PLE's, networks, knowledge & me

Free tech for teachers #plenk2010

Sun, 28 Nov 2010 06:15:26 -0800

This is a clear straightforward presentation on developing a network for learning. Jargon free and without pretense. #plenk2010

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PLN made simple #plenk2010

Sat, 13 Nov 2010 21:15:00 -0800

Personal Learning Networks - the what, why and how from darren elliott on Vimeo.

Two things here The presentation comes via
21 Resources About Personal Learning Networks (PLNs)- Shelly Terrell on openzine. This is an interesting tool for sharing.
http://www.openzine.com/

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Connectivisms secret; Oxytocin? #Penk2010

Tue, 19 Oct 2010 11:51:00 -0700

Presented for your consideration

EXPERIMENT No. 3 In Which I Learn to Love by Tweeting Madly
"Zak greets me at his lab near the Claremont campus, a three-bedroom house being converted into a spacious new lab. To escape the hammering, yammering workers, he escorts me upstairs to a study where a nurse awaits. She compliments me on my veins and draws blood. Then she and Zak leave me alone. I pull up TweetDeck on my laptop and get to work. The question is simple: Will social networking increase my levels of oxytocin? Will my brain react to tweeting as it reacts to, say, a dinner conversation with good friends?" Read more

Excerpt from Fast Company, Neuroeconomist Paul Zak has discovered, for the first time, that social networking triggers the release of the generosity-trust chemical in our brains.

Social Networking Affects Brains Like Falling in Love

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Top 100 Tools for Learning 2010: Final List #plenk2010

Mon, 18 Oct 2010 21:58:00 -0700

via janeknight.typepad.com

Twitter is number one this year. It would be interesting to classify the list in terms of formal vs informal as well as large and small scale tools.

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A Plethora of Personal Learning Environment Distinctions #plenk2010

Sun, 17 Oct 2010 08:44:00 -0700

via slideshare.net

To paraphrase the Tao--The Tao that can be spoken of is not the Tao"

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The vegetarian roots of connectivism? #plenk2010

Tue, 12 Oct 2010 20:10:00 -0700

Note the analogy of plant roots and the internet. A connectivist analog?

Stefano Mancuso: The roots of plant intelligence

"Plants behave in some oddly intelligent ways: fighting predators, maximizing food opportunities ... But can we think of them as actually having a form of intelligence of their own? Italian botanist Stefano Mancuso presents intriguing evidence."

TEDGlobal 2010

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Does the Digital Classroom Enfeeble the Mind? #plenk2010

Sun, 10 Oct 2010 19:49:00 -0700

There two paragraphs from this NY Times article by Jaron Lanier sums up my attitude about "theorys" of learning.

"The deeper concern, for me, is the philosophy conveyed by a technological design. Some of the top digital designs of the moment, both in school and in the rest of life, embed the underlying message that we understand the brain and its workings. That is false. We don’t know how information is represented in the brain. We don’t know how reason is accomplished by neurons. There are some
vaguely cool ideas floating around, and we might know a lot more about these things any moment now, but at this moment, we don’t.

You could spend all day reading literature about educational technology without being reminded that this frontier of ignorance lies before us. We are tempted by the demons of commercial and professional ambition to pretend we know more than we do. This hypnotic idea of omniscience could kill the magic of teaching, because of the intimacy with which we let computers guide our brains."

I prefer to think of the theories as metaphors for learning. Much in the same
vein as Gareth Morgans work Images of Organization

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What I was up to on week 4 in a word cloud #plenk2010

Sun, 10 Oct 2010 17:57:00 -0700

Thanks to my friend Brian Remer for suggesting Tagxedo. Read Brian's wonderful ideas about words at the Firefly Group.

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Ideals and Reality of Participating in a MOOC Implications for #plenk2010 ?

Sat, 02 Oct 2010 12:47:00 -0700

The Ideals and Reality of Participating in a MOOC on Prezi

This presentation by Jenny Mackness rang true to my subjective experience in #PLENK2010

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Cyborg Anthropology: Implications for Learning and PLEs? #plenk2010

Sun, 26 Sep 2010 07:41:00 -0700

via if the video is not present click here to watch on youtube.com O'Reilly Webcast: Cyborg Anthropology: A Short Introduction August 5, 2010

This is a fascinating presentation on humans and tools co-evolving one another. Interesting that she brings up Gregory Bateson and some of the early discussions on cybernetics. The later portion delves into augmented reality with a demonstration of situated notes. These would appear (in your mobile) when you are in the vicinity of the notes geo-location--personal learning on location. #plenk2010

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A summary that helps me with my PLE struggle

Sat, 25 Sep 2010 19:28:00 -0700

via slideshare.net

I find myself in a sea of possibilities. Choosing is not my strength. It reminds me of looking for the "perfect" organizer/dayrunner. I was always sure that when I found "it" I would be organized. Didn't happen, I have to organize myself and live with the level of effort I put in. #plenk2010 I wonder about PLE's and personality types? Does a P have a very different approach than a J? From the description of these preferences and my comments can you guess my preference?

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PLE Practice and Theory #Plenk2010

Sat, 25 Sep 2010 17:27:00 -0700

Today I have been working on the design of my personal learning environment concept. More about that in a moment, but first, a story.

My wife asked me to install a network printer on her laptop today. I had forgotten how to do it. Here is how I re-learned (remembered) how to do it. I knew generally that I would be setting it up as a local printer but needed to set a tcp port. I have an airport extreme wireless router. I do remember from the last time that bonjour for windows was having problems with win 7

Step one--Look at my own installation. Didn't work (at the time I had forgotten how to look for the port)Step two--Google airport extreme ip address and find it is 10.0.1.1 also find our there is a new bonjour release that is working with win 7 and download Step three--Can't remember printer model (ask wife who remembers) Step three--get new drivers for printer. It is an older printer and win 7 does not have the drivers
Step five--Cant remember 32 or 64 bit version. Look for disk with version.
Step six--Download drivers and unzip
Step seven--Install bonjour and it finds the port and I install the drivers. (didn't work first time ran it twice and it worked)

Lesson: The personal learning environment in this tale is my memory, google, my wife, and the win 7 disk. Had I been more intentional about PLE's perhaps this would have gone more smoothly. Now for my PLE concept framework

Personal-Learning Environment

Domains of Learning, (work, personal curiosity, citizenship, how-to)
Depth of Learning (conversant, can do, create)
My personal style of learning (I plan to use personality type INFP)
Networks of support
Tools and technology for
- Aggregation
- Filtering and "curation" I am thinking in terms of narration and visualization
- Finding things again

So there you have it. Practice and theory. Let's see how far I get in applying the theory. I have the CMAPP software for the next step of diagramming the list above #plenck2010

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Struggling with my PLE Concept Map #Plenk2010

Thu, 23 Sep 2010 20:16:54 -0700

The story so far...

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Very Personal Learning Networks #plenk2010

Wed, 22 Sep 2010 21:09:00 -0700

The Movie Lorenzo's Oil is a tale of a debilitating and so far uncurable disease. It is also the story of parents struggling with the medical and research establishment for treatment innovations.

From Wikipedia's plot synopsis. " setting up camp in medical libraries, reviewing animal experiments, badgering researchers, questioning top doctors all over the world, and even organizing an international symposium about the disease...they persisted until they finally hit upon a therapy involving adding a certain kind of oil..."

Clearly a case of personal learning shaking up the established ways.

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PLE as Pied-à-terre

Tue, 21 Sep 2010 20:26:07 -0700

My picture of the cave painting as a learning environment has me thinking about PLEs in other times and places. Driving to work yesterday I heard this story on NPR. It caused me to think about alternate ideas of a personal learning environment and the importance of the physical world that supports learning. What is your physical learning environment like? How does it support your learning? My own is pretty mobile, have netbook will travel, but I do tend to settle in a comfy chair. How is your physical world reflected in your PLE? #plenk2010

Roald Dahl: The Story Of The 'Storyteller'
"Author Roald Dahl is best known for his children's books: "James and the Giant Peach," "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" and "The Fantastic Mr. Fox."

"Dahl as a kind of childlike person who wrote his books at a weird little hovel that he called a writing hut" ..."he set up the hut largely to give himself a little private space where he could indulge his love of fantasy and absolutely escape from reality. I think that's really what the hut was about....It was a very weird place. He did surround himself with a bunch of very strange objects, including bits and pieces of his own body that had been removed in operations."
See a picture of the hut

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PLE for Learning to be a Leader

Mon, 20 Sep 2010 09:49:00 -0700

Can Twitter make you a better leader?
Via SmartBrief on Leadership: "Social media can help you grow as a leader by exposing you to other leadership ideas, by helping you improve communication skills and by allowing you to get instant feedback on your ideas." The article gives a very practical example of a personal learning environment in use TerryStarbucker.com #plenk2010

By the way, SmartBrief was mentioned by Robin Good in his article on Real time News Curation (Sep 7, 2010 )

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PLENK2010 First Week

Fri, 17 Sep 2010 21:22:00 -0700

Like a sword that cuts, but cannot cut itself;

Like an eye that sees, but cannot see itself.

#PLENK2010 is much like the hundred acre woods here are many things to see but it is hard to find the way. The week has two major themes for me:

The underlying philosophy of learning both for a massive open online course and PLEs. I sum it up as enacting an ecology for increasing possibilities for action. all knowing is doing (Maturana & Varela, 1992) The course discussion forum "Ecología del conocimiento y del aprendizaje" provided both insight and inspiration for my current thinking. In addition there is a reference in the discussion to George Siemens book Knowing Knowing. I gave the book a quick scan and plan to dive in soon.

On the know how side, today I discovered several practical answers to how to go about seeing up a personal learning environment for me thanks to the great work of Chris P Jobling, his use of yahoo pipes and netvibes.com was exactly what I was seeking in terms of a toolset to support a personal learning environment

Next week, I start creating my personal learning dashboard for plenk and attempt to apply it to one other topic. I also plan to outline a very brief history of ecologies for learning.

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The world henceforth will be run by synthesizers #plenk2010

Thu, 16 Sep 2010 20:23:00 -0700

Thought of the day, seen at the #lrnchat session this evening.

We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom. The world henceforth will be run by synthesizers, people able to put together the right information at the right time, think critically about it, and make important choices wisely.

E. O. Wilson

Prehistory of Personal Learning environments--Hunting 101

#PLENK2010

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PLE as subset of PLN | Graphic @catspyjamasnz #plenk2010

Thu, 16 Sep 2010 09:55:00 -0700

via flickr.com

Some rights reserved by catspyjamasnz

I think this visual provides useful summary of the personal learning environment and personal learning network relationships. Nicely done in pleasing colors. I think the whole could be called an ecology for learning. #plenk2010 I am ready to move on with some "how to's". I came to "simplify" and so far I have not made much progress on that goal.

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Real-Time News Curation, Newsmastering And Newsradars (implications for a PLE?) #plenk2010

Wed, 15 Sep 2010 21:05:00 -0700

via masternewmedia.org

This slide presentation is a good summary of a great article, The first of a six part series.
Link

In Part 1 - Why We Need I
In Part 2 - Aggregation Is Not Curation
In Part 3 - Types of Curation and Real World Examples
In Part 4 - How To Do It
In Part 5 - The Real-Time News Curation Tools Universe
In Part 6 - The Future

Stephen Downes is mentioned in the article as well. I think the word knowledge could be substituted for "news" and you have a down to earth methodology to approach a personal learning environment.Robin's other observation is

Curation is the new role of media professionals.

"Separating the wheat from the chaff, assigning editorial weight, and -- most importantly - giving folks who don't want to spend their lives looking for an editorial needle in a haystack a high-quality collection of content that is contextual and coherent. It's what we always expected from our media, and now they've got the tools to do it better."

If we substitute knowledge for news this strikes me as the role of an educational community such as #plenck2010.

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