maximizing the meanderings

Thanks to a post entitled “A Year in the Spiral” by Britt Watwood of Virginia Commonwealth University, I’ve got a new way of thinking about my latest leap into the world of social media.

Both his own end-of-year reflections on his experiences within the “Social Media Spiral”, as well a post  http://michelemartin.typepad.com/thebambooprojectblog/images/2008/01/13/socialmediaspiral3_3.jpgby Michele Martin (the original source of the accompanying graphic) mentioned many of the constellation of tools and practices that I’m already well into the habit of using.

Britt writes, “I saw myself in that spiral, and recognized that to grow, I needed to move higher up …

What I’ve discovered in the short time since I’ve begun to branch out beyond my core set of familiar tools to document my meanderings around the web is that writing (and reflecting) in the format of blog posts is … different.  (Is this my blog-ha moment?)  Just how this plays out is something that perhaps I’ll be able to be a bit more articulate about in the coming months.

So far I’m struck mainly by the unexpected difference between having read who knows how many hundreds — nope, gotta be thousands — of blog posts over the past few years, and the act of starting to write them myself.  Sounds trite, no doubt.  But I really had the impression that having logged that many hours, I was “quite familiar” with blogging.

Hah! New discoveries abound, and they are just beginning.

I had noticed that other bloggers tend to highlight milestones in their blogging experience, but now I’m starting to have glimmers of what might those milestones really mean.

I’m also intrigued by exploring “ways to do blog-like publishing in things that are not blogs.”

Onward …

Horizon Report background resources

The 2009 Horizon Report has been released and is available on the web.  //horizon.nmc.org/wiki/Main_PageA recent blog post from the NMC gives some interesting background on the creation of the report, highlighting wiki links of particular interest to those interested in educational technology.   The initial list of 80-100 technologies makes for interesting reading … too many other interesting links to highlight individually; the post warrants some detailed exploration.

There’s now a podcast version of the ELI09 session during which the 2009 report was officially released.  And the Horizon Metatrends Vuvox collage that Larry Johnson showed during the session (a good example for anyone who is interested in some alternatives to PowerPoint).

ELI09: Alternate Reality Games

Over the span of a few short days, have gone from reading a “7 things” brief about ARGs (alternate reality games) which mentioned in rather detached terms that they “offer engaging content” and “new opportunities for collaborative learning” …

… to attending a pre-conference workshop that explored elements of play ….

//playfullearning.pbwiki.com/

… to becoming a participant as an ARG unfolds here at the conference.

It turns out this mystery fellow Rufus has a blog … //rufuskbluth.blogspot.com/

and a website, and a Twitter account … and there on the table at the back of the room is another (non-web-based) artifact that is obviously also related in some way …

Conference participants are finding their own way through all of this, some more actively engaged, some less so, and a wiki has emerged from among a number of options as a place to compile what has been found to date.

Also found this blog post, a reference from the workshop wiki, which gets at some interesting elements re: philosophy.

In the case of Rufus, no one told us what to do, we just dove in. It’s an interesting mix of lots of pre-planning (the team promised to post the coordination docs by week’s end) combined with then opening it up and letting it take on a life of its own.

There’s a puzzle, which creates an itch, which leads you down the first of many rabbit holes … and the clues and content that people are collecting and sharing is bubbling up all over the place, as yet another layer added to this very interesting event.

Definitely not the same as just reading about it.

ELI09: twitter as back channel

* * WARNING * * … this is a live-blogged post in need of some serious tinkering, when I have a chance … links are not embedding (the popup is blank), and the pictures aren’t uploading quite right … but I’ll go ahead and publish it for now, and fix those things later …

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Sitting here at the ELI09 conference in Constance Steinkuhler’s presentation on virtual worlds — she’s looking at the discourse of adolescent boys while playing online games … (but that’s a separate post … )

What was really striking was this progression of events …

1) Bob Cole and I are sitting here in the session, in Orlando, Florida.

2) We’ve both got the MIIS yammer community open, and Bob posts a link to the live video stream of the talk.

3) Anne Marie Steiger picks it up and writes back a thanks (she’s in Monterey, but watching the same plenary session along with us).

4) I replied with the link to the #ELI09 hashtag … which is a way to collect posts of all kinds … and in particular, a way to follow the live back channel of people sitting both in this room and elsewhere, as they watch the presentation.

Here’s the link I sent to Anne Marie, but the moments of actual commentary on the plenary will be long gone. So I’m attaching some images by way of visual documentation of this back channel phenomenon.

I think it’s important for a couple of reasons.

back channel in Twitter

1) It turns what is traditionally a one-way presentation into a far more interactive experience. I’m listening to the presenter, and simultaneously watching a steady stream of other people’s reactions, thoughts, questions, etc, and am free to jump in myself at any time.

2) The way that it bridges not just the individuals here, but also beyond this particular room, and pulls in anyone with a good web connection. A sense of “presence” is something that is talked about as a defining characteristic of virtual worlds and how they differ from something like Elluminate or Skype audio or video chats — where does this fit along that continuum?  Does the co-presence of ideas count for more than seeing a sea of faces?  🙂

At MIIS, what implications does this phenomenon of the back channel have when doing hybrid or online courses? For collaborating with colleagues and peers who are geographically distant? (DPMI plus, IPSS, CLS hybrid, etc …)

2nd backchannel screenshot

Reminds me of some folks who researched the ways in which their students utilized various back channels during an online course: what participants used, why and how they used it.


ELI09 – Participation and Collaboration: Social Learning

Heading out to the ELI09 conference tomorrow. I’ve been accessing resources from their website for quite some time now, and recommend the following:

7 things you should know about … (series): a great introduction to emerging technologies and their potential impact on teaching & learning (very succinct, 2-page format)

Horizon Report 2009 (pdf): co-published with the New Media Consortium, the Horizon Project Wiki is a deep well of information on emerging technologies for learning. Venture into this wiki *not* … if you were planning to use the next two hours for some other critical task!

I recently ran across official mission statements for both organizations:

The EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI) helps institutions advance learning through IT innovation. ELI is a community that works together to stay on the leading edge of teaching and learning with technology through a focus on learners, learning principles and practices, and learning technologies.

EDUCAUSE (the parent organization) looks more broadly at higher education, learning and technology.

I like the focus on learning, and am looking forward to learning a lot!

brain on steroids

During my recent visits to DPMI I found an opportunity to get in some hands-on practice using CMAP as a right brain friendly mapping tool. I had initially seen CMAP in a Spring 2008 TLC session by Beryl Levinger on High Performance Thinking (see podcast on the Teaching & Learning Collaborative page of the Institute’s ITunesU site), but then hadn’t followed up.

At one point during week one of DPMI, Beryl described CMAP (and other mapping tools) as something she reaches for when she wants to put her brain on steroids. So far I’m sold …

Here are two examples: our first draft on “metacognition”, and v2 with further additions. More to come …

Meanwhile, I’m looking for more CMAP (or other mapping) examples — even better, descriptions of the roles that such tools have played in the promotion of high performance thinking. Any thoughts? Please share in the comments.

how do I find …?

Whenever I start talking about something like Twitter, or the networking feature of the social bookmarking tool, Delicious, with people who have yet to venture into online communities, one of the first mental roadblocks they seem to encounter is the following question:

“But how in the world do you find people?”

Often, the unspoken conclusion to that sentence is … among “all that awful stuff out there” — the lurkers, those baddies who are out to get us all. My experience has been quite different; I’ve found so many resources and ideas, mostly through asynchronous connections, that have really enriched my professional life far beyond the geographic confines of our small campus.

So, in an effort to document how it is that I have been finding my way, I’ve started a few new tags in my delicious account, and I’m trying to remember to hit one of them every time I’m off meandering and one wonderful thing is leading to another.

I take it for granted that what I call “meandering” — and think of as a very productive process — actually does involve (and rely on) some other skills and habits. What are these, exactly? Not sure, and that’s why I’m embarking on this little project. Here are the links, in case anyone wants to meander along, or join right in:

how-do-I-find (collection of links on delicious)

one-thing-leads-to-another (already seeing some duplicates … see final comment, below)

Come to think of it, this one might turn out to be related as well:

informal-learning

As with all of my tags, I make them up on the fly, as I go along. Some are used once, and then left to obscurity. Others become “sticky,” gaining momentum and becoming a regular and integral part of my emerging system. I suppose that might drive some people crazy.

I like it.

It allows me to DO, rather than have a great idea, make big plans and then end up not having the time to follow through. Big win, in my books.