Reflecting and learning with my PLN
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.
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.
Our OLTD 505 connected learning has occurred primarily through the use of: Twitter, the OLTD 505 Google+ Community, and our Wordpress/Weebly blogs (although OLTD 505 connected learning is beginning to extend to Pinterest and other curation sites). I have noticed, for me, a focus seems to have emerged, and it appears to have taken on a life of its own. This focus is curation. Ever since I wrote my Week 4 blog post, Too Much Creation and Not Enough Curation?, there have been many ‘chats’ on this topic within our course community forums. However, as Jeffery Heil (2013) states, “It’s never about a single tool, it’s always about the community” ... “it’s about the learning and outcomes”. Therefore, our Personal Learning Network (PLN) is the relationship between our Cohort 3 members (OLTD 505 member Thomas Diesch wrote a fabulous post on Sharing is caring, the importance of Professional Learning Networks), and our goal is mutual learning. Twitter, among other tools, has allowed us to access information and connect with others (and indeed curate). Yet, when I look at a Twitter Storify for our course interactions using the #oltd hashtag, it seems to indicate that our Twitter community has focused its energies on sharing resources, as opposed to conversing about them via ‘Twitterlogs’ (this may be something that develops more slowly over time in a public forum). On the other hand, our Google+ community seems to have been the area to generate the most lively discussion threads, and hence, this is the area from which I often garner much insight. Perhaps our OLTD 505 Google+ course community (which is not 'public', because it requires an invite) allows our cohort to feel more comfortable in exploring participatory learning. Meanwhile, our blogs have allowed for feedback on our thoughts and reflections, thus helping to make sense of it all. It is important to note that in order to activate all this learning, reciprocity and a level of trust are needed (a topic for another blog post).
Our Google+ Community: What an inspirational group!
Why curate?
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:
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:
So how do we make sense of it?
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.
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.
I would like to thank the OLTD 505 group for engaging, reflecting, and working with me towards sense-making in such an open and honest manner. In addition to those members already noted above for their contributions to my learning, I love the way that Kymberlee Toporowski took off with the Pinterest curation boards; she did an outstanding job at capturing our journey over the weeks - I'm so impressed Kym! I have also appreciated the dialogue with Karen Gadowsky, trying to figure out who would shadow whom in the evaluation of curation tools. It turns out her video on IFTTT was a winner. Chis Brandle was the brave cohort member to jump feet first into a Twitter chat (and he lived to share his learnings with the group) – thanks, Chris. Meanwhile, Nadine Cahan, Bryan Young, Melanie Sedergreen, and Maria Guadalupe Soto found plenty of links and resources for us to bookmark and curate. Christopher Sowden, Carrie Cann, Karen Gadowsky, Robert Hills and others had some great chats about the #hashtag, while Derek Cockram found a good example of OER LiveBinder curation. Jane Sutton, Carol Bob, Edward Frison, Barry Switnicki, Mac Newton, Kim Chalmers, and Lisa Cole (among others already mentioned), always had something insightful to comment about on our blogs – ever so much appreciated! And finally, thanks George Knight for the humour and your way with words. Oh, and Carol, thanks for ... A final curation cake … yum. :) Of course, a huge thank you to Alec Couros for guiding us so masterfully into the open!
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.
However, while this speaks of “the assist” of smarter search engines, we also need to be wary of invisible algorithmic editing of the Web. In Eli Pariser’s TED Talk: Beware online "filter bubbles", shared by Alec Couros, Eli Pariser states that if algorithms are going to curate the world for us, and if they are going to decide what we see or don’t see, new ideas from new people are not going to become evident if our filters leave us in “a web of one”. We need to be able to search for and curate relevant, important, uncomfortable, challenging ... other points of view. However, despite search engines, tools, techniques, and modes of sharing and aggregating, I think the following Will Richardson (2013) quote from Curators Rule the World really says it all: "At the end of the day, while the technology can help us aggregate potentially relevant and interesting content and information, if we don’t have the “curation” skills to make sense of it for ourselves, it doesn’t really matter much."
The dialogue
Digital Curation Summary (screencast)
Final realizations and questions
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?
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?
References
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
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