More complicated fun!
Things are coming together for the cohort of people who use Second Life as an important part of their personal learning environments.
Sean Fitzgerald has started a new wiki to coordinate things a bit. http://plenk2010insl.wikispaces.com/
We met for a while tonight in Conviviality Corners and tried imagining a few things. One proposal was to incorporate a in-world RSS feed aggregator for the feeds of the PLENK SL cohort or anyone blogging about virtual environments in a PLE ( as a PLE). We could post Stephen's master list of feeds if he is okay with that and if we can find the proper code.
I was playing around with an idea that avatars could gather to participate in the PLENK Elluminate sessions. Kind of like getting together in the bar to watch a football game.
I'm pretty sure it can be done with UStream and the in-world shared media. I tried it out tonight. After downloading the Desktop Producer version of UStream I started a UStream broadcast. I think grabbed the url for the UStream feed and put it on a shared media panel in Second Life. I then opened an Elluminate demo session on my desktop and switched UStream to screen capture mode. I was able to view the Elluminate session on the wall in Conviviality Corners. I will have to play around a little more to see if people can participate in the Elluminate chat from within SL and whether the audio will work properly but it looks promising.
Saturday, September 18, 2010
Saturday, September 11, 2010
#PLENK2010 in SL
Just getting set up to participate in this MOOC (Massively Orasimatastical Online Course) with 800+ other folks from around the world. The course is about personal learning environments and networks and knowledge.
An increasingly important part of my ple is the virtual world of Second Life. I have offered to help organize a cohort of people who want to use SL in various ways to participate in this course.
I have already had a few meetings with other PLENK attendees in SL and we have established an SL group to support the inworld cohort. Search for it by name PLENK2010 in SL
A similar course to this CCK 08 also used SL and a wonderful Connectivism Reading room remains in world with an archive of documents, podcasts and Elluminate recordings.
I hope we will be able to do the same for this course. Things have also changed in SL since 2008, media sharing is available and the VOIP system works very well so it will be interesting to compare and contrast the experience this time with 08.
I intend to use this blog as a main organization point for my PLENK activities. It is one that I have used for many other courses, seminars etc and as a general reflection and thinking out loud spot. Love to respond to comments.
An increasingly important part of my ple is the virtual world of Second Life. I have offered to help organize a cohort of people who want to use SL in various ways to participate in this course.
I have already had a few meetings with other PLENK attendees in SL and we have established an SL group to support the inworld cohort. Search for it by name PLENK2010 in SL
A similar course to this CCK 08 also used SL and a wonderful Connectivism Reading room remains in world with an archive of documents, podcasts and Elluminate recordings.
I hope we will be able to do the same for this course. Things have also changed in SL since 2008, media sharing is available and the VOIP system works very well so it will be interesting to compare and contrast the experience this time with 08.
I intend to use this blog as a main organization point for my PLENK activities. It is one that I have used for many other courses, seminars etc and as a general reflection and thinking out loud spot. Love to respond to comments.
Thursday, August 26, 2010
Machinima, film-making in virtual worlds
I've been spending a little more time in Second Life and attending more functions. There are so many interesting things going on. Today I attended a seminar on machinima, at the Caledon Oxbridge Lecture hall http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Caledon%20Oxbridge/73/137/29
Machinima is defined as "animated filmmaking within a real-time virtual 3-D environment".
Machinima is recorded in real-time, and real people can act and control the camera. Essentially you use a screen capture tool such as FRAPS or Jing (Camtasia) to record and edit the real time activities in a virtual environment such as SL or an online game. You then use the tools to edit sound and video. With careful planning, artistry, and some reasonable easily acquired skills the end product is very good. This lovely piece by Bryn Oh is an excellent example. World Expo Shanghai-No Love
Make sure you watch it in the full screen player. 
Sunday, July 25, 2010
Not Perishing...
Much as I love blogging it is time for me to work toward a book. Just such an endeavor is underway. I've developed a proposal to send to Jossey Bass. I hope they like it because I like them since they included me in the JB Online learning conference last year. It was a great experience. They also seem to have some pretty good author supports and information. http://www.josseybass.com/WileyCDA/Section/id-290030.html
The book idea emerged from a syllabus I am writing for a Fielding course which may be offered starting Jan 2011. It would be great if I just happened to have a book ready to go about that time. We will see. Fortunately, I have bits and pieces already written in various blog posts so it is partly a question of collecting and polishing for a at least a couple of chapters.
Sue is also keen and will be able to contribute to a couple of the chapters directly and to the whole project overall.
The book idea emerged from a syllabus I am writing for a Fielding course which may be offered starting Jan 2011. It would be great if I just happened to have a book ready to go about that time. We will see. Fortunately, I have bits and pieces already written in various blog posts so it is partly a question of collecting and polishing for a at least a couple of chapters.
Sue is also keen and will be able to contribute to a couple of the chapters directly and to the whole project overall.
Saturday, June 26, 2010
Tappers and Listeners Great sensitizing concept
I've been reading an interesting book on stickyness of information. (bought the ebook on my iTouch)
The book is Make to Stick: Why some ideas Survive and others die by Chip and Dan Heath. Early in the book they reference Elizabeth Newtons 1990, PhD dissertation, Overconfidence in communication of intent, heard and unheard melodies. In an experimental situation subjects were asked to tap out a simple and familiar song for others to guess. They were asked to estimate how many of the songs that the others would guess and they estimated 50%. The actual rate of correct guessing was 1 in 40. The tappers could not believe that the listeners did so poorly, they thought they did a great job. The book goes on to describe the implications of this for leadership communication skills especially when linked with the "Curse of Knowledge" phenomenon, the notion that the more you know about something the less likely you are to be able to make your messages clear about the topic.
So the take away is this. We think we are communicating way better than we actually are.
Lots of interesting social psychology on the concept of overconfidence much of it nicely summarized in an article by Dunning, Heath and Suls (2004).They have an excellent section on the implications of overconfidence for the field of education. One of the issues for education they describe is that we have a system of bulk upload mass education that exacerbates this problem. The system is good at transmitting a message but is not so good for long term retention of information or transfer to application.
All very interesting and it sparks lots of interesting ideas for me.
As I have been trying to put all this together for myself, a side issue has appeared Where is Elizabeth Newton? I want to read her actual dissertation for myself but I can't find it anywhere. Doesn't seem to have been published elsewhere. Is she still being held hostage by her PhD committee? I see that the Heath's of Made to Stick are faculty in Newtons school and I am very pleased that they have given her a citation in their book but it seems a little odd that she has such a low profile. I'll have to keep digging although I'm unlikely to be willing to pay the Stanford fee to read the dissertation if is even available. None of the databases I use has access to the Stanford collection or am I doing it wrong.
Dunning, D., Heath, C., & Suls, J. M. (2004). Flawed Self-Assessment. Society, 5(3), 69-106.
Heath, C., & Heath, D. (2007). Made to stick:Why some ideas survive and others die. New York: Random House.
Newton, L., 1990. Overconfidence in the communication of intent: Heard and unheard melodies. unpublished doctoral dissertation, Stanford University, Stanford, CA
The book is Make to Stick: Why some ideas Survive and others die by Chip and Dan Heath. Early in the book they reference Elizabeth Newtons 1990, PhD dissertation, Overconfidence in communication of intent, heard and unheard melodies. In an experimental situation subjects were asked to tap out a simple and familiar song for others to guess. They were asked to estimate how many of the songs that the others would guess and they estimated 50%. The actual rate of correct guessing was 1 in 40. The tappers could not believe that the listeners did so poorly, they thought they did a great job. The book goes on to describe the implications of this for leadership communication skills especially when linked with the "Curse of Knowledge" phenomenon, the notion that the more you know about something the less likely you are to be able to make your messages clear about the topic.
So the take away is this. We think we are communicating way better than we actually are.
Lots of interesting social psychology on the concept of overconfidence much of it nicely summarized in an article by Dunning, Heath and Suls (2004).They have an excellent section on the implications of overconfidence for the field of education. One of the issues for education they describe is that we have a system of bulk upload mass education that exacerbates this problem. The system is good at transmitting a message but is not so good for long term retention of information or transfer to application.
All very interesting and it sparks lots of interesting ideas for me.
As I have been trying to put all this together for myself, a side issue has appeared Where is Elizabeth Newton? I want to read her actual dissertation for myself but I can't find it anywhere. Doesn't seem to have been published elsewhere. Is she still being held hostage by her PhD committee? I see that the Heath's of Made to Stick are faculty in Newtons school and I am very pleased that they have given her a citation in their book but it seems a little odd that she has such a low profile. I'll have to keep digging although I'm unlikely to be willing to pay the Stanford fee to read the dissertation if is even available. None of the databases I use has access to the Stanford collection or am I doing it wrong.
Dunning, D., Heath, C., & Suls, J. M. (2004). Flawed Self-Assessment. Society, 5(3), 69-106.
Heath, C., & Heath, D. (2007). Made to stick:Why some ideas survive and others die. New York: Random House.
Newton, L., 1990. Overconfidence in the communication of intent: Heard and unheard melodies. unpublished doctoral dissertation, Stanford University, Stanford, CA
Update
Long time no see.
Activity report since last post.
Applied for various positions and worked toward developing a consulting agency. I guess I am a white collar farmer or a Wifi Homesteader as Clark Aldrich describes:
I was approached to instruct a class for Assiniboine Community College through their Continuing Studies program. The course was a trades qualification program for a group of Hutterian Brethren who wanted to challenge the Inter-provincial journey-person exams. The biggest attraction for me was that the course was taught using the Hutterian Broadband Network. Thirty Hutterite colonies in Manitoba are linked with their own broadband network which includes a comprehensive videoconferencing system. I mostly taught from the studio at Green Acres Colony near Wawanesa, MB but the class participants were members of 12 different colonies located all across southern Manitoba. It was a great bunch of people and the experience was very rewarding. I will be writing an article with an analysis of their system and the possibility it presents for rural economic development.
The ICT class that I teach for Brandon University MEd program was offered this spring and I had 9 excellent participants. These are all teachers and administrators located across rural Mb and we conducted the class entirely using web-based tools. I have yet to meet any of the participants face to face. I will be writing this experience up in a separate article for publication.
Most recently I was contracted to deliver an ICT class for the Brandon University Northern Teacher Education Program (BUNTEP). This was essentially the same ICT class that I teach to the masters group but with some of the critical analysis elements trimmed out (i.e.) No APA format final paper.
Now I will get a chance to do some writing and put together some things for another MA in Ed program that I hope will start up this fall.
Always something to do on the homestead.
Activity report since last post.
Applied for various positions and worked toward developing a consulting agency. I guess I am a white collar farmer or a Wifi Homesteader as Clark Aldrich describes:
More and more people are trying to untangle themselves from toxic institutions, from box stores to, in some cases, schools, and taking control of their own lives.I've picked up some work teaching for Northcentral University as a mentor for their online masters and doctoral programs. Most of my work for them has been mentoring for a series of research methodology classes for doctoral candidates who are preparing to begin the dissertation process. It has been an excellent experience as I have had to re-familiarize myself with many of research fundamental. I was recently approved by NCU to mentor classes relating to eLearning in their Masters of Arts in Education program.
I was approached to instruct a class for Assiniboine Community College through their Continuing Studies program. The course was a trades qualification program for a group of Hutterian Brethren who wanted to challenge the Inter-provincial journey-person exams. The biggest attraction for me was that the course was taught using the Hutterian Broadband Network. Thirty Hutterite colonies in Manitoba are linked with their own broadband network which includes a comprehensive videoconferencing system. I mostly taught from the studio at Green Acres Colony near Wawanesa, MB but the class participants were members of 12 different colonies located all across southern Manitoba. It was a great bunch of people and the experience was very rewarding. I will be writing an article with an analysis of their system and the possibility it presents for rural economic development.
The ICT class that I teach for Brandon University MEd program was offered this spring and I had 9 excellent participants. These are all teachers and administrators located across rural Mb and we conducted the class entirely using web-based tools. I have yet to meet any of the participants face to face. I will be writing this experience up in a separate article for publication.
Most recently I was contracted to deliver an ICT class for the Brandon University Northern Teacher Education Program (BUNTEP). This was essentially the same ICT class that I teach to the masters group but with some of the critical analysis elements trimmed out (i.e.) No APA format final paper.
Now I will get a chance to do some writing and put together some things for another MA in Ed program that I hope will start up this fall.
Always something to do on the homestead.
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Organizational Shadow in Ed Tech
I've been taken with the concept of organizational shadow recently after reading a 1991 article by Bowles. From the abstract...
Interesting to watch the dynamics of this playing out. A 2008 book by Collins Rethinking Education in the Age of Technology recently received a controversial review by Jenna McWilliams.
I think she pegged it right when she pointed out the "damning by faint praise" offered in the book to the notion of self-directed education supported by new web-based affordances. The old guard of the existing educational establishment is not going to give up power and control that easily. They have too much to loose. They have convinced themselves that they are a last bastion and that the education system for all of its, presumably known and lovable, it preferable to the crazy chaos of self-directed learning.
I listened to a recent interview with McWilliams on CBC Sparks where Norah Young interviewed Jenna by Skype and then posted the interview as a podcast. For me it was the media being the message and predisposed me to suspect that she had put her finger on a nasty sore spot on Collins. Collins responded to the review: http://blog.acm.org/elearn/2009/11/allan_collins_on_jenna_mcwilli.html
Bowles, M. (1991). Organizational shadow. Organization Studies, 12(3), 387-404. doi: 10.1177/017084069101200303
Collins, A., & Halverson, R. (2009). Rethinking Education in the Age of Technology: The Digital Revolution and Schooling in America. The TEC Series. New York: Teachers College Press.
Organization Shadow is understood as facts which organizations wish to deny about themselves, due to the threat posed to self-image and self-understanding and, more generally, the need to be viewed in a favorable light by others. The Shadow is repressed, and, as unconscious content, is projected onto others, often those who are incapable of resisting it.
Interesting to watch the dynamics of this playing out. A 2008 book by Collins Rethinking Education in the Age of Technology recently received a controversial review by Jenna McWilliams.
I think she pegged it right when she pointed out the "damning by faint praise" offered in the book to the notion of self-directed education supported by new web-based affordances. The old guard of the existing educational establishment is not going to give up power and control that easily. They have too much to loose. They have convinced themselves that they are a last bastion and that the education system for all of its, presumably known and lovable, it preferable to the crazy chaos of self-directed learning.
I listened to a recent interview with McWilliams on CBC Sparks where Norah Young interviewed Jenna by Skype and then posted the interview as a podcast. For me it was the media being the message and predisposed me to suspect that she had put her finger on a nasty sore spot on Collins. Collins responded to the review: http://blog.acm.org/elearn/2009/11/allan_collins_on_jenna_mcwilli.html
Bowles, M. (1991). Organizational shadow. Organization Studies, 12(3), 387-404. doi: 10.1177/017084069101200303
Collins, A., & Halverson, R. (2009). Rethinking Education in the Age of Technology: The Digital Revolution and Schooling in America. The TEC Series. New York: Teachers College Press.
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