Derek Chirnside

Just a few days left until this seminar draws to an end.  Out official title was this:


I think we have teased out a few issues.

• Tools.  (pageflakes, evernote, delicious, netvibes, google docs)
  
• The P in PLE and morphing into PWLE (Ron, your article was quite important here - thanks)
  
• The attitudes.  A pervasive theme. . . .
  I think we are agreed here . . .  :-)
  
• Providing for the tools and attitudes in schools and businesses
  Not sure if we have got this clear.
  
• teaching and PLE's
  See Bron's summary: From Re: teacher presence and PLE summary by bronwynh on Sunday, 17 June 2007 3:18:00 p.m.:
  It looks like overall that people see the PLE as a self-directed learning tool which works best when shared with others so we get the advantages of social interaction and comment. So the teacher is probably not vital but could contribute to the learning experience for the PLE user.
• Assessment eg Emma - From Re: learning in isolation by emmadw on Monday, 18 June 2007 6:48:00 a.m.:
  but students should be able to identify those sections that are for assessment - or, better, use what they have learnt in their learning to create the artefact for assessment.

Some of these ideas are pretty scattered over the forum.  I'll not attempt a summary, Sylvia asked me about the future of the wiki, I'm not really sure.  There are actually some better summaries and wikis out there.
I actually don't feel  like I've quite been present as a facilitator as much as I could have, I've been trying to process a few things.
There is great stuff here, but it may remain here.  Unless anyone wants to compile some of these themes??

The first is the attitudes.  Because of a workshop next week, I've revisited Nancy White's Seven Competencies for Online interaction.  Which has actually now become 8)
Here are a few at random (and I mean really random) from the 18 points on Bev Tarynors Phonesis. A few random highlighted bits . . .

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1. People think that going online will solve their problems, but you get online and it's not that easy. Among other things you are bridging literacies, bridging belief systems and bridging languages.

2. Interacting online involves thinking/moving laterally not hierarchically. <snip>

3. We have to be able to read a hell of a lot more; we need to be able to scan and see patterns.

6. Interaction is emergent and multi-contextual.

7. We have to be able to write. And we have to be writers, beyond words including images, music etc.

9. An important competence is to be unknowing. <snip>

10. Blogging is going to increase our online competencies - it will change the way we articulate our ideas.

12. The power and importance of the lurker.

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(This would be a fun topic to talk over, but a digression here - you get the idea)  This is actually a big ask for many people.  In some respects, this is the 'problem' with managing a PLE (however we define these) in an age of hugely scattered identity.  I had this sudden insight last year


I was having trouble with facilitating the use of web 2.0 tools.  I was a bit slow I guess: I now think this was partly because the attitudes and the thinking habits were NOT present.  Like Sally in Peanuts said: "How can I do New maths (Web 2.0) with and Old maths (Web 1.0) mind".  I did some videoing of teachers explaining things in 1999.  They'd miss out a critical step because they just 'assumed' it as being so obvious.  eg.  delicious.  How do you explain tagging?

I've been surprised so few of you posted on your own use of PLE.  We have Ron, Ray and Michelle's contributions and some fragments elsewhere.  Derek's been ill, but he did send this as a suggestion for a ending:

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From Derek W: From by dwenmoth on Wednesday, 20 June 2007 3:13:00 p.m.:

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So onto my second thought: research on PLE's in people
I decided to do some anecdotal research this week. Putting  a PLE lens on, as I wandered around my day job I tried to find out what I could.  The news is NOT good.  Random contacts:

1. Placing a job advert with student job search: "Oh, no I haven't done it.  I asked if I could fax it in, but they said no, I had to create a user account and fill in a form.  Too much trouble, these things never work for me"
2. "I lost my password" (Why didn't you just click on the lost password link?) "Oh I thought it was easier to wait until xx came to visit and to get her to help me"
3. Several people described how they have dabbled (delicious, netvibes etc) and lost passwords, and described their passwords as a mess.  Password management/account management is a big issue.
   
4. "Oh yeah, I'm supposed to be using delicious for xxx project" (As a result of this call, 9 people and I meet for a show and tell of delicious in 60 minutes)
5. ""Why didn't you just click on the 'tour' link.  It's there at the top of the screen." (Oh, so that's what a tour is?!!)
6. 4.00pm.  Panic call.  "I only just got xxx's e-mail to put the brochures in the courier and I've missed the deadline"
7. "No, I don't read blogs - full of crap"
8. "No, why should I blog?  If I take three hours to find an article, why should I tell someone else about it?  Literature reviews take a lot of time you know"
9. "No, we do not need a threaded forum for our dept website.  No-one in this university uses forums" (Oh?  You have talked to all 1134 staff and all 11,000 odd students?)
10. "I could not ever think of a situation where I would use computers in the seminar room.  I bring my lap top in if I want to use the data projector"
11. "There are two pages of spam in the wiki.  You need to clean them up now"
12. "I've signed off all my lists.  I was just getting too many e-mails"
13. "What is an (e-mail) filter?"
14. "Yeah, my kids use bebo.  What's it all about?"
15. "Dad I need your memory stick to take this to school - I can't burn a CD.  The machines have no CD drive".  (And gmail is blocked, the students have no e-mail . . .)

So I guess it's little by little.  If you have somehow missed out on the basics - like attitudes to e-mail (skim/scan, knowing when to go deeper), awareness of filtering (yes, it removes clutter), and passwords (adopt a habit and stick to it, learn to get them if you loose them etc) just to take one little trio, you can be quite unable to move onto some of the other nice things about web 2.0 etc.  True with some students, some workers . .

Sketchy, no-scientific survey no doubt, and I'm sure oyu have a lot of similar stories.

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Well, we have a couple of days to follow up on anything you want here. . .  bring closure for now - read the tags you have posted for follow up . .  or just smile and move on to USE your PLE's . . .

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And, starting Monday . . . (no doubt Sylvia will send a reminder)

Linda, thanks, I think so.  Merolee is a friend of mine, and will host conversation at efest, a national e-learning conference here next week.
(Conversations are not quite a workshop and definitely NOT a lecture . . .   )

You say 'their own learning     . . .  '.  is it working?? - are teachers seeing the potential for their own learning?  [Or will they become one of the many that teach blogging, use blogs with their classes and don't blog!!]

-Derek

I'm sorry Nancy, I'll come back to this.  Here's me falling into the trap I've not liked and trying to avoid: that of the quibbles over definitions.
Watch this space.
I probably will not change my mind, but I can qualify it.

-Derek

This is from Merolee Penman at Otago Polytech:
From the TALO list

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Hello all
I know how productive TALO can be.....I'm hoping that I can now be helped!

With Leigh's help at Otago Polytechnic, I've been working with a group of occupational therapists to develop their skills in using Web 2.0 tools.  My plan is that over time we will increase not only the presence of our profession on the Web, but that therapists will start to see the potential of using Web 2.0 tools as the means by which they can have their learning needs met.. Ie instead of siginig up to go to a conference, they would request from their manager the same amount of time to use the web to build their knowledge about a particular area of OT practice.

On Monday I'm presenting an elearning conference and I want to make this statement but I'd love to know if its true or not.......

Most educators exploring the use of Web 2.0 tools for student learning do so within an undergraduate or postgraduate course at the tertiary level or with the classroom K-12.  Few are considering how Web 2.0 tools can aid in a professional working full-time to have their learning needs met.  Is this right?

I see examples of this in individuals - ie creating their own personal learning environment - that is open to the world to view - eg Konrad is an example.... but is anyone working with any professional group anywhere as I am??????  I think its happening in teacher professional development - but specific examples would be good.

So.. just to be clear - I don't need examples of how people are teaching students who are learning to be teachers, or doctors or chefs or whatever to use web 2.0 tools in specific educational programmes - this is about professionals in their every day work learning the value of say blogging, just as they have learnt the value of say conferences....

Oh... and thats the other bit I get confused about - is it Web 2.0 tools or what is the phrase I can use after web 2.0.

Many thanks in hopeful anticipation..

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Any others to add to the list below??
Any comments?
I'll tell Merolee this post is here . . .

Ray: http://blog.simslearningconnections.com/?p=17
Michelle
Ron
Derek
Tony

Sorry to do this in two parts, someone came in and said restart browser now.

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<cont>But this is not a PLE
It's an institutionally provided receptacle for certain conversations in written/digital form.  But the company recognises that this is not the real knowledge - the real knowledge is in people.  It's just that the company provides the place for certain interactions to occur.
There is some distinction here between Personal KM and Corporate KM.
Maybe like a Personal LE and a Corporate LE.
And I know some will spit at this very idea. 

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I just have not got my mind around it in a general sense.  Ray links to some blog posts here -  From Re: Welcome . . . by rsims on Thursday, 7 June 2007 6:48:00 p.m.: I may take that 'challenge' to map PKM and PLE distinctions on. I've posted something there in response, but it is a little muddly.

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Back to this engineering company: they provide help and (dare I use the word) training in using other tools.  I'm not sure exactly what, but it has included google docs, and may have included delicious.  It has certainly included managing e-mails, folders, organisation or files.

I'm now thinking aloud a bit here.  What the university provides (eg where I work) does need some walls.  I think.  Some learners need to get rid of a few of their fears and preconceptions.  It's a strongly held view by some students I have interviewed . . . they don't want to have their shakey first steps out there for all to see.  They need some boundaries within which they are free.  I think this is reality - For a different reason, businesses need walls of some kind as well, with some stuff behind the password.

Glen has joked a bit recently: "Lets set up an LMS with two things: a drop box for receiving assignments and a notice board for dishing them out" and everything else - do it yourself".  (Blogs, wikis etc etc)  Probably wouldn't work.  Many people are not ready yet.


Businesses - in my ideal world - would inherit people who have been students where this PLE attitude has been grown and nurtured.  Won't happen for many students right now.
Businesses need therefore to nurture attitudes themselves.  Informal learning, lifelong learning, there is a whole industry out there.  Michelle's romantic view: The beauty of the personal learning concept for me is that it creates a construct for people to navigate through their own learning landscape I think has a lot going for it.

So how do we do this?  What does the business world need to provide?  How is the business world different to education?

I have thoughts for a part three, but I must go.