Contemplation, Reflection, Blogging
Contemplation and reflection play a tremendous role in the way I approached learning, and blogs for me are a key way through which I reflect and contemplate.  The act of sharing these reflections publicly serves to help me focus my attention.  Somehow the idea that my thoughts will be read by others inspires me to dedicate even greater attention and energy to establishing and discovering what I truly think, feel and understand.

I’ve found that I come to conclusions through the act of writing at-length. Discussion does come into play in how I grow to understand a subject, but for me discussion only comes into play after reflection and contemplation. I need to feel confident and comfortable with what I think before I’m able to articulate it in a discussion with others – and particularly before I am able to explain it or debate about it.

Self-Directed, Solitary Learning

Following on this, I’ve realised over time that I am a fairly solitary learner.  I tend to have trouble brainstorming and learning through discussion.  So blogs and leaving quiet time to think and contemplate are very important to my learning style.  Blogs are very appropriate to me because I don’t need discussion with others to really explore ideas.  Indeed part of contemplation for me is constant questioning of the conclusions I’m exploring – it’s very much an internal dialogue with myself where I ask questions, internally debate points, and look at topics from multiple angles.

This perhaps makes me a poor commenter on the posts of others, since so much of my mental energy goes into realising and articulating the ideas that I’m exploring. That said I do find I greatly benefit from the comments that people leave on my posts, since they emerged in the wake of a train of thought I’d already explored and enabled me to pursue an idea even further through tangential discussions.

Conceptual Connections

From a Connectivism standpoint connections are not limited to interacting/engagement with people; they can and do include neural and/or conceptual/theoretical connections as well. For me the latter is where the bulk of my learning processes begin, typically through making a connection between new concepts or ideas and others that are already understood.

In my case the initial phases of grappling with an idea and establishing patterns and frameworks for sense-making is a very internal process where I do a lot of thinking, questioning, and comparing it with existing areas of understanding (e.g. “How does this new topic relate to things I already know?”). Eventually this leads to initial conceptual connections, and I can start to recognise patterns and similarities with other ideas.

This stage is typically where blogging comes into play. In many ways constructing posts is externalising around knowledge for me, since the way I naturally write is fairly systematic and analytical (a leads to b, which leads to c). Putting my thoughts to paper enables me to map out a conceptual exploration in a way that can be referenced later, reviewed, critiqued, challenged, and built upon.

As a result I’ve found over time that the act of writing enables me to draw additional conclusions and establish new connections that had not previously occurred to me – both through the writing process itself, as well as recognising trends in my posts over time.

The enormous benefit of blogging to me is that this very personal act of cognitive exploration then becomes the seeds from which discussion with others may emerge, since people are largely able to follow the exact train of thought I had pursued when drawing my initial conclusions.

This point tends to lead into/facilitate the development of social/external connections – through commenting, Twitter discussions, and face-to-face conversations – which in turn can inspire the whole process to begin again as people inject new ideas into the mix and I’m brought to reconsider existing perspectives on things.

Artifacts as references or dialogue?

One question I haven’t quite resolved yet though is where artifacts sit in the process. For example, are journal articles, papers, blog posts, YouTube clips, Wikipedia articles and the like considered to be social/external interaction, or are they somehow different to this?

In other words, when does a reference resource or artifact become a form of dialogue?

I have traditionally considered these items to be somehow different to asynchronous dialogue, since I frequently do not interact with the producer/creator of the artifact. Commonly I’ll watch YouTube clips, read blog posts and Wikipedia articles without ever leaving a comment for the author – so effectively they have no way of knowing I have engaged with their creation, let alone what my interpretation on the matter was. Yet I rely greatly on them as reference resources in order to address areas of confusion during the early reflective/contemplative stages.

However if these items are considered to be a form of asynchronous dialogue, then I may not be as solitary a learner as I’d previously thought.

Building on the past

As mentioned previously, when I first dove into CCK08 last September I did so with a very poor understanding of many of the learning theories and concepts underlying the course.  This included fundamental ideas like Behaviourism, Cognitivism, Constructivism, Networked Learning, activities such as mind-mapping, and perhaps even the overall landscape in which the discussions were occurring.

Not surprisingly most of my energy went into exploring what these concepts were, and in turn how they related to (or conflicted with) elements of Connectivism and Connective Knowledge.

This time around I’m feeling much more confident and would like to approach the course from a slightly different angle that encompasses both some review and more in-depth exploration of previous ideas, but also an exploration of what their implications are in other areas.

Additionally, there were a few concepts last time around regarding neural connections that completely escaped me and I just could not get my head around (no pun intended).  I’d like to ensure I thoroughly understand these concepts by the end of the course.

A bullet-point list of objectives is included at the end of this post (and is expected to change and grow as I think of more things).

Learning Networks

In particularly though I’d like to spend far more time observing Connectivism and network growth as it exists in reality and develops in practice.  Using the example of students in the course, and the informal networks and cohorts that emerge is a key opportunity in that respect.

At this stage I’m uncertain about the best way to approach this objective though, since my experiences last time around showed that gaining a holistic view of who was in the course and what they were doing was a virtually impossible task given the size, diversity and distribution of the student population and the environments in which they interacted.  Nonetheless, the opportunity to observe the evolution of learning networks in reality, analyse their nature and dynamics and ultimately their strengths and weaknesses is a significant one.

Implications for Alternative Learning Models

One of the key areas of interest I have regarding Connectivism, Networked Learning and Rhizomatic Knowledge is their implications for alternative models of learning and education.  What I didn’t mention last time is that my family are homeschoolers (natural learners/unschoolers to be specific), and I therefore have a vested interest in exploring models and theories that afford learners the opportunity to explore, discover and interpret on their own terms according to their own schedules.

From observation of my kids and their networks, I see a number of similarities between the natural learning model and the theories we discussed previously concerning nodes, ties, the distributed nature of knowledge, even power laws.  I would therefore like to explore ways that these ideas might be factored into (or otherwise inform) facilitation in order to best empower natural learners, homeschoolers and learners from other alternative models – and essentially how best to help learners establish, maximise and explore their own learning styles.

Of course empowering learners and helping them help themselves is core to all learning models though.

Connecting in Filtered Environments

Arguably on the other end of the spectrum, I would also like to explore and discuss ways through while people can connect in regulated, restricted environments.  An unfortunate trend in education in Australia these days seems to be the habit of locking people out of online spaces in the name of security and safety, despite interest and learning opportunities to the contrary.

There is tremendous interest in exploring innovative opportunities for learning and teaching amongst teachers and students in these controlled environments, so exploring ways to work around the filters – and make the most of a restricted system – would be a worthwhile discussion to have.

These aims and objects are of course my personal ones and many may not be particularly relevant for the course, however they will nonetheless things I’m thinking about and exploring during the course of the session.

List of Aims and Objectives

• Review and pursue a more in-depth understanding of Connectivism & Connective Knowledge and related subject matter
• Develop a better understanding of neural connections
• Explore the implications of Connectivism for alternative forms of education
• Using the example of the students in the course, observe and analyse the nature of learning networks in practice, including how they form, why they form, the nature of the dynamics and relationships within them, and their apparent strengths and weaknesses
• Observe the different forms of social media used to connect and engage, evaluate how it is being used, and assess its relative effectiveness in supporting the learning process
• Explore ways to engage and connect in locked-down environments where sites are filtered and access to some/many online environments and applications is restricted.

In order to do the experience justice, though, I think I need to spend some time reflecting on the experiences and lessons learned during CCK08.  However just broaching that train of thought immediately introduces a myriad of thoughts and feelings, which almost certainly won’t fit into a single blog post.  So I anticipate a theme will emerge in the coming weeks as I unpack my thoughts on the matter.

My CCK08 experience

The long and the short of it is that CCK08 was an incredible experience.  The subject matter was fascinating; the cohort size and diversity was staggering; the nature, scope and scale of the distributed frameworks was incredible; and the sheer volume of information and discussion was titanic.  My appreciation for and perspective of online learning and open education was inextricably altered, and my thirst for additional knowledge on the matter unquenchable.  By the end of the session I had more questions and research topics than I’d started with, and importantly I’d developed relationships and friendships with some incredible people.

Likewise my understanding of online interaction was constantly questioned and my behaviour in the face of disagreement, debate and conflict challenged (sometimes to disappointing epiphanies).  In many, many regards, the course inspired personal growth and development, lead to the acknowledgment of my short-comings and character defects – as well as strengths – and ultimately represented perhaps the greatest intellectual learning curve I’ve traveled since leaving uni 10 years ago – perhaps even including uni.

In light of all this my motives for wanting to take the course again are clear.  Yet much has changed in the last year.  I’m not the same person I was in 2008, and have learned and experienced much since then.  So it would be a mistake to assume the same experiences will emerge in 2009.

Something old, something new

With few exceptions the cohort of students will be brand new.  This as much as anything is the essence of the subject – connective knowledge.  Even if we covered exactly the same curricula in the same order, were assigned the same assessment tasks, readings and projects – the experience would not be the same.  Connectivism says that knowledge is distributed across as network and is comprised of all the unique experiences, understandings, and perspectives of the nodes within it; and that learning is the act of establishing connections with nodes in the network, and then gradually forming a web of nodes that encompasses both depth and diversity.  In turn, these networks help to aggregate information, and having done so interpret and synthesise it.

The facilitators may be the same, the knowledge within the network and the outcomes that emerge from it will be very different.  Chaos theory, Networked Individualism, Rhizomatic Knowledge, abundance of information, lack of symbolic meaning in language – each contributes to the organic, unpredictably developing and emerging nature of knowledge and information.  If we learn from each other, and our experiences are unique, then we will never run out of new ground to cover.

Be Strategic

In 2008 I had minimal understanding of many of the learning theories and schools of thought that we covered.  As such the learning curve was extraordinary.  When every term and topic raised is one you’ve never heard before – let alone understand – you find yourself doing a whole lot of reading, and feel as though you’re constantly playing catch-up.  Adding to this the very unique nature of CCK08 as a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course), with 2,200 enrolled students at start of session, and the fact each individual was encouraged to develop their own distributed learning spaces, you literally could not stay on top of all the discussion that were taking place – yet try I did.

After a while I learned it was critical to be strategic in your approach to the course.  That it was impossible to absorb, synthesise and comprehend everything – and that trying led not only to cognitive overload, but frustration as well.

You don’t go into a public library and try to read every book on the shelves; you pick a subject, thread, or niche to focus your attention on.  The same premise goes for a course with several thousand unique voices.  Besides, with distributed online spaces being what they are, the information will remain there long after the course is over.  There’s plenty of time to explore and digest.

Next post: Personal aims and objectives for CCK09

In a page in his wiki he writes:

“I’m presenting at the August 2009 Open Ed Conference (Vancouver) on the positive things that happen to people because they share their content openly on the web. I’d love to share your Amazing Story of an opportunity, connection, professional/personal gain that came about because of something you shared with the world.”

The open movement has become what it is through the tireless efforts and contributions of individuals. We are all a credit to its ongoing success, vibrancy and strength. Likewise we are all responsible for ensuring its longevity and ongoing development continues. Therefore I encourage everyone to take a moment to contemplate what open education means to them, and respond to Alan’s call for support.

My Experiences With Openness

The Sydney Morning Herald recently reported:

“The Federal Government has now set its sights on gamers, promising to use its internet censorship regime to block websites hosting and selling video games that are not suitable for 15 year olds.”

The article went on to name SecondLife and World of Warcraft specifically, saying “the move to extend the filtering to computer games would place a cloud over online-only games such as World of Warcraft and Second Life, which aren’t classified in Australia due to their online nature.”

So far the SMH article is the only one I’ve seen that has specifically named these two sites specifically, and made any suggestion that they might fall victim to the filters. I haven’t heard similar reports from politicians or government offices. So at least for the moment it would appear that this is not a preordained fate for SL or WoW.

Torley's Tweet provides room for optimism on the fate of SL in Australia

Importantly just moments ago, Torley from Linden Labs posted a Tweet that read “Linden Lab has received no indications from the Australian government that it plans to block Second Life.” The Tweet points to a web link that appears to be a blog post by Linden Labs, however attempting to access the post yields a message indicating “It appears you’re not allowed to view what you requested. You might contact your administrator if you think this is a mistake.”

Access to the blog post is currently unavailable however.

So at this point I’m unable to reiterate exactly what the blog post has said. I mentioned this to Torley in the hopes of getting in to read the exact message. If and when it’s opened up I’ll try to pass along the details.

I’ve seen references to the Society of Geek Advancement for several months but haven’t been motivated to mention it until tonight when I saw Peter Black post this same video on his blog.

Initially I wasn’t really sure what the “I am a Geek” thing was all about, but reading into this a bit further, it appears that the motives behind the movement are several fold.

According to the Society for Geek Advancement about page:

“THE SOCIETY FOR GEEK ADVANCEMENT was founded upon the principles that we should all embrace our inner and outer geek and have fun while doing it. As individuals who love learning, innovating and believe in possibility as well as change, the second step of responsibility is to “be the geek that keeps on giving”. As a member of SGA, we work together as a global community to provide the tools and help others realize their true potential too!”

If the above video is any indication, a core component to the movement is old fashioned fun and togetherness. I don’t know about you, but I for one felt a tremendous amount of Geek Pride after watching the clip and am no longer the least bit self-conscious of my social deficiencies and fashion ineptitudes. Social skills or no, geeks sure know how to have a good time.

Wikipedia defines geek as:

“A person who is interested in technology, especially computing and new media… who has chosen concentration rather than conformity; one who passionately pursues skill and imagination, not mainstream social acceptance.”

Room To Read

Reading into this further, the objective of “giving” through the pursuit of fundraising and charitable donations. Proceeds from sales of of “I am a geek” T-shirts go to a charity known as Room to Read, which builds libraries and schools for children in developing countries.

So in addition to the Society acting as a networking hub and congregation point for a proverbial cornucopia of geeks of all shapes and sizes, it also seeks to make the world a better place. Not bad for a network of fringe-dwelling technophiles.

Just in the last two days I’ve decided to make some fairly sweeping changes to the commenting system on this blog and have installed the Disqus Comment System. This video is a basic overview of what Disqus is, how you set it up (primarily from the standpoint of self-hosted WordPress blogs), as well as a discussion on the implications that the framework has for readers as well as site owners.

Disqus describes itself as:

“Disqus, pronounced “discuss”, is a service and tool for web comments and discussions. The Disqus comment system can be plugged into any website, blog, or application. Disqus makes commenting easier and more interactive, while connecting websites and commenters across a thriving discussion community.”

How it works

Disqus establishes tremendous opportunities for both site owners/bloggers and readers/commenters alike in that it expands the available functionality far above and beyond the traditional text-based commenting structures found natively in most blogs.

Information from Disqus profiles is accessible from blogs and websites

This includes the option to link to personal profiles elsewhere on the web, connect with friends and colleagues and thus facilitate discussion, and ultimately retain far greater ownership over your comments than exists in traditional commenting frameworks since everything you say is aggregated against a profile on the Disqus website.  For example, this is my Disqus profile.

Network and Community Formation

One of the key outcomes of this framework is the opportunity for network development at both the blog level and the user level.  This is due to the fact blogs and users are equally represented in the framework and can thus become nodes in their own right.

As part of the set-up process each blog is given its own community area on the Disqus website (here is the one for this blog).  Not only does this enable users to quickly view and respond to comments (which are tied back into the blog), the community area also displays statistical information regarding Top Commenters and Popular Threads.  The increased focus on the individual in this framework means that readers are able to connect with one another – thus facilitating the development of networks and communities within and across blogs and sites.  Effectively the users start to become hubs for the discussion as much as sites are.

Synchronised Comments

Of critical significance for WordPress users (which forgot to mention in the video) is the fact that Disqus now synchronises comments between your WordPress blog and the Disqus site.  In the past when you replaced the native WordPress commenting framework with Disqus, all comments were stored on the Disqus website.  Personally this is the reason I never adopted it earlier; it seemed too great a risk to store the comments elsewhere.  With comments stored on both Disqus and WordPress, if you decide to revert to the native comments  at some stage – or otherwise need to deactivate the plugin – you are not going to lose all the discussion that took place while Disqus was implemented.

Many Platforms Supported

This is not to say that Disqus is restricted to WordPress.  The framework supports a variety of other platforms, including Blogger, Movable Type, Tumblr, and hosted WordPress.com blogs.  “Hacks” for other platforms have been developed as well.

There is a plethora of information available on the Disqus website so I encourage you to take a look if you’re interested, or take a look at the comment area of one of my posts here to see the framework in action.

By and large the bulk of the online conversations I engage in these days take place on Twitter.  Sure I blog, and I post comments elsewhere, but these tend to be fairly one-off threads.  I’ll write a post here and perhaps receive a comment or two in response every once in a while, but there is rarely many-to-many discussion on anything.

Twitter

Twitter does tend to facilitate this with far more regularity to a degree.  The problem is the 140 character limit.  You can say a fair amount in 140 characters if you’re efficient in your wording, but my experience has been there are definite limitations to the depth that can be explored and maintained.  This is especially true given there are no clear ways to tie conversations together.  When you comment, it appears as a largely independent contribution, making the prospect of easily skimming through a thread exceptionally difficult. Hashtags are useful for consolidating topics and tracking trends, but in my experience they don’t do a great deal to further the conversation.

Twitter is great for link sharing, and fairly superficial conversations, but not for deeper more lengthy discussions.

Facebook

In the absence of something better, Facebook has started to become the place where this has been happening for me, however I’m not particularly happy about that.  For one thing I really don’t like Facebook.  Above and beyond the sheer volumes of rubbish and distracting applications and advertisements that are so prevalent across the site, I have always had huge issues with their user management policies, the stance they’ve taken on photos of breastfeeding, and also the fact that it is a private environment where conversations are not easily viewed publicly.

It’s a place I visit occasionally when I want to kill time on something fairly shallow and mindless, not where I’d like to go to engage in meaningful discussion.

FriendFeed

The topic Gina and I were talking about was FriendFeed.  FriendFeed has been around for a couple of years now and has a fairly passionate user-base, but not one that has seen anywhere near the levels of notoriety that Facebook and Twitter have.  In the same way that the stream of updates on Facebook’s default page displays recent contributions of your contacts,  FriendFeed is designed as a way to aggregate and share your activities, track those of others, and engage in discussions.

You’re now able to organise your contacts into different lists for easier browsing, as well as create groups for more contained discussion and sharing of information.  Importantly it’s not plastered with ads and unwanted applications in the way Facebook is; content is kept to what is shared by your contacts – and you have a great deal of control over what you choose to view in terms of other people’s content, or alternatively what you decide to conceal from your view.

Like Twitter, you can also engage in discussions from 3rd party clients like Twhirl.  This means you don’t have to be constantly on the site to remain plugged into the discussions.

On the surface you’d have thought that I would have quickly adopted FriendFeed a long time ago – but in truth that’s never happened.  I see a lot of discussion taking place amidst the Silicon Valley crowd, and technology focused people in general – but seemingly very little communication in the educational, edtec or elearning sectors. Sharing, sure; just not discussion.  Without a network to engage with, a useful application like FriendFeed fails to yield much value for me.

Fostering Long-form Discussions

Nonetheless the peppering of discussions I’ve enjoyed on Facebook lately have made it clear how much value there is in long-form discussion.  Having a thread emerge that you can easily track, link to and share with others, while not being confined to character limits has proven to be an extremely liberating experience.  So I’ve been inspired once again to try and find a way to cultivate this outside of Facebook.

There are people on Twitter I greatly respect who flatly refuse to use Facebook, and I’d really like to bring them into the fold if possible.  Friendfeed seems like at least one reasonable option there.  The fact you can now embed discussions seems to open the door to distributing conversations more widely.

For example, I posted the following status update to FriendFeed (embedded at the end of this post), where people who follow me can read and respond to the comment. By enabling me to embed the entire discussion here – including all future updates – I’m able to circulate the discussion more widely amidst a community of people who may not be FriendFeed users. This is a far cry from the site-specific discussions you see on Facebook, as well as more traditional discussion forums.

There are a number of additional thoughts, issues and considerations floating around in my head about this at the moment, so I may post more about this later. The significant thing to me is the idea that I’d like to engage in more in depth discussion than I have been on Twitter and need a framework that will enable me to do this – preferably in a distributed fashion.

I welcome any thoughts on this in the meantime.

Embedded FriendFeed Discussion Thread

The explosion of mobile devices has gone a really long way to freeing computer users from their desks, and letting them roam in the open, while still engaging and collaborating in many of the same ways they do in more traditional computer environments. Yet there are other ways as well by which you can take your work with you, while leaving your desktop computer or laptop at home. Portable apps are one such example.

This video covers portable apps, including what they are, how you install them, and why you might use them. A variety of portable application frameworks are available, but in this particular case I used http://portableapps.com.

This is not to say that portable apps are better or worse than something like an iPhone or a Blackberry, they’re just another option worth bearing in mind if you find yourself needing a lightweight way to take your work with you.

Sorry about the audio quality; I’m apparently louder than I thought. Must be the American in me

cc licensed flickr photo shared by tnarik

The unthinkable finally happened.  I’ve been suffering from major league social media burn-out for nearly a fortnight and it’s showing no signs of disappearing any time soon.  So rather than post snippy, whinging posts about things that irritate me – which I’ve been inspired to do on several occasions lately – I’m going to take a bit of a break.

Twitter has begun to bore me; I can’t write a blog post to save my life; my RSS subscriptions are regularly cleared without being read; and the idea of recording a screencast tutorial or application walk-through just isn’t the slightest bit inspiring.  Likewise the passionate interest in online learning – both theory and practice – I’d maintained day and night, seven days a week including holidays for I don’t know how long, has completely vanished. Poof!

This is by no means my curtain call.  I’m not hanging up the blog, the Tweets, videos or the like.  I’ve just found over time that the well will occasionally dry up – as if I’ve over-fished the stream – and it’s time to dive into other areas to allow the passion and enthusiasm to slowly replenish.  A break is a very positive thing.  Not the end of something; just the beginning of something else.

Perhaps I’ll play guitar again, or read.  I’m not sure just yet.  But I’ll definitely be back.