Paddy Fahrni

Hello all!
Activity 1:
Alas, according to Personas, I am a bland person with wide swathes of 'education' and 'online' and a narrow pinch of 'social'. That may be because my active participation on the Internet falls into work and research areas - I may be the last person in Canada to refrain from Facebook. I shared the tool with a friend who is asking her teenager daughter to use it to check if her many online personae are colouring her online identity in ways that may surprise her....The tool is interesting to use as such an awareness check.
And yes, it counts my online 'sharing' events and interprets it into an 'identity' for my name. However, the Persona identity only slightly represents my human identity(for lack of a better term): it includes any person of that name (as is the case for Bronwyn, a Swiss doctor with the same name adds 'medicine' to my identity); and it covers only one of the several forms of my name I use online.
Trish - how do you define 'digital identity', and what effect or relationship does digital identity have to human identity ?

Activity 2:
The Leadbeater statement "We are what we share" is presented as our current condition, contrasted with our former condition of "We are what we own". I'm not sure I understand or agree with this - seems simplistic.
I have yet to read the Friesen references, but look forward to sorting this all out in the weeks ahead.
Bye for now,
Paddy Fahrni

Hello Sylvia et al,
Just late joining. Very interested in this discussion but am afraid I'll be mostly following as most of my experience is in more informal contexts. Really interesting references so far - thanks everyone!
Paddy Fahrni

Hi Janet -
The 2004 article is here, and Yikes! I guess this not the first time this has happened for you, but the ref was actually Gillian Salmon ( Salmon, G. (2002). Five-step model of teaching and learning online. Retrieved November 27, 2003)
Must pay more attention to detail! I guess this is an example of something that happens online but wouldn't happen F2F.
Look forward to learning more about your work,
Paddy

Thanks, Deirdre. Yes, J.Salmon's 5 stages of collaboration are well-used. I remember using them for a 2004 article on online-collaboration, too.
Currently, I've found myself referring to S.Downes 4 conditions of network quality: autonomy; diversity; openness; and interaction/connectivity. (I heard this at an Australian Council seminar March 31 of this year - must be in a paper by now.)
Nellie asked us what conditions are necessary for successful collaboration - I'd say Downes' conditions inform this question. Some of my research showed practices that sustained an informal adult learning group were:
Valuing and eliciting group members' personal experience and knowledge;
Practicing "spaciousness" - unhurried listening and reflective participation;
Creating an informal and supportive culture of participation;
Growing trust through collaborative interaction;
Regularly clarifying and reiterating group goals;
Developing and using critical feedback mechanisms;
Using ethical practice;
Creating and applying criteria for relevant and credible information.
Whew!!!
Do these practices apply to formal education context as well?
Thanks,
Patricia

Hello Gladys and all,
Collaboration and teamwork is never a waste of time for me. Collaboration potentially brings richness through diverse viewpoints, a variety of skills and strengths, and exposure to new triggers and possibilities. You can see I'm a total convert - have been for some time. However, I recently had an interesting experience which makes me think that the word "collaboration" has become a buzzword that is not always - um - fully understood.
I started a project that was to be/ was called a collaborative project, but ended up being a people-working-on-their-own and throwing-things-together-at-the-end project. I though how much better the thing would have been if there was a clear understanding by all parties at outset what collaboration entails. This is likely the responsibility of the project lead - to make clear expectations re communication, openness, extent of boundaries, etc. There has been a lot of research done on the collaborative process - surely there exists accessible "guidelines" that could be used in various contexts.

Look forward to the course, although have some time constraints,
Paddy Fahrni