Pontydysgu – Bridge to Learning

What better way to end the year with lots and lots of new ideas for teaching in the classroom. Here is a collage of what the NY Times has put together. There are some quizzes, puzzles, pictures and lots more that you can use in your classroom.

Here is the link to some great ideas:) Enjoy

http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/20/looking-back-at-2010-teaching-ideas/

Are you  interested about exploring ways to express opinions and being more engaged in politics using Web 2.0 tools?

On 10 – 16 April 2011, there is a seven day workshop being held in Chania, Crete, Greece sponsored by the EU Grundtvig programme.

The Workshop is being organised by the POLITICS project aiming at developing skills for using digital storytelling to develop a dialogue and involvement in politics, at local, national or international level.

The Workshop will examine issues as how Facebook, YouTube and blogs can be used for digital storytelling. The 7-day course will include  practical sessions and hands-on labs) on familiarizing with the use of social networking and Web 2.0 tools to participate in online collaborative educational activities and the development of stories based on political issues of interest.

A full description of the Workshop is now available here.

Applications for funding are eligible from all EU Member States (including Turkey, Croatia and FYROM but not Greece since it is the host country) and should be submitted by 27 January 2011. Selected application will receive a grant covering all travel, accommodation and expenses.

Guidelines about the application can be found here and for more information, please contact n [dot] marianos [at] agroknow [dot] gr

Norm Friesen has taken a look at the use of commercial and social software applications for Personal Learning Environments in a paper published in First Monday and entitled ‘Education and the Social Web. Connective learning and the Commercial Imperative‘.

The major thrust of his argument is that services such as Facebook, Twitter and Digg or even Google are designed around the interests of advertisers rather than of users.

Particularly interesting is Friesen’s point  that such services deny any negative responses or the ability to express disapproval or dissent. So whilst the Facebook ‘like ‘ button populates thousands of web sites there is no such button for dislike. Equally Twitter tells you when you have followers, but not when someone has chosen no longer to follow you. The business model of commercial social networks is based on advertising, assisted by data collection and powerful tracking and analysis capabilities.

Freiesen concludes that the pattern of suppressing division, negativity and interpersonal dissent runs counter to common models for pedagogic engagement and interaction. Commercial software services by design serve other priorities than learning, indeed they are often opposed to it.

Friesen reiterates the social process of education, but does not see knowledge as being exclusively embodies in networks of connection an affiliation, in the way some researchers have.

It is hard to argue with much that Norm Friesen says in this paper. However, there are other models for social software applications, other than advertising. Indeed, the last sic months has seen increasing numbers of previously free applications launching premium services (either for extra fiunctionaility or file space or to get rid of the advertisements!).

Nevertheless I have always been wary of the idea of basing a Personal Learning Environment on Facebook or Google.  Facebook offers far too little user control. Google, on the other had, produces some excellent software tools, which can be used as part of a PLE without long term dependencies, I think.

Norm Friesen limited himself to commercial providers in his paper. However applications like Buddypress and Elgg, both available as Open Source, have growing social functionality. Furthermore for those users willing to learn a little, they offer plenty of opportunities for designing their use. It may be that it is that process of design which is mots important in developing a Personal Learning Environment. I have written before of how the PLE itself should be seen as outcome of learning as well as a process. Probably the major failure of commercial social software services is that they deny the user that involvement in the design process.

And going beyond the issues Norm raises, the issue of control is once more bubbling near the surface. Whilst most institutions have been looking at the possible cost advantages of using cloud services, the service providers have shown though the wikileaks saga how susceptible they are to governmental and commercial pressures.

I’ve been hearing all kinds of things about using Facebook for educational purposes and so far nothing useful and nothing worth mentioning. Therefore, I decided to do something about this and try it out myself. You hear so many things about Facebook not being private enough and that you cannot delete your Facebook account, however, all these rumors remain just that. People should pay a little bit more attention to what Privacy Settings on a social network can offer. In the case of Facebook, privacy can be quite well controlled.

I already have an account on Facebook for personal use but I also post stuff about teaching in general, however this wasn’t enough to see how this social network functions when teaching comes to play.So I created another account but this time one as private as possible only for one of my classes (with teenagers) and I quote from one of my students”Well I must say this idea of group on facebook is a really a good one )”.

It works and I keep in touch with my students on a daily basis. I receive their posts, messages, notifications, comments directly on my phone(yes, you need a phone with Ineternet access) so I can reply instantly, thus saving time.

You can also create a group in your Facebook account (as one of my students suggested to me) and this way all the members in the group will receive every message so they don’t have to check the wall posts all the time.

As you can see, you can make your group either Open, Closed or Secret. Mine is Secret which means that the members and the content is private, only for the eyes of the group members I invite. You cannot add yourself to a group…the only way to get in is through an invitation from the person who created the group.

You could also create an email address for your group, such as: nameofgroup@groups.facebook.com. This way you don’t have to check your yahoo, gmail or any other providers for any email from your students but simply enter your Facebook account and check your emails.

You can post links for your students where they can do their homework (or you can use it for blended learning). Of course, it depends on how strict you want to be on Facebook with your students…you know what they say: All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. I personally avoid being too serious and post some fun stuff also, however, in a way that they still do learn something out of it:)

You can post videos and pictures too but never forget to comment and like your students’ posts otherwise they will get bored if they see that there is no reaction from your part to what they have to say.

You also have a document section in your group where you can post documents or ask your students to upload their homework there.

My students tell me they stay on Facebook all the time so what better way to interact with them if not Facebook itself.

Drawbacks

• Of course there is the disadvantage that the advertisements still appear but if they’re already spending so much time on Facebook and the ads don’t bother them then why should they be an obstacle for you and your class? Nobody ever clicks on those ads anyways…:) Also, you get ads only about things you like…you just have to personalize it.
• Another disadvantage is that on the Facebook homepage they will be able to see all their posts and these could be stuff that have nothing to do with education (these are the posts that they post on their own profile)…but they see these things anyway and when they go to the group that you’ve created they will see only what you want them to see on your own account.

Privacy Settings

Here are some videos from Facebook.com where they talk about how to set your privacy settings so you can be sure not to leak anything you don’t want to:

http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/video/video.php?v=681506488373 – how to control who can see the information you post on Facebook. There are 5 points here in this video that are good to remember for any user:

1. You have control over how your information is shared.

2. Facebook does not share your personal information with people or services you don’t want to.

3. They do not give advertisers access to your personal information.

4. They do not and never will sell any of your information to anyone.

5. They will always keep Facebook a free service for everyone.

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=681507022303 – control how to share on Facebook. How to control tags of your pictures and the privacy of your posts.

Tags:

Posts:

Album privacy (as you can see both parts are for friends only):

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=684554250633 – control over the access of Apps and Websites on your profile. How to change how you appear in search engine listings (Google, Bing, Yahoo) and how to block people.

I hope these videos will clarify any doubt whether privacy is possible on Facebook or not. I like using it and my students like it too, thus I think, if managed carefully and correctly, Facebook can be used for educational purposes.

There have been many videos of student protests in the UK posted recently. But student protests are nothing new and neither are videos! This video documents the protests at Columbia University in the USA in 1968

I am ever more interested in how we can use technologies for knowledge development and sharing. In terms of research I think we need to bring together ideas and insights from different academic and research communities. Although there has been a traditional of discourse between those working in education and technology developers, this is less so when it comes to ideas about organisational learning and different forms of knowledge.

I have just read an interesting paper by Bengt-Ake Lundvall, Palle Rasmussen and Edward Lorenz on ‘Education in the Learning Economy: a European Perspective’. Let me first say I have always been sceptical about such terms as ‘learning economy’ and ‘knowledge economy ‘which seem to be too often bandied about as a mantra, rather than with any exact meaning. But I would agree with the authors observation that knowledge is becoming obsolete more rapidly than before so that employees have to learn and acquire new competencies. the authors say “It makes a major difference whether economic growth is seen as being fuelled by investments in codified scientific and technological knowledge, or whether it is seen as being driven by learning processes resulting in a combination of codified and tacit knowledge.”

International comparisons tend to focus on the first measure,. looking, for example at expenditure on research and development (R&D) and at the number of science and technology graduates. The latter perspective – captured by the term the learning economy –they say,  “can be seen in work focusing on the way informal networking relations, practical problem-solving on the job, and investments in lifelong learning contribute to competence building.”

At the heart of their argument is the nature of different forms of knowledge. They propose “a taxonomy of knowledge where it is divided into four categories (Lundvall & Johnson, 1994):

Know-what refers to knowledge about ‘facts’. Here, knowledge is close to what is normally called information – it can be broken down into bits and communicated as data.

Know-why refers to knowledge about causality nature, in the human mind and in society. This kind of knowledge is important for technological development in science-based industries.

Know-how refers to the ability to do something. It may be related to the skills of artisans and workers. But actually it plays a role in all economic activities, including science and management.

Know-who involves information about who knows what and who knows what to do as well as the social ability to cooperate and communicate with different kinds of people and experts.

Lundvall, Rasmussen and Edward Lorenz point to important differences in the degree to which these four categories of knowledge can be codified and in how education systems are affected by the degree of codification. the main point of their paper is to look at how traditional schoolings systems have become isolated from society and how the organisation into subjects and disciplines fails to maestro the needs of how we are developing and using knowledge. they also point to dramatic difference sin work organisation and opportunities for work based learning in different countries in Europe concluding that “Educational principles and cultures focusing on collaboration, interdisciplinarity and engagement with real-life problems are needed to prepare people for flexible and innovative participation in the economy and society.”

They do not deal with the issues of how we are using technology for learning  and knowledge development although they acknowledge that “data bases can bring together know-what in a more or less user friendly form”. Interestingly they piontyt0 to “the failure of IBM, Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard to develop management information systems that could substitute for ‘the art of managing’ ” despite considerable investment and incentives to do so,
Traditional, Technology Enhanced Learning has focused on the know what and know-why. There has been little attention on the know how. yet it is this form of knowledge which is perhaps the most important within many enterprises and is changing most rapidly.  True, we have access to increasing numbers of know-how videos. yet we have possibly failed to develop pedagogical and learning approaches to how to use video and audio in an active sense. We tend to use it in the old English pedagogic sense of ‘watching Nellie’ rather than in any thought through way. and even though the web allows us to find people, their is only limited linkages to knowing who does what well, and even less to “the social ability to cooperate and communicate with different kinds of people and experts.”

Can social networking fill such a gap? Once more my feeling is that it can, but only to a limited extent. Social networki9ng allows us to tell what we are doing and what we are thinking. recommender systems allow the development of patterns. Yet they lack the idea of purpose and intent.

There are many instances of exchange of knowledge through different platforms in communities of practice. equally companies like CISCO or IBM have set up platforms to promote the process of turning tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge though for example podcasts and other companies such as Shell-BP have established extensive wikis for the same purpose. However these initiatives fail to ‘scale=down’ for use in smaller enterprises. One of the issues may be that of fragmentary knowledge and the difficulty of how we can scaffold fragments of knowledge gained through practice – or know how = into wider knowledge bases, which necessarily have to build on purpose and context.

Furthermore, looking at practice in smaller enterprises, the nature of collaboration and social exchange becomes critical, Lundvall, Rasmussen and Lorenz cite the work of Marshall (1923), “who was concerned to explain the real-world phenomenon of industrial districts, (and) emphasised the local character of knowledge. He found that specific specialised industries were concentrated in certain regions and that such industrial districts remained competitive for long historical periods.”

So another issue is how to support that local character of knowledge – and indeed to rethink what local might mean in a connected world.

(More to come in a later post)

I picked up this video from Jim Groom. Jim says “erchache2000 shared the link to the above video of Isaac Asimov talking with Bill Moyers in “The World of Ideas” back in 1988. His fascinating discussion of the idea of computer mediated instruction being anything but dehumanizing. I love Asimov’s idea that rather reproducing a model of privilege that had been available only to the few, i.e. 1-on-1 instruction, is now available to the many: the one-to-one amongst the many. He gets beautifully at how the internet allows for a radically different paradigm for thinking about education, while at the same time touches on the thrust behind unschooling when talking about not only allowing, but encouraging, kids to follow their own interests. What’s more, Asimov seems so cool in this video, I love his final comment “why not?…why not?” Spoken like a true believer, I love that about this video, it’s speculative, visionary, and in many ways idealistic—what we don’t seem to realize is we have that platform, and it’s time for us to use it with some of that vision.”