… First Followers at #converge11 – sharing with #change11…

Here’s what I learned over the past two days of conferencing networking and workshopping…

ConVerge11

ConVerge is a Victorian state based Innovation Showcase and Conference that has been running for 9 years or so to celebrate and acknowledge the work of the new tribes of ‘first followers’. This term was a new one I heard during Nancy White’s session on the ups and downs, or was that upside down.

Here’s my take on that inspiring keynote:

social reporting in sketches

AND

social reporting from another perspective

• disruption and disjunction leads us to more engaging education and innovative access to knowledg
• AHA moments need to be increased to maintain momentum
• unlearning things can help us become competent
• do more with less – the BCF modeol – Better, Cheaper, Faster
• do the RE: thing for refreshing elearning: re-examine current learning practices; reframe your perceptions; re-ignite your passions; re-define your changes
• drop the ‘e’
• ensure portability, accessibility
• build in process not bolt on
• ensure e-learner e-skills competencies
• use a learner centred approach – seek skills needs, device needs, location preferences and provide alternatives eg workshop, induction, online, content, communication and self-directed learning
• biggest threat is relevance – ensure you have that with interactivity
• avoid the COO – chief obstruction officer (busy building bigger firewalls)
• LMS is dead, viva la revolution, move beyond
• avoid the Moodle templates from hell
• remember that social learning is what people do together, not what you make them do
• use google tools for clarity, sanity and objectivity
• the future is in the convergence in the cloud
• success factors: student friendly content; scaffolded teacher support; integrated testing
• simplify and amplify
• navigate to educate

Great to see so many of the early adopters bringing along their first followers – we have a new beginning!

Much of the above may not be new but we are now seeing these things through the lens of others to bring in a new perspective.

VIVA LA REVOLUTION

Note: if you wanna be in with the crowd – gotta have an iPad or iPhone and Tweet – for popular back channelling at live conferences.

Reflective writing posted in HootCourse as an Essay – goes directly to your blog. Now that’s cool.

#change11 – Tweets to Hoots!

I believe we all agree that it is both fashionable and educational to keep up-to-date with trends in social networking using our favourite tools. Then we end up with several places to visit online and leave our digital trail. For a new person to e-learning this can be confusing and distracting. We need a way of including micro-blogging and social networking and reflective practice in a blog – all in the one place. There is a gap between social networking and learning spaces. We need to ‘go where the students are’ – Twitter, Facebook and Blogs.

This week I’ve been exploring how well HootCourse can fill this gap.

My new ‘one place’ (googlesite) is being developed as a portal for an e-skills program and I have embedded the Hootcourse code directly onto the home page. (Note: this site is currently under construction – more news on that soon.)

Participants in the e-skills program will be able to send ‘hoots’ (140 character messages with the #eskillsmooc hashtag automatically built in) directly to both Twitter and Facebook from a panel on the googlesite.

Digging a little deeper into this beta version of http://HootCourse.com I discover that the user can also choose to send a post to their designated blog page using the Essay tool rather than the Tweet tool. Now the potential for this clever HootCourse service is really filling the gap. Participants will be able to send their reflections on their e-skills learning directly to a Bloggger, WordPress or other blog site directly from the e-skills googlesite – a true one stop shop!

This posting was constructed in HootCourse and automatically posted to my blog. No image input tool yet, but enables formatting and linking. The title area of the posting doubles as a status update that goes directly to Facebook.

Still working out how to get it to display in Twitter – but I’m impressed so far!

Oh, and by the way you can set up additional HootCourses which are displayed in your dashboard as well as create RSS feeds directly from the courses.

This little tool is helping me change the way I think about developing massive and mini open online courses!

 

 

#change11 Listening to Nancy #socialartist

It’s Saturday and I have had time to visit the recording of Nancy White’s stimulating, inspiring and artistic session for #change11, generously moderated by Dave Cormier and George Siemens. I was inspired!

Giving myself the entire hour to listen, absorb, observe, notate and think whilst Nancy provided one of her ‘outlier’ sessions. This is what I did!

I got my trusty portable white board and propped it beside my desk and as I listened I began to take notes as a ‘social reporter’ giving due attention to the ‘drawing’ style that Nancy herself recommended for the many real time participants in the Blackboard Collaborate virtual room. The picture you see above is the result of my ‘scribing and drawing’ for that hour (oh well sure I was able to pause and check for understanding,  and it might have taken me an hour and a half).

Inspiration point 1:  read again this engaging book by the author of the Tipping Point and Blink.

You’ll note that at the point early in the piece where someone described Nancy as an ‘exceptional outlier’ I was able to just reach to my bookshelf and take down my own copy of ‘Outliers: the story of success by Malcolm Gladwell’.

If you click on the image and read it from left to right you’ll get my perception of this session on ‘change and what it means to you’ through my lens and aided by some creative thinking on the board. You will notice some of the QUOTES and discussion pieces that leapt off the whiteboard and chat space for me. For example this one from  @suifaijonmak – ‘the more I listen to various networkers the more I want to know and share’, and these from @brainysmurf – ‘MOOCs = tremendous self-controlled learning’, and ‘managing the ‘chaos’ is part of the self-control in a MOOC’.

Then there were some right off the whiteboard itself where they had been scribed by participants. For example: ‘change leads to divergent thinking’ and ‘love the silence to ponder the What just happened? or What was said’. Words of wisdom and expressions of passion for change were demonstrated throughout the session and Nancy ‘facilitated’ with ease enabling a ‘whole group collaboration’ on the topic that was meaningful and engaging. This type of ‘brain stretching’ and ‘chaos causing’ with disruptive learning is what helps me to stay focussed.

I aim to be a better SOCIAL REPORTER in my reflections and a better SOCIAL ARTIST in my networking.

You’ll notice I also picked my copy of ‘Digital Habitats’ right off the shelf when I saw a reference to the book co-authored by Nancy, Etienne Wenger and John D.Smith.

Inspiration point 2: re-read Chapter 12 on Learning Agenda to stretch my notion of community and what it is to be a technology steward.

Inspiration point 3: I also took note of the URL provided in the CHAT and will be taking a closer look at Etienne Wenger’s new work by reading the blogs of David Wilcox on Social Reporting. and watching this video.

So by listening to Nancy I end up listening and learning from David around a ‘new to me’ concept of ‘social reporting’ – and unpacking it for how to do that well for my communities.

… and now for a closeup of that whiteboard for Nancy ….