Resource Description and Access

8 December 2008

(Via Greg Blood and Chris Gould, NSIC, Canberra)
The Joint Steering Committee (JSC) for the Development of Resource Description and Access (RDA) states that RDA is the working title of the new standard that will be the successor to AACR2. (Background information is here.)
RDA will provide:

A flexible framework for describing all resources – analog and digital
Data that are adaptable to new and emerging database structures
Data that are compatible with existing records in online library catalogues

Information about the RDA full draft can be found here.
This is an information page about RDA on the National Library of Australia website. This is a link to presentations about RDA made at a seminar in Sydney in October 2008.

Sporting Organisations and Digital Communication

4 December 2008

Edwina Luck and Elizabeth Buchanan (August, 2008) have published a paper entitled Sporting Organisations: Do they need to Communicate with Members?
In their abstract to the paper they observe that:

We surveyed Australian sporting organisations aiming to examine their communication strategies. Not surprisingly, our findings suggest that many organisations think of communication as an after-thought. We argue that sporting organisations are not making the most the latest communication methods, nor progressing with member’s communication desires or what members are actually seeking. Members want electronic, two-way and fast communication tools including electronic newsletter and bulletin boards. This research opens up debate on how community-based media may value-add to the organisational communication mix, and how digital broadcasting can be developed by the community broadcasting sector to enhance the communications capabilities for the not for profit sector.

The paper reports the findings of two surveys: one of sporting organisations (90 organisations) and one of members of a sporting organisation (Equestrian Queensland, 324 respondents).
Findings from the survey of organisations included:

in the majority of cases no specific person was appointed to look after communication. Local clubs were more likely to have someone looking after communication (38.5 percent), compared to national (24.0 percent) and state level (33.3 percent).
48.9 percent of respondents felt that advancements in communication technologies would make it less time consuming to communicate with members. In addition, 71 percent thought it would make things more efficient to communicate with members. Furthermore, 63.8 percent of respondents used electronic
newsletters to send to members, although the majority of Club level organisations did not use electronic newsletters (53.8%).
Sporting organisations stated that updating websites is important, however at a Club level, only 66.7% update their websites every now and then. Daily updates are undertaken by 40% of National and 14.3% of State organisations; with 40% and 54.7% updating every couple of days to weekly respectively.
Communications methods used by the organisations in the survey:

In the survey of Equestrian Queensland (EQ) members:

49 percent of member respondents felt that advancements in communication technologies would make it less time consuming to communicate with EQ and 51 percent thought it would make things more efficient to communicate with EQ. Furthermore, 91.3 percent of respondents wanted electronic newsletters to be sent to them.
the most popular communication method was Email.

One of the authors’ key conclusions is:

Use of technology has trebled within the past five years, and within the ever–changing marketplace, sporting organisations cannot afford to lag behind. Embedded with electronic channel usage is the potential to reshape internal communication. In order to accommodate changing environmental conditions relating to the technological environment, sporting organisations must lead the way with communication.

Sporting organisations will need a great deal of support as they explore digital media. Gene Schembri’s wiki is a great example of the support that can be offered. This canoe slalom wiki is an example of the potential of harnessing the wisdom of crowds in an organisation.

CCK08: Thank You!

4 December 2008

I have waited to write my final post of the CCK08 course. My alerts are still bringing me news of course members and I am fascinated by the connections they are making and the reflections they are offering.
This final post is a note of thanks and celebration.
I was delighted to be involved in the course. I leave it with enormous admiration for and a sense of awe about George and Stephen‘s vision, energy and delivery. I think it was an inspired move to have Dave Cormier involved in a third party role. It was a wonderfully intense experience for me that ranged from the hedonism of personal discovery to exegesis induced fatigue. For some of the course other parts of my life were put on hold and I was fortunate to have the time to pursue ‘teachable moments‘. CCK08 gave me so many of those moments. The course gave me access to remarkable people too and the opportunity to marvel at their creativity.
I joined the course as a ‘voluntary inpatient‘ and was free from the demands of credit assignments. I was surprised to learn about ‘lurkers‘. I had not heard this term before. When I first (mis)heard it I thought there were ‘lurchers‘ in the course and I was excited by how much energy they would bring to discussions.
My engagement in CCK08 was limited to a small number of tools. It was very interesting participating in an on-line course in Australia. I used the course wiki as a web page. I visited the course blog when alerted to it but missed the 18 comment discussion on participation. I made no synchronous use of Ustream but was delighted that there was a second Elluminate session (Thursday morning in Australia). My participation in Elluminate was limited to posts on the chat board and asynchronous revisiting of presentations. I thought the range of guests were outstanding during the course and regret that I did not get to hear Nancy White in real time. I thought the timing of the Elluminate sessions in the course week was excellent and provided a focus for emerging ideas and a catalyst for bisociative leaps of the imagination. I lament that I failed miserably to contribute to the Moodle forums and bandwidth in rural NSW did very strange things to Pageflakes and made any Second Life participation impossible. I did not tweet and had minimal input to Facebook. I missed the Connectivism Memetracker completely. I considered developing concept and mind maps for my experience of CCK08 and had been attracted to CMaps some time ago (via The Knowledge Tree). However I found it impossible to develop a 2D representation of my experiences in the context of my non-linear learning. Perhaps I should have developed a time-lapsed presentation of my thinking or a right-brain approach to sharing.
I did luxuriate in the wonderful richness and diversity of CCK08 blog posts and it was here that I felt most at ease. I spent considerable time each week visiting blog posts and enjoyed the opportunity to synthesise some of these posts in ‘slow blogs’. I was keen to comment on blog posts but realise that my own alerts (WordPress and Google) missed some important posts.
The Daily became essential reading for me and because of time differences I accessed this either late at night or early morning. I enjoyed those days when The Daily and OLDaily arrived together particularly when a post in the latter enriched discussion in the former. It was interesting to read Stephen and George’s input into The Daily and throughout the course I contemplated how ‘voice’ is managed and mediated. At present I am reflecting on The Daily as a delightful a cappella Renaissance polyphony.
An overwhelming metaphor for me in the CCK08 course has been connectivism and connective knowledge as a garden. I have had a delightful morning writing this post and am wonderfully fortunate to look out at a physical garden. It is Summer here in Mogarlowe and I trust that wherever you read this post that your garden (metaphrical and physical) is flourishing too.
Thank you all for the opportunity to spend twelve weeks with you.

CCK08: Wayfinding

26 November 2008

It has been fascinating to read the growing number of blogged reflections on CCK08. (We have had an enormous amount of reflection in action on the course to date.)
In the last week of the course I have been thinking about post-CCK08 wayfinding.

I was interested to read of the ABC Radio Nationals’ My Street project. My Street:

is more than 100 stories told from real and imagined streets around Australia and across the globe. They capture the emotions, tensions and joy that people feel about the street they live in. The stories were created by the public using digital technology and are told in; text, video, audio only, photos, slideshows and computer animation.

I wondered whether this format might be of interest to CCK08 participants. There is a map to accompany the stories.
The ABC has another innovation to share too. It has established a Fora page that is:

the result of an editorial partnership between the ABC and US web group www.fora.tv. Combining content sourced by the ABC from talks events all over Australia with the international material provided by fora.tv, ABC Fora will bring you the most engaging and interesting speeches and debates from all over the world.

Another part of my wayfinding has been to follow up on my dormant membership of Edna’s me.edu.au service. This looks a rich context for CCK08 types!
CCK08 has been a vibrant and dynamic catalyst for my own professional development. I think I am more of a seeker than ever!

SIRC launches Blog and Facebook Page

24 November 2008

Via Greg Blood (NSIC, Canberra)
The Sport Information Resource Centre (SIRC) has announced the launch of a blog and Facebook page and group.
This is the link to the blog.
Background information from the press release on 18 November 2008:
Founded in 1973, SIRC is a private, not-for-profit corporation based in Ottawa, Canada with over 6.5 million pages of sport research in its collection. SIRC’s clients consist of international, national and provincial sporting organizations, sports medicine associations and educational institutions committed to the development of sport. … SIRC is known worldwide as the creator of the SPORTDiscus Database, SIRC Document Delivery and author of the SIRC Thesaurus. SIRC offers services in the areas of indexing, research, communication, education and knowledge management. In addition, SIRC manages several programs that inspire, acknowledge and celebrate academic and sport excellence.

CCK08: Week 11 End of Term Feeling?

23 November 2008

My post early last week was written before George’s CCK08 week 11 video became available. I noted George’s discussion about ‘spaces of learning’ in relation to instructional design specifically and more generally in relation to models of schooling. I wondered if it takes some time for an eco system to emerge and whether there are very special times for change (just like the year 1859, for example). (Later in the week Jenny and John picked up the discussion of physical spaces for learning.)
In this post I collate some themes from the penultimate week of the course.

I was pleased that end of term has unearthed a most wonderful example of ‘a dingo ate my homework’ plea (that included a further impetus on ANT for me.) Tom wrote about ‘the end is nigh’, His post started with this observation ” I will admit I am tired, this course plus my other responsibilities has been at times a little too much, so I feel it is time to reflect on the course and hopefully myself.” Fleep posted a delightful item at the end of the week with a memorable first paragraph “Between the crazy workload for Fall Quarter, being out of town for conferences, and a bout with the Martian Death Flu, I confess to having fallen completely off the CCK08 and CCK08SL bandwagon. I didn’t just fall off, I think it ran me over on its way out of town.”
Early in the week, Stephen linked to Steve Egan’s post on ‘keeping people involved’ in on-line communities (in OLDaily 17 November) and to another post about sharing inside and outside the classroom. I thought both posts were timely reminders of the energy required to sustain communities particularly as end of term euphoria strikes. The Daily provided a link to Diego Leal’s discussions about EduCamps in Colombia to provide more food for thought about organising communities of practice.
Google Alerts and the WordPress Tag Surfer brought me to a number of assignment three posts. Bradley posted his assignment and I was delighted to read the final sentence of his post “And I the CCK08 student, may become the teacher much faster than I thought.” Adrian posted his assignment too and concluded that “Depth of learning arises from providing learners with the time and resources to engage with material extensively. …And it means trusting that we do not have all the answers.” Jon‘s paper concludes in part with these sentiments “it is time to take responsibility for the power that teachers have. Once the power is recognized, begin to understand how this classroom can be used to not only teach the curriculum that is required, but to do it in a way that reflects the ability to question and question intelligently.” (Janet made this very strong statement a few days earlier: “These powerful opportunities risk being trumped by the governance of our infrastructure. There must be a way to move forward with a sense of due care and positive engagement, not just by learners but also by the systems and communities which enable them.”) Jenny posted her discussion this about networks and teachers “I think we need teachers and preferably teachers who understand the power of learning in networks.” (The title of her post I don’t know what I don’t know prompted me to think about the foresight of Joseph Bazalgette.)
Viplav posted about paper three early in the week and later in the week invited peer review of his work. Wendy posted her paper and concluded that “Success (in education) will depend on our ability to change our role from all-knowing teacher to network learning guide.” Frances added to this theme with her post about education in which she concludes that “I remain an optimist who believes that a ‘good’ education can offer the chance of empowering individuals to influence the power relations within which they may struggle, as well as expanding their knowledge networks.” Shel explored the possibilities for change in her paper posted at the end of the week.
A delightful treat this week was being given access to the It’s Elementary #26 recorded discussion of CCK08. It was great to hear Maria, Alice, Jose, Lisa, Bradley and Wendy talk about their experiences (it was interesting to hear Maria typing away in the background and wondering what was going on in the chat room!). Dave Cormier joined the conversation later too.
I would have been interested to join the Spannish SL session Stephen alerted me to through The Daily. (Maru and Delores posted about this event.) I did access Stephen’s paper on the future of on-line learning (ten years on). Once again I marvelled at Stephen’s synoptic vision. What a decade! This YouTube video underscored that! This latter post sparked a number of responses including Jenni‘s, Mike‘s and Jenny‘s.
Lani discussed her understanding of the secondary role technology plays in learning. She observes that “Unless the learning and thinking, the life of the mind and the processes of creation, remain at the center and everything else we do is in its service, then its all a bunch of noise.” I thought Carmen‘s post on listening slowly (see The Daily post about this) was an excellent post mate for Lani. It was interesting to read Sarah‘s post about the impact of CCK08 on her teaching. She notes that “that teaching isn’t just about providing content, but facilitating the means for students to connect with each other so they can learn from the content together.” She outlines a number of roles a teacher can take (including steward, curator and jack of all trades). In a subsequent post Sarah makes some great points about connectivism and serendipity. Jenny‘s post raises some interesting questions about digital literacy and connectivism “What are the literacy skills of connectivity and are these simply digital literacy skills or do we need to make a distinction?”
Heli‘s post is a great call to join each other and share our beautiful learning spaces and our learning experiences as Andreas did. It is a reminder too what a global experience CCK08 has been. Steve points out that “In fact, it is such a small world, that I now have a real problem trying to keep up with all the friends I have made all over the world. The problem is time!” Lisa observes that “I think after this class is over, the blogs I’ll come back to, the people I want to know better, may not be the ones whose work stretches my intellect or changes my approach to work, although those were the connections I initially hoped to make.” (Her subsequent post about maps prompted me to think about my woeful contribution to this part of the course. I have been a verbaliser rather than a visualiser! Ariel and Grant posted their maps too.) Polsterf noted “the path forward appears in the connected conversations – that you make a difference by what you do, the example you set and by your own contributions within a connected community – no matter how small or seemingly insignificant. Your persistent participation in the dialogue will make a difference.” I took Matthias‘s post to be an excellent example of this persistence. He observes that “the most powerful but hardest to describe mechanism is what happens when an idea or some microcontent strikes a chord or resonates with someone else, and when that other person’s reaction, in turn, influences the first person’s conceptual network.”
There was some interesting Web 2.0 discussion (wiki and this recording) prompted by The Daily. Mike posted about his presentation on CCK08 to the Open Education Workshop. His follow up video is a must see! (No guitar but a bouncing baby boy.) John continued with his enormous output of thoughts and support.
George‘s post about the humanity of the issues raised in CCK08 was touched by his personal sadness and loss. At the end of this phase of CCK08 I do believe our connections have celebrated the personal. Rom Harre once wrote that “we should treat people as if they are human”. It reminds me too that we are not an island .., that we can reach each other. Heli‘s post tells me just how important this work is … “I am shy, I am not a talkative person even in using my mother tongue and this is my first blog in English. I know I cannot network globally in Finnish…”

CCK08: What a Journey!

19 November 2008

I received this photograph this morning and thought it encapsulated the last eleven weeks of CCK08 for me.
It has been an incredible journey. A journey out of the desert …

CCK08: Week 11 Possessive Individualism Revisited in the Post Historical University

17 November 2008

I am resisting the calls of my garden to write an early post about CCK08 Week 11 readings. My morning started with this error message whilst trying to access George’s (2008) paper:

(I wondered if this was one of the ‘new dangers’ mentioned in Michael Peters’ paper but such is the capability of the techno-culture that I was able to access the paper on-line some thirty minutes later). I did download Michael Peters’ paper Higher Education, Globalisation and the Knowledge Economy and started my reading.
I enjoyed Michael Peters’ analysis. I have lived through the period he describes and analyses. I studied social science at the University of York (1970-1973) at a time of student activism nourished by events at the Sorbonne in 1968. I was involved in higher education in the UK from 1978 to 2002 and witnessed at first hand the tectonic changes occurring in the status of the university and the value (in both senses of ‘value’ – benefit and cost) of higher education.
I have extracted three points from Michael Peters’ paper that strike me as fundamentally important:

I want to take a different tack and suggest a form of the university that does not break entirely with the founding historical discourses and their single unifying ideas but preserves them, adapts them to new conditions, reinvents and redefines them as an imaginative basis for resistance against the narrowing of thought (Michael Peters, 2007, p.21).
The existence of a philosophical ethos as a permanent critique of our historical era (after Michel Foucalt quoted in Michael Peters, 2007, p.24).
We must begin to understand the new techno-cultures in relation to the university where the radical concordance of image, text and sound sets up new exigencies and promises for pedagogy but also new dangers (Michael Peters, 2007, p.24).

I do believe that higher education has a vital role to play in the second order questioning of knowledge and cultural reproduction. I believe too that agile institutions must engage with the ‘radical concordance’ available to them and accept the volatility and disruption educational technologies bring. It was fortunate that after reading Michael Peters’ conclusion to his paper I was able to move on immediately to George’s paper.
I think George develops the “new exigencies and promises” for pedagogy very well. I do believe that accreditation in the postmodern or post historical university is a very important issue. Away from the system of higher education I am perplexed by the status anxiety universities have about qualifications and research rankings. I understand that I may be missing a fundamental economic point here but believe that epistemology and pedagogy are not the sole reserve of higher education institutions. I do believe that courses such as CCK08 provide “an imaginative basis for resistance against the narrowing of thought” but realise that there is a tension between non-hierarchical approaches to learning and a formal credit model of participation.
In my post about Utopian education I mentioned Michael Young’s biography of the Elmhirsts. I did not mention that Michael Young was a founder of the Open University and a former pupil of Dartington Hall School. He writes about his time at the school with enormous affection in The Elmhirsts of Dartington (1982) … “before I had always longed for the end of the term … now it was the other way round: I longed for the end of the holidays”.
Michael (Peters) and George identify for me the possibilities of a different kind of education afforded by our present context. Michael (Young) emphasises for me the possibilities of a libertarian approach to knowing that is intoxicating. (An obituary printed in The Guardian exemplifies this approach.)
I want to conclude this post with mention of Crawford Brough Macpherson in deference to the co-hosts of CCK08. Whilst in my period of ferment at the University of York I did study political philosophy and whilst reading Hobbes, Locke et al I came across and read with enormous interest The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism (1962). I think his arguments resonate wonderfully with this week’s discussion. C.B. argues for the repair of the philosophical arguments of the rights of an individual forged in the crucible of seventeenth century debate. The repair that is needed is one that “would bring back a sense of the moral worth of the individual and combine it again with a sense of the moral value of community…” (1962, page 2).

One must be able to postulate that the individuals of whom the society is composed see themselves, or are capable of seeing themselves, as equal in some respect more fundamental than all respects in which they are unequal (1962, page 272).
The dilemma of modern liberal-democratic theory is now apparent: it must continue to use the assumptions of possessive individualism at a time when the structure of market society no longer provides the necessary conditions for deducing a valid theory of political obligation from those assumptions. (1962, page 275).
… technical change in the methods of war … has created a new equality of insecurity among individuals, not merely within one nation but everywhere (1962, page 277).

Wikipedia notes that Macpherson claimed that what he had always been trying to do was to “work out a revision of liberal-democratic theory, a revision that clearly owed a great deal to Marx, in the hope of making that theory more democratic while rescuing that valuable part of the liberal tradition which is submerged when liberalism is identified as synonymous with capitalist market relations.”
My thinking is that in a postmodern and post history context we must continue to address authority and the civic responsibility of the individual. Michael Peters has indicated one way of addressing the role of the University and George’s paper has given voice to the agility required to transform that University. Radical concordance brings the Sorbonne days back to me and that wonderful opportunity to contemplate how local action can address ‘false consciousness’.
Perhaps I should be off to the barracades rather than the garden!

The 2008 Boyer Lectures: A Golden Age of Freedom

17 November 2008

The 2008 Boyer Lectures are being broadcast by ABC Radio National in Australia. Rupert Murdoch is the guest presenter of this year’s lectures. The theme of this year’s lectures is A Golden Age of Freedom. This is the press release about the lecture series. This is the home page for the series of lectures and all podcasts.
Two recent lectures,Lecture 2 (9 November) Who’s afraid of new technology (transcript here) and Lecture 3 (16 November) The future of newspapers: moving beyond dead trees (transcript here) seem very timely for this stage of our CCK08 discussions.

CCK08: Week 10 Wild Flower Garden

15 November 2008

I have been working in the garden this week. Part of the garden has wild flowers (mainly oxeye daisies, Lecanthemum vulgare) in it during the Summer and I noticed that one of the wild flowers was growing (strongly) away from the other flowers. I missed Howard Rheingold in the first Elluminate session and have not participated in the Ustream discussions so me and the wild flower have a lot in common this week. There is action going on somewhere but we are away from it!
This is my review of this week’s action in CCK08. (The parts I saw read and heard!)
I read Stephen’s 2004 paper on Reusable Media, Social Software and Openness in Education and his 2006 article on Sustainable Open Education Resources. I watched Stephen’s Seven Questions video (I hope it was recorded at 4 p.m.) and followed up the Daily link to Stephen’s presentation on Open Educational Resources and his Blip TV video on Openness in Education (Bradley wrote a detailed response to this presentation). I went back to read the Seeley Brown and Adler paper.
For some inexplicable reason (perhaps the subliminal qualities of too much Blip TV and the occassional mention of neurons) I went away and read about the Minority Game. (Perhaps it was the sustainability arguments and a recent post about economic behaviour that took me there.) Joe Wakeling and Per Bak (2002) explore:

… the effects of changing agent characteristics, demonstrating that crowding behavior takes place among agents of similar memory, and show how this allows unique `rogue’ agents with higher memory values to take advantage of a majority population.

This week’s Daily led me to:
Carmen‘s comprehensive discussion of the travel impulse and the excitement of discovery. News of Dave Cormier’s presentaton to an Emerging Monday’s seminar on MOOCS and Connectivism hosted by Graham Attwell. (Jorgen came to Graham Attwell’s post by a different route.) Wendy‘s discussion of teachers as researchers who “teach the research process, how to find and filter information”. I really enjoyed her subsequent post about a teacher in a connectivist framework and was delighted to read that:

I’m about to embark on a 6-week connectivism project with my Contemporary Issues class. They will build a personal learning environment based on a topic for which they have great interest. I will take on a number of new roles including that of modeler, network administrator, curator, concierge, community leader, technology steward, information filter, Sherpa, researcher, change agent, learning entrepreneur, and evaluator. Some of these roles will be foreign and uncomfortable. But, I’m open minded, confident, ready to experiment, and prepared to learn from my mistakes.

I read Ailsa‘a contemplation of appreciative and iterative change (inspired by Nancy White) and her discussion of agile development. (Dave Cormier wrote this week about communities and linked to Nancy too.) Rita wrote about groups, networks and collectives and shared news of the ECEL conference in Cyprus. Ariel has been visiting a virtual worlds in education conference and his notes are here. Ken posted this week on analogies and followed up with a second post.
Jenny had a busy week of posts: changing teachers; intervention in students’ learning; and community, networks, reciprocity and responsibility. In her most recent post, Jenny asks:

What makes one person take (this) responsibility more seriously than another? Is it in order to fulfil a personal need rather than to benefit the community? And how do notions of responsibility to a network of learners fit with ‘connectivism’?

Elsewhere a number of course members have completed Paper 2, including Tom’s serialisation, Maru (and her delightful context paper), Grant, Jon, Jcrom, Steve, Jorgan and Shel

Frances‘s detailed discussion of connectivism as a learning network stopped me in my tracks. I have mentioned before that I must look carefully at ANT and her post is a very good reason why I must accelerate my reading. I had thought that connectivism is open to its own revision. Three thinkers from my network of dead people, Marx (withering away of the state), Weber (science open to on-going change) and Kelly (there are infinite alternative constructions of reality) gave me good reason to think this.
Just when I was recovering from Frances’ post up comes The Revolution will be Syndicated. Mike Bogle has made an enormous impact on me in the last ten weeks and his post exemplifies for me just what a connected person is and does. (Mike has a poll running at the moment about tools used to engage with CCK08.)
I looked at John Mak’s alphabet post and admired his writing productivity over the last few weeks (this week a response to Bradley‘s book review and this post on connectivism, for examples). I noticed Andreas‘s post about optional assignments and am finding myself more and more interested in his approach to learning (later in the week he posted about frustrated students and assignment 2). I look forward to Lisa’s posts and this week she discussed the ontological turn. I noticed her mention of John Holt. Bradley discussed a different kind of ontology later in the week.
The Daily linked me to Howard Rheingold’s TED talk (I noticed that Eyal Sivan had posted a comment there linking to this detailed post about “enlightened self interest”), to the review of Smart Mobs and a link to the online book the Virtual Community. Lori posted a link to the Social Media Classroom at the start of the Elluminate session.

I did listen with great interest to the recording of Howard’s Elluminate session and noticed a number of comments on the chat board at the end that participants were going to re-listen. This first session takes place early in the morning In Australia so I have been a second-session-Elluminate-kind-of-person. I was interested to see who participated in the first session and noticed that there were 45 wildflowers in the list of participants (Howard, George, Stephen, Adrian, Alan, Anachorete, Bee, Bill, Bradley, Ctscho, DebbyK, Dendari, Derbaum, Dolors, Emcdef, Frank, Gabi, Grant, Iamarf, Jabiz, Jcrom, Jennymack, Joel, Jon K, Jorgen, Juliana, Lindaleea, Lisa, Lori, Lynn, Marc, Maru, Mary, Matthias, Mic, RCJones, RNolan, Roland, Romi, Sasa, Sharon, Silvia, Steve, Sylvia, Teresa, Todd, Wendy). It was great to hear Howard talk about his work and to hear the voices of other CCK08 participants. Listening in lapsed-time gave me the opportunity to pause and follow up some points in more detail. There seemed to be an early exchange about wiki formats and blogging going on on the chat board and Alan posted a link to this excellent Common Craft explanation of a wiki (there is a video too). (Subsequently I found this post on CogDogBlog.) Steve posted a link to his Connectivism pbwiki and to an SL Experiments wiki.
Other themes in the discussion:

Inducting students into Web 2.0 tools and establishing a disciplined approach to practice
Sustainability
Reflection
Critical thinking and creative thinking (Bee posted this link to Open Spaces For Dialogue and Enquiry)
Stage craft

I was delighted when Howard indicated some of the influences on his development (Postman and Weingartner, Freire, Dewey and Goffman). Bee (and others) have some tweets about this session.

The Daily linked to a number of reflective pieces later in the week. Mrs Durff looked at learning, chunking and reflecting. (I noticed her Voki, I am wondering how to change mine.) This paper discussed Latin characteristics of education and training. Adrian brought another perspective to educare. Matthias looked at openness here. Lisa explored resistance, reassessment and retooling. (Later in the week she posted on Openness.)
Earlier this week “Linker Taylor” posted that “I have always been comfortable as the connector – someone who notices all sorts of odd bits of information, then finds opportunities to pass along the information in the most unlike situations.” This week has seen me trying to connect despite the appeal of early Summer In Australia and a wild flower garden. I should let Lani know that it is a real and virtual organic garden … and perhaps George will appreciate life in a rural society given his connectedness challenges this week.

Postscript
I revisit my posts after first posting to include other posts that come my way from alerts. Today I lost my postscript! I had written about a post by Frances and her walled garden discussion of social software in schools. I liked her observation that:

Good teachers inspire their students to learn away from the classroom as well as in it – thinking is the first mobile technology – the question is how do institutions learn about what is appropriate support for learners and teachers using social software.

It has been a busy time in the backyard for Jenni too. Her post shares her interest in VoiceThread as an introduction tool for an on-line course. Linarmstrong has post about dyslexia and theories. Linarmstrong and Matthias have posted their short paper three. Eduardo‘s post on the lifecyscles of communities and networks was a timely reminder about egocentric and object centric networks discussed earlier in CCK08. In doing so it prompted me to read more of Michele Martin‘s work. WordPress Tag Surfer brought me Mark’s Wordle post, Ariel‘s discussion of Openness and Twitter, two posts by ulop (one on freedom and one on connectivism), and John Mak‘s post on individual development, networks and communities (and linked to his earlier post).

Clyde Street