Organizers

While RSS is still a dying technology, I offer some insight into its innards. If the mundane details of feed data make you queasy, carry on. If you want to know what’s going on under the hood of your blog and the Connected Courses syndication hub, then trudge on. This started with a reasonable request from Liz Dorland, a colleague I’ve known since my mullet headed days at Maricopa @cogdog Our friend @rheyden pointed out my blog link on #ccourses borked. URL text shows, not blog name. Doh! Help! http://t.co/LFFRT4Ai26 — Liz Dorland=Chimera (@ldinstl_chimera) September 9, 2014 So here is the thing, the list of all syndicated blogs on the site is automatically generated from the RSS feed for each blog, so the title of the blog and the link are ones provided by the blog itself. There are two main parts of an RSS feed- there is the “Channel” […]

Should teaching/learning be this fun? Heck yeah. Yesterday, my blog brothers Jim “Click” Groom and Howard “Embed” Rheingold launched the first live session for Connected Courses and open connected course about teaching open connected courses (see recursion). The first two week segment we, the Connected Brothers, are running is the “Pre-course” meant to onboard people, to have them set up their blog space and connect it to the course hub, but mainly to have them just start connecting. And they have- the twitter channel is lively, and we have as of right now, 104 blogs connected in. I have to say, this round of getting the blog signup pumped into Feed WordPress is getting a much higher success rate than my earlier efforts. It still takes some manual banging on the pipes, but its going smoothly. Of course all the known kids are snortling about the way grandpa syndicates, but […]

Image by Suus Wansink

When a cohort of learners, who may or may not meet face to face, move through the same material on the same schedule — their blogging and commenting offers individual learners opportunities to learn more about the material by reflecting publicly about what the material means to the them. There are lots of ways to do this. I like (and have adapted) Gardner Campbell’s “nuggets” assignment for course-bloggers who aren’t sure where to begin with reflection. (And when I looked for a good example of a blogging nugget that exemplifies public reflective learning, of course I immediately came across “As we may nugget.”)

Image by AnanthBS

Reflecting on material is a path to understanding by an individual learner, but when a group of learners reflect in public, they provide a rich field for conversations about the material. Debates. Conjectures. Contrapositives. Analysis. Conversations can lead to co-learning, when other elements combine to influence groups of learners to be co-responsible for each other’s learning. And co-learning over time can grow into learning communities. 

Image by Lili Olivares

The best courses, from small face-to-face seminars to massive online cohorts, come to life when groups of learners come to know and trust each other enough to co-learn. I have some expertise in a particular aspect of our mutual interest to offer. Others provide to me kinds of expertise that I don’t have. When I know what would interest you, I send it your way. In 1987, I wrote almost exactly the same thing as I’m saying now: 

If, in my  wanderings through information space, l come across items that don’t interest me but which I  know one of my group of online friends appreciate, I send the appropriate friend a pointer to the key datum or discussion. This social contract requires one to give something, and enables one to receive something.  I have to keep my friends in mind and send them pointers instead of throwing my informational  discards into the virtual scrap-heap. It doesn’t take a great deal of energy to do that, since I have to sift that information anyway in order to find the knowledge I seek for my own purposes. And with twenty other people who have an eye out for my interests while they explore sectors of the information space that I normally wouldn’t frequent, I find that the help I receive far outweighs 
the energy I expend helping others: A perfect fit of altruism and self-interest.

I can see now that in my 1987 description of what I now recognize as co-learning communities, I left out one of the essential elements — not just exchanging and gifting bits of information, but striving to make sense of the material together. That’s what I try to encourage my students to do, and it’s been a way of life for me nearly thirty years.

Image by Suus Wansink

When a cohort of learners, who may or may not meet face to face, move through the same material on the same schedule, their blogging and commenting offer individual learners opportunities to learn more about the material by thinking aloud about what the material means to the them. There are lots of ways to do this. I like (and have adapted) Gardner Campbell’s “nuggets” assignment for course-bloggers who aren’t sure where to begin with reflection. (And when I looked for a good example of a blogging nugget that exemplifies public reflective learning, of course I immediately came across “As we may nugget.”)

Image by AnanthBS

Reflecting on material is a path to understanding by an individual learner, but when a group of learners reflect in public, they provide a rich field for conversations about the material. Debates. Conjectures. Contrapositives. Analysis. Conversations can lead to co-learning, when other elements — trust, shared purpose, lead learners, skilled facilitation, serendipity — combine to influence groups of learners to be co-responsible for each other’s learning. And co-learning over time can grow into learning communities. 

Image by Lili Olivares

Whether it is a small face-to-face seminars to  a massive online cohorts, a class comes to life when groups of learners come to know and trust each other enough to co-learn. I have some expertise in a particular aspect of our mutual interest to offer. Others provide to me kinds of expertise that I don’t have. When I know what would interest you, I send it your way. In 1987, I wrote almost exactly the same thing as I’m saying now: 

If, in my  wanderings through information space, l come across items that don’t interest me but which I  know one of my group of online friends appreciate, I send the appropriate friend a pointer to the key datum or discussion. This social contract requires one to give something, and enables one to receive something.  I have to keep my friends in mind and send them pointers instead of throwing my informational  discards into the virtual scrap-heap. It doesn’t take a great deal of energy to do that, since I have to sift that information anyway in order to find the knowledge I seek for my own purposes. And with twenty other people who have an eye out for my interests while they explore sectors of the information space that I normally wouldn’t frequent, I find that the help I receive far outweighs 
the energy I expend helping others: A perfect fit of altruism and self-interest.

I can see now that in my 1987 description of what I now recognize as co-learning communities, I left out one of the essential elements — not just exchanging and gifting bits of information, but striving to make sense of the material together. That’s what I try to encourage my students to do, and it’s been a way of life for me nearly thirty years.

Next week we start the “pre-course” for Connected Courses, which means that Jim Groom and Alan Levine (the masters) and I (the apprentice), are going to help course participants through the whys and hows of blogging for this course. As I will discuss when I facilitate the Co-learning segment, I’m along to learn as well as help teach, and one of the things I’ve learned is that fun is integral to the design of a course like this. Alan Levine didn’t think our syllabus page looked like fun, and when he and Jim and I discussed what we were going to do, the idea came up of doing a Hangout on Air as a “Blog Talk,” where “Click,” “Embed,” and “Link” could respond to questions posed via the #ccourses hashtag on Twitter — like the public radio program “Car Talk”  and its unserious mechanics “Click and Clack.” Alan immediately whipped up a graphic. I was motivated to hunt for an animated GIF for the syllabus page for the Co-learning unit, and to figure out and debug how to post it on a WordPress page.

Just a quick post here to reference what I posted on the Connected Courses site as part of the “pre-course” unit September 2 to 14 I am co-doing with Jim Groom and Howard Rheingold. This is the equivalent of what we used to do in ds106 as “Boot Camp” (probably a metaphor not useful worldwide) as a chance for people to get settled in the blog they will use, experiment with some customizations, and hone their blog style. What I posted on Connected Courses is rooted in the ds106 How to Write Up Your Assignments Like a Blog Champ (in which I remix myself)– and is now live on the site at http://connectedcourses.net/blogging-like-a-champion/. It covers what I find is important– and is open to additions, rejections, rotten tomatoes– the importance of a good title, using hyperlinks (you know, what makes this thing a web), writing blog posts that stand on […]

creative commons licensed ( BY-NC-ND ) flickr photo shared by Pensiero You can fuss about your mentions, follower counts, book sales, klout scores, all of that is bubkahs to me in lieu of what the internet has and does afford me in enabling genuine connectivity with likable people I would never have gotten to know otherwise. This bubbled up the cranium following a series of wonderful twitter direct messages with Maha Bali, she a thoughtful educator in Cairo, Egypt and me a typo prone blogger in Strawberry, Arizona. Part of our exchange was a bit of wondering how we establish these affinities quickly with colleagues we’ve never met. Someone (drats I cannot find it) recently tweeted something about not trusting someone or considering them experts solely from their twitter messages. Well, no, but we do not work from single sources of information. The *way* people tweet, who they tweet to […]

I’m quite pleased to point you to a new online learning experience being put together by a group of amazing educators from the Connected Learning community. Starting September 15th we’re going to be talking about openness and blended learning in a 12 week course that aims to help people run their own connected courses. It’s meta! I love meta. The coursework will help you understand how we work in the digital space by demystifying the tools and trade of openness. We’ll explore why you might run a Connectivist learning experience, how to get started, how to connect online and offline participants, and how to MAKE things that support this kind of learning. We’ll talk about building networks, maintaining networks, diversifying networks and living and working in a connected space. We’ll learn together, share ideas and start making action plans for our own connected courses. You might understand, based on the above, why I’m excited about this. For the past couple of years I’ve been learning how to run connected courses, and I’ve been looking to people like the organizers of Connected Courses for advice, best practices and support. I’ve learned so much about how open online learning can activate and inspire people, and I’ve spent loads of time trying to understand the hows and whys in order to make Webmaker’s #TeachTheWeb program a sustainable engine of learning and support for our community. This course aims to simplify many of the trials and tribulations I’ve had organizing in this educational space, so that anyone can run these experiences and join in on open culture. Everyone is welcome and no experience is required. The first unit starts on September 15th, but you can sign up now and find more details about the topics we'll be exploring at http://connectedcourses.org See you there!

creative commons licensed ( BY-NC-ND ) flickr photo shared by One Tree Hill Studios This is part 5 of 5 in a series of posts for Building Connected Courses: Feed WordPress 101 Basic Concepts of Syndication – and what to think about even before you touch that WordPress thing Installing and Setting up Feed WordPress – Minimal settings, and planning the way content is sliced, diced, and recombined Feeding the Machine – How to get RSS feeds into the aggregator without losing a finger Some Feed Magic – Optional ways to improve feeds from sites such as flickr, twitter, etc, creating a twitter archive, RSS Feed TLC »» A Few More Tricks «« – leveraging categories, adding attribution, setting featured images Feed WordPress is a plugin, but itself has it’s own suite of plugins to extend it’s functionality- a plugin with plugins? Yes. I will be reviewing a few of […]

creative commons licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by pasukaru76 This is part 4 of 5 in a series of posts for Building Connected Courses: Feed WordPress 101 Basic Concepts of Syndication – and what to think about even before you touch that WordPress thing Installing and Setting up Feed WordPress – Minimal settings, and planning the way content is sliced, diced, and recombined Feeding the Machine – How to get RSS feeds into the aggregator without losing a finger »» Some Feed Magic «« Optional ways to improve feeds from sites such as flickr, twitter, etc, creating a twitter archive, RSS Feed TLC A Few More Tricks – leveraging categories, adding attribution, setting featured images The previous posts in this series covered setting up Feed WordPress and getting mostly blog feeds into a syndication site. But you are certainly not limited to blogs, you can add anything to […]