Reflection: Manuel Lima: The Power of Networks

I find this to be one of the most lively, condensed and persuasive rationally presented videos I have ever seen. The cartoon character makes it into a work of art too. This fulfills my expectations of what teaching should be. Ten minutes imaginative and visually attractive input followed by hours of reflection. This is one of those events that will remain with me.

In search of Jabberwocky

The internet took all kinds of shapes in my imagination most of them cloud-like till Simon Fogg pointed me towards this down to earth video from Ted Talks (where else would it be?)

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Reflections on 'Could the Web be a Temporary Glitch ?'

In their paper 'Could the Web be a Temporary Glitch?', Carr, Pope and Halford conclude with these words:

'Openness is a property of the Web architecture and a contributory factor in the success of its adoption, but it is not an inevitable property of the user experience in the coming decade.'

This 'inevitable' clearly implies that the current situation is both dynamic and fluid. Everything in web history is about periods of transition. We don't live through periods of transition, as in the past, we live in transition. We see that in the recent past teens have moved and are moving away from facebook towards WhatsApp, WeChat and KakaoTalk. Their reasons appear to be greater privacy, restriction to friendship groups and avoidance of selfies, silly self portraits. Yet we know that despite many protestations to the contrary in the end economics take control as in almost all aspects of life (not creative commons hopefully)...so just maybe we are currently enjoying the Indian Summer of the web. Thanks to Mark Nash for his highly relevant links.

Reflections on web use and how I deal with the information I find

My perception of my web use is like this.

When I browse I tend to check out many news sites using www.aldaily.com as a good homepage for that. I often look through TED  for inspiration and lateral thinking and I use You Tube generally in the same way. For social networking I use facebook and twitter (somewhat reluctantly because of all the question marks against them in my mind) and LinkedIn. For educational networking , google+ educational groups mainly. Email and combined activities are done through google (waldorfy@gmail.com with web science in the subject line please). For music listening I utilize soundcloud, lastFM and musicovery. I subscribe to selected figures like Siemens, Downes and Hart in particular and either bookmark them in firefox or organise them in netvibes. Other information is stored in evernote, pinterest and dropbox (while networking is in progress). As a family we use online banking. I search quite specifically with specialist engines (also the invisible web) and more generally academically with sweetsearch, Google Blog Search and Google Scholar. For general searches I use google or DuckDuckGo

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Personal Learning Environment tools: preparation for Southampton MOOC Personal Learning Network

As there aren't any MOOC guidelines in my hands from Southampton yet, for the learning experience I researched what I think I will need as a minimum to prepare to be successful in the way I want.

I set up a blog (this one) as a place to reflect on my experience so that I am in a position to share it with others in a spirit of compare / contrast / grow. I gathered feeds about MOOC experiences from the instigators and participants; of course Downes and Siemens loomed large amongst them. I am instinctively  drawn towards the necessity of connectivism as a digital age dynamic theory. In my information gathering I need ways to organize and refine what I got, so I found myself trying out a variety of sources. The best amongst them were netvibes, rss feeds, bloglines, evernote and pinterest (for thematic graphic storage). Sources of inspiration were mainly You Tube and slideshare. I figured that my most detailed sharing would likely be done through something like dropbox after I learn who my like-minded fellow students are. I have used delicious as a bookmarker for years so old habits die hard. I'm not really proficient with google+ yet and I haven't really forgiven them yet for the death of various cherished tools. For getting the answers to my basic questions I have chosen a bundle of sources which I have used in the past - although on this occasion Techopedia has helped the most so far. That's my plan - let's wait and see how well it works. I guess the official estimate of 3 hours per week for 6 weeks will prove to be a massive understatement!

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Techopedia impresses this relative beginner and computing autodidact

I know a bit about computing I think. Yet when you have taught yourself, as you went along, with a few (half-understood) conversations with experts in computing (but not necessarily communication) it is great to find a fall-back position where you can check your knowledge and plug the gaps. That's what techopedia.com  does for me, at a basic, easily readable level, as well as updating and rounding up my half-knowledge in the following areas for example:

• the difference between the Internet and the World Wide Web
• the pioneers of the World Wide Web
• a timeline of the development of the Internet and the World Wide Web
• understanding social media
• a beginner's guide to internet memes
• 6 key trends in online business
• what do massive open online courses (MOOCs) mean for education?
• cloud computing
• top 10 cloud computing myths busted

I hope this will all be useful background to my Web Science MOOc later this month and if not I have learnt something useful anyway. It satisfied my curiosity and at some point I had to stop clicking yet another hyperlink.

Tim Berners-Lee: The World Wide Web - Opportunity, Challenge, Responsibility (Photo credit: Anna L. Schiller)

Time to extend our concept of 'blended learning'

The time has come to reconsider what we mean by blended learning. I suggest that it can exist on two levels.

Firstly an acceptable definition from Wikipedia:

' Blended learning is a formal education program in which a student learns at least in part through online delivery of content and instruction with some element of student control over time, place, path or pace.^[1] While still attending a “brick-and-mortar” school structure, face-to-face classroom methods are combined with computer-mediated activities.^[2] Proponents of blending learning cite the opportunity for data collection and customization of instruction and assessment as two major benefits of this approach.^[3] Schools with blended learning models may also choose to reallocate resources to boost student achievement outcomes.^[4]'

1. ^ "Blended Learning (Staker / Horn - May 2012)" (PDF). Retrieved 2013-10-24.
2. Jump up ^ Strauss, Valerie (22 September 2012). Three fears about blended learning, The Washington Post
3. Jump up ^ Harel Caperton, Idit. (2012) Learning to Make Games for Impact. The Journal of Media Literacy, 59(1), 28-38.
4. Jump up ^ Jacob, Anna M. (2011). Benefits and Barriers to the Hybridization of Schools. Journal of Education Policy, Planning and Administration, 1(1): 61-82.

Then a proposed extension from me.
 If a MOOC, for example, is accompanied by:

• peer-to-peer teaching with questions answered by a professor - for example by email
• dropboxes or wikis for idea collection and development
• skyping or video conferencing to set up pair or group learning
• with knowledeable peers or experienced tutors involved

isn't that blended learning too - or is it the case that we really believe a monopoly of knowledge resides in formalised institutions of learning?

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