 1: Differences between Downes & Siemens, CCK09 Elluminate Session, available at: https://sas.elluminate.com/site/external/installinfo/playback?psid=2009-09-17.1420.M.1223D4571DF6BC84DD5B92A640F41D.vcr

Siemens G (2009) Where have all the people gone in CCK08, CCK09 Moodle Forum, available at: http://ltc.umanitoba.ca/moodle/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=2661

Sporns O, Honey C (2006), Small Worlds inside Big Brains, PNAS online, available at: http://www.pnas.org/content/103/51/19219.full

Siemens G (2008), Schweier R interviews Siemens G on Connectivism, available at: http://omegageek.net/rickscafe/?p=1193

Schmidt C, (2009), The Authority of Formlessness, Form Follows Behaviour blog, available at: http://www.formfollowsbehavior.com/2009/03/29/the-authority-of-formlessness/

Cormier D (2009), Does the PLE make sense in the connectivist context? Dave’s Educational blog, available at: http://davecormier.com/edblog/2009/11/21/does-the-ple-make-sense-in-the-connectivist-context/

I’ve just been watching one of the MJFF Virtual Roundtables which was available as a webinar, available soon, previous ones. Its the first one I’ve viewed. The Foundation is supporting incredible work. I haven’t read Always Looking up yet, but a friend has and said it was excellent.

History of Parkinson’s Disease.

Amongst many activities of the  Foundation, it tirelessly supports ( research into clinical trials, surgeries and physical therapies / exercises).  Activities like meditation, yoga, tai chi, walking, dance – can all help improve balance, co-ordination especially those who suffer with posture and gait related symptoms. There are many ways to support the Foundation’s work.

Their research:

With medications, the clinicians who responded in the webcast, mentioned that no two patients are the same, respond to treatments differently, the rate of progression of symptoms also varies. They are trying to understand if there are different groups of people who have physical, genetic similarities. People may have cognitive symptoms such as thinking more slowly, depression, mood disorders, so treatments for motor disorders may not be as effective for these as well.

I was not aware but there is research about gastrointestinal dysfunctions where there is also a loss of  dopamine neurons. They are looking at studies of the colon.

In June, they launched PDOnlineResearch which looks at how to interpret results – where researchers, scientists, funders can get together and  discuss findings, also making this available publicly, googleable ! It has grown substantially since its launch.

There are many other interesting areas discussed in the webinar, which I highly recommend watching. Will conclude this post with DBS – deep brain stimulation which is an evolving technique, being used at earlier and earlier stages. MJFF have funded many grants for DBS. I don’t know if this is one of them but it explains a bit about DBS:

Hi Kerry,

Thanks for your response. “What is the desired outcome of Connectivism?” Great question! 

I think each of us has our own answer, especially when it comes to informal learning.  What are your passions?  What interests you most?  What makes you feel more confident, more competent, and more rewarding when learning in the network(s)?  Could Connectivism help you in fulfilling your goals?

Most of us have been involved in our formal education for decades, and at times after graduation,  we often found the skills that we have acquired are often not be good enough in tackling the challenges at work or in our daily life, especially at this time of great changes.   So this new era of informal learning could stimulate us to be more connected to the networks,  through our PLE/N or the Virtual Learning Environment, and the tools and media, that would help us to learn more effectively and efficiently as an individual or as a network, through sensemaking, wayfinding, skills building, and mutual sharing.  

We could harvest our fruits of learning through such navigation, recognising of patterns of “knowledge” and thus develop a diverse area of interests that fulfill our curiosity to learn, and learning to be “a life long learner”- as part of our vision.  We could also engage more deeply with the weak ties in this network, and broaden our perspectives as we reflect personally and together in the network in an open, autonomous manner. 

We could also be inspired by each other’s enthusiasm in networking, to become our leaders of the future, to solve problems both individually and in the network, to support each other with the use of tools and media, and to be more connected in this world of networks.  This will also help us in adding value to ourselves, our network(s), community and the social capital.  A win-win to all.

Aside from exploring the “content” of the CCK09 course (including content generated by the instructors and by the “student” community) related to the theory and pedagogy/androgogy of connectivism, the aspect of the experience that I have enjoyed most is seeing how participants are mixing and matching various online tools to create mashed up learning environments uniquely suited to their learning preferences, professional roles, lifestyles, aesthetic sensibilities, and technological comfort levels.  I have certainly appropriated bits and pieces of what I have seen into my own strategies for gathering and filtering pieces of the distributed conversation and archiving and organizing the key ideas, pithy quotes, and big questions I want to be able to recall and reuse in the future.  I know I have become a better online, semi-independent learner as a result.  Not only do I know more “stuff” than I did at the beginning of the course, I feel smarter because I’ve improved the part of my brain that is outside of my skull.

Unfortunately, this experience has also dramatically increased my sense of frustration with the dominant view of technology in K-12 education in Ohio (my state.)

Earlier today, I read Antonio Fini’s paper summarizing responses to a survey he conducted with 2008 CCK MOOC participants, which, in part, explores the online tools used by CCK08 participants and their perceptions of the value of those tools in the learning process.  While virtually all of the survey participants reported using the “official” tools of the course (Moodle, the Daily e-mail newsletter, and Elluminate) to some degree, almost all participants also reported using at least one (and usually several) tools that were not required to access the content specified on the syllabus or follow the instructors.  These tools included social networking sites like Ning, LinkedIn, and Facebook, blogging tools like WordPress, virtual environments like Second Life, and Twitter for “backchannel” communications, brief comments, and resource sharing.  Additionally, content aggregation tools (e.g. PageFlakes and RSS) and social bookmarking and link sharing tools like Twine and Diigo were key elements for several participants.

What frustrates me going back and forth between my CCK09 experience and my “day job” in public schools is being made acutely aware every day of the power of social learning technologies in the course and then going back into systems where most of these technologies are not merely “unfamiliar” to learners, but preemptively blocked or banned, and actively demonized, by educators, many with (ironic?) titles like “Instructional Technology Supervisor.”

For example:

• I recently participated in a conference on STEM education — held at a technology education center — where virtually every social networking site, social bookmarking tool, video portal, and even Google Sites were blocked.
• In 2007, the state’s largest professional association for teachers issued guidance to members advising them not to join or cancel their accounts with Facebook and MySpace.  Many districts also ban or discourage educators communicating with students via cell phone, text message or Twitter.
• The state school boards association advises against using social networking sites for K-12 educational purposes while simultaneously posting links on the front page of the organization’s website directing visitors to follow it on Twitter or become a fan on its Facebook page.  (As of today, the association has only four fans — possibly because most of their would-be audience either can’t access Facebook or is afraid to make their presence on the social network known to school officials.)  I attended their state conference recently where the keynote speaker, a purported expert on creativity, spent a good part of his presentation comparing the growth of social networks and mobile computing via cell phone and iPod to the growth of the Borg from Star Trek, destroying relationships, subjugating people to machines, and crushing the individualism of poor ignorant students too naive to comprehend the dark powers of the network.
• Poorly informed fear-mongering in local media produces knee-jerk reactions of many K-12 educators only compounds the problem.  Lauren Angelone nicely catalogs the lopsided “discourse” in the non-debate over school policies and reactions to technology in this blog post and highlights the growing chasm between views of technology between K-12 and higher education with examples from her e-mail inbox.

A term that emerged briefly in CCK08 (and which I stumbled across in some curious Googling) which I think fits my day job universe much of the time is “disconnectivism.”  I’m going to repurpose the word, though, to describe the opposing force to Downes’ and Siemens’ thinking to help bring (sarcastic) clarity to the debate.

To compare and contrast:

• Where connectivism proposes that learning occurs through interaction, disconnectivism holds that learning occurs in isolation (and MUST be assessed this way.)
• Where connectivism suggests “freedom” involves being able to construct and choose your own community, disconnectivism argues that that freedom is actually a threat to community (which must be defined by place and demographics.)
• Where connectivism sees a student’s  ability to create and customize networked learning environments to connect with external sources of information, expertise, and mentorship as an expression of individualism and indicator of learner self-efficacy, disconnectivism sees these personal learning environments as debilitating for students (as they should learn “on their own” and do “for themselves”) and, sometimes, as an affront to the profession of teaching.  Where connectivism proposes that knowledge largely lies in network connections, disconnectivism is skeptical, asserting that while some knowledge may exist “out there,” so too does grave danger which must be avoided (kind of like starving to avoid the potential risk of choking inherent in eating food.)

Unfortunately, right now, it looks like the disconnectivists are winning the K-12 debate.  However, there’s still hope for a come-from-behind shift.  After all, connectivists can use tools to organize themselves that the disconnectivists are afraid to touch.  Connectivists can collaborate 24/7.  Connectivists can get smarter faster.

However, to succeed, K-12 connectivists need more support from their allies in higher education and industry — and not just in the form of research and theory development, but in the form of policy advocacy and engagement with popular media to balance the technological horror stories that dominate thinking today with news of success and promising possibilities that go largely uncovered in mass media (which remains the primary source of information and consensus opinion for people not yet participating in social media.)

In this Where have all the people gone  in CCK09 Moodle forum, Ulop says:

“It doesn’t matter if people leave the course, and go off and study on their own. That would be their option, and the connections will re-form and the networks will form elsewhere, if the ‘course’ is not serving the needs of the people. Otherwise, are we forcing people to take and remain in the course?”

Would this be of great interests from an educational authority or administration point of view?  What are the roles of educators and learners in a course? What happens if the course is not serving the needs of the people in an education institution?  What happens if the network is not serving the people it is supposed to serve?  Yes, people have a choice.  We can’t force people to remain in a course.  So, what are we going to do?

What should we do as an educator?  How could we improve our support to our learners? How could we ensure the course is run more effectively and efficiently (on a learning and cost basis)?  How could we achieve the institution goals and individual goals?  These are the sort of questions typically asked by educational leaders and educators. 

In a corporate world of education, there are intense competition between different education providers, so which is more important for surviving or thriving?  Teaching? Learning? Education? or Customers (learners) first?

In this Where have all the people gone  in CCK09 Moodle forum

Ulop says “That said, there is no troll in CCK09 and people have left the forums. For what reason(s), this time?”  I would like to know too!

People have left the forums for various reasons.  Some participants (especially new to CCK09) have already indicated the reasons at the start (introduction): they felt overwhelmed with information, and have since then moved to other media such as cck2009 Ning.  But was that the only reason?   And why didn’t they join back to the forum?

Some (especially the new CCK09 participants) might have expected the instructors (George and Stephen) to facilitate or moderate the forum discussion, as in a typical on-line course.  However, they might have noticed that George and Stephen would more likely meet them in the Elluminate session instead.  Others might have used other media such as twitters, facebook, their own blogs, their own PLE/N to interact, learn and reflect, rather than using the forum.  Many might still like to lurk though. 

Does this fall into a similar pattern to CCK08?  May be in a much smaller scale in the forum, but their involvement or interaction may be spreaded all over with a much wider arrays of networks, media and tools.

This time, a lot of past CCK08 participants rejoining CCK09 might have already experienced “enough” forum discussion, and so they would like to consider other “new” or emergent personalised learning network or media.  This leaves a few CCK08 participants remaining active in the forum.  Roy, Frances, Ailsa, Ulop, Ken, Dolores, Geoff, Roel, Mary, Nicola, Edgar together with other CCK09 (new?) participants – Gus, Luz, Leila, Maijann, Dean, James and Roland, and some others.

Another possible reason is that: Connectivism is about new and emergent learning, not just (online) teaching.  A lot of educators might be expecting to learn “how to teach or moderate” or the teaching or net pedagogy in an online course using forum or virtual learning Environment (i.e. using Moodle etc.).  However, as Stephen (and George) has mentioned in the past forum, connectivism is a theory about learning at this digital age, and so the emphasis is on learning.  For some of the educators/learners who might have used to instructivism, constructivism or social constructivism as a teaching/learning theory or pedagogy, they might have expected a similar approach to be adopted under connectivism in online teaching/learning.  What are their reactions?  Are they convinced of the connectivist approach?  Does connectivism as a learning theory resonate with their teaching practice? 

Are these educators/learners joining the course for their own reasons which we have all assumed?  That they would join the forum to discuss, to interact, to teach or to learn?  Or they would set up their PLN/E?  Or they would just like to lurk? 

In summary, it all comes back to the choice of learning amongst participants (with learners and some educators).  And whether they would resonate with the theory of Connectivism as espoused by Stephen and George.

Again this leaves us with more questions.

1. If you are coming from CCK08, what would you expect from CCK09?  What are your needs?  How are your needs fulfilled? Are these needs fulfilled in the forum?  What sort of “new and emergent concepts, knowledge, connections” would you expect from the forum?

2. If you are new to CCK09, what would you expect from CCK09?  What are your needs?  How are your needs fulfilled? Are these needs fulfilled in the forum?  What sort of “new and emergent concepts, knowledge, connections” would you expect from the forum?

Do the concepts and theory of Connectivism resonate with you?  Why/Why not?

May be the research question is: Why would you like to join/not join the forum?

Have found a series of  posts about “body sense”, partly following a conversation on Tom Haskins post, I am not really familiar with the psychology yet and trying to get my head around the interaction of sensations, emotions. Both Tom and minh were extremely helpful in their descriptions of how we learn.

Body sense appears to be about reconnecting to your body, increasing your awareness of what is happening.

Body sense is the ability to pay attention to ourselves, to feel our sensations, emotions, and movements on-line, in the present moment, without the mediating influence of judgmental thoughts…

The body sense is more technically called embodied self-awareness. It is composed of sensations like warm, tingly, soft, nauseated, dizzy; emotions such as happy, sad, threatened; and other body senses like feeling the coordination (or lack of coordination) between the arms and legs while swimming, or sensing our shape and size (fat or thin), and sensing our location relative to objects and other people. Thoughts about the self are called conceptual self-awareness. The table below gives a summary of the differences.

Conceptual Self-Awareness

• Based in language
• Rational, explanatory
• Abstract

Embodied Self-Awareness

• Based in sensing, feeling, and acting
• Spontaneous, open to change
• Concrete, in the moment

The series also looks at eating, exercise both with and without mirrors, body image etc. I find this interesting in relation to taekwondo. Out of the three dojang sessions I do weekly, one is with mirrors. This can be very helpful, because when someone is explaining that you are doing something wrong and they demonstrate it and you get it wrong again, if you can see what you are doing in the mirror, you have a better understanding – possibly ..it is easy to get distracted by your image in the mirror although in a dobok – less so.

I guess if men or women are in a gym with mirrors and wearing tighter fitting clothing you naturally become more self conscious. I’m not sure how much difference it makes – I haven’t trained in a gym for a few years and from what I remember, if I was in a good mood to try and exercise which made me concentrate or a really bad mood and concentrated in order to snap out of it, then I didn’t notice the mirror so much. Some of it, like a treadmill where you can be staring into a mirror can work both ways, either your mind drifts to other things because of the monotony – you stare through it, or it can be distracting.

It also depends, if a work or personal situation is on your mind, then it is more difficult to focus anyway, so seeing yourself in the mirror exercising hard may be less than helpful, unless you are an olympic athlete or similar ! Maybe if conceptual self-awareness does exist, then you are more likely to drift back to conceptual in those circumstances.

One of the benefits of martial arts training in the dojang is that there are others around, very fast paced and variety of activities and you are training to develop balance, focus, co-ordination. In terms of general fitness, I dislike running in gyms, you cannot replicate the wind, rain, unexpected changes in the environment as you run around either streets or fields, I feel so much better when I have run outdoors.

Time and budget permitting, I’m thinking about starting video series soon – taking some fitness gadgets for a spin, in both running and martial arts training. Heart rate monitors have been around for a long time, then Nike and others looked at tracking in trainers,  now in 2009 there are gadgets like Fitbit*, Apple and Nokia both releasing or partnering with others, GymTechnik etc

Does any of this make any positive difference to how we perceive the benefits to our body / exercise or are they a physical distraction in themselves?

I’m not convinced right now, I am very happy with how I currently train for martial arts without wearing any digital technology. I don’t record anything formally other than documenting the 33 days on this blog earlier in the year and I don’t have plans to do anything more detailed. This will also be alongside continuing a deeper exploration into chi, internal martial arts and eastern philosophy.

In the meantime:

Currently unable to try and visualize the output from an RSS feed on Many Eyes wikified such as the rss for The Daily or from a pipe feed, whilst resolving Many Eyes migration issues, so in the meantime decided to take another look at visual search using cck09, found some great ones:

• Using the Connectivism / CCK09 home page – entered this URL on Walk2Web and then you can walk (and listen!)

• Kartoo

• 3Dlicious (and rss feed for delicious cck09 tag)

• Dipity using Dean Jenkins Yahoo pipe cck09 rss feed

Wordle is always quick, I just entered the url from The Daily feed today

This is only demo so can’t search but maybe worth keeping an eye on: http://6pli.com/, when I clicked on one of the demos, it moves very quickly – like Visuwords but kind of interesting, you can view in 2d circles and other options.

Whilst searching also found this series from a project on visualization of text essays, which I’m going to read, also looks very interesting.

In the words of H.G. Wells: The future is a race: A race between education and catastrophe 

We Are The People We’ve Been Waiting For is a full-length feature film on education which was inspired and guided by Oscar-winning producer Lord Puttnam. The film is supported by various sponsors including independent education foundation, Edge. The film follows the experiences of five Swindon-based teenagers. What unfolds during the course of the film is a very inconvenient truth about education. It concludes that, while there are signs of spring, a transformation of the education system is vital if the UK is to continue to compete effectively in an era of globalization the world has changed enormously but our education system has not kept pace. We need to recognise that there are many paths to success for young people and provide the right support and opportunities for them to develop their individual talents.

Globalization has exploded the Information Age. Yet our education system isn’t preparing our children for how to compete in the Global Economy. America is a nation in crisis. Did you know how little media attention this very real crisis receives?

Instead of teaching information that’s quickly obsolete, teaching students how to take standardized IQ tests and achievement tests, labeling our children with learning disabilities and prescribing ADHD, ADD and Dyslexia medications, we should be celebrating and building the brainpower of each individual child.

Back to school is a nightmare for many parents – watching their child fall further behind – when we can identify learning weaknesses and FIX learning problems at the brain level. Brain fitness is the #1 competitive edge in the 21st century and our children’s brainpower is America’s future.

This new brain development science is both effective and affordable. Join the Learn To Learn Revolution – a Parents Revolution today. http://www.LearnToLearn.com

Comments?

“Transparency is related to openness. Openness is most often related to content. Transparency, in contrast, involves making our learning explicit through forums, blogs, presentations, podcasts, and videos.” ~ George Siemens, Week 8: Openness and Transparency

Participation in #CCK09, the entire course thrives on learners and educators who are open and transparent in the learning process. David White joined the #CCK09 class to discuss his ideas on how Visitor and Resident learners impact the online educational environment [session recording].

Visitors & Residents: Original Blog Post & Presentation

Much of this conversation was initiated with the JISC funded Isthmus project which was designed to bridge the gap between institutions and online learning, specifically how learners are utilizing technology. Instead of using the terms ‘digital native’ and ‘digital immigrant’ (coined by Marc Prensky in Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants 2001 publication), White sees learners as being a Visitor or Resident in their motivation for online education. Here is a quick Visitor vs. Resident comparison chart I created based on his presentation:

In thinking about my own experience, as an online learner, I seem to fall in the ‘Resident’ category. I am very transparent and open online, and I am comfortable sharing my learning experiences and social experiences digitally. Although I am a resident, I can recognize a few visitor experiences from time to time, i.e. learning new tools, online resources and expanding my personal learning environment perimeters.

In thinking of the Visitor vs. Resident comparison, it is critical to think of it as a continuum rather that distinct categories. Students should not be labelled definitely into these categories since it is fluid. Each learner may have boundaries and limitations, however possess a willingness to be an open, online learner. As an educator, it is critical to create a learning environment online that provides structure and purpose online, while allowing learners to expand their creativity and knowledge as they see fit.

Wonderful post on Effective Virtual Facilitation by Ryan. I suppose these 5 stages are best practice of “teacher-centred structured session” and to some extent what has to be mastered by a competent online teacher or facilitator.  This is obviously one of the most welcomed approach from both educational authority and learners as the learning outcomes are well defined, and could likely be achieved. 

Here is the model presented by Gilly Salmon, Professor of E-Learning and Learning Technologies

Running E-tivities 5 Stages:

Stage 1. Access and motivation

Stage 2: Online Socialisation

Stage 3 Information exchange

Stage 4 Knowledge construction

Stage 5 Development

Ryan concludes with:

Evolving e-learning in the workplace

Using Salmon’s 5-stage model of e-moderation as a framework, SMEs can transform from sage on the stage to guide on the side.

And isn’t that what adult learning is all about?

What happens in our virtual world of networks?  How far could we be able to achieve all these?

Have you considered the connectivist approach where the stages are structured a bit differently?  With the complexity of learning and a manic society with “busy” learners who have to commit themselves to their personal and family needs at various times, not every learner is ready for the learning or available in those sessions (especially due to the difference in the time zones, for learners from different parts of the world), and so such planned stages would be difficult to be “implemented” without consideration of chaos, complexity and disorder that are inherent in a complex learning ecology. 

Ideal and reality has become a separate one especially in the online environment or ecology.  Would too much emphasis on learning outcomes be viewed as too pragmatic in nature?  We all want different learning outcomes, based on our needs, and our various stages of learning development, and this really requires a flexible curriculum rather than a set one, if we want to succeed in nurturing ourselves and our learners in this changing learning ecology.  One size doesn’t suit all!

At the end, facilitation is still a great strategy in “teaching”, only in that some learners prefer to self organise or direct their learning, with networks and technology as mediators, rather than being “facilitated”.   This is most often cited as PLN/E.

Here are the extracts from the interesting discussion in Moodle on Where have all the people gone?

Roy says: There are a variety of design and management options, but there is actually no such thing as a non-designed, non-managed network.

So the options are:

Mode 0. Build it and leave

And hope they ‘come’. If it forks (as in OS software) into multiple split networks, OK. If the nodes and networks cross-connect, OK. If not, also OK. Also known as ‘the network is the network is the network’ approach(apologies to roses).

Mode 1. Backchannel aggregator

The current structure of CCK09 has a backchannnel aggregator, (Stephen) who does a link-threading thing (much like the way early computers processed cards in card readers?). Very innovative way, for instance, of threading blogs back into the weave of forums and other media – see:

“The proportion of respondents in CCK08 who used blogs primarily or exclusively was unusually high for an online course, particularly one that emphasised openness and learner autonomy. In CCK08 the instructors encouraged, created and supported what was in effect an aggregated network of blogs” (Forums and Blogs … in cck08 paper – in General Forums)

Mode 2. Threading and Weaving

More conventional facilitating or moderating, which can be combined with option 1. This typically probes, asks further questions, draws out emergent lines of inquiry.

Mode 3. Complexity facilitating

This is a more explicitly complex approach to facilitating or moderating, and generally does a lot of complexity-facilitating stuff. (See:

“Openness and connectivity per se need to be tempered by constraints and moderation, to prevent the paradoxes of autonomy, scale, transparency/trust and openness from becoming contradictions. It is possible to do this within a framework of complexity, but there are a number of requirements that must be in place. These include: 1) light touch ‘probing’ and ‘steering’ and, where necessary, firm intervention, both as early as possible in the course; 2) setting out not what should happen (as in traditional learning outcomes) but rather setting the boundaries of what should not happen …”

(See: Ideals and Reality of participating in MOOC paper – In General Forums for more details).

Mode 4. Revert to Classroom/ Conference Delivery mode

This is a variant on mode 0, in the network/s are cut free to do what they do, and the designers revert to an online version of classroom/conference mode, with the delivery of set pieces.  

Mode 5. Open Conference /unconference mode

This is a variant on mode 4, taking into account the innovations in ‘un-conferences’.  It does, ironically, require a lot more design, time and energy, as I found out in setting up the Visitors and Residents conference, which was great, but which slipped back from what might have been a Mode 5 event into something much more like Mode 4.

 Is virtual facilitation a rhetoric or reality? 

What is your preferred Net Pedagogy?

Here is a wonderful discussion on Help with Some Clarifications please  posted by Ailsa

@ Ailsa Here is my view on learning principles. We are humans, not “non-human”, so I would like to see more than just firing of neurons, in the connections, but the establishment of human relationship in networks, in the history of learning. At the end, I like to learn with humans, though often technology is part of that mediation (is it part of ANT??). Agents, actors mean differently to different people. At the other end of the network, it is more than a node, it has feelings, “it” is breathing air and taking water (knowledge), and it lives..and is engaging, interacting. That makes human more than just human, beyond behaviorism.

I remember that when I conducted my last class with my learners, especially in my early years of teaching, I always have an emotional response. We have once upon met here together as a learning group or network, and our identities are inscribed in the history of learning. Ten years later, we might still be able to remember each other, as once upon we have been with the same network and learn together.

Would networks be forever? Like diamonds are forever, when it comes to collaboration in the networks.

Roy: Replicator, host, and everyone of us will become history, but the learning and relationship stay forever in networks.

Diamonds are the girls best friends (from Fickr)

John Mak asks:

Who am I? What is your identity in social networks?
How would emotions impact on social networking?

He also shows some videos in his post.

I would like to discuss this topic with John. Since I am a reading/writing-preference learner, I searched for text references about Emotions in Social Networks. These are the references I have found

- CCK09: help with some clarification please

hey, if i’m a node, i want to do more than connect and fire…i want to think, to feel, to be…
Im ok with a metaphor of synaptic firings, but as a human filled with love & self importance & some regard for others, i also know i am more than this.

- The importance of emotions | Why are emotions important in life

Emotions help us to become aware of our needs. All emotions derive from needs. When we feel that our needs are being met, we experience feelings of comfort. The better we are at getting our needs met, the more peaceful and comfortable our lives will be.

- Emotions

Emotions are our feelings. Literally. We feel them in our bodies as tingles, hot spots and muscular tension. There are cognitive aspects, but the physical sensation is what makes them really different.

- Emotional Intelligence in online and community learning

As this is the second round of Connectivism CCK09, I am more interested in how “EQ” and emotions propagate through the network, or at least how people would perceive their learning being influenced by the emotions of those nodes, connectors, instructors, co-learners, bloggers and others in the communities.

- Maru’s blog: How do we deal with emotions in a network?

Are we willing to discuss our emotions openly?, Does dealing openly with participant’s emotions really promotes learning?

Emotions are important for connections but how and where do we deal with them in a network?. I bet some research been done on this, could any of you share links on the subject?

- Twitter: “pointless babble” or peripheral awareness + social grooming?

I vote that we stop dismissing Twitter just because the majority of people who are joining its ranks are there to be social. We like the fact that humans are social. It’s good for society. And what they’re doing online is fundamentally a mix of social grooming and maintaining peripheral social awareness. They want to know what the people around them are thinking and doing and feeling, even when co-presence isn’t viable. They want to share their state of mind and status so that others who care about them feel connected.

- on the danger of twitter : D’Arcy Norman dot net

But, I fear that the strengthened social connections are not worth the cost borne in superficial thinking. Being more closely connected is an extremely valuable thing – and Twitter is somehow able to make my connections to people online feel almost tangible, almost real – but not at the cost of shallow thinking.

- cck08 Being there and suddenly very lonely | World Wide Wiser

But yesterday, during the Ustream session on Elluminate, I suddenly felt very lonely and estranged. It was of not any importance that I was there, I felt not seen and not heard, I had nothing to say. It was to difficult to read the chat and listen to the session-leaders at the same time. I had the feeling that all other participants knew each other very good and for a long time

- Personal Circles – Life With Alacrity

Describes our Support Circle, Sympathy Circle, Trust Circle, Emotional Circle and Familiar Stranger

…the personal limits described herein instead define the limits placed on how many people an individual can know with various degrees of intimacy.

– Emotion Becomes “Tractable” to Neuroscience

The amygdalar circuit pulls people away from dangerous situations by giving them emotions like fear and anxiety, when activated. The left prefrontal area pushes people toward new, challenging situations by giving them emotions like hope and optimism, when activated. A person with a healthy, well-adjusted emotional life experiences the appropriate emotional response in situations of danger or situations of opportunity.

- The Psychology Of Emotions, Feelings and Thoughts

This book puts forth the idea that life is divided into three groups, emotion, thinking, and feeling. These three groups make humans feel in certain ways, thinking, physical stimulus, and emotion all contribute to feeling. But what is the difference between a thought, an emotion, and a feeling? Is there an overlap between the three? Probably, since any emotion can be broken down into the sensations and real events that caused it, and these events all lead to emotions, feelings and thoughts. So emotions, feelings and thoughts all might have the same source, they are just expressed differently in the mind. Where do your emotions, feelings and thoughts rate on a scale of clarity? Where do they rate on a scale of focus and attention? How does understanding the psychology of ones emotions, feelings and thoughts lead to a long term increased consciousness?

- Where’s the Emotion? The Forgotten/Left Out of Biological Basic Needs

Maybe physical necessities keep numbers up and a heart ticking, but aren’t emotional desires a large part of what differentiates organisms? Aren’t our conscious minds- and understanding ourselves- a different, but perhaps just as real need- or desire- worthy of mentioning, even at the most basic biology level? If we’re taught in first or second grade about basic physical necessities- it seems that, in addition to teaching that food and water are necessary, we should be taught about emotions, even to the smallest degree that we could understand at that age.

- A Macro Cultural Analysis of Emotions

Educators typically emphasize conveying information and facts; rarely have they articulated or modeled the full learning process replete with emotions of confusion, fear, sorrow, apathy, anger, jealousy, pride, and enthusiasm. Because emotions are integral to educational practices such as learning, persuasion, concentrating, and cooperating on projects, it is vital to understand and address them. Understanding emotions requires comprehending both their specific, distinctive qualities (e.g., palpable visceral qualities), and their general psychological features that they share with other psychological phenomena.

- Emotional Competency – Emotion

Emotions are ancient mechanisms that mobilize us to deal quickly with important interpersonal encounters. They have both a primal aspect and a motivational aspect. Emotions act as primal beacons, guiding us along the path of survival.

- Youth Use the Internet for Moderating Emotions.

He found that when kids are stressed they use technology to help moderate their emotions. That is, when kids in his study found themselves under stress, they interacted with technology to both moderate their moods and access social networks. Through the Internet, they accessed entertainment and information and sought “social compensation” through recognition and relationship management.

I hope you also find these references useful to learn about emotions in social networking

I am not writing this post as a way of sharing good practice, its a way – just going to explain exactly what we did. Elgg is without a doubt one of the most rewarding, quickest and easiest projects I have been involved with in the last few years.

My no1 recommendation if you are working with technologies in learning and want to find out more about Elgg, go visit All things Elgg , Elgg & Social Learning . As previously blogged, Jane is an Elgg guru, not to mention a wonderful human being!

Last April, I had an email from our Head of Computing (the academic department) asking to chat about possibilities of setting up a social network for a leadership program that the university was running for staff, including the Exec board (our vice chancellor was also a member of the program) . They had received the go ahead from the board and it was being sponsored by change management program leader in HR. The Head of Computing had initiated this being aware of technology infrastructure at the university as well as being a member.

As part of the leadership program which consisted of approx 100 staff, they met for coffee mornings and training sessions. They wanted an online network so that they could connect as needed outside of face to face meetings, because they recognised that they couldn’t currently do this in a convenient way, with many travelling to conferences and meetings. They didn’t want to start a formal project which would need to be managed by IT because they recognised that the internal IT Services did not have the resource to support it and it needed to be live by early June and demo-able before then.

Following some brief discussion we had narrowed it down to Elgg or Ning, then with the wisdom and expertise of Jane Hart, he decided to opt for Elgg. This was mainly due to the need for sharing documents as part of the network requirements. Jane has a fantastic comparison chart at  Social Media in Learning, we used this to check against our requirements. We had to move extremely quickly on this because of its high profile. One of the immediate issues was that Elgg was open source – could we support this also with open source hosting as well?

After a discussion with my team who advised that any support that I provided to this network would need to be done in my own time due to being one person short in the team. We discussed the possibility of seeing if there was interest from a PhD student studying in the department as an alternative option but in the end opted for an Elgg specialist web hosting provider who help with installation but you pay for the domain & web hosting. I can’t remember exact figures but I think we paid approx $20 for setup and now paying $9.99 per month for hosting.

We got messed around initially by a web hosting provider so switched to one that provided better customer service – they responded to all of questions really quickly and turned everything around within 24 hours.The Head of Computing left me to handle this side of it, I think I oversold my capabilities – so it was done in spare time, but it wasn’t complex to get going. If we hadn’t need to move so quickly we might have been able to be more patient but it simply wasn’t an option, I was asked to provide regular updates. In summary I had to

• fill in two boxes I think in order to search for our chosen web domain name – to check it hadn’t been registered already and click on ok.
• fill in a form to pay by credit card (we didn’t go through institutional procurement due to timescales)
• within 48 hours had details back from Web hosting advising of location of install, ftp, http details and logins etc

Then we got going. We decided to play around a bit – I wasted some time by playing with themes (for fun!) and then having to take off plugins and reinstall but we started the above process on the Friday, I spent approx a day of a weekend and we had a ’shell’ in place by Monday morning with blog entries, documents uploaded and I can’t remember what else but hopefully you get the idea. Your core applications included within your basic Elgg set up are a theme, blogs, status updates, groups & discussions, bookmarks, profiles and I can’t remember what else. You can add to this by installing plugins.

What’s a plugin ?
Basically a little extra piece of web code packed up as a group of files – a widget or application which can add something to your community – you choose it, download it, upload it into your community and enable it (make it live by clicking on a button).

You do need to be able to use an ftp application to upload the plugin files, if you go to C4lpt or MasterNewMedia , or Mashable, or wherever,  you can find recommendations. I already had wise ftp at home and purchased smartftp for work laptop. You can use ftp through explorer or if you know how to code it, through a command prompt too. I wanted something with an easier interface because I knew that was a question I might get asked.

Choosing plugins is great – you can go window shopping on Elgg – there are hundreds to choose from now – all developed & tested by the community and all free -  themes, languages, analytics, maps, calendars, walls, dashboards, twitter, ident.ca, facebook, video, audio, radio, friends, bulk registration – you name it, its probably there ! We installed a whole bunch of them and a new theme.

Domain
We had originally called it the 100 but after a quick demo with our HR lead and a colleague from Marketing – they liked it so much that they thought it was viable enough to start thinking about extending beyond this network so renamed to a different domain. Unfortunately this meant we had to do a completely new reinstall. Some of the files and permissions proved too problematic to map across easily without doing lots of extra work, so we just started again from scratch but this time, it took a grand total of 2.5 hours once we had the new domain (72 hrs usually but I think we had within 48). We didn’t have a budget for video so I did some explanatory guides – screenshots etc (and I think was going to do some quick Jing videos but can’t remember if did or not) Also used my blog on the site as a how-to with each new entry being a how-to for using something on the site.

Internal IT Services
I would recommend if you don’t already know someone within IT services, to go across your campus and start talking with them, find out who in the IT Services has been using blogs, wikis, social networks, tell them about your idea and informally ask their opinion. It will help if you know something about web coding and web servers, but if you don’t, try and use the correct technical terminology (or bring a tech friend) to describe your idea which will help them become more familiar with your idea quickly. They will also be aware of the project & programme management of IT at the university and will understand the issues that you face. If you mention that you think you can manage the project without needing to draw on their resources – explain that you have thought about as many of the risks, security & technical implications possible. Do some homework on this before the discussion. If you mention that it is an experiment or pilot that may be helpful too.

It will help if you have the Head of Computing as initiator and also that its being supported by the leadership of the university, but that will not be the case for all programmes. If you work in e-learning / learning technologies and do not have much connection with the training programmes within your HR, I would also recommend meeting them and asking if you can support / advise them with anything too, they may welcome you with open arms. It can also open up possibilities for discussions at a more strategic level.

We did have one issue where we had to involve IT Services. With the auto-emails – you can subscribe to updates via email in Elgg, for some reason they were coming through to non Surrey accounts but not Surrey ones. Jane Hart via Twitter was extremely helpful and offered some great suggestions for diagnosing the issue. I spoke to a friendly contact within IT Services and asked them to check to see why they weren’t appearing, we thought it was firewall related but it didn’t appear immediately obvious. I can’t remember what it was but something related to the exchange servers.

Outcome
We met the June deadline which was a coffee morning where it was introduced (don’t know specific details, wasn’t there). I’m not sure where they are at with it now but the last time I spoke with them over the summer they had over fifty users on there. So with no budget, very strict timescales and the attention of the university board we managed to get something out there in a nice looking shape, introduced the terms open source and online social networking to the leadership of the university and I hope they continue their interest. Before I left, I was asked to present a kind of lessons learnt to the Marketing team and that led to a really interesting discussion on the present and future of collaboration at the university. They were going to monitor the use of Elgg not just to see how the leadership programme used it but whether it sparked off any more overall interest in collaborating using non-traditional technologies in general across the university. I hope it does! I will definitely use Elgg again in the future.

<grins>

Confession – ever since George Siemens posted about Technologically Externalized Knowledge and Learning, I kind of lost focus on the core weekly topics that studying for cck09 and started to think about this. Time to throw myself back into chaos, no longer have anything to lose, sanity went years ago. I have so little to offer the learning network for cck09 in terms of educational ’stuff’ so will fling everything mobile at it and see where it goes.

Have just started to create on a wikimap on Mindmeister, want to move onto Deepa Mehta at some point, but not content with managing to delete my concept map after spending (nearly 12) hours creating it last week there – don’t ask, have now managed I think, idiotically, to actually delete my whole self from Deepa Mehta so awaiting reinstatement ! Have added a tiny bit on there about textiles – but its not my thing / an area I know much about and what I do is from a brief period in Turkey when had partnership in a clothes shop one summer & brief conversations with someone who used to import cotton to UK. There’s a ton of stuff which could be added, especially under wearable computing & touch – lickable education anyone ?

If I was going to organise a TEKL creation dinner party – aside from educators – would want fashion designers, interaction designers, engineers, neuroscientists etc Or within education – just build a prototype and see ! Maybe it is more than one device or device & accessories depending on your viewpoint I guess.

So a TEKL is

“a physical, wearable device that captures our physical and virtual interactions and assist us in recognizing and forming knowledge connections based on our past interactions, our social network, and our current work or personal interest needs…As we go through the day, TEKL merrily records, matches, monitors, and recommends our learning and knowledge needs. When we go to bed, TEKL process our conversations (verbal – after all, everything is recorded), our email, our work habits, and our information seeking activities. Then, when we wake up, we receive a learning and knowledge status report, providing us with intelligent and relevant information as well as recommendations for greater personal efficiency and critical sources of information. The is a daily personal knowledge and learning GPS that provides direction and progress.” (1)

So many things to consider – there are wearable devices now but how to navigate through frequencies, fabrics, fibers and the invisible as well as visible. I wonder if it will be made with a wristband, watches , earpieces, rings – so many choices but how will they all connect?

Do they need to be connected all the time or could each one be accessed using different networks, protocols. Maybe it could just be like a little thimble (albeit 21st century one) with a skin sitting on one of our fingers which just remotely accesses everything as needed.

Haven’t mentioned glasses or lenses but I guess with ongoing augmented reality development, like the toolkit, research and projects at University of Washington and many others. No giant goggles please!

What about headpieces – would prefer design along the lines of Skullcandy as opposed to Darth Vader – something with a softer interface into the brain. Speaking of which, have not included anything on the brain on the wikimap yet – but having watched this amazing video last night, have a better idea about possibilities.

This Emergence and Growth of Knowledge and Diversity in Hierarchically Complex Organised Systems: Genesis of a theoretical framework sounds intereting.