Therese Weel

I've been hovering on the periphery of this discussion as I tend to do. 

Thank you Peter, for laying out for us your knowledge of badges and their current use in education. Enjoying your blog as well - http://criticaltechnology.blogspot.ca/  

The mozilla badges are a bit cumbersome for wide adoption. Something along the lines of the recent linkedin peer endorsements might be a more  practical way forward.   Endorsing someone is easy, and as long as the system is not abused, helpful. 

 Badges, certificates and medals are fine in moderation.  If they are helpful in your situation - great.  A little validation can do wonders  --> https://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=CA&v=Cbk980jV7Ao

Bron Stukey's  project referencing the Hero's Journey got me thinking.  I recall Joseph Campbell  speaking somewhere about how we should endeavor to stand in our own truth and not justify ourselves or seek approval. Ironically I didn't find this particular quote on google - think it was in the Bill Moyers interview.  I did find some other seniments of his and overall, they didn't give the impression of him being a badge kinda guy. 

“If you can see your path laid out in front of you step by step, you know it’s not your path. Your own path you make with every step you take. That’s why it’s your path.” 

"No one in the world was ever you before, with your particular gifts and abilities and possibilities. It’s a shame to waste those by doing what someone else has done."

“Is the system going to flatten you out and deny you your humanity, or are you going to be able to make use of the system to the attainment of human purposes?”

Once again thank you for the opportunity to take a look at this idea more closely. 

So, I was thinking of James Burke and his BBC series Connections. I can hear his velvety voice tracing the evolution of sharing stories around the campfire to the modern day "MOOC".

It's my hope that "MOOC's" become an evolutionary dead end.

I was disappointed with CCK08.  I remember my eyes aching from reading a barrage of angry posts about whether George Siemens' Connectivism idea was a learning theory. The energy of the place was loud and obnoxious. To add to the joy, my user profile was screen snagged by someone and added to flicker.

I don't blame the hosts for the behavior of the students. Although, I didn't see much in the way of moderation. It was chaotic and unwieldy.

If it represented a "real" course it would be a first year lecture hall experience, with no lecturer.  Picture it.

• People are "engaged"  in a clamour of social chatter.
• Paper balls are being hurled around the room.
• The garbage is piling up and starting to stink.
• A couple of ideological thugs start mixing it up in the hallway.
• Some opportunists hijack the A/V system and begin to prostheletize their myopic crap to the dumb masses.  
• And finally, the administrators of this post secondary sausage factory, silently watch via CCTV and do not intervene.

No thank you.  

Things did improve with change11 and the move to an online conference model. I could focus my time and attention on the sessions that were of interest to me. The live midweek sessions were small enough to interact a little with other participants.

It was a conference - not a course and not very different from the thousands of online conferences underway right now.

Regular attendees (ie people from the community) stepped up to provide human commentary, evangelical services and critiques.

And so we are nearly back to communities with crowd sourced seminars.

How about that?

We are nearly back to  Bologna - before the tail started wagging the dog.

I'll stop here ...

I was thinking along the lines of the world of warcraft definition

Do you find these questions helpful for documenting your experiences? 

I'll answer that one.  The answer is no. 

This is not the first time I've had trouble answering these sorts of  questions.   I followed the #change11 sessions last year and volunteered to participate in the survey.  I honestly could not answer their questions either because they were not relevant to my experience.  It not that I  need help with the big words.  The questioner assumed I was some sort of "professional educator" with a defined objective that I hoped to achieve.

To me scope is a  guild meeting, geek fair and  pioneer school rolled into one .    I like it that way.  It feels more like a natural , albeit technologically enabled- social activity than a course. It  is a place where kind people gather  to learn how we can encourage meaningful dialogue in an online setting.   

For it to work, there needs to be a human-ness about the place, which you Sylvia, as the community manager, cultivate very nicely. It is through your example and the experience of participating in an online seminar  that we realize  there are subtle nuances at play here.   

While we can articulate our understanding of holding online conversations to some degree, experience is still the best teacher. 

Therese

Thanks for this Eva

I've read the article in english - the google translation is reasonably understandable. 

I hadn't come across Kruse before, his video gave me a new way of looking what our online contributions say about us.  Kruse is charismatic, a communicator. He explains complex ideas simply. I appreciate that.

In the blog post Martin Lindner characterizes Kruse's events as a dog and pony show for the uninformed. Using phrases like the `Church of Kruse' and `Professor Silver Tongue`.  He calls Kruse a brilliant performer but Linder is an aspiring politico and media star in his own right.

http://www.martin-lindner.de/Medien-Archiv/13109b3333/index.html

Name calling and chest puffing aside, Linder's main argument is that Kruse may have an outdated or overly simplistic view of the limbic system. I wouldn't know. I appreciate him pointing that out. 

Since he doesn't elaborate, I look to wikipedia, which for my purposes and despite it's faults, does indeed mention that our generally accepted ideas of the limbic system are evolving.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Limbic_system

This thread probably belongs in the CCK11 course as it exemplifies, the challenge I have as an individual to sift through information for the purpose of drawing a reasonably accurate and useful conclusion. Much better accomplished I think, with polite suggestions and thoughtful replies.

Once again thanks for providing an alternative view.