Objects of Interest

Systems Thinking: Peter Senge’s Learning Organization

Tue, 20 Sep 2011 00:59:32 GMT

Reflecting this week on systems thinking and Peter Senge's book, The Fifth Discipline. In particular, Senge’s vision of a learning organization as a group of people who are continually enhancing their capabilities to create what they want.

Senge sees five disciplines as central to learning organizations:

Personal Mastery - continually clarifying and deepening our personal vision, of focusing our energies, of developing patience, and of seeing reality objectively.
Mental Models are deeply ingrained assumptions, generalizations, or even pictures or images that influence how we understand the world and how we take action.
Building Shared Vision suggests that if any one idea about leadership has inspired organizations for thousands of years, it's the capacity to hold a shared picture of the future we seek to create.
Team Learning is vital because teams, not individuals, are the fundamental learning unit in modern organizations.
Systems Thinking - The Fifth Discipline that integrates the other 4.

Senges 11 laws of the Fifth Discipline - Systems thinking

Today's problems come from yesterday's "solutions."
The harder you push, the harder the system pushes back.
Behavior will grow worse before it grows better.
The easy way out usually leads back in.
The cure can be worse than the disease.
Faster is slower.
Cause and effect are not closely related in time and space.
Small changes can produce big results...but the areas of highest leverage are often the least obvious.
You can have your cake and eat it too ---but not all at once.
Dividing an elephant in half does not produce two small elephant
There is no blame.

Great infographics on Systems Thinking in Action for some great Infographics -

http://www.thevalueweb.org/systems/systems-thinking-in-action/

References:

http://www.infed.org/thinkers/senge.htm

Watch Peter Senge on Navigating Webs of Interdependence via IBM Social Media.

Description: Whether you are part of a family, organizational team or business in a supply chain, systems thinking is a valuable approach to understanding the complexity of today's world. Peter Senge, author of The Fifth Discipline, Senior lecturer at MIT and Founder of the Society for Organizational Learning shares his perspectives on leadership and systems thinking with IBM. Senge focuses on the problems that are most difficult to solve and the mental models today's leaders need in order to build a smarter planet. Leaders today need to be able to be prepared reassess their strategies, work across multiple groups to find solutions and have the vision to work through high leverage solutions over time. Working smarter means working in ways that are collective and are based on collective intelligence across cities and supply chains to produce social, ecological and economic well being.

The Tower of London and Lunch at the British Museum

Thu, 15 Sep 2011 00:57:49 GMT

After attending Alt-C, my colleague (@briannido) and I headed to London to visit with some clients and for a little sightseeing. While heading over to the Thames River Festival, we came across a beautiful rainbow that appeared over the Tower of London.

Here are some pictures that I took.

We also had lunch at the British Museum, which was a real treat. The company was great and the food was yummy!

Reflecting on Alt-C 2011 - Part of My Learning Process

Tue, 13 Sep 2011 15:28:14 GMT

I always like to include reflection in the classes that I teach and I think it is an important part of the professional development process, too. Last week I had the pleasure of attending Alt-C 2011 (#altc2011.) Alt-C is a "the UK's leading membership organisation in the learning technology field. Our purpose is to ensure that use of learning technology is effective and efficient, informed by research and practice, and grounded in an understanding of the underlying technologies, their capabilities and the situations into which they are placed."

While I spend most of my time networking and learning online, I always enjoy attending conferences in person. There is a certain synergy when you get a bunch of like-minded people in the same physical space, especially when you bring educators together to discuss new ideas for teaching and learning with technlogy!

Visit the conference website to see videos from this year's conference. Stay tuned to the Alt-C YouTube Channel for videos from this year's conferece - http://www.youtube.com/clipsfromalt

Read the RSS feed of conference blog posts to see what people were learning (and saying) during the conference.

Particluarly memorable was the final keynote delivered by John Naughton, educator and journalist. Read Steve Wheeler's (@timbuckteeth) recent blog post summarizing the event.

View from hotel in Leeds, UK

Rainbow - London, UK

Are You Integrating Technology In The Classroom? Not Should You!

Fri, 09 Sep 2011 20:39:14 GMT

What is amazing to me as an educator, instructional designer, and someone who teaches about the benefits of social learning every day, is the fact that we are still debating whether or not technlogy and, now, social media is valuable in the classroom? My answer to that is, how could it not be? Personally, I think we should be asking ourselves HOW we can incorporate social media applications into our teaching and WHICH tools are the right ones for what we are trying to accomplish.

I also think we need to get over the fear of failure. I hear so often on survey results that educators are afraid of appearing less than expert at something in front of a classroom. If you have a well planned lesson that you are updating with new technology, and you explain that to your students, they will often be more than happy to go along for the ride. The key to that sentence was well-planned. Technology does not integrate or implement itself in the classroom. It has to be woven into the lesson, project, or assignment, which is something instructional designers are very good at helping with. Take advantage of their services if they are available to you at your institution.

Technology-Infused Lesson Plans: What is the Relative Advantage?

Technology Integration: Plan Backward

Advice on "Getting Serious About Social Media"

Sat, 03 Sep 2011 13:28:05 GMT

I was flying home from Washington, DC this week (spent some time in the office,) and I was reading through some reports I has saved to read later. Exact Target published a white paper titled, "LETTERS TO THE C-SUITE: GETTING SERIOUS ABOUT SOCIAL MEDIA."

To help executives understand social media and its impact on business, they asked a dozen of the industry’s top social media experts to offer their insights. Contributors included:

Jay Baer
David Baker
Sergio Balegno
Olivier Blanchard
Jason Falls
Ann Handley
Joseph Jaffe
Kyle Lacy
Valeria Maltoni
Shelly Palmer
Trey Pennington
Jeff Rohrs.

TIM KOPP,Chief Marketing Officer, ExactTarget, started off by listing three things to remember about social media and business.

Marketing is no longer a department—it’s a state of mind.
The conversation’s happening with or without you.
Social is social—not a silo.

Some of my notes from the different sections of the report:

OLIVIER BLANCHARD - Social media is a set of communications channels that can be used for different functions. Social media can serve the specific purposes of every department in an organization, very much in the way that the telephone can.

ANN HANDLEY Don’t leave social media solely to marketing. Chances are, creative people who love your company exist in all corners of your organization.

JOSEPH JAFFE Social connections are not a new concept. What is new is the sheer magnitude of the speed, scale, and reach of social networks, the amplification and power of the megaphone that levels playing fields. To be successful, think like a small business. R.E.A.C.H. out and touch someone – Responsive, Empathetic, Accessible, Connected, Human.

VALERIA MALTONI Being connected is a process. It begins with the creation of contexts and frameworks guiding your interaction with customers, creating and serving content, incorporating research, and continually improving. Customer intelligence is central. To succeed with social media, you need to start thinking about marketing as a system that integrates people, processes, and technology

SHELLY PALMER In the Information Age, there are no gatekeepers, no pundits, no leadership, just passionate points of view. Perhaps the legacy of this technology will be the empowerment of a true Fifth Estate with a collective mind of its own and the ability to amplify the voice of the people above all others.

JEFF ROHRS If you’re going to get serious about social media, you must:

Identify the passionate voices within your organization. Passion is the critical component to social media success.
Empower those voices to speak on your brand’s behalf.
Mobilize a cross-functional social media team to meet regularly and develop, measure, and continuously evaluate how your company should engage through existing and new channels.
Leverage technology to ensure timely, consistent, and informed social media participation.

Gamification - What is it? Why Should You Care?

Tue, 30 Aug 2011 13:00:02 GMT

I attended #speakchat last night and the topic was Gamification. I have been seeing a lot of talk about gamification in the business and education worlds. This is an excellent explanation by Gabe Zicherman (@gzicherm) titled - The Year of Gamification - 2011.

The Year of Gamification - 2011 - Time Social Media Week

View more presentations from Gabe Zichermann

Benefits of an ePortfolios explained Visually

Thu, 25 Aug 2011 13:07:12 GMT

I loved this video explaining the benefits of building and maintaining an ePortfolio:

Loved this webinar: Social Media and the Smart Worker

Wed, 24 Aug 2011 16:14:08 GMT

I listened in on this webinar yesterday and it was very interesting. Slides posted here -

http://c4lpt.co.uk/library/janes-articles-and-presentations/social-media-and-its-impact-on-how-we-learn-in-the-workplace-2/

The presenter, Jane Hart, blogged about her ideas today.

http://www.c4lpt.co.uk/blog/2011/08/24/social-media-and-the-smart-worker/

Jane Hart - the Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies - Although more and more people are now using the term “social learning” to mean the use of social media for learning, most of them are simply referring to how social media can be used within formal, social learning/training – whereas this is only a small part of the picture. The more powerful part is how social media is being used to enhance informal social learning. But even this fact I don’t believe clearly highlights how social media is now fundamentally changing the way many people – those I called Smart Workers – are now working and learning – and how this is opening up a new era of workplace learnng.

http://c4lpt.co.uk/new-workplace-learning/new-workplace-learning-book/

Some of my tweets while I was attending: (@nancyrubin)

Smart Workers - Find content, create and share content, join and build communities, improve productivity - @c4lpt #sociallearn

Trends in media and learning - BYOD - people bringing their own devices to work (and school!) #sociallearn

Informal learning happens all the time in the workplace - social media is impacting learning in a very powerful way - #sociallearn

Learning is like an iceberg - only small percentage visible (formal) in organization - a lot is invisible - informal #sociallearn

Social Learning Best Practices: A Prezi!: http://bit.ly/pGQSAA #sociallearn

Workers today need Just In Time Information - need immediate access to information to solve the problem/task at hand. #sociallearn

Quick start guides and screencasts IMO are more popular than training. Review resources on own time, when they need access - #sociallearn

Study: Surfing the Web at work makes you significantly more productive | Articleshttp://bit.ly/nd92iN #sociallearn

Story Starters Make Great Blog or Journal Prompts

Sat, 20 Aug 2011 00:26:30 GMT

Story starters are a creative writing tool that can also be used as writing prompts for journal and blog activiites. Usually starters are a sentence or two, enough to get the creative process started.

If I had three wishes…
The person I admire the most is…
My favorite season of the year is…
My most exciting moment is…
My most embarrassing moment is…
My favorite food to eat is…
The best time I ever had…
My least favorite food to eat is…
I have always wanted to…
If I had a million dollars…
The best time I ever had…
I always laugh when…
If I could go anywhere in the world…

Social Learning Best Practices: A Prezi!

Mon, 15 Aug 2011 19:57:15 GMT

Social Learning Best Practices on Prezi

Back to School: Creating a Classroom Community

Sat, 13 Aug 2011 13:49:56 GMT

Creating a classroom community starts on day one by helping students get to know each other. Ice-breakers are techniques and/or strategies used during the beginning of a class or unit to reduce tension and to immediately involve students in the class in a light and effective way.

Online ice-breakers, specifically, include additional techniques that utilize various technologies to further develop a sense of community. Ice-breakers are especially important for online learners, because the face to face interaction is not readily available. Thus, ice breaker activities foster openness that leads to a bonding experience that causes students to feel a sense of community, which motivates them to be engaged in their learning.. Ice breakers can occur synchronously or asynchronously. http://twt.wikispaces.com/Ice-Breaker+Ideas

The term "icebreaker" is borrowed from a ship which "break the ice" in the arctic region. The icebreaker ships help in clearing the ice to make way for the other ships to travel smoothly. Similarly, icebreaker activities help the students to interact with one another and also enhance learning through series of games and activities and teamwork. http://www.buzzle.com/articles/classroom-icebreaker-activities-for-students.html

Resources for Ice-breaker Activities:

http://www.ion.uillinois.edu/institutes/fsi/2005/presentations/3/IceBreakingActivities.pdf

http://busyteacher.org/teaching_ideas_and_techniques/warmers/

http://www.utdallas.edu/ah/rhetoric/tips/icebreakers.html

What am I learning more about? Learning Analytics.

Sat, 06 Aug 2011 20:33:27 GMT

Learning analytics refers to the interpretation of a wide range of data produced by and gathered on behalf of students in order to assess academic progress, predict future performance, and spot potential issues. The 2011 Horizon Report listed Learning Analytics as a trend that will be adopted in the next four to five years.

Data are collected from explicit student actions, such as completing assignments and taking exams, and from tacit actions, including online social interactions, extracurricular activities, posts on discussion forums, and other activities that are not directly assessed as part of the student’s educational progress. Analysis models that process and display the data assist teachers and school personnel in interpretation. The goal of learning analytics is to enable teachers and schools to tailor educational opportunities to each student’s level of need and ability.

http://horizon.wiki.nmc.org/2011+Learning+Analytics

More and more institutions are using analytics to evaluate student academic performance. Large stores of data already exist at most colleges and universities. By analyzing this data, analytics applications have the potential to provide a predictive view of upcoming challenges, both for the institution and for students. The resulting data-driven decisions can support optimal use of both economic and pedagogical resources while offering a structure for improved educational outcomes. (Educause, April 2010) http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI7059.pdf

Additional Resources: MOOC - Introduction to Learning and Knowledge Analytics

http://www.learninganalytics.net/syllabus.html

19 Learning Analytics Resources from Educause

http://www.educause.edu/Resources/Browse/Learning%20Analytics/39193

Michael Wesch Keynote: From Knowledgeable to Knowledge-able

Wed, 27 Jul 2011 22:23:45 GMT

Michael Wesch, Cultural Anthropologist, Researcher in Digital Ethnography, and Associate Professor, Kansas State University, was one of the keynote speakers at the Campus Technology Conference this week. The title of his presentation was, "From Knowledgeable to Knowledge-Able: New Learning Environments for New Media Environments." There were a lot of thought provoking questions in the presentation. I am summarizing my notes here.

What do we need to learn?
Who do we need to be as we prepare for whatever is coming next?
Who were we? Who are we? Who do we need to be?
Who are students today and who do they need to become?

As was evidenced in many of the videos he has created, students like learning but not the institutions we have created for them.

Digital artifacts are everywhere; even in the air ;-). We are sharing information and knowledge all of the time - shouldn't we be teaching (letting) students do the same? Literacies in today's world include connecting, organizing, sharing, collaborating. It is important to understand how to use the tools and software available to us, but we also need to recognize how the tools are using (and changing) us.

Media are not just tools, not just a means of communication; media is shaping many aspects of our lives and how we connect with one another. As Media changes, our relationships change, and, our culture changes. Students today need to have different literacies than they did in the past; skills on how to find content, sort it, organize it, and criticize it. They need to be taught how to be critical thinkers!

Web 2.0 is linking people not just information. We are using and sharing information in new ways:

User-generated content
User-generated filtering
User-generated organization
User-generated distribution
User-generated ratings

What is it like being a student today? (My thought - What COULD it be like being a student today?)

That is not happening in many schools. We can see this in the spaces we design:

What the walls say (classroom spaces)
To learn is to acquire information
Information is scarce
Trust authority for good information
Authorized information is beyond discussion
Obey the authority
Follow along

The web can enable individuals to find their voice and contribute in meaningful ways. We are seeing this all the time with citizen journalists and citizen media, which is often unleashed when regular media collapses.

Things to think about in a web-enabled world:

Knowledge-ablity
Communication
Thoughtfulness
Empathy

As people, we search for meaning and significance. If we can unlock the creativity in our students, we can help them become meaning makers. Isn't that what education is really about?

Personal Learning Environments: User-Centric Spaces

Wed, 27 Jul 2011 15:12:07 GMT

I had the pleasure of presenting today at the AAEEBL conference. AAEEBL, The Association for Authentic, Experiential and Evidence-Based Learning, is a a membership organization for the world e-portfolio community that now has established affiliations and collaborations with nearly all world-wide portfolio initiatives, projects and organizations.

I posted the slides from my presentation on SlideShare and have shared them here, too. Feel free to provide feedback or comments. This is an interesting topic that is getting a lot of attention recently. I certainly don't claim to have all the answers, probably a lot more questions and things to think about. I'd love to hear you thoughts on the subject.

Personal Learning Environments: Creating User-Centric Learning Spaces

Keynotes of Note

Sun, 24 Jul 2011 22:49:25 GMT

As a vendor attending a conference, I don't always get to attend as many sessions as I would like. I was able to attend both of the Keynotes at Blackboard World 2011 (#bbworld11) and thought I would share some of my notes.

One keynote was delivered by Steven Johnson, author of "Where Good Ideas Come From." This is similar to the presentation he delivered at Bb World.

What are the common themes for innovation spaces?

Slow Hunch – opposite of eureka moments. Good ideas usually incubate for a while.
Collisions of Ideas allow hunches to come together.
1800 English Coffeehouses – engines of innovation, spaces of diverse interests colliding.
Sustained Innovation – more moving parts
Mentioned Stuart Kaufman’s, “The Adjacent Possible.” There are a fixed set of possible moves you can make given where you are in the system. What openings are available to you?
Innovation occurs when new clusters of ideas form from previous ones
Social Media enables you to follow an interesting, diverse group of people. New ways to connect with other people and find new ideas.

The other keynote of note was delivered by Sir Ken Robinson (one of my favorite speakers.)

Themes of the keynote:

There is no precedent for the times we are in.
We need to meet the challenge. We need to think differently about ourselves and our talents.
We need to do things differently in education.

Education is a personal process, a personal journey. New technologies offer opportunities to personalize education. The goal should be personal, diverse, and creative educational systems.

Curriculum is teaching and learning and personal assessment systems. Learning cultures are personalized education systems that further creative thinking.

Me: Infographically (@nancyrubin)

Fri, 22 Jul 2011 11:59:10 GMT

I love infographics. I produced this one using http://visual.ly/

@nancyrubin Infographic

Click here for larger version

The New Media Literacies For A Participatory Culture

Sun, 10 Jul 2011 12:55:16 GMT

In 2002 (that was a while back already!), the New Media Consortium held the Twenty-first Century Literacy Summit which focused on our change to a knowledge-based society (http://archive.nmc.org/summit/). The Summit released a report titled, "A Global Imperative." Recommendations included teaching more than just reading and writing; students must learn technology literacy, information literacy, media literacy, social responsibility, workplace skills and civic engagement.

This is a great video by the research team at Project New Media Literacies. They highlight the social skills and cultural competencies needed to fully engage with today's participatory culture. As educators, we need to factor these skills into everything our students do in the classroom so they can be successful outside the classroom. We need to Open the Doors (and the Windows) of our Classrooms!

Transforming Pedagogy

Fri, 08 Jul 2011 14:49:14 GMT

A great resource from Twitter. Thanks @suebecks: @timbuckteeth and @thomcochrane for creating!

Transforming Pedagogy - Educational Technology as a catalyst for pedagogical change. Bridging the PAH (Pedagogy, Andragogy, Heutagogy) continuum, beginning with the first year student experience. http://prezi.com/de1jhnq64hlx/transforming-pedagogy/

Transforming Pedagogy on Prezi

My Wordle: Nancy Rubin, Ph.D

Thu, 07 Jul 2011 00:20:50 GMT

PLEs, PLNs, Communities: It's About the Connections!

Tue, 05 Jul 2011 00:20:50 GMT

Personal Learning Environments (PLEs) allow learners to direct their own learning and educational goals. Taking advantage of Web 2.0 technologies, PLEs allow learners to be active co-creators of knowledge.

The main idea behind a PLE is that learning is continual and the goal is to provide tools to support that learning. It also recognizes the role of individuals in organizing their own learning. The pedagogy behind the PLE is that it offers a portal to the world, through which learners can explore and create, according to their own interests and directions, interacting at all times with their friends and community.

PLEs: Creating User-Centric Learning Environments

What About my PLN (Personal Learning Network)? Why Networks?

It is the organization of the network that supports learning, and that if the network is designed appropriately, it will organize itself – just as we see happening in Web 2.0 communities – in order to best support learning. Thus, when we talk about ‘learning networks’ we are talking about networks in two distinct ways:

the use of networks to support learning, and
networks that learn.

Why Do We Connect? Why Do We Need PLNs?

Don’t forget about Communities: Share, Share, That’s Fair!

Learning occurs in communities where the practice of learning is the participation in the community. A learning activity is, in essence, a conversation undertaken between the learner and other members of the community. This conversation, in the Web 2.0 era, consists not only of words but of images, video, multimedia and more. This conversation forms a rich tapestry of resources, dynamic and interconnected, created not only by experts, but by all members of the community, including learners.

Learning happens when students collaborate, communicate and cooperate and it is about creating an environment that enables those activities. Social Software can transform learning into a dynamic experience. learners become contributors, not passive recipients of information. Whether participating in a blog site, collaborating on a wiki assignment, or commenting on a podcast, users are actively engaged in content creation, community cultivation, and discussion moderation.

Campus Pack Social Network for Communities of Practice

Resources: “Emerging tools for Learning Report” produced by BECTA in 2007.

Create Custom Resources for Your Students

Sat, 02 Jul 2011 00:33:47 GMT

	Campus Pack Social Learning Applications are great tools for creating custom resources for your students. Instead of sending students out to different websites to access engaging content, use a wiki to "mashup" various activities for your students. Embed the resources you want students to use into a wiki so the content is easily accessible and they don't have to go out to sites to use the different resources you have chosen. Click Here to see an example of a wiki I created to show how easy it is to embed all types of content from different sources. It is not very fancy, but I think you get the idea. These are some of the activities I am using in this wiki.
Create all types of self-checks and self-assessments for students and embed them into your wiki using educaplay, a multimedia platform to create multimedia teaching activities. http://en.educaplay.com/en/
Do you use Flashcards with your students? The Flashcard page was created using Quizlet which lets you Create flashcard sets with your own terms and definitions Or choose from millions of flashcard sets created by other users. http://quizlet.com/features/
PollDaddy lets you create polls that can be embedded just about anywhere in a course. http://polldaddy.com/
Wallwisher – Brainstorm using Virtual Post-It notes - http://www.wallwisher.com/
GoogleDocs - Easily Embed Google Docs into a Campus Pack Site.

Digital Storytelling: Ideas for Educators

Fri, 24 Jun 2011 19:10:31 GMT

Storytelling has been an important custom for centuries. With the emergence of web technologies, Digital Storytelling has become more commonplace and can be an engaging activity for students and teachers. Digital Storytelling is the practice of combining narrative with digital content, including images, sound, and video, to create a short movie, typically with a strong emotional component. Sophisticated digital stories can be interactive movies that include highly produced audio and visual effects, but a set of slides with corresponding narration or music constitutes a basic digital story. Digital stories can be instructional, persuasive, historical, or reflective.

The resources available to incorporate into a digital story are virtually limitless, giving the storyteller enormous creative latitude. Some learning theorists believe that as a pedagogical technique, storytelling can be effectively applied to nearly any subject. Constructing a narrative and communicating it effectively require the storyteller to think carefully about the topic and consider the audience’s perspective.

http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI7021.pdf

Digital Storytelling in Plain English

New technology tools allow us to connect, communicate and collaborate easily with others around the world. Stories are all about these three C's and lend themselves naturally to create a bridge between teaching and integrating technology. Digital Storytelling is a tool that can support teaching and learning in any subject area.

We connect on an emotional level with people and events in stories and we connect them to experiences in our own lives.
Stories let us communicate our perspective and perception.
Stories are usually a collaborative effort of stories' characters, their actions and points of view. Stories that have been passed down through generations allow voices from the past to be intermingled with voices from the present. Remixing and re-makes of stories add new twists, allow new perspectives, and shed new light storylines.

Digital Storytelling Guide for Educators

This is a video that my colleague, Brian Nido (@briannido), did as a project for his Master's Program in Global Distance Learning. His video reminded me of how interactive digital storytelling is and how easily a digital story can capture your attention.

Social Networks for Communities of Practice

Sat, 11 Jun 2011 14:06:24 GMT

The Internet has made joining communities commonplace today. I (@nancyrubin) am getting ready to head to the UK with my colleague (@briannido) for Learning Objects' (@learningobjects) first Campus Pack User Group meeting, I have been thinking a lot about the value of community and how Campus Pack (our social learning applications) can help educational institutions and businesses foster community development.

Etienne Wenger describes Communities of Practice (CoP) as “groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly.” This learning that takes place is not necessarily intentional.

Three components are required in order to be a CoP:

the domain - A CoP has an identity defined by a shared domain of interest
the community - members of a specific domain interact and engage in shared activities, help each other, and share information with each other, and
the practice - members are practitioners.

Many communities need their own resources to get going, to function, and to flourish. Here are some of the resources that communities can use:

Facilitation to help a community launch or get connected. Meeting planning, organization, venues, and related resources.
Technology infrastructure to help a community find a digital habitat that works for its learning needs.
Curation of a community’s knowledge products or resources (organizing, maintaining, searching services such as a librarian might provide)
Travel funds for community meetings or work sessions.

Read more about the Campus Pack Social Network and Academic which provides access to a network for teaching, learning, and collaboration to everyone at your institution; enables administrative and cross-departmental collaboration on projects and research using social media; gives academic departments spaces to collaborate on curriculum and research and to store artifacts; provides clubs, teams, and ad-hoc groups an interactive online community.

Etienne Wenger, Nancy White, and John D. Smith, authors of Digital Habitats: Stewarding Technology for Communities, identified 9 orientations that can be useful for choosing technology from the perspective of the community.

Digital Habitats Community Orientation Spidergram Activity

View more presentations from Nancy White

References:

Communities of Practice (Lave and Wenger) - http://www.learning-theories.com/communities-of-practice-lave-and-wenger.html

Etienne Wenger, Nancy White, and John D. Smith, Digital Habitats: stewarding technology for communities.

Business Models for Communities - http://learningalliances.net/2010/12/business-models-for-communities/

Journals and Blogs: What's the Difference?

Sun, 29 May 2011 20:14:39 GMT

Two of the social learning applications that are part Campus Pack are the journal and the blog. During my trainings, people often ask what the difference is. They are both used for reflective writing. Reflective writing can aid learners in synthesizing new information, and it is often used to improve reading comprehension, writing performance, and self-esteem via self-examination

In my mind, a journal is always meant to be private writing; either for the student only or to share with the teacher. Journaling is an excellent way for students to practice writing and enrich their personal learning by writing about and re-reading a record of their learning. Journal Entries are usually dated and involve reflecting on intellectual and emotional experiences over time. Keeping a journal involves some commitment to maintaining the record over a period of time

A blog, which could also be reflective writing, usually involves sharing entries with the rest of the class for feedback, comments or ask questions. The blog creates an online community of scholars (you and your classmates) discussing and debating issues of importance in your field of study (Edith Cowan University).

Project-based Learning: What it is and What it isn't!

Mon, 23 May 2011 16:26:02 GMT

As a long-time teacher and supporter of project-based learning, I have bookmarked both of these videos. They provide insight into what project-based learning is and what it isn't. The one focused on what PBL isn't does a comparison of project-based learning and project-oriented learning.

What Project Based Learning Is - http://howtovideos.hightechhigh.org/video/268/What+Project+Based+Learning+Is

What Project Based Learning Isn't - http://howtovideos.hightechhigh.org/video/265/What+Project+Based+Learning+Isn%27t

Project-based Learning: Why do it? - http://ow.ly/50Ucz