Personal Learning Environments

As previous post, a curated page or two on PLE's.   Thanks to http://www.scoop.it/u/pgsimoes

Tech Effect Me and the Organisation

Two specific technologies come to mind when looking at impact upon me and my own CPD and Learning.  The First is Twitter which has shifted my CPD from something I did specifically at pre-arranged events or conferences to an almost daily, ongoing habit. Twitter, via recommendations, opened a whole avenue of investigation, comment and thought from both peers and fellow practitioners.  The second technology, is that of aggregation and curation  through channels such as Scoop.it!  I have found  myself stepping from reading others comments in a haphazard way, to curating their words, articles and musings into a topic which is relevant to me and my peers and those within my organisation who are targets of change.  Again, this is happening daily and while it will reduce it has been the primary reason for being so far behind this last week or two

My own organisation is benefiting through access to the same sources that I am reading and for those that choose to access these materials they shall be better informed. Example of Scoop.it! curated by Me!!

Who is doing what with Web 2.0 


Franklin, T. and van Harmelen, M. (2007) Web 2.0 for Learning and Teaching in Higher Education, London, The Observatory on Borderless Higher Education.

A widely quoted rule of thumb is that 1% of Web 2.0 users create content, 10% comment or in 
some way add to the content (e.g. adding a tag), and the remaining 89% consume content without 
adding to it. On the basis of survey data, Forrester Research has refined this broad distinction into 
categories of creators, critics, collectors, joiners, spectators and inactives.


AGE  ROLE                  12 – 17     18 – 21     22 – 26    27 – 40      41 – 50    51 – 61      62+


Creators                            34 %        37 %         30 %        19 %         12 %        7 %          5 %
Critics – comment 
and add ratings etc             24 %         37 %        34 %         29 %        18 %        19 %        11 %
Collectors – RSS 
aggregator users, 
bookmarkers                     11 %          16 %        18 %         19 %        19 %        16 %       11 %
Joiners – join social 
media sites                         51 %          70 %        57 %         29 %        19 %         8 %         6 %
Spectators – watch 
and read                            49 %           59 %        54 %         41 %        31 %        26 %       19 %
Inactives – online 
but no social 
media, e.g. only email          34 %          17 %         21 %        42 %        54 %         61 %       70 %

Basic Blue Skies Research in the UK: Are we losing out?

Lifted from....Belinda Linden


http://www.j-biomed-discovery.com/content/3/1/3 accessed 10 Jun 2011.


The term "blue skies research" derives from Julius Comroe, who explained in 1976 how scientific discoveries often arise from tortuous curiosity-driven paths, rather than a direct goal-driven route [11]. He used as his example an event where Charles Wilson, President Eisenhower's Secretary of Defence and an opponent of basic research, said: "I don't care what makes the grass green!" Comroe claimed that Wilson might just as well have said, "I don't care what makes the sky blue!" Comroe defended the need for basic research by describing the work of a British physicist called John Tyndall whose research in 1869 explained the blue colour of the sky by using a glass tube into which he introduced certain vapours. When illuminated, the tube filled with many fine particles. When a powerful beam of light focused on the tube in a dark room, a sky blue cloud filled the tube [12]. Comroe describes how through this discovery, Tyndall's work explained many other unrelated concepts. His examples included the development of a test for optically pure air that was unable to develop bacteria, success in convincing scientists of Pasteur's claim that there was no such thing as spontaneous generation, research demonstrating how lung airways remove particles from inspired air before reaching the alveoli. Tyndall also discovered 50 years before Fleming how penicillium bacteria could successfully destroy a mould [13]. He showed how a light beam followed a curved route, leading to the later development of the flexible gastroscope and bronchoscope [14]. Tyndall's work therefore provided strong evidence to show that important discoveries are often curiosity-led rather than goal-driven. Comroe asked US cardiologists to list the professional activities that they considered to be the most valuable. When the origins of these advances were examined, he demonstrated that more than 70% of the clinical tools used by cardiologists arose from fundamental, curiosity-driven research performed without a cardiological outcome in mind. This report was used as a key argument to convince the US Congress that basic blue skies research had a better than average chance of translating into something clinically useful compared to that derived from problem-oriented research [24].

Back to Blogging

Despite my best efforts to forget blogging, it would appear we're back into the online, 'say what you mean in the most public of ways for all posterity'! Love it.

Undergrads.... Who are they? And what tech do they use to Learn?

http://www.educause.edu/Resources/ECARStudyofUndergraduateStuden/217333

What are the main findings from this study?

Tech and its usage are becoming more prevalent. Difference in using a tool for a course and using it to collaborate for a course.

Web based office / google tools = 36% of which 50% used to Collaborate.

Wiki usage = 33% of which 30.7% used to Col.

SNS = 29% of which nearly 50% used for Col.

small % of users using Micro Blogs (twitter) at 4.3% but nearly 40% of those used for Col.

Again small % using Virtual worlds (1.4%) and Social book making sites (2.8%) but nearly 30% of these users used for col.

Overall, students are using a variety of technology which has varying degrees of perceived use in learning and collaborative learning. These student perceptions are certainly not reflected, understood or capitalised upon within my institution.  Students are using technology which they have (not necessarily institutionally provided) to learn and collaborate with. This tech and tools may not have originally been designed for leaning but the collaborative elements means its being hijacked for that purpose.

I can't say any of this surprises me as I've read it previously and have been attending Modern Learning Symposiums and the like for many years where these embryonic stats are wheeled out to tell us a major change was on its way....   well don't look now cause its happened!

My own experiences are similar, the trend is evident but the acknowledgement that something other than a white board and PP could be used to deliver training until a few years ago was heresy.

The implications are significant.  These tools are being used and you can either actively dis-guard them, or get on board and provide content and support students in a way they want to learn as opposed to the way we have traditionally taught them.  Dangerous thoughts in my organisation......

Reading Richardson (2005)

Do you think the innovations described in Weeks 8 and 9 as ‘learning design’ would induce more desirable approaches to studying on the part of the students?


Well in short it could. But poor design is still poor design even when its planned better.  If the designers conceptions are of transmission and the use of interaction is limited then achieving a student focus is unlikely regardless of the tools utilised.  Understanding what each tool can achieve and bring to the learning party is central to producing a student focus.  The activities we sampled in weeks 8 & 9 were useful to highlight the strengths and weaknesses of each.   




Compare Marton’s idea that some students regard learning as something that just happens to them with Sfard’s account that you read in Week 3


The Acquisition and Participation Metaphors describe well a view of learning but Merton does not describe whether this AM is a passive process or not.  My inclination is to assume that AM is passive whereas PM is active in its approach.  Where students assume that learning is a passive process, having them engage in learning serials may be more problematic and we may suggest that this is 'not their preferred learning style'.  Where this is the case is any Participation methodology useful for these learners? 


Do the concepts, theories and evidence described in my paper fit your own experience as a learner?


I have witnessed similar understandings / delineations of what teaching is when delivering train the trainer courses.  Furthermore some of the ideas are comparable to my own experience as a learner.  


Which of Säljö’s five conceptions of learning best fits your own definition?


All five have resonance, but I edge towards the the abstraction of meaning and interpretation of reality.  My professional life requires me to down grade and convince engineers of the merit of an approach in sound bites or simple terms. Abstraction of meaning and delivery of a principle behind a way or approach is critical so it can be re-applied next time round.  

Creative Commons

The creative commons licencing process is a really interesting development from an e-Learning developers perspective.  The possibility of accessing work and content that has been designed and developed elsewhere is a huge attraction to a large organisation such as mine.  I have long argued for a repository of 'stuff' and with the growth of Global Commons materials and the processes to develop and distribute new 'stuff' without fear of using somebodies proprietary materials inadvertently makes great sense.  I was unaware of the type of licencing available within the framework and had assumed wrongly it was all 'up for grabs'.  With this misnomer corrected I'm off to work out what you can do with what and see where CC materials take us.

Acquisition and Participation Metaphors

In terms of military technical training/ education, the AM PM divide is sound. Though this appears wholly dependent upon our assessment what is really being tested in order to do the job.  Therefore our assessment strategy for that particular element of a course is critical.  We require trainees to grasp fact, information in terms of concepts, notions, principles and ideas but also to be able to apply those in the work place.  Therefore we generate scenarios for assessment purposes which demonstrate acquisition of knowledge and the demonstration of AE good practice.   So I see strong comparators with teaching nursing, pharmacy or other 'professional' skills. 

The risk of creating holes in the countryside is considered significant enough for Air Engineering in particular to take steps to create not only technicians but ‘air mindedness’ within technicians.  This is about integrity, procedure, supervision and so on.  This PM is central to learning in the AE world, though until Sfard, I’d not seen it articulated in such a way.  It raises questions over whether our assessment strategies for AE is indeed correct in all cases.  Often I have intervened in systems where the ‘wrong’ thing was being assessed.  This delineation gives me a principle to hang those arguments upon.

The suggestion of a single metaphor which catches all is ambitious.  Furthermore I like the idea that the AM / PM divide highlights weakness in the other and moves towards what Lynda Hine suggest is a more critical approach to understanding what learning is about.  

Lastly, the question of whether the AE learning is individual or socially contextual.  It has to be both.  The individual has responsibility for their actions but the system is designed to reduce bad practice and error.  Knowing where you as a technician sit within that system is, I would suggest  as contextual learning as it gets.   

Isn't Reading Blogs as Relevant as Writing them?

It strikes me that the reason for writing a blog which is summed up by the blog category (column b) is not the same as why students or learners read the blog.  Paraphrased from Guthrie, Bennett and McGough  2004, ‘Motivations for reading are internalized, enabling the individual to perform acts such as acquiring knowledge, enjoying aesthetic experiences, performing tasks, and participating in social contexts’. They go onto outline the reasons for reading. 

• Curiosity, as in the desire to learn about a topic
• Aesthetic involvement, as in the enjoyment of experiencing a literary text
• Challenge, as in the orientation to learning complex ideas from text
• Recognition, as in the gratification in receiving a tangible form of reward for success in reading
• Grades, as in favorable evaluations from a teacher

They further propose that ‘motivations for reading also include: social, processes of constructing and sharing meanings in groups; and compliance, adaptation to an external goal or requirement’.  These in particular would appear to hold true within the blogging world. 

 http://www.readingrockets.org/article/260

Core Activity 9.1: Desktop research – Blogs and Blogging

Serial (a)	Blog Category  (b)	Example Site (c)	Notes (d)
1	Reflective Personal	http://grantkellyou.blogspot.com/ http://collinsmh808.blogspot.com/	Reflection often instigated by the need for assessment therefore often institute or assessment driven.  Continued as ‘Habit’ forming.  But many personal Blogs lie dormant.  As intuitional or course derived, continuation after the course is sometimes problematic.
2	Reflection Professional	http://quantumlearningblog.wordpress.com/ http://wedderburn-college.blogspot.com/	Reflection of professional learning.  Possibly assessment driven but often done for Professional level learning. More likely where reflection is seen as a core professional trait and a stepping stone to professional recognition. Evidence to suggest that these reflective blogs (1&2) are less likely to have feedback or response as opposed to below (3).  Can be either personal professional or corporate professional.
3	Intellectual Exchange, Data Mining / Research	http://edtechdev.wordpress.com/2010/03/19/the-digital-natives-digital-immigrants-distinction-is-dead-or-at-least-dying/	Research orientation. Academic musing over concept, thought or approach.  May be used as two way communication tool (debate in public) and often become more forum orientated.  Expert opinion aired for feedback. (Williams and Jacobs, 2004)
4	Signposting / pathway	http://www.downes.ca/ http://sperry20.edublogs.org/ http://www.academicevolution.com/	Assistance to fellow educators, students etc undertaking the same learning journey. (Oravec, 2002????) Range from ‘Evangelical’ to ‘informative’ in perspective. Danger of being viewed as authority on subject where bias is clear. (Corbyn, 2008, Kirkup, 2010)
5	Community Creation & Communication	http://technorati.com/blogging/article/state-of-the-blogosphere-2010-introduction/ http://blog.techsmith.com/edublog/
6	Political persuasion	http://www.educationstate.org/

 I seem to have put the references some where safe!!  Here's some.....     

Brown, S. (2006) ‘The Blogging Spectrum - An alternative classification system for the blogosphere’, blog entry posted 8 August, 2006. Available online:http://modernl.com/article/the-blogging-spectrum

Corbyn, Z. (2008) ‘By the blog: academics tread carefully’, Times Higher Education, 9 October 2008. Available from:http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=403827 (accessed 5 Jan 2011).

Core Activity 8.3: Communicating to an audience (2)

http://support.hopkins.k12.mn.us/podcasts/STP-MartinDougiamas.mp3

·                Sound quality – Professional, Music intro behind, conversational interview between interviewee and presenter.  Good constant sound levels.  Good voice. Presenter voice occasionally sounds computer based.

·                Broadcast quality – Very well constructed, though conversational.  Clearly spoken. Little background noise.

·                Suitability –Conversational approach, provides background to where Moodle came from and why Open Source should be used.  

·                Length – Appropriate, remained interested throughout and I didn’t get bored I did however find myself doing Ironing while listening.  The conversational style made it eay listening.  

·                Interest – Yes.  The podcast covered a variety of issues which were interlinked. It became clear that it was quite dated.

·                Academic quality – Opinion based, however as the interviewee is central to Moodle development it is authoritative.

·                Suggestions for improvement – A guard on the microphone would remove the occasional distraction.  

·                Suggestions for use – This is a ‘why and wherefore’ podcast.  It provides a useful history of Moodle, and the thinking behind it, it isn’t necessarily for enhancing skills.  It is an infomercial for want of a better term. 

Core Activity 8.3: Communicating to an audience

http://sclater.com/pod/podcasting-and-blogging.mp3

·                Sound quality –Adequate, breathy on occasions, good constant sound levels.  Good voice.

·                Broadcast quality –Very well constructed, clearly spoken. Little background noise.

·                Suitability – Very much so, possibly a little low but moves from simple to complex as required. Occasionally goes ‘off piste’ with personal experience. This however adds an additional dimension to the podcast.

·                Length – Appropriate, remained interested throughout and I didn’t get bored.

·                Interest – Yes.  The podcast covered a variety of issues which were interlinked.  Additionally the personal touch was good.

·                Academic quality – A little opinion, supported by academic research. Outlines the pedagogical thinking behind Podcasts and Blogging.

·                Suggestions for improvement – A guard on the microphone would remove the occasional distraction.  

·                Suggestions for use – This is an introduction for Podcasting and Blogging.  It outlines why these have grown in popularity and goes on to explain how to deliver podcasts and blogs to students. It also outlines the issues exposed by podcasting such as quality control of content.  Additionally, it outlines what type of information and learning is most suited to podcasting.  It also points to the possible future uses.  The speaker also discusses Blogging and RSS feeds and the cross over between Blogs and podcasts.  

Inquizitior for Learning

Inquizitior for Learning

Core Activity 7.2 - Professional Learning Situation v's familarity

A bit late as ever, thanks to John Sumpter for the Frame work questions.

A: Situation / Familiar | Learning Task / Familiar

As a teaching assistant with a degree in International Relations and Security my transition to Instructor for the Navy was relatively simple. In comparison, some of my colleagues had no significant teaching experience and didn't know their subjects either. This task/situation was simple, non threatening and achieved with little angst or issue.

B: Situation / Unfamiliar | Learning Task / Familiar

Learning the fundamentals of Action Based Leadership was simple enough.  Until placed under considerable stress achieved through mental and physical exhaustion and placed on Sheep's Tor on Dartmoor at 3am in freezing conditions with team members coming down with Hypothermia. All of a sudden the fundamentals seemed some what abstract.  This was an unusual learning environment but has since served me well.  I failed the task set.  I learned more through non achievement than I ever would have thought possible.  I was left to 'reflect' on that failure for some time to come and eventually completed the same exercise (though not the same task).  This was a  profound event in my Naval career, learning how to bounce back from failure is a Key part of my job when training the future Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen of our armed forces.

C: Situation / Familiar | Learning Task / Unfamiliar

Learning the basics of the Moodle VLE was a significant unfamiliar learning task in an envirnment I understood or knew well.  I am competent with a PC and Office tools, but Moodle was a new task entirely.  I neither understood the capabilities of the tool, its inherent issues or what I was attempting to achieve with it.  In this instance I learnt through exploration and inquiry. Significantly I had no real time pressure, I was undertaking R & D to inform the Navy of possible delivery options for the future.  Had I been aiming to achieve a particular Learning objective I believe that this would not have been so comfortable.

D: Situation / Unfamiliar | Learning Task / Unfamiliar

Some tasks in H808 has been similar to instance D.  Learning to use or create Podcasts to achieve particular learning outcomes has been difficult.  Here the unfamiliar is more about the circumstances and criteria than a physical location, place etc. Instance D isn't comfortable for me, though it has been challenging and hopefully I have learnt the correct learning outcome.

“Where / How would you classify the learning you are doing here and now? What is the nature of the risk involved?”

Where H808 has pushed the boundaries thus far is in that instance D has occurred a number of times.  I have found myself reticent to engage and have found reason to wait and let others take the lead. I often read and then re-read the requirement and see what others have done and think that wasn't my understanding of the task.  But as many are 'old hands' at this I have followed their lead.  

“Now consider Clegg's table”

Reflection and the value of, is changed through time.  For initial reflection I would go with Instance A and B.  But the value of being pushed way outside ones comfort zone may make immediate reflection more difficult, but its use over the longer term has considerable value.  This is particularly if the Unfamiliar, though prolonged exposure becomes familiar and the nuance of that environment can be understood.  Here it can have Reflection and benefit value over the longer term.