I never knew there was so much choice!
Monthly Archives: May 2008
Summary – ‘Building a collaborative workplace’
SUMMARY NOTES of the key concepts in: ‘Building a collaborative workplace’ – Callahan, Schenk and White |
New environment for innovation and getting things done:
- no lone pursuits
- need collaboration
- changing skills so seek people with these skills
But:
- Collaboration skills don’t tend to be taught – on the job or hit and miss.
- Organisational culture will determine how collaboration is supported.
- Many companies but ‘collaboration’ software they are not using well
“Technology makes things possible; people collaborating makes it happen” Continue reading
Musings: Web2.0 includes???? (May#7)
So what prompted these musings? There is a school I work with in Sydney, St John Bosco College, that runs a wonderful day for their Year 11 students and I came across something in their booklet that make me think.
First, I run a study skills session with the group. Then they break into smaller groups for the school’s GROW program (Glossary Research Organised Writing) where they work on writing styles, identifying key terms, marking criteria, supporting evidence, using scaffolds for writing, and advanced research skills. It is a really impressive program and takes into account the sort of navigation literacy skills that students need.
While waiting Year 11 to arrive, I was flicking through their booklet and came across a section ‘How Web 2.0 Savvy are you’. I quickly jotted down a few points to see whether I was savvy as the Year 11 students:
- Am I comfortable using the Internet. Yes.
- Do I have a web page. Yes.
- Do I read blogs. Yes.
- Do I write a blog. Yes.
- Do I have a Myspace etc page. No. Doh!
- Do I use YouTube. Yes.
- Do I use podcasts/vodcasts. Yes.
- Do I subscribe to RSS Feeds. Yes.
- Do I use Flickr or similar. Yes.
- Do I read/write wikis. Yes.
So I felt pretty good about how I would compare to a web savvy student. Mind you, 6 months ago prior to this subject for uni I would have only been able to answer yes to 3 of these!
But I started thinking – what else should be on this list? What else do we expect a Web 2.0 afficiado to be comfortable with? Continue reading
Musings: Bloggings CEOS (May#6)
What prompted these musings? Hearing a discussion on ABC Radio that prompted me to visit this blog: http://blogs.sun.com/jonathan/
Jonathan Schwartz is chief executive officer and president of Sun Microsystems. And he keeps a blog in his role as president of Sun.
He writes about all sorts of topics and everyone from employees to the general public can comment on his posts. What a fantastic way for a big org to be more accessible and what a fabulous marketing opportunity. How many companies can you go direct to the CEO? I found the comments more interesting than the posts in some ways although it was interesting that after skimming a few you start to get a feel for what this man is like.
Another interesting application for blogging.
Musings: SuperGeek to the rescue! (May#5)
What prompted these musings? Wondering how I was going to get the CD-ROM drive on my laptop fixed without being parted with from it for days on end, then seeing a SuperGeek van – we come to you and fix computer problems and thinking, why not?
Anyway, so the guy arrives on time (great start) and proceeds to fix not only the CD-ROM drive but lots of other fiddly things that had been bothering me but that you wouldn’t take to a repair centre to fix – I figured I had to pay for the hour, may as well use it all! Was great value for a hundred bucks.
But it was a short conversation with the guy that inspired this blog.
Me: ‘Gee, they must have to give you heaps of training to do this job cause everyone expects you to be able to fix every possible software and hardware problem.”
Him: “Nah they can’t really train you for this”.
He then proceeded to solve all my various problems, not through knowledge acquired in a series of training courses, but through jumping online, google searches, checking forums etc etc until he found a suggested solution he could try. It was quite incredible to watch. It was a perfect example of why teaching our students navigation literacy is so important. The important knowledge he possessed was knowing what to look for and how to look for it.
PS. Now after listening to ABC Radio this morning talking about how unscrupulous bloggers are paid to promote people, products and companies I just have to say I have absolutely NO alliances etc with SuperGeek other than being a satisfied customer!
Musings: You’ll never look at text the same way (May#4)
What prompted these musings? A great video provided by a classmate Debra.[kml_flashembed movie=”http://www.youtube.com/v/6gmP4nk0EOE” width=”425″ height=”350″ wmode=”transparent” align=”center”/]
We need a fundamental shift in the way we approach text. We are used to thinking of text and literacy from a one-dimensional perspective but now we need to start looking at text as a multi-dimensional tool. Until we embrace this perspective, our use of web-based technologies will go the same way as other technologies like our digital cameras, our dvd hard drives and our mobile phones – most of us know how to use the basic functions but never bother to explore the depth of functionality that is available. While it is not that big a deal if we don’t know all the functions on our digital cameras, it will be a real shame if we as educators turn our backs on the power of this developing medium of Web 2.0.
Musings: Computers putting on airs? (May#3)
What prompted these musings? Reading a chapter about ‘affective computing’ and no, it is not about computers who are showing affectations….
Yet another new term! Hershey (2006) defines ‘affective computing’ as computing that relates to, arises from or deliberately influences emotions – basically it is researching about emotion in computers.
One of my classmates John, will be pleased to know I have discovered in this reading even more new terms: ‘perezhivanie’. Vygotsky (1994) found that the development of a child depends on the way the child experiences a situation in the environment, ie. how it relates emotionally to a certain event and coined this as perezhivanie.
The idea is that we know now that emotion and motivation strongly affect learning. So wouldn’t it make sense that we design the technology to react to the emotion of the students? Researchers in artificial intelligence have looked at ways to customize educational systems to the affective states of students.
For this to work, Piccard (1997) postulates that first the system has to be able to recognize the emotions of the student – are they disappointed, do they need encouragement, have they given up? Second the system must be able to express emotion and usually to make this more realistic the system is represented by a lifelike character (called animated pedagogical agents: check out http://www.isi.edu/isd/ADE/ade-body.html) . So where to from here? Continue reading
Musings: Technology – a cure for dementia? (May#2)
What prompted these musings? A discussion with my mother as I drove her from Newcastle to come to Sydney for the weekend for mother’s day celebrations.
I recently attended a seminar by Dr Martin Westwood, aka ‘the brain man’ who spoke about how when mice were exposed to a stimulating environment the symptoms of a neurological disorder were dramatically reduced.
My grandmother suffered from Alzheimer’s. My mother is concerned she too may one day develop symptoms (even now if she has been forgetful she will sign her emails from ‘Al’). But really, their mental lives could not be more different and much of that is due in a large part to technology.
So where do the differences lie? Continue reading
Reflection #3 on Wenger – Who’s driving?
“One can design systems of accountability and policies…..but one cannot design the practices that will emerge…One can design roles, but one cannot design identities that will be constructed through these roles. One can design visions, but one cannot design the allegiance necessary to align energy behind those visions….One can design work processes, but not work practices; one can design a curriculum but not learning.” Pp. 229, Communities of practice, Wenger, 1999. |
As we begin the process of designing a learning community in our group, re-reading this passage in Wenger was initially a bit discouraging. It seems there is only so much we can do to design an effective learning community, we have to accept that the community will start to take on a life of its own and determine its own direction. On reflection, I actually found this concept empowering. What we are doing is creating a vehicle for learning, but then handing over the navigation and driving to those who started off as the passengers. It our role as designers to then be responsive and reactive to the needs of the community and to provide the necessary frameworks as needs and wants emerge.
Musings: How did you get here? (May#1)
What prompted these musings? A surprising result on the cluster map on the bottom left hand side of the page.
When I added a cluster map to the bottom of the page, I wasn’t really expecting to see any other dots apart from that of classmates in the e-learning course and maybe a few other Australians who arrived here via my study skills site.
But blow me down with a feather there are dots from countries all over the world! I’d love to know how these people ended up on my blog. What were they looking for? What did they enter into the search engine? How far down was I on the list of links? How many links did they follow to end up here? Was it useful at all?
So if you have ended up on this page, I’d love to hear your story!
PS. The picture has absolutely nothing to do with this blog post. I just thought it was cute.
PPS. If anyone knows how to make the cluster map actually display properly let me know!
Reflection #2 on Wenger – Learning transforming identities
“…because all learning eventually gains its significance in the type of person we become.” Pp. 226, Communities of practice, Wenger, 1999. |
One thing about learning is that you will never know when things you learn become useful later in life. When I was living in Singapore in the mid nineties, my employed paid a web design company (there wasn’t a lot of choice then) to design their site. It was expensive and inadequate. I bought a book ‘html for dummies’ and said I’ll make the site for $1000. And I did! And then I taught Primary school students how to code in html and they made web pages showing all the Australian lollies they were missing in Singapore with scanned images of the wrapper papers.
At the time (oh how naïve) I thought I am never going to use this skill again. In the end it has turned out to be one of the most important skills I have developed. Wenger is right, eventually, all learning gains significance through the skills we develop and how that transforms as us a person and our ability to participate and negotiate meaning.
This unassuming skill has certainly transformed my life and my identity in many ways I did not expect 13 years ago!
SIGNPOST to Assessment 1 Part 2 (EMT1)
SIGNPOST FOR ANNE TO ASSESSMENT TASK
Main challenges with this task:
- not getting dragged into spending hours in the community
- trying to keep the technical details to a minimum
- again trying to reduce what I had written to the word limit!
Although I entered this community for this assignment, it is a community that I will stay a part of as it has been pretty useful.