I spotted this on someone else's blog ...
You need to be a Flickr member to set one up, so sign up, load up some photos and create one at http://www.flickr.com/badge_new.gne
HTML Version (for some reason the Flash one only wants to work in the sidebar of my blog and not in the body of a blog post???
| www.flickr.com |
Auricle
Derek Morrison queries in Auricle about the continuing dominance of proprietory VLEs (LMSs) in the University sector.
"As Neil Pollock and James Cornford have pointed out in their various writings this is a corporate model which technology tends to reinforce but is, at the same time, at variance with the creative, diverse and collegiate nature of many HEIs."
Earlier this week I took part in a forum coordinated by Dr John Mitchell for the NCVER Project, “Critical Issues in Teaching, Learning and Assessment”.
Link to project page and papers
One of the issues under discussion was innovation and how to create environments to encourage innovation and also stifling factors. Recently I’ve been dipping into Stephen Johnson’s book Emergence, Dave Snowden’s ideas on social complexity and also thinking about innovation in the current VET context in Australia.
I talked about looking at the increasing complexity not as a problem, but rather as an opportunity. If innovation happens at the edges, then in a context of increasing and persistent complexity, there must surely be more edges at which innovation can occur?
Comparing the amorphous nature of our context to an amoeba works for me – If you consider productive, useful innovation, then the edges need to stay connected to the whole in some way. If you get breakaway innovation that becomes disconnected from the main section, then the usefulness for the organism of that innovation may be diluted or go in tangential directions.
Talking later with my other half, we also discussed the notion that sometimes the innovators can be out on those arms and over time, the amoeba can move out and ‘flesh out’ the arms around them, or indeed innovate off different edges. So innovation does not get mainstreamed by moving closer to the centre of the organism but rather than the amoeba moves out and re-centres around some innovations and not others. For people who are closely tied to a historical centre of the context, this reshaping can be extremely challenging. Although moving with the reshaped context means working within the contained organism, moving within it is still a challenge. New pathways need to be developed and accepted. But that’s a whole different topic…
"Technology_of_cooperation" by Andrea Saveri, Howard Rheingold, and Kathi Vian
Intro...
"Emerging digital technologies present new opportunities for developing complex cooperative strategies
that change the way people work together to solve problems and generate wealth. Central to
this class of cooperation-amplifying technologies are eight key clusters, each with distinctive contributions to cooperative strategy."
link to website
includes link to pdf
Three types of e-portfolios are described in this report: student e-portfolios, teaching e-portfolios, and institutional e-portfolios. E-portfolios can support student advisement, career preparation, and credential documentation; the sharing of teaching philosophies and practices; department and program self-studies; and institutional and program accreditation processes. This report defines and categorizes e-portfolios, offers examples of higher education e-portfolio implementations, reviews e-portfolio technology, and addresses adoption issues.
link to website
from Albert Ip about games in learning....
"While educators can select games which have attributes positive towards learning, I would still like to ask if "playing game" is the best use of time of the students. For those who are motivated to learn, playing game may be considered a waste of their time. They can engage in much more direct learning activities which are designed to develop the skills they set out to learn.
The question, to me, is not to use game as a substitute of good design of learning activities. We have a lot to learn from the game designer, how games, some very difficult, engage the players. We should learn from game design. We should not use game as a substitute of good engaging learning activities."
"CSO has been designed for people who are interested in learning more about dogging, rigging, scaffolding or hoist operation.
These are highly skilled areas of construction work, and require the individual to hold a certificate of competency from the appropriate licensing body in each state or territory.
The contents of CSO are based on four specific competency standards from the BCG30998 - Certificate III in General Construction (Materials Handling) in the General Construction Training Package BCG98:
* BCG3041A - Undertake dogging
* BCG3042A - Undertake rigging
* BCG3043A - Operate hoist
* BCG3118A - Erect and dismantle scaffolding - basic."
"safe@work is a health and safety resource package for secondary school students who undertake workplace learning programs."
The SafetyLine Institute is an online education and training facility established by WorkSafe Western Australia, a State government enforcement agency, to provide resources to assist individuals improve their knowledge of work safety, and increase workplace access to nationally accredited or endorsed, competency based, work safety training. - You can sign up and gain access to online. learning materials
Weblogg-ed - The Read/Write Web in the Classroom :
RSS: The New Killer App for Eduators
just as fun as the Tag Browser from the same people at this address http://www.airtightinteractive.com/projects/related_tag_browser/app/
Flickr Postcard Browser
This application lets you browse Flickr's huge image database, by searching for tags (keywords). Flickr Postcard Browser use the real world metaphor of a set of postcards shuffled onto a surface.
Many thanks to the Flickr team for putting together a really easy to use API. Flickr is almost certainly the best online photo management and sharing application in the world.
link to website
this looks like the start of an ongoing series..
"Creating an Inexpensive PowerPoint Online Module"
"The Clinical Skills Online (CSO) is a project aimed at providing online videos demonstrating core clinical skills common to a wide range of medical and health-based courses.
This project has been funded by the Higher Education Academy Subject Centre for Medicine, Dentistry and Veterinary Medicine."
all materials are under a creative commons licence
Shareware and Free Software list from Dept of Education Tasmania which covers:
# Web Tools
# Graphics, animation and Image manipulation
# CAD and 3D software
# Concept mapping
# Programming (inc games programming)
# Typing Tutors
# Sound and Music Editors
# Tutorial Building
# Utilities
# Video
Enterprises' commitment to nationally recognised training for existing workers
Authors:
Erica Smith, Richard Pickersgill, Andy Smith, Peter Rushbrook
"This report aims to provide a clearer understanding of how and why enterprises use nationally recognised type of training. It finds that an enterprise's decision to engage in recognised training is not made lightly and decisions are made afresh each time a new training need arises. Successfully embedding training in enterprises involves a three-phase process - engagement, extension and integration. In most cases, it is dependent on: positive initial engagement; extension of training through a 'VET evangelist' who 'sells' the benefits of recognised training and persuades management; and, integration of competency standards associated with recognised training into many human resource processes. The availability of funding strongly influences whether enterprises use recognised training. However, one of the key reasons why more enterprises have not taken up this training is lack of awareness."
on this page there are links to a number of conference presentations from ICT and Creativity - Strategies for a creative information society.
Stream
2. June
Creativity in the Global Information Society
Humanity in Innovation
Creative Content & Community Building
Creative Diversity in Mainstream Cultural Industries
A Cultural Agenda for Technology
The Cultural Horizons of IT
3. June
Bridging the Digital Divide through Learning and Personal Capacity Building
eCulture, Creative Content and DigiArts
Economic Framework for IT Corporations
Conclusions of Conference
Infrastructure of sharing in the commons
Tuesday 28 June - Teemu Arina
"What strikes me the most these days is that everyone is talking about sharing in the commons. There is an increased amount of contributions in the commons without any financial interests. People have discovered, that the value of information and knowledge increases when shared. This is the world I’ve been living in during the eight years, but now suddenly everyone is talking (and doing something) about it."
...and...
"There is a second layer building upon the World Wide Web. The complex system we live in is getting a lot smarter and starts to live a life of its own. We are like cells in a human body, possibly completely unaware of the system we are starting to be part of. This layer is more clever and more adapting than the underlying technical information infrastructure. What gave birth to it are several key elements:
* Juridical foundations that made it easy to share intellectual property (FLOSS, Open Content)
* Various technical foundations that enabled sharing information between networked systems (open standards)
* Standards to structure content in such a way that it’s readable by machines (XML)
* New online tribes that include sharing of information, knowledge and ideas as part of their core values (hackers, pro-ams, remixers, file swappers, bloggers and alike)
* Political movements and ideologies that support the birth of a sharing economy
* Peer-to-peer distribution of resources (Skype, Bittorrent etc.)
* New business models that make it economically viable to share information"
What value do Australian employers give to qualifications?
Authors:
Lee Ridoutt, Chris Selby Smith, Kevin Hummel, Christina Cheang
"This report is about employers and how they value and use qualifications in their business decisions. The research indicates clear differences in the value placed on and use made of qualifications by employers for different groups of workers and occupations. Qualifications are considered more important for higher-level occupations and employers use them predominantly to recruit new employees and to ensure regulatory compliance. Employers regard qualifications as a signal of potential for future learning and skills acquisition, not as a signal of immediate competence. Overall, employers drew a strong distinction between qualifications and experience, and favoured and valued the latter more in regard to many of their business decisions. The higher the level of enterprise change and innovation, the lower the level of value and use made of qualifications by employers. Also, small enterprises are more likely to be highly discriminating of qualifications and supporting development among their employees."
from Learning Circuits by Eva Kaplan-Leiserson
Implications for learning
Listening to digital audio content won’t replace reading, listening to live presentations, or the multitude of other ways learners take in information, but it can augment those methods. The following are ways that podcasting can contribute to the learning process.
Assist auditory learners
Provide another channel for material review
Assist non-native speakers
Provide feedback to learners.
Enable instructors to review training or lectures.
Replace full classroom or online sessions when content simply requires delivery.
Provide supplementary content or be part of a blended solution.
Smith, Ragan: Instructional Design, 3 e - Student Companion Site
Presentations & Illustrations: Book Figures (JPG Format)
This set of resources is organized into three sections:
1. Presentations in PowerPoint format
2. Book Figures in JPEG format
3. Other Illustrations
You can take the illustrations out of these presentations and use them in presentations of your own (but please provide source credit).
There are 20 chapter-based presentations in PowerPoint form which you can download and use or modify. Since the presentations have been developed over a long period of time, some will employ much older presentation styles than are currently possible (yet the simple ones may be the most helpful to you).
Untitled
from Douglas Rushkoff....
"The Internet's unexpected social side effect turned out to be its incontrovertible main feature. Its other functions fall by the wayside. The Internet's ability to network human beings is its very lifeblood. It fosters communication, collaboration, sharing, helpfulness, and community. When word got out, the nerdiest among us found out first. Then came those of us whose friends were nerds. Then their friends, and so on. Someone would insist he had found something you needed to know about-the way a childhood friend lets you in on a secret door leading to the basement under the junior high school."
...and...
"n spite of the many efforts to direct its chaotic, organismic energy toward the monolithic agenda of Wall Street, the Internet can't help but empower the real people whose spirit it embodies. I've mentioned only a few of the thousands of equally vital new buds blooming on the Internet today. They thrive because they promote the life of the Internet itself. They are not parasites but fruit, capable of spreading their own seeds and carrying the Internet's tendrils even further. They are the Internet.
They share the very qualities that make the Internet so compelling and valuable: transparency, participation, openness, and collaboration."
Social Machines
Social Machines
By Wade Roush talks about continuous computing
"This information field enables people to both pull information about virtually anything from anywhere, at any time, and push their own ideas and personalities back onto the Internet--without ever having to sit down at a desktop computer. Armed with nothing more than a smart phone, a modern urbanite can get the answer to almost any question; locate nearby colleagues, friends, and services; join virtual communities that form and disband rapidly around shared work and shared interests; and self-publish blog entries, photographs, audio recordings, and videos for an unlimited audience."
OMN: Mentoring and Coaching Resources
from the edna groups - is a wiki on this topic
link to website
from James Farmer "Am presenting tomorrow on podcasting in higher education, specifically how you produce better quality online teaching and learning audio material, save enormous amounts of money and be pedagogically… all at the same time :o)"
link to website
Learning Development Cycle: Bridging Learning Design and Modern Knowledge Needs
from George Siemens
"To better reflect the centrality of learners, the term "learning design" will be used in place of instructional design. Instructional design is an important component in the design of courses. Designing courses requires set steps and guidelines for instructors and learners to follow. Learning design, in contrast, is concerned with more than simply creating courses. Instead, the intent is to create the constructs within which learning will occur - networks and ecology. Creating networks and permitting learners to form their own connections is more reflective of how learning functions in real life. Informal and life-experience learning are such a significant aspect of an individual’s learning that they cannot be left to chance within organizations. Design processes need to be utilized to capture the value of alternative learning formats."
The domains of learning are linked with various theories of learning - see diagram 3 and the following paragraphs in particular.
link to pdf
summary of 2004 ncver student stats - demographics, aqf levels, participation rates etc
link to website
from Alan Levine resources for a presentation called Living at the Crossroads: EDUCAUSE IT Institute
Resources to support presentation here
One part I'd like especially to use as the basis for a workshop would be the Flickr part - see the slides in the presentation as well as the task listed in the post.
Dave Pollard "...began to realize that appreciating enterprises, organizations and systems as (mostly) complex rather than merely complicated is more than just a basis for re-framing business methodologies, it is a completely different way of sensing and dealing with the world. It changes everything. Here are just a few of the extraordinary paradigm shifts that this reframing provokes:
Complicated World VS
Complex World
Assumption of order ("research this to find out if there's a market for it"
Realization of unorder ("let's explore what might happen if we did this")
Importance of aggressiveness and charisma to "lead the change"
Importance of collaboration and humility to participate in the evolution
Actions driven by authority-based direction
Actions based on learnings from conversations, consensus and freedom to act bounded by personal responsibility
Top-down hierarchical communication and knowledge transfer
Peer-to-peer (networked) communication and knowledge transfer..."
At an Education.au seminar I came across a mention of David Snowden and his notions of social complexity and did a little hunting, then this turned up from Dave Pollard. The article includes a table contrasting a complicated world with a complex one. The Cynefin Centre can be found at http://www.cynefin.net/
From the Creating Passionate Users Blog come a few posts about learning ....
link to website
This is where so many teachers (and books) go wrong. In trying to make the learning smooth, and in a well-intentioned attempt to save the learner from having to learn the hard way, they simply tell you in advance what to do and what not to do. If there's a surprise lurking, they just tell you up front and spare you the trouble.
But they just robbed you of the chance to remember. To have that thing seared into your brain. What's worse, is that after they tell you how things really work, then they give you a lab exercise that simply demonstrates exactly what they told you. No surprises there, and your brain never really wakes up. At least not until someone really hot walks into the room. (Remember, at that point your brain is thinking... "UDP socket programming or survival of the species...")"
...and...
link to website
"...when you want them to really learn and remember something new, look HARD for opportunities where things don't work as expected. Places where something behaves counterintuitively, or radically different from something that appears (at least on the surface) similar are golden."
This foldable ipod stand could be a good solution to the cable tangle on my desk. Need to hunt out a great image/pattern for it too.
This archive of resources is drawn from member contributions, collaborations and other content developed in the Australian Flexible Learning Community between the years 2001 - 2004. The content is sorted into the following theme areas:
* Technologies for Learning:
...information on instructional technologies, applications, frameworks, systems and tools.
* Teachers, Training and Learners:
...resources about the design, development, delivery, implementation, assessment and evaluation of teaching and learning.
* Professional Development:
...tools, checklists and other resources for managing professional development.
* Managing Flexible Delivery:
...readings and resources on the management and implementation of flexible learning from an organisation-wide perspective.
* Global Perspectives:
...news, views and key resources from a national and/or international perspective.
Comment: I'd been wondering if something like this would appear.
from Laura Turner in T.H.E. Journal
also includes links to resources where skills/knowledge can be learnt.
by Barry Wellman
Connecting Community: On- and Offline
"<
.....
The Internet and other new communication technologies are facilitating a basic change the nature of community from physically fixed and bounded groups to social networks, which I have started to call “networked individualism. These technologies are helping people to personalize their own communities. Instead of being rooted in their homes, cafés, and workplaces, people are becoming connected as individuals, available for contact anywhere and at anytime. Instead of being bound up in a neighborhood community where all know all, each person is becoming an individualized switchboard, linking a unique set of ties and networks. In a society where people rarely know friends of friends, there is both more uncertainty about who will be supportive under what circumstances, more need to navigate among partial social networks, and more opportunity to access a variety of resources. The Internet provides both communication and information resources to keep in greater touch with community members – from neighbors to cousins left behind in international migrations."
link to website
from Leon Bambrick
"A master procrastinator presents the solution.
Draw up a little piece of paper like the one shown below. Start taking notes.
On the left you write in your current tasks (the tasks you're blocked with)
In the right column you etch in anything you're worried about, any fears you have, and anything that's gonna stuff up when you try to do the things in the Action list.
Start anywhere."