As I sit here with many thoughts percolating from discussions in our OLTD 505 course, I have a hard time making sense of it all. However, sense-making is critical, and it is here I must focus. Dave Cormier once said in a session on Rhizomatic Learning that 5 steps to succeed in a MOOC are: Orient, Declare, Network, Cluster and Focus. Although this course is not a MOOC, I feel these five steps certainly apply, in varying degrees, to this connected learning experience.
OLTD 505 cohort members Mac Newton and George Knight discussed a Tony Bates post, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of OERs, and the value of sharing, and it was noted that “the best educators authentically share the most of themselves”. Mac commented that Bates “offers cautions about open content that's being shared”. This caused to me reflect on a quote by Joe Coleman (2013), from his post Long-Form Journalism's Resurrection:
A blog post by Sandra Dailey (Why Do People Blog?) did a fabulous job at honouring our OLTD Cohort 3 group through her insightful and carefully crafted comments. I do not expect to be able to remotely come close to this, so instead I have created a Google+ Collection of 'Curation' related discussions that have arisen in our Google+ community (I apologize if I have missed any). I believe the appropriate privacy settings are in place so only OLTD 505 members can view this (as posts were originally shared with a limited group); however, please let me know if I need to change any settings.
We’re now at a point where curators rule the content world, by collectively deciding whether content gets amplified or lost. As a result, quality of content is again starting to win out over quantity, with an assist from smarter search algorithms and the death of content farms. As power continues to shift to the curators, great long-form content continues to increase in value, as it’s shared and consumed by more and more people. Today, one exceptional, widely shared essay is far more valuable than a thousand disparate tweets.
Social, networked, and connected learning, facilitated by the Web and its associated Web 2.0 software, such as blogs, wikis, peer-to-peer (P2P) media sharing, folksonomies (i.e., a shared vocabulary for tagging and bookmarking), etc. - and now the Web 3.0 connective intelligence; connecting data, concepts, applications and ultimately people - provides us with bountiful opportunities (and as some wound say, a 'firehose' or flood of information). We can now use collective intelligence from around the globe to create “the wisdom of crowds” (Surowiecki, 2004). Surowiecki's opinion is that the collective is more intelligent than the smartest person in the group, and "when our imperfect judgments are aggregated in the right way, our collective intelligence is often excellent" (2004). So, this begs the question, what are the right circumstances, and how do we aggregate imperfect judgements in the "right way"? Are filter bubbles helping or hindering in this process, and what about other tools and technologies? Is our sense-making being skewed?
As we have experienced in OLTD 505, we are connecting and learning within rich and dynamic social environments, but are we managing to filter, curate, sort and make sense of it all, and are we doing this alone or collaboratively? Are we activating our collective intelligence, or do we need to create separate spaces for sense-making, where the ‘noise’ is turned down, the fire hydrant turned off, and the only dialogues are dedicated towards sense-making? I once read a post by Gardner Campbell (unfortunately I didn’t curate it) that asked the question, do connections just happen, or are they "beckoned"? Are we "beckoning" the connections that will help us realize this collective intelligence?
Brown and Adler (2008) stated, "We participate, therefore we are". Is this enough? Is anything missing from the conversation?
Coleman, J. (2013, February 1). Long-form journalism's resurrection. Digiday. Blog post. Online. Retrieved June 1, 2015, from http://digiday.com/brands/long-form-journalisms-ressurection/
Cormier, D. (2011). Rhizomatic Learning ̶ Why we teach. Blog post. Online. Retrieved July 31, 2012, from http://davecormier.com/edblog/2011/11/05/rhizomatic-learning-why-learn/
Bates, T. (2011). OERs: the good, the bad and the ugly. Online Learning and Distance Education Resources-Blog moderated by Tony Bates. Retrieved May 29, 2015, from http://www.tonybates.ca/2011/02/06/oers-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly/
Heil, J. (2013). Social Bookmarking and Content Curation. [Blackboard Collaborate Recording] Retrieved from https://sas.elluminate.com/site/external/jwsdetect/playback.jnlp?psid=2013-01-17.0928.M.E1C6971D0015BD348DBD143FC183D6.vcr&sid=2008350
Martín, A. (2008). Minds On Fire: Open education, the long tail and learning 2.0. Retrieved from
http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ERM0811.pdf
McLoughlin, C., & Lee, M. J. (2007, December). Social software and participatory learning: Pedagogical choices with technology affordances in the Web 2.0 era. In ICT: Providing choices for learners and learning. Proceedings ascilite Singapore 2007 (pp. 664-675).
Retrieved from: http://www.dlc-ubc.ca/wordpress_dlc_mu/educ500/files/2011/07/mcloughlin.pdf
Pariser, E. (2011, March). TED 2011: "Beware online "filter bubbles" [Video]. Retrieved June 1, 2015, from http://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bubbles?language=en#t-514324
Richardson, W. (2013, February 1). Curators rule the world. Read. Write. Connect. Learn. Blog post. Online. Retrieved May 30, 2015, from http://willrichardson.com/post/42016514917/curators-rule-the-world
Stacey, P. (2014). Pedagogy of MOOCs. INNOQUAL-International Journal for Innovation and Quality in Learning, 2(3). Retrieved from http://www.papers.efquel.org/index.php/innoqual/article/download/161/50
Surowiecki, J. (2004). The wisdom of crowds: why the many are smarter than the few and how collective wisdom shapes business, economies, societies, and nations. Review available from http://www3.nd.edu/~busiforc/handouts/Other%20Articles/Wisdom%20of%20Crowds%20Review%202.PDF
Valenza, J. (2013, January 26). "Curation!" [Slideshare]. Retrieved June 2, 2015, from http://www.slideshare.net/joycevalenza/curationeducon