Lurkers as consumers vs. producers

RE: Lurkers and the PLENK 2010 discussions... George Siemens has talked about the problem with lurkers in the MOOCs he's taught. Some of us (lurkers) defend ourselves. We're still digesting the information; we're not quite ready to brave exposing our work to the experts; we're too busy. Excuses, excuses. Ramit Sethi points out "It’s so easy to consume. It’s much harder to produce something." I Will Teach You to Be Rich. December 20, 2010.. So.. maybe it's best to insist on SOME production. However there's nothing to hold over MOOC participants. How can instructors make participants feel comfortable enough to take a risk?

What's wrong with MOOCs?

George Siemens asks "what's wrong with MOOCs?" The premise is that MOOCs are so intrinsically interesting/enjoyable/fascinating that all participants will push aside all other activities and responsibilities and devote themselves to the MOOC. MOOCs by nature of their openness and willingness to embrace technology are more engaging. However it seems that isn't true for everyone. There is a high dropout rate. The plethora of tools used can be confusing. Even though making social connections is key, many participants feel lost, disconnected, uneasy about having their say. Comments on this piece mentioned language barriers and time zone issues. In some cases the MOOC may be achieving results that can't be tracked. Some posters indicate that at least some participants are using lessons learned. George is concerned that there is over-reliance on the instructors as experts. Hmmm...What if it turns out that "course" with a start/stop date, some specified software, some content (readings/media) experienced by the entire group - with students providing some artifacts (i.e. papers, discussion threads, blog postings, videos, etc.) that are indicative of learning is like...an OK structure?

Being a lurker

George Siemens wrote "[B]eing connected, without creating and contributing, is a self-focused, self-centered state. I’ve ranted about this before, but there is never a good time to be a lurker. Lurking=taking. The concept of legitimate peripheral participation sounds very nice, but is actually negative. Even when we are newcomers in a network or community, we should be creating and sharing our growing understanding." (http://www.elearnspace.org/blog/2010/12/01/my-personal-learning-network-is-the-most-awesomest-thing-ever/) Rita Kop and others responded - some in favor of "lurker" (or "listening") and some championing active participation. Hmm... I was a lurker in PLENK 2010. I must have been because I was selected to be in the lurkers' focus group. Not sure I like being called out as a selfish taker. On the other hand.. I'm not feeling all that guilty either. ;)

C&RL News for November 2010 - QR Codes and Transliteracy

C&RL News showed up in the mail today (in print(!)) with a couple of articles I'm really enjoying. Tom Ipri "Introducting transliteracy: What does it mean to academic libraries?" http://crln.acrl.org/content/71/10/532.full.pdf+html. "Transliteracy" is an great word - and now that Ipri's article is out, I'm especially pleased that Susan Ariew mentioned it in our "Best Practices in Information Literacy" workshop for the TLT-Group last month (http://bpil.wikispaces.com/). Ipri says "In the transliterate world, creating a social network of experts is held in high regard.
What is important is not just transferring information but creating an information narrative that evolves over time and adds value." This is a VERY nice fit with some of principles being discussed over at the PLENK 2010 (Personal Learning Environments Networks and Knowledge MOOC.)
The other article that caught my eye right away: Robin Ashford "QR codes and academic libraries: Reaching mobile users" http://crln.acrl.org/content/71/10/526.full.pdf+html. I read the description of Alexander Street Press' Music Online using QR codes to send playlists to your mobile device where they are available for 48 hours. I logged on to the USF Libraries and sure enough - one of my old playlists with Music Online zapped right to my iPod Touch (though once I got distracted and turned off my iPod Touch... well, I'm not sure how to get back to that playlist that's supposed to be available for 48 hours... I'll have to give that another try.)

PKM Inc.

From a PLENK 2010 blog post: Rita Kop discussed her discomfort with "personal knowledge management" which she describes as yet another business term that has made its way into the social sciences. Tony Ratcliffe replied that PKM is an important concept because individuals need to organize their knowledge and think of themselves as "Me Inc (Incorporated)." "You should think of yourself as a business and look after your own needs." That sounds even MORE scary business-like to me even though when I think about the way the university works, individuals have that entrepreneurial spirit and who don't depend on the goodwill of others seem to do well. It would be nice to see a "we" in there someplace as in sharing is learning and learning is sharing. See http://ritakop.blogspot.com/2010/11/feeling-uncomfortable-with-personal.html. However I do see that when I think "PKM", I too connect it up with capitalist terms like "productivity." Maybe there are some more agrarian concepts to adopt? Could we think "personal knowledge harvesting" instead of "data mining"? Maybe there are some terms related to canning fruits and vegetables?

The Internet is a Ponzi scheme of human knowledge

Quote from Sketchbook by Ivan Brunetti: "Sometimes I think the entire Internet is an elaborate Ponzi scheme of human knowledge." (from p. 107 December 21, 28 New Yorker from 2009). This quote seemed like a good counterpoint to today's PLENK2010 Elluminate session with Harold Jarche. Some points: Drink from the firehose. (I guess the question is how much of what we drink from the firehose is junk? What filters do we need in place?). Leave some time for reflection. Use a blog for reflection and (based on comments from some participants) don't censor yourself too much. Put your ideas out there and be willing to accept critiques. Downes noted that sometimes he goes back and puts an "update" at the end of an old blog post if he's changed his mind about something. Another thread from the Elluminate: How can we change the established concept of and what happens at a "university"?

George Siemens Questions I'm no longer asking

Siemens post on "questions I'm no longer asking" is great! I'm very fond of this one: "Is online learning more or less effective than learning in a classroom? Who cares. That question is irrelevant. Society answered the need to use technology through its broad adoption of the web/internet/online medium." Right on! There's thousands of articles comparing online courses to face-to-face courses. (See the No Significant Difference web site) The question has been answered over and over: people can learn in online courses. Let's move it along.

PKM and PLEs

This week's PLENK 2010 topic is Personal Knowledge Management. I was attracted to this article: Personal Knowledge Management: A Strategy for Controlling Information Overload by Jason Frand and Aura Lippincott from February 4, 2002.
http://www.anderson.ucla.edu/faculty/jason.frand/researcher/articles/info_overload.html until they recommended thinking through a file management structure. I'm too disorganized. I'm looking for things for myself, but I'm also looking for things for others. Too many categories! I've been very pleased with Evernote. I could organize the notes into files - but I don't have to. I can add tags (keywords) to my heart's content and that seems to work reasonably well for me. Nevetheless... I sometimes see something interesting and get interrupted - phone calls are the worst! and that's it. I have a site that I remember interested me recently. It was a link from a link maybe from a tweet(??) Something from a graphic novel or a cartoon about soldiers and something about the nature of war...(???) I cannot recall enough about it to find it(!) I hope that item shows up again.

Create your own tools. Create your own tools???

Week 7 for PLENK2010 has to do with PLE/Ns Tools - What Exists, What is Being Built?"

...Many of the tools that fit under the PLE/N umbrella have been appropriated by educators from other fields. This isn't necessarily a problem, but it does reflect a sense that educators are not building tools for themselves... Two significant challenges exist for educators and PLE/Ns:

1. Create new tools - what do we need? What functionality is missing in PLEs?
2. Improve end user experience - new tools, new interfaces, and ease of use.
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My reaction is.. oh no! I have to create tools??? Please! Not me! Someone else has to do that! Of course we need better tools - and better integration of tools. When someone else does this, tweet about it and make sure Jane Hart and some of the others who report on new useful educational tools puts in her blog.

Speaking of tools: I'm loving Evernote - Better than bookmarks! If I see an interesting tweet, I email it to Evernote and go back and edit and tag the entries later. I went premium so I have access to my notes offline - and on my iPod Touch.

Speaking of more tools: I'm trying to get comfortable with Mendeley, but so far I'm feeling like I have to do a lot of typing. Mendeley is not doing much work for me automatically. It must be a function of the kinds of documents I'm saving.

And even more tools... I'm still trying to find just the right thing that's free and robust that I can use to make each entry my 50+ page bibliography on gangs in Central America searchable - I would like to be able to add keywords, etc. - and make the whole thing available to the public. No programming skills here - no institutional support since I'm retired - no willingness to spend my own money... I'm going to take a look at RefShare via RefWorks since I've got access to that.

What about students who fluff off?

So far I feel that the PLENK discussions of PLEs assume that students are actually trying to learn something rather than just get credit on their transcripts. The discussion has centered around ways of knowing if a student has some knowledge. How about if there are some students who show no understanding or misunderstanding? We might want to be bias-free, values-free in our assessment, but how about students who are just plain goofing off, gaming the system, etc? I work with institutions that give credit for having completed a course of study. I work with institutions that give certifications. There seems to be an assumption that if students are learning what they'd like to learn, they will do a good job. However I've seen people in courses that they elected to do, have no obligation to do other than being self-motivated - and just not doing anything much at all. Maybe they really want to learn auto mechanics. Then why did they sign up for this other course? No coercion! Totally self-induced! But... no evidence that they gave anything other than a superficial glance at the course content. That's what they wanted to get out of the course - Ok - That's their business - but what about grades? What if I can't tell that they learned? Oh well, this may have nothing to do with the PLE discussions at all. I'm feeling frustrated with some student work that I've seen lately.

Rita Kop wrote this interesting post about formal learners

This week (October 18 - October 24) there's a whole bunch of things going on at the same time: Open Access Week at Athabasca University, the NMC Symposium for the Future, two PLENK Elluminate sessions, a workshop that I have to present with a colleague, an online book talk where I also have to be present... an online instructor's meeting that's not until Saturday thank goodness... There's going to be some picking and choosing going on!

Personal learning environments and assessment

This is "assessment/evaluation" week for #PLENK2010. It's the usual knotty problem: How do we know that participants in PLENK2010 have gained knowledge? Who cares? Personally I hate grading. As an instructor I would rather be responsible for responding, suggesting, cajoling - or whatever it takes to ask students to new considerations - not grading! But... being uneasy about judging the work of others is sort of wimpy, isn't it? The institution, employers, etc. want an estimation of how well a student has grasped the info presented in a course of study. Can I abdicate that responsibility when I've agreed to teach a course? No! So...if students are doing... personal learning networks and using a variety of tools - blogs, wikis, discussion boards, emails, media, documents, etc. - how do you as an instructor track all of that and provide a fair assessment? The readings available for this week (5) were philosophical - but I'm also interested in the logistics.

For me personally: I'm doing PLENK2010 just because. I don't need to be evaluated or certified or any of that. I attended the Elluminate session on October 13 and some participants were expressing frustration with all the material and trying to figure out if they were getting it or not. That's interesting because the moderators have reiterated that PLENK2010 is what you make of it. There's no particular body of knowledge to regurgitate. Somehow... the participants have some expectations about something that's called a "course"?

People have other things to do

Stephen Downes noted that in #PLENK2010 "there is not the sort of effort being directed toward helping others as I would like to see. Some people observed that the course was not for people new to the material, but my thinking was that more experienced people should be creating introductory content to help people new to the material, that this is how they learn. And, on reflection, it leads me to think that it is traditional learning that leads to a selfishness in learning, as you are encouraged to focus only on your own learning (even when you are working in groups) and not on helping other people (that's "teacher's job")." (OLDaily archive October 8) I smushed that quotation up a bit - sorry about that - but I wanted to question whether "traditional education" is the issue. I wonder it's simply that people have other things to do. I'm thinking about Jon Stewart's remarks about "the Busy Majority." (http://www.allfacebook.com/stewart-colbert-rally-2010-09). Involvement in #PLENK2010 is one more thing to do. This week (Week 5 apparently) there are readings as usual - and discussions to follow - and activities and presentations for those who are more actively involved. I never made it through all of last week's readings and discussions! Out of all the participants who's got the time as well as the will to create more information to help beginners with the concepts addressed by the course?

Personal Learning Networks - low-enough tech?

I'm getting started on reviewing the material for Week 4 of PLENK 2010 (Personal Learning Environments Networks and Knowledge 2010). I was also participating in the Commonwealth of Learning's discussion on OER (Open Education Resources.) Participants from Africa and other parts of the world noted that in some cases printed material still works best. Students may not have access to much in the way of technology - and even the distribution of printed material is hampered by lack of funds. In those cases what happens to the concept of a PLE? Is it still a "PLE" is what you've got is a notebook and the books on the shelf of your library and meeting up face-to-face with your instructor or other students and there's no zingy social media involved? I guess we're just up against the digital divide in some cases. (Another OER discussion participant also noted that African higher education institutions could choose to make education a high priority and get those networkds installed and teach teachers how to use technology. Archive for the OER discussions at http://lists.esn.org.za/pipermail/oer-forum/ )

PLENK 2010 notes and other activities

The PLENK2010 Elluminate session on Wednesday (Sept 29) by Janet Clarey - interesting! She provided a lot of space in her presentation resulting in a lot of chat among the participants. I came away with names (Jim Groom http://jimgroom.net/about/ ) and links to check out (https://www.zotero.org/groups/gt and https://www.zotero.org/groups/critical_pedagogy_in_a_digital_world and https://tekri.athabascau.ca/analytics/ )
The group got on to the topic of privacy. What about tools such as Foursquare that pin-point one's location? Are we giving ourselves over to commercial interests? Is what we're giving up in privacy worth it? What about students' privacy when educators insist that students post their work without password-protection? Some say that privacy is a lost cause. Why fight it? We have more transparency than ever - as if we all live in a small town. Transparency become the norm. (What about the tragedy of the student at Rutgers who committed suicide after a video of him having sex was posted on the Internet without his permission? No right to privacy? How much life-logging do we need? Do we have a right to decide how we're presenting ourselves to a general public?)



Reading the Chronicle yesterday. An article by Jennifer Howard called Conference Explores How to Find—and Make Findable—Information in a Digital Sea (Sorry! this article is for subscribers only) sent me off to look at the ITHAKA Sustainable Scholarship Conference 2010 and then to Google's "user happiness" guy Daniel Russell's home page (http://sites.google.com/site/dmrussell/) and then on to his SearchReSearch blog (http://searchresearch1.blogspot.com/) to see what he has to say about user research skills - and to his August 29, 2010 post "Why libraries?" and looking at his "20 Things You Probably Don't Know About Search... But Really Should () where he outlines six components of expertise (pure engine technique, domain knowledge, assessment, information mapping, search strategy, site-specific knowledge) and where he has some good examples of how to do a search - and then... over to Google Web Search - Classroom Lessons and Resources (http://www.google.com/educators/p_websearch.html) and "Why is Search Easy & Hard: Search Quality and User Happiness" and then back to ITHAKA to read up on their report on University Publishing in a Digital Age (July 2007) and then over to the ERIAL (Ethnographic Research in Illinois Academic Libraries) site (http://www.erialproject.org/participants/universities/) where I noticed that they have a book coming on Spring 2011 titled College Libraries and Student Culture: Learning from Collaborative Research.... I like the way anthropologists have become engaged in studying the use of libraries and library users.

Is the Internet changing the way we think?

One of the suggestions that turned up via PLENK2010 was looking at Edge: The World Question Center's discussion on How is the Internet Changing the Way You Think? at
http://www.edge.org/q2010/q10_index.html Wow! A lot of people are thinking about this! I see some really interesting people posted responses. I've got a bunch of reading to do!

Friesen, Norm. Education and the social web.

From today's PLENK2010 Ellmuniate session:
Friesen, Norm. Education and the social web. Connective Learning and the Commercial Imperative. http://learningspaces.org/n/papers/Social_Web_in_Education.pdf
Friesen points out that "that commercial social networks are much less
about circulating knowledge than they are about connecting users (“eyeballs”) with advertisers; it is not the autonomous individual learner, but collective corporate interests that occupy the centre of these networks." I'm really interested in this paper. There's a tendency to see Web 2.0 tools as free from corporate taint. Perhaps that was true of Web 2.0 tools at their inception, but commercialization has crept in. On the other hand... what is still great about these tools is that you don't have to wait for some committee at your university to decide what software to buy and then wait for some campus IT person to provide access! Just do it!

Who owns student work? Does this change just because work's in an LMS or a PLE?

Reading Terry Anderson's discussion of the diff between an LMS and a PLE. He says this: "The old saying that possession is 9/10 of ownership doesn’t really mean much in the electronic era, but there is a sense that contributions on an institutional site are owned (or at least access is controlled to them) by the institution." (http://terrya.edublogs.org/2006/01/09/ples-versus-lms-are-ples-ready-for-prime-time/) I'm not convinced that holds true. I've reviewed a lot of university intellectual property policies and I can't think of a single one that doesn't cede copyright to the student. (There might be a provision to use student work for evaluation purposes - or in the case of dissertations/theses, some policy to allow the school to continue to make the student's work available. Students doing work for hire - that's a different case.) Are policies in Canada much different from that? It seems to me that it's easy enough to keep copies of the work submitted to an LMS. Of course if a student wants to make it available to the world, they'll probably have to find another place to put it up online.

PLENK2010 Second Life Wiki

Telmea Story (SL) along with some others have started a PLENK 2010 SL Wiki - and set up a meeting place in Second Life. See more at Conviviality Corners (http://ggatincritped.blogspot.com/) As a Second Life fan, I'm all for that!

Activities for the day: PLENK2010 , COL's OER discussions

I've signed up for the OER discussions which are being sponsored by the Commonwealth of Learning (See http://oerworkshop.weebly.com and registration for the discussions at http://oerworkshop.weebly.com/--online-discussion-forums.html )

PLENK2010: Online sessions via Elluminate are scheduled for Wednesdays and Fridays at noon EDT. I have a difficult time making myself show up at an appointed time - but I have in mind to attempt attending. In the meantime... I read through some of the discussions for Week 1:

Zaid Aslagoff put up a link to his free learning tools list
http://zaidlearn.blogspot.com/2008/04/free-learning-tool-for-every-learning.html
It's a long list! I would think that instructors ought to make some suggestions about which tools to use.

One participant suggested that PLE tools should be accessible via mobile devices. Some participants have mentioned Symbaloo - yet another social bookmarking site..
(Ok, does everyone doing PLENK2010 want their discussion contributions discussed outside of the PLENK2010 environment? I'm assuming "yes" given that we're asked to tweet and post, etc.)

PLENK2010 Personal Learning Environments, Networks, and Knowledge

PLENK2010 has started up. I've been on the fringes of other MOOCs (Massive Open Online Course) run by Steven Downes and the others. I start out reading everything attentively for a couple of weeks and then drifting off to other activities... I'm going to see if I can impose some discipline on myself and stick with it this time.
Dave Feguson( http://www.daveswhiteboard.com/archives/3661 ) mentioned trying to find his way around Moodle. That mirrors my experience with the previous course on Critical Literacies. I felt that I had to log in too many times and kept getting bogged down trying to figure out if I wanted to go to the discussion forums (which seemed underutilized to me) or the wiki or..read the daily or head for the blog.. rss feeds? Archives? Live sessions? Recording of live sessions? Whew! One thing I do notice: PLENK2010 home page has a nice schedule of what's going to be covered week-by-week on the main screen. That's helpful!
Ok... PLE (Personal Learning Environments): I'm reading through the Educause 7 things you should know about Personal Learning Environments: http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI7049.pdf Is PLE just another term for using Web 2.0 tools with students? Does the term PLE imply a coherent collection of Web 2.0 tools? "A PLE ... puts students in charge of their own learning resources..." but it seems like this particular article is discussing PLEs as "student created" but a component of a course in which a student will receive a grade. So a PLE is "personalized", but not private and is still up for judging. Will I get an A?