Learn, Unlearn, Relearn
This week, as I’ve sifted though the mass of information disseminated via the OLTD 505 readings, Blog Hub, Google Plus Community, and Twitter, I am astounded by how much information we have consumed, discussed, analyzed, synthesized, and used to recreate or remix. We have truly become networked educators and a community of learners, supporting each other through the connections and voyage into openness. Our fearless leader, Dr. Alec Couros, has guided us towards (sometimes with a bit of kicking and screaming) survival skills for the 21st century. Moreover, the emergent OLTD 505 community and learning network has fostered a depth and breadth of knowledge that would not have been possible if one had travelled the journey alone. Yes, it has forced us, on occasion, into an uncomfortable growth area; however, without pushing the boundaries, one does not reach their potential for real, raw, and contextual learning. Prior knowledge and cognitive bias affect how, what and why we learn. So, as Barry Switnicki noted with the bicycle post he referenced, we need to let go of expertness and power. In fact, we need to go further. As Alvin Toffler states, “The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn”.
This week, as I’ve sifted though the mass of information disseminated via the OLTD 505 readings, Blog Hub, Google Plus Community, and Twitter, I am astounded by how much information we have consumed, discussed, analyzed, synthesized, and used to recreate or remix. We have truly become networked educators and a community of learners, supporting each other through the connections and voyage into openness. Our fearless leader, Dr. Alec Couros, has guided us towards (sometimes with a bit of kicking and screaming) survival skills for the 21st century. Moreover, the emergent OLTD 505 community and learning network has fostered a depth and breadth of knowledge that would not have been possible if one had travelled the journey alone. Yes, it has forced us, on occasion, into an uncomfortable growth area; however, without pushing the boundaries, one does not reach their potential for real, raw, and contextual learning. Prior knowledge and cognitive bias affect how, what and why we learn. So, as Barry Switnicki noted with the bicycle post he referenced, we need to let go of expertness and power. In fact, we need to go further. As Alvin Toffler states, “The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn”.
In trying to curate (learn, unlearn, relearn…) information from the past 5+ weeks, I have realized that the information has been generated collaboratively, and yet I have been trying to curate Individually. This seems antithetical. Yet, I wonder why I thought I could do this successfully as an individual; this is not a logical extrapolation from the way in which I/we have collected the data.
Lino.it Curation: A visual tool
A few of my sticky notes... What's mine is yours. Sticky away!
Yikes … Collaborative Curation IS Necessary!
Over the past few weeks, my curation has involved a few tools, but two will be the focus for now: Lino.it (see above) and Diigo (see below). I chose Lino.it because I had never used it as a note-taking tool, and I thought it might be a good way to create a pin-board of sorts. I liked being able to easily stick notes, links, images, videos, PDFs, etc. to the board; however, I soon realized that this type of tool is good for limited or very focused note-keeping (I filled up the board quickly, and I didn’t want to backtrack to make multiple boards - i.e., one board per week). As for Diigo, I chose this curation tool because I knew OLTD cohort members had accounts, and I thought it might be a good way to share the resources. I hadn’t worked with the Diigo Outliners since they were implemented in December 2014, so I had a few formatting issued that I still need to work out. Otherwise, the curation of resources was fairly straight forward, albeit a bit time consuming (one day I may try to further delineate the resources and/or alphabetize them). Or better yet, now that I’ve shared this resource, maybe others would like to polish it up? Feel free to add, change, organize, and re-organize, as you would like (or not).
Diigo Curation: A text-based tool
Feel free to make it better (yes there are formatting issues still!). This is just a start! Once it is polished up we may wish to move the information to an Outliner in the VIU Diigo community (there is an easy export function).
Sharing, Collaborating & Curating Should Start at the Beginning
I now realize that my above-noted curation tasks would have been much easier if a curation discussion had piggybacked on introductions at the beginning of the course. If the OLTD 505 students had implemented a collaborative curation site (or two), I bet we could have co-created a pretty awesome resource bank. In my blog, Too much creation and not enough curation?, three comments really focused my thinking:
Katia Hildebrandt wrote: Do you see curation as something for you only, or is curation itself another act of creation in that others can now access your compiled resources?
Barry Switnicki wrote: Curating not only for myself but others also. I am definitely going to look at my structure and also at other ways that I can make my personal curation structure more public and accessible to allow others to share what they have also.
Julia Hengstler wrote: After identification of "good information", curation is the second most critical skill.
As noted above, we need to look at curation as an act of creation, and we need to do it for ourselves and for others. However, I believe we need to go beyond this when we are part of a learning community: curation needs to be a collaborative process. If we collect, share, and produce resources collaboratively, then we also need to curate collaboratively – there is no other option to manage the vast amount of information. I believe the only way forward involves a culture of openness, sharing, and collaboration. Adoption is no longer a choice; it is a necessity. Do you believe there is an option?
Image adapted from slide 4 of Learn, Unlearn, Relearn Slideshare by Ogilvy & Mather South Africa, Published on Jun 12, 2013
In the words of Bob Dylan, "The Times They Are a-Changin’".