I am mid MA program and exploring social media, learning, technolgy and leadership. These will be the focus of my thesis, I hope. Currently I'm taking a course on Program Planning, part of the Learning and Technology program at Royal Roads University. I'm not doing my MA in Learning and Technology rather I'm doing an Interdisciplinary MA that includes learning and technology. That's the back story cos appearently context counts.
For the past few months my current cohort has been working primarily in teams, exploring various aspects of the program planning process through the lenses of program planning experts like Cafferella, Sork, Bates & Poole, etc. I of course am always looking for the exceptions. I have a slightly opposable mindset and tend to want to look at the "other" angles. Makes me a bit annoying to be around but it affords me a better, fuller view of whatever subject is being explored.
In search of other viewpoints, hoping they might support my own of course, I have been using Twitter to build arguements against the views of the planning experts. During this exploration I have noticed there is a process that I have engaged in. I have noticed this process after the fact perhaps in part due to my infatuation with Donald Schon's Refection in and on action models.
The process I have noticed is that I wait for an opportunity to ask key people questions in Twitter. It's kind of like bumping into someone in a hallway or having a moment of relatively free time with someone in an elevator. These are people I don't actually know but that I have been following on Twitter for some time. So aquaintances, not friends.
I have also noticed that before I ask them a question I generally do something to increase my level of social capital with them. For example I provided some information that Alec Couros was looking for regarding trust. He responded to my offering indicating that it had some value to him thus opening the door for me to ask him to return the favour. Social capital is built upon trust and reciprocity.
I did the same when asking Howard Rheingold some questions about his process of program planning. Although I didn't provide him with anything useful. I thanked him for posting a link to his del.icio.us tags about Twitter and Education. I hadn't intended to manipulate or use the compliment as a way to build social capital. I meant it earestly but when he responded to my genuine thank you tweet I went through that open door and proceeded to ask him for some information about his program planning process.
So, reflecting on these actions, it seems that I conform to social rules around building and using social capital in Twitterin the same way I would if interacting face to face. The difference of course is that I live many hundreds of miles for these folks and would likely not bump into them in a hallway lol
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Shifting Mindsets - get outta that box
In reading Simon U Ford’s blog titled “Social Media – an online mindset shift”, I couldn’t help but think that this could easily be applied to teaching online.
Ford says “When it comes to social media, you have to have a complete mindset shift or else you’d end up wasting time and energy with little or no rewards.” I say when it comes to Technology Mediated Learning (TML), aka online or distributed learning, you have to have a complete mindset shift or else you’d end up wasting time and energy with little or no rewards.
He goes on to make some suggestion which I have adapted below:
1- Know what’s going on in the edtech world. Subscribe to different blogs related to learning and technology. Do some research. Subscribe to Google alerts for updates or subscribe to have relevant bloggers new posts sent directly to you inbox (I prefer the push over the pull). Follow edtech guru’s on Twitter to keep current.
2- Learn from others. There are tons of free webinars and even courses available that focus on TML and related issues. Share what you know. Start you own blog or try Twitter as an entry into micro-blogging.
3- Keep a look out for new tools and spend time playing with them. If you don’t like a tool, you don’t have to use it - but at least give them a try. There are so many cool free online applications that can benefit you and your learners. Don’t forget to get familiar with the old standby applications like Moodle, Jing and various wiki’s.
4- If you think you are still not the tech type - Get tech friendly people on your team and empower them to get creative with TML.
Ford says “When it comes to social media, you have to have a complete mindset shift or else you’d end up wasting time and energy with little or no rewards.” I say when it comes to Technology Mediated Learning (TML), aka online or distributed learning, you have to have a complete mindset shift or else you’d end up wasting time and energy with little or no rewards.
He goes on to make some suggestion which I have adapted below:
1- Know what’s going on in the edtech world. Subscribe to different blogs related to learning and technology. Do some research. Subscribe to Google alerts for updates or subscribe to have relevant bloggers new posts sent directly to you inbox (I prefer the push over the pull). Follow edtech guru’s on Twitter to keep current.
2- Learn from others. There are tons of free webinars and even courses available that focus on TML and related issues. Share what you know. Start you own blog or try Twitter as an entry into micro-blogging.
3- Keep a look out for new tools and spend time playing with them. If you don’t like a tool, you don’t have to use it - but at least give them a try. There are so many cool free online applications that can benefit you and your learners. Don’t forget to get familiar with the old standby applications like Moodle, Jing and various wiki’s.
4- If you think you are still not the tech type - Get tech friendly people on your team and empower them to get creative with TML.
Sunday, October 11, 2009
YouTube - Michael Wesch - PdF2009 - The Machine is (Changing) Us
I was watching Michael Wesch's take on social media and reflecting on some of the conversations I have been involved in lately about social media and it's use. One perspective I have been exposed to repeatedly it that social media, like Twitter, are leading to the decline of sociality. The arguements supporting this seem to come from folks who are unfamilar with technology in general and are at the slow edge of integrating any kind of technology into thier lives.
My irritation at this stems in part from my knowing that these same folks who wax poetic at the loss of face to face conversation and lament over why people don't just phone them to ask a question or to say hello are the same folks who whould be at the forfront of protests against cuts to education in literature. I know this because most of the folks in this conversation are educators.
K, you might be scratching your head now. Follow my logic, as twisted as it might seem, for a moment. The arguement goes kinda like this: This new media (insert any one here) is taking time away from developing relationships. We need to connect with learners face to face, speak to them directly, be able to hear what they are saying.
My response is that communication is critical to relationship building AND relationships are critical to growth and learning AND how we communicate has evolved over time. In some ways email, Twitter, blogs, online forums, Facebook and the like are a throw-back to a time when the written word was king/queen. Don't you get it, people are using written commmunication again! Oh, but you don't like the form of written communication. What? You want it in APA format you say. Sheesh!
What also comes to (my) mind is that our ability to communicate as a species has evolved in pretty much the same way that an individual's ability to communicate evolves. We start and humanoids started the communication process by babbling. Short grunts and monosylable words to get the point across. Then pictures, cave drawing emerged and then symbols. One form of communication enriched the other. As pictographs became more symolic, langauge began to change, evolve, and as more words are learned pictures become more dymamic. Laddered learning occured all through history in the same way it occurs in children.
As with children, when a new tool or media is introduced a new form of communication begins to emerge. The printing press had a huge impact on how we communicate. Books were mass produced and the oral tradition began to decay. I can imaging the leaders and great thinkers of that time having perhaps the same kind of conversation as we are having now. "Memory will lapse" or "stories will lose their impact" they might have said. Of course it wouldn't have sounded like that because the mass produced new media of books changed the way we speak. Just as the way we write now will change the way we speak and the way we speak will change the way we write.
Now enters video, the next BIG wave in social media. K, it's simply back to the cave paintings folks. We are once again trying to communicate visually. The first genre of educational video was the talking head, direct instructional videos. Now we're seeing more and more of an artistic approach, more symbolism and metaphor. We're even seeing a call for a repository of graphic and video work for educatiors courtesy of Doug Belshaw Sites like YouTube, Qik, UStream, and Almost At offer new and excitingly visual ways to connect, communicate, teach and learn.
I can just hear the folks in opposition to this... "Why can't we just write about it, why do I have to let people see and hear me".. or something like that.
My irritation at this stems in part from my knowing that these same folks who wax poetic at the loss of face to face conversation and lament over why people don't just phone them to ask a question or to say hello are the same folks who whould be at the forfront of protests against cuts to education in literature. I know this because most of the folks in this conversation are educators.
K, you might be scratching your head now. Follow my logic, as twisted as it might seem, for a moment. The arguement goes kinda like this: This new media (insert any one here) is taking time away from developing relationships. We need to connect with learners face to face, speak to them directly, be able to hear what they are saying.
My response is that communication is critical to relationship building AND relationships are critical to growth and learning AND how we communicate has evolved over time. In some ways email, Twitter, blogs, online forums, Facebook and the like are a throw-back to a time when the written word was king/queen. Don't you get it, people are using written commmunication again! Oh, but you don't like the form of written communication. What? You want it in APA format you say. Sheesh!
What also comes to (my) mind is that our ability to communicate as a species has evolved in pretty much the same way that an individual's ability to communicate evolves. We start and humanoids started the communication process by babbling. Short grunts and monosylable words to get the point across. Then pictures, cave drawing emerged and then symbols. One form of communication enriched the other. As pictographs became more symolic, langauge began to change, evolve, and as more words are learned pictures become more dymamic. Laddered learning occured all through history in the same way it occurs in children.
As with children, when a new tool or media is introduced a new form of communication begins to emerge. The printing press had a huge impact on how we communicate. Books were mass produced and the oral tradition began to decay. I can imaging the leaders and great thinkers of that time having perhaps the same kind of conversation as we are having now. "Memory will lapse" or "stories will lose their impact" they might have said. Of course it wouldn't have sounded like that because the mass produced new media of books changed the way we speak. Just as the way we write now will change the way we speak and the way we speak will change the way we write.
Now enters video, the next BIG wave in social media. K, it's simply back to the cave paintings folks. We are once again trying to communicate visually. The first genre of educational video was the talking head, direct instructional videos. Now we're seeing more and more of an artistic approach, more symbolism and metaphor. We're even seeing a call for a repository of graphic and video work for educatiors courtesy of Doug Belshaw Sites like YouTube, Qik, UStream, and Almost At offer new and excitingly visual ways to connect, communicate, teach and learn.
I can just hear the folks in opposition to this... "Why can't we just write about it, why do I have to let people see and hear me".. or something like that.
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