Connecting 131004

BC1I missed attending in person this week’s ePortfolio Forum at the University of Canberra.
I was able to participate virtually in the Forum through Blackboard Collaborate and the #eportforum activity on Twitter.
Angela Shetler has created a Storify link for the event too.
I felt very fortunate to be able to connect this way … and to find some new colleagues to follow on Twitter.
I thought it was a rich vein in a serendipity economy of social capital. Particularly when there are so many other connected educator events taking place this month (Ronnie Burt has an Edubloggers’ Guide to the month).
My reading in the past two days has had strong connection themes.
I was interested to read Tom Whitby’s take on whether we really need connected educators. He notes “Using technology is less generational and more about learning. Social media and its acceptance in our culture has been a catalyst to connectedness”. He adds:

Once an educator connects with other educators, they begin to collect them as sources in a Professional Learning Network of educators, a PLN. A connected educator may then access any or all of these sources for the purpose of communication, collaboration, or creation. This connectedness is not bound by bricks and mortar. It is not bound by city limits or state lines. It is not limited by countries borders. The only nagging inconvenience is dealing with time zones on a global level.

My connections are focussed by connectivism. I was delighted to discover that Stephen Downes had written a Half Hour post yesterday that explored the epistemological and ontological foundations of connectivism.
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I noticed too that one of my colleagues in CCK08, Cristina Costa, has written this week about the participatory web and digital scholarship. One of the main findings from Cristina’s study was that “research participants clearly felt the benefits of practising digital scholarship, and it has influenced their entire approach to scholarly practice”.
One of the aspects of this practice I am always trying to resolve is auto-sharing. I was delighted to read Mary Hiers’ post today. In it she discusses five auto-share options: dlvr.it; BufferViraltag; SocialOomph; GaggleAMP.
One connected educator who impressed me immensely this week was Andy Miah.
Andy has two Prezi presentations to share this week:
Everyone Everywhere
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Everything Everywhere
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Both presentations are wonderful examples of the digital scholarship discussed by Cristina. They contribute to a key theme of this Connected Educator month about “how to move from merely connecting with other educators into collaborations that push pedagogy and the education conversation forward”.
A fascinating two days!

Photo Credit

Connecting the Dots #TP164 (Irmeli Aro, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) (Irmeli is another colleague from CCK08)
 

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