Category Archives: CCK08

Virtual field trip to the clouds

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Serendipity. Gráinne Conole used that word a few times in her virtual field trip on Cloudworks today / tonight. And it was really serendipity for me that I learned about that field trip from the comfort of my home. Bob Reuter, a colleague of mine, wrote a brief blog post about Cloudworks earlier in the evening. Not too long after I saw the tweet about it, I read a tweet from @scope_community about Gráinne Conole presenting on the very same subject tonight taking us on a Virtual Field Trip Visiting Cloudworks (recording). She also set up a cloud for the field trip.

Cloudworks is an initiative by the Open University offering “a place to share, find and discuss learning and teaching ideas and experiences”. Gráinne spoke about Cloudworks in CCK08 last year. But back then, it was still fuzzy and not so easy to grasp as there was not much activity going on.

I have not yet had an account in Cloudworks (changed a few minutes ago), but had already taken a few looks at it a couple of months ago and was very impressed about the amount of discussion and activity in general going on.

It is great to see so many ideas in the open space. However, I asked the question in the session if it were possible to install the system on a server for a closed community. In the tech group of our bachelor program, the question came up how to make good student work accessible to others within the BScE. After mulling things over in my head and discarding a database in Moodle, I thought of Cloudworks and Alan Levine‘s Maricopa Learning eXchange (from a different web area, simpler, but still serves its purpose).

Our students produce a lot of research, data, teaching material, portfolio reflections and so on, but nobody in the program knows about them when you are not involved with the students producing these great things. Therefore, it would be useful to have a system where teachers, and I think also fellow students, could nominate works to be put into a repository for all students to check out. The nomination part is not exactly Cloudworks, but I believe good to show the students that their work is appreciated by others (besides receiving comments).

A lot of the artifacts our students create could be made openly available. But some of them not because they may contain videos or images of children from their internship classes. The parents only agree to having these displayed in password-protected areas of the university. It would be much harder to get the consent for open online publishing. Students may also feel comfortable with showing their work or also portfolio reflections to fellow students and teachers, but not to everybody.

Of course, being open has a lot of potentials, e.g. the artifacts can generate comments and / or discussions that may have never surfaced in a closed system, students would produce for a potentially larger audience and not just for themselves / their group / class.

Therefore, I am torn between openness and the walled garden. Maybe a combination will evolve where certain things would only be found on our server (then the problem persists of how to do that) and others in an open system. Before trying to find a system that would be useful on our server, I would jump in on the deep end and try Cloudworks with some of the work that students and teachers have done because

  • it will be a good trial to open up more and to make the work done in the BScE more visible
  • the system offers a number of possibilities for uploading, aggregating, interaction
  • it would be a good experience for the students and teachers involved to learn how to manage in such an open space

And, we may be surprised to find out “how many people are open to openness” as Gráinne said.

Streaming a stream

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Alec Couros and Dean Shareski dueled today at #tatc09. Each of them presented their favorite web tools in the Cool Tools Duel which was broadcast live on Ustream. The audience – in the room as well as online could even vote for their favorite presenter. Both Alec and Dean presented great tools and the audience loved their duel.

Alec presented Ustream and thus he was streaming a stream and everybody could watch the stream in the stream streamed in the stream. ;-)

Streaming a Stream

Streaming a Stream

It was tough to decide whom to give my vote. In the end, Alec got it,but the irony is that I used two tools that Dean talked about to take the above picture. ;-) I took the screenshot with Skitch, a tool that I truely love to have on my Mac, and added the frame and the text with Picnik.

Thanx for sharing this presentation.

Learntrends = trendy learning?

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The conference Corporate Learning Trends and Innovations 2008, commonly abbreviated “learntrends”, the second conference of its kind, took place entirely online from November 17 till 21, 2000. On top of being an online conference, it was a free event.

Jay Cross, Tony Karrer, and George Siemens were the main organizers of this conference and had put a great program together with well-known speakers who shared their knowledge, experience, tips, and insights.

Although the conference focused on corporate learning, I could relate to the issues discussed because in many ways they are not different from the ones that are faced in higher education. There it can also be difficult to sustain communities of practice, introduce new technology to improve workflows, and convince others of the benefits of using certain technologies. Of course always under the premise of what I want to achieve and not of which tool I want to use. Content and people come first. Only then are tools selected.

The conference always ran from 8 a.m. till 1 p.m. Pacific Time which was perfect because that translated to 5 p.m. till 10 p.m. for me. Sometimes I did have trouble making it to the first session, but otherwise I tried to keep my evenings free to follow the sessions.

I realized though that my conference attendance differed from face-to-face conferences. That was also noted in the wrap-up on Friday. I did not really take time out to attend the conference as I would during a face-to-face one. I did not even ask for time off, but squeezed it into my regular work day. Tony Karrer’s words during the wrap-up resonate with me (I’m paraphrazing): when at a regular conference, we do work on the side, while at an online conference, we tend to do the conference on the side. That, of course, poses problems as participants came late to sessions or had to leave early to attend to work matters, or just stayed for the official sessions and then left not hanging around in Elluminate.

Socializing is certainly more difficult during an online conference because one cannot flock to the refreshment tables and struck up a conversation, there is no welcome reception etc. One has to be more creative to get the attention of others. I have seen a number of “Let’s exchange email addresses and talk about that later” during presentations when a discussion in the backchannel was getting too far away from the original content.

However, connections can be made. Some participants were quick in finding others on Twitter through the common hashtag “learntrends” and added them to their Twitter contacts. Others used the dedicated Ning site to connect to each other. This site will stay open for discussions allowing for continuing exchange. Yet others tagged links that appeared in the backchannel in Delicious and so on.

Furthermore, it was nice to “see” people I knew from other contexts, mainly CCK08, at this conference. Thus, I felt not so alone altough I sat in front of the computer by myself. Just reading familiar names and saying the occassional “Hello” was a good thing.

I was amazed at how George Siemens, Jay Cross, and Tony Karrer set up this conference basically by themselves. There were some volunteers and some tech support, but other than that they did it by themselves. And what is even more amazing, the entire conference cost them less than 60 US$. True, it would have cost more if an Elluminate license had to be purchased. But other than that no costs.

As I already mentioned earlier, I struggled between work and conference not taking time out for the latter to be more fully engaged. Furthermore, I realized again, as already during live CCK08 sessions, that I am not very good at multitasking because I need to focus to fully comprehend what’s going on. Following a presentation, keeping an eye on the text chat and participating in there is not really my cup of tea. Some presenters like Nancy White were brilliant at that and had mastered the skill of thinking, talking, following the backchannel and responding to it at the same time.

I did not want to not follow the chat, however, as interesting comments were made, references listed etc. The text chat added a great dimension to the presentations sometimes going into greater detail for a specific point mentioned or taking off into a different though related subject matter that proved interesting. Thankfully, all sessions were recorded and are accessible from the conference site. That’s the beauty of such an online event: a recording can be created fairly easily if the tools allow that, and it can be made available even to those who could not participate. Many face-to-face conferences still lag behind session recordings a lot.

Coming back to the heading of this post “Learntrends = trendy learning”, I say: Yes. However, I still like physical conferences for the buzzing atmosphere that I can only attempt to feel in front of a 15.4″ screen, for the socializing parts though I need to work on my smalltalk skills, and for being able to focus my attention better during presentations. During this online conference, participants were more active than during normal sessions I think because we had the backchannel in which questions were posted, answers provided and that already during the presentations. One did not have to wait until the last few minutes to ask questions, but could do that the entire time. Moderators monitored the chat and passed the questions along to the presenters. And even if I could not make it to a session, there was still the recording and I could follow up easily.

Thus, an online conference is a trendy way to learn, to participate in a discussion with fellow conference participants and presenters, and it is a great alternative to physical conferences.

Thank you very much, George, Jay, and Tony for organizing this event. I’m looking forward to next year.

Lost in Technology

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This past week was an online feast I had not experienced before. I tried to catch as many sessions of the conference Corporate Learning Trends and Innovations 2008 at which great minds shared their knowledge, experience, and thoughts. I will blog about that over the weekend a bit more trying to summarize important points for me before they get lost in next week’s travel excitement.

On top of that it was the 11th week of CCK08. Though I have not been an active participant in the course by way of writing blog posts, discussing in Moodle etc., I try to participate in the Wednesday Elluminate and Frida uStream sessions. I always look forward to them.

As we are nearing the end of the course next week and I will not be able to attend the last sessions (maybe next Friday if I am very lucky), I was happy that I would be able participate today during a break of the online conference. However, as our hosts Dave Cormier, Stephen Downes, and George Siemens are very busy people, we did have to have one day when a session would have to be canceled. That was the case today. Nevertheless, and due to not reading “The Daily” earlier, three of us (Eduardo, Lisa and I) gathered in uStream and reached the decision to have our session anyway. Thus, we did get to have our revolution after all (if you don’t know what I am referring to, I point you to the beginning of the uStream session of Week 5). ;-)

Lisa quickly pointed us to her uStream channel, but as all of us had never experimented with uStream before, we had difficulty to bring everybody in on the audio (and video). Andreas and Carmen joined us there after they got our Twitter messages. Soon, we realized that we couldn’t get onto the uStream audio and decided to try Skype because that would allow us – in theory – to audio chat together.

That meant to get all our Skype IDs together and start a conference call. We kept uStream open to be able to text chat while continuing the tech experiment in Skype to get everybody in there. After some bits of discussion in Skype in a smaller conference call with three of us and the other ones listening to Lisa filling them in and text chatting in uStream, we were all united: Eduardo in Uruguay, Lisa in Southern California, Carmen in Minnesota, Andreas in Germany and I in Luxembourg.

Unfortunately, the tech gods did not have their protective eye on me during that hour. I could only get sound through uStream although I was on Skype and could be heard through there. On top of that my audio lacked behind between 30 seconds and 1 minute thus making it difficult to contribute to the conversation in a timely fashion. I usually cut in while others were talking and I felt aweful about that because I interrupted the entire conversation. I resorted to text chat in the end but could hear everybody.

As Lisa rightly said, “And here, you know, the pipe really was more important than the content.” That was certainly true. We had to figure out how to connect and not just connect but bring everybody on the same tool and allow for participation (no willing CCK08 participant left behind). Due to the technical problems, we could not finish our discussion on the blog software we used for what reason, what we will do after CCK08 will be over, whether we will continue blogging, staying in contact etc. It would have been a really interesting discussion had we had more time and mastered our internet communication tools better.

Hosting a live session certainly takes preparation and even when you have all the technology available to you that does not mean that it will cooperate and do what you want. However, we managed to get connected and stay that way more or less using two tools (not in one environment) simultaneously.

A big THANK YOU to Jeff who usually manages our Friday sessions and stays on top of his tech game to connect Dave, George, and Stephen to us from wherever they are on the planet and with whatever internet connection they have to work with. He’s always in the background handling the difficult part of connecting everybody as smoothly as possible.

After our allotted time for our Friday class, everybody went back to their other tasks. I wondered what happened to the  intentions to have meetups as they were discussed at the beginning of the course. There are two Second Life group that meet / met regularly if I remember correctly: one English-speaking one and one Spanish-speaking one. Are there other groups? Maybe even face-to-face ones? How often do / did they meet? What are their experiences?

Our little group was a great experience today, we stayed in class, and learned together without our teachers / instructors / facilitators / moderators / curators / enablers…

Communicating online can be more difficult but still be fun

Communicating online can be more difficult but still be fun

Salad Bowl vs. Melting Pot: Old Metaphors Revisited

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In preparation for CCK08′s Week 5 (yeah, I did some reading again, finally :-) ), I read Stephen Downes’ transcribed presentation on “Groups vs Networks: The Class Struggle Continues“. He makes compelling distinctions between groups and networks and uses old metaphors that I know from my English and North American Cultural Studies classes.

Groups – groups are defined by their unity. In fact, one of the first things you do in a group is you try to maintain its unity. A group need to be, in some sense, cohesive, united, “e pluribus unum”. Or to keep this politically fair, “The people united will never be defeated,” the “melting pot”, the encouragement to be the same, the encouragement to have the same values, to follow the same vision, to be, in some relevant way, like the others because that’s what the group is. (Downes, 2006, ¶40)

Image by Watchcaddy, June 11, 2008

"Melting pot dinner" by Watchcaddy, June 11, 2008

Networks, on the other hand, are salad bowls:

In Canada, we were all taught, is a salad bowl where each entity, the lettuce, the tomato, the whatever, cucumber, I don’t know what you put in salads. That’s what we put in salads. All of these things maintain their distinctness and their identity and by maintaining their distinctness and identity, they create a whole that is something distinct and different from any individual entity and indeed, something that cannot be created without maintaining that distinctness and identity.

[...] And so there is this idea of the network, there is this idea of distinctness and diversity in an environment where people are encouraged not to be the same, but to be different. (Downes, 2006, ¶46-47)

Sald in metal bowl by mollyali, October 23, 2007

"Salad in metal bowl" by mollyali, October 24, 2007

These two metaphors provide me with a very clear distinction between these two concepts that help to keep them apart. Stephen’s tabular comparison between groups and networks is of additional help to get some characteristics straightened out.

Groups and Networks by Stephen Downes, September 24, 2006

Groups and Networks by Stephen Downes, September 24, 2006

This distinction had me already wondering before when the terms “group” and “network” were used in CCK08. Finally, the week has arrived where these issues will be addressed closely. :-)

Do we have groups in our course or subnetworks?

In presentations and the synchronous sessions, there has been a lot of talk about groups within CCK08. Are they true groups taking Stephen’s characteristics from his eFest presentation into consideration or are they something else? The only argument indicating to “group” is that some aspects of CCK08 are closed at first glance: you must be a member of Facebook, LinkedIn, Twine, Diigo, Google Groups, Second Life etc. to have access to unofficial parts of CCK08 that were created in these services. However, membership in these groups is open to anyone who wants to identify with CCK08. We are free to come, join, contribute, and leave. Some other avenues are entirely open: the course blog, the course wiki, the course Moodle (though you have to sign in when you want to contribute), the Google map, the blog posts, Twitter messages.

The “groups” within CCK08, at least as far as I perceive them, are not coordinated or dominated by one person, but everybody can contribute equally and bring in her/ his points of view. Usually, there is a person who sets up a certain service, e.g. the Facebook group, the Twine etc., but that does not mean that this person dictates the direction of the discussion or the (correct) use during the course. To speak in the salad bowl metaphor: This person just provides the bowl in which all ingredients can mix happily.

Then, is such an arrangement still a group? I had feared that this discussion might have already happened as Week 3 already dealt with network properties. However, searching the Moodle forums, I only came up with one reference for “subnetwork”, but the discussion centers on something else. As I do not have an overview of all blog posts, I may be missing reflections and / or discussions that have been going on there about this topic.

Looking at Stephen’s comparison, I think, we form subnetworks within our CCK08 network and not groups. Thus, do we use the term “group” only in a very wide everyday sense of something like “people gathering together to accomplish something” (leaving out all other aspects like leadership, prescribed values, centralization etc.)?