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creative commons licensed (BY-NC) flickr photo by mrkrndvs: http://flickr.com/photos/aaron_davis/14425906657It is only a few weeks until the inaugural DLTV conference. +Steve Brophy and I will be presenting a session on listening to other voi...

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Over the past few years, together with comments at the Work, Interaction & Technology Research Centre (Christian Heath and Helena Webb) at KCL, Will Gibson at the Institute of Education and the optometrists Bruce Evans, David Thomson and Peter Allen I worked on research and knowledge exchange projects exploring the practical work of optometrists and developing communications training material. some of the …

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creative commons licensed (BY-NC) flickr photo by mrkrndvs: http://flickr.com/photos/aaron_davis/14421694749

I recently wrote a post wondering whether you have to be a radical in order to be a connected educator? In response, +Eric Jensen directed me to Tom Sherrington's post 'Signals and Noises in the EduSphere'. In it Sherrington discusses the counter-productive nature of disruptive noise when it comes to communicating online. I tried to post a comment on the blog, but it produced an error, so I decided to simply elaborate my thoughts here instead ...

In his post, Sherrington postulates that the mode of communication that we choose affects the depth of understanding that we achieve. In a 'high quality exchange' we are able to build upon ideas by finding common ground which includes challenging and refining our own opinions. In contrast to this, a 'low quality exchange' involves ideas losing their meaning as they are not given time or lack any sense of context. One of the keys, according to Sherrington, to creating a signal and not just more noise are relationships and remembering the people behind the ideas. He ends his piece with the suggestion, "When I disagree with someone or review their work, I’ll imagine sitting in front of them, face to face, before I express (broadcast) my views." This is some great advice and says a lot about connecting online.

Sherrington's musings reminded me of a post I wrote a few months back in response to +Peter Skillen's wondering as to whether the modern phenomena of perpetuating 'one-liners' was actually detrimental to productive change? At the time, I thought that there were many benefits to Twitter, such as coherently summing up the main idea, curating a digital identity, engaging with aphorisms and perpetuating a hope for a better world. However, I am becoming more and more pessimistic about such prospects. I still see a place for Twitter as a means for communication and I still feel that many of my arguments still stand true to some degree. I am sceptical though about the benefits of getting every teacher on Twitter, as +Mark Barnes recently posed. I think that this misses the point to a degree.

Twitter is most effective when it is built around and in addition to communities and relationships that already exist. Fine you can form relationships within Twitter, but as both Sherrington and Skillen point out, the medium is restrictive. I believe teachers should grow their own PLN, a point I have made elsewhere. Too often though, people constitute following 1000 excellent educators as developing a meaningful community. It is what we do with those people, how we interact, the stories that connect us, which make a community.

I was recently going through old +Ed Tech Crew episodes. In a 2011 interview, +Doug Belshaw explained that he limits the people he follows on Twitter to 150. He calls it a 'convenient hypocrisy'. Interestingly, he has since reneged on this, instead now choosing to use lists to split between those people who he is open to engage with and those who he activily engages with, never missing a single thing. 

Belshaw's suggestion was a godsend for me as I was really struggling to maintain any sort of personal connection on Twitter. In my early days it was ok, I only had a few followers and could keep my finger on the pulse, but as my feed steadily grew, so did my disconnect with my communitie(s). Instead, Twitter was becoming more akin to a river in which I would dip in and dip out out of. Since Belshaw's suggestion, I have used lists and I actually feel like I am a part of the community again, because I am able to connect with those who are truly important to me. I still have my normal feed, which I dip into, but I also have my own list which I scan through every now and again. I have found using lists is particularly important when it comes to connecting across time zones.

After reading Sherrington's post, I am realising more and more the power of professional relationships in turning our ideas into signals, rather than just adding to the clatter of noise. I am just wondering what tips and tricks you use when sustaining relationships online? Is it about time? Or does one medium help more than another? Have you managed to develop meaningful relationships simply within Twitter? Please share, would love to know.

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Recent legislative plans to overhaul education came in two forms: jumbo and bite-sized. Senate Democrats presented a 785-pages-long bill to reauthorize the Higher Education Act, while a House committee, equal parts … Continue reading →

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This fall, I will be offering a new course on Advanced Urban Infrastructure Planning (UAP 5854G) with Yehyun (Hannah) An. The course description is provided below. The course can be counted as an elective for the Graduate Certificate in Global Planning and International Development Studies. Description: Urban infrastructure systems play a critical role in facilitating economic development and raising […]

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How to run a great company....http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/06/business/at-zingermans-pastrami-and-partnership-to-go.htmlWhat really motivates peoplehttp://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/06/opinion/sunday/the-secret-of-effective-motivation.htmlAnd, why are w...

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Image via Twitter Lately my daughter has moved on from watching Dora the Explorer and Peppa Pig, to partaking of various kids films. Starting with Frozen, she has since moved to the various Disney princess films. Having initially seen them al...

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creative commons licensed (BY-NC) flickr photo by mrkrndvs: http://flickr.com/photos/aaron_davis/14557280205 

I have been reflecting quite a bit lately on what I see as the importance of making online connections with other educators and developing dialogues to continue the conversation about education. Some of the push back that I have gotten is about who those teachers are that I am actually connecting with and what agenda is really being pushed? The question that it has me wondering is whether being a connected educator automatically equals being radical? If not, then where is the middle ground or is there something else going on that is being missed?

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

There is something about social media as a medium which lends itself to extremes. Take Twitter for example, often it is a case of the loudest statements that seem to stand out the most. Too often though this noise equates to latching ourselves to the latest panacea to all of education woes. In the process many fall in the trap of dispelling of the bathwater. Like Orwell's Two Minutes Hate, no matter what our intentions may be, what efforts we make to include all voices, what aspirations we have to openness, it seems that time and time again our attitudes are moved to the side and replaced with the radical, which has become almost cliched. A prime example of this are the various Twitter chats, a point +Starr Sackstein recently made. Her argument is that they seem to be churning out the the recycled conversations week in week out.

In an interview with Charles Arthur, Jack Davis spoke about his experiences as a hacktivist with Lulzsec. He told how the deeper he got into the web the louder and more extreme the voices became. The voices were not necessarily about adding any value back to a community, but simply about standing out and being heard. 

Although the world portrayed by Davis a contrast to many of the educational environments online, there is still something to be learnt from Davis' experiences. For the one similarity is that so often it is the loudest, boldest and strongest voices that stand out and stand tall. In many respects, it seems to take more effort to actually be mundane and, ironically, being more mundane and seemingly ordinary doesn't often get you heard. Maybe then the challenge is digging deeper, going beyond the hype, the radicalism and start there.

Finding Common Ground

In a post reflecting on the purpose behind his blog, +Peter DeWitt reminisced on attempts to find some sort of common ground. DeWitt spoke about the emotions often attached to discussions associated with any discussion of education. The problem with this is that such emotions often lead to a lot of noise, but not a lot of listening. As he states, "people fight with others without really listening to what they are trying to say. They base opinions on hearsay and someone else's opinions." The answer according the DeWitt is to build consensus with those who we agree with and find a point of agreement with those who we don't.

What stood out to me in DeWitt's post was that the foundation to listening and respond was having a clear understanding about non-negotiables in regards to education. For DeWitt, the two areas in need of changes are high-stakes testing and having evaluation attached to them. 

I would argue therefore that before we find common ground we need to develop a better idea about what matters the most to each and everyone of us. A point that I touched upon in regards to my post on pedagogical cocktails and education dreams. +Peter Skillen, in a post looking at the roadblocks to change, suggests that school leaders can do is supporting teachers as they ‘construct their own knowledge and practice’. Being clear on our own values and practises helps us be clear about what it is we are actually arguing about.

Tribal Voices

At the start of the year a furore erupted around a piece published by Johanna O'Farrell. For O'Farrell, the education system was broken, but not in the usual manner. Instead of arguing for radical reform as people like +Will Richardson call for, O'Farrell was coming from the perspective of the radical conservatives. According to her we have lapsed when it comes to the basic of literacy and numeracy. Instead of focusing on spelling and timetables, we have placed too much focus on inquiry and technology. My issue with O'Farrell was not her arguments so much, but the manner in which she went about it. She killed the conversation.

The various responses to O'Farrell highlighted an interesting condition. For our initial response to such situations is to identify with a particular idea or perspective and form our tribes. The problem is that unlike Seth Godin's call to find something worth changing, often such situations become lost in a war of noise, with the boldest and loudest standing out. The reality is that, as +Dan Donahoo suggested at ICTEV13 Conference, authentic change involves engaging with a range of voices and differing ideas, that it takes a village. This was no a village, but a mass of warring tribes ready to inflict damage on each other. There was no common ground provided by either side.

I believe that in some respect the problem is not necessarily with the idea, radical or not, or our tendency to form tribes with like minded people. I feel that the big problem is our mindset. Being willing to enter into a dialogue about education requires a belief that although you may have a set of core values, you are willing to compromise in order to evolve the conversations. 

The best thing that we can do then, in my view, is to constantly review what it is that we believe in and why we believe it. In an interview with the +Ed Tech Crew Podcast, +Dan Donahoo makes the suggestion of following the thoughts and ideas of not only those who we agree with, but more importantly, those who we don't agree with. Doing this not only helps solidify what it is we truly stand for, but also gives us a wider perspective on things. For surely online communities should be about finding your own way as best you can, not about digging trenches and raising arms.

Engagement not Provocation

Another perspective on the problem of the radical was covered in a recent episode of Radio National's Future Tense program focussing on the power of provocation. The message presented was that provocation does not work any more, well definitely not the way it used to. Whereas in the past there were less voices and not so much advertising, the change in society and media means that the focus moved from consumption to engagement. Instead of just making noise to be noticed, it is argued that we need to provide something that has the power to ignite a conversation. Such engagement though does not just come through identifying a good idea, but also presenting it in creative manner.

The big problem that we face is that such engagement in the modern world is easier said than done. Returning to social media, it is often stated that our attention associated with such mediums is only seconds. Therefore, some take to using big and bold statements with a hint of hyperbole to gain attention, while others resort to a cycle of posting and reposting, attaching their ideas to as many different causes through the use of various forums and hashhags. The problem with either of these approaches is that such actions actually risk disengaging the audiences that you are trying to engage.

+Alec Couros highlighted this problem in a response to Biosgraphy, a social network revolving around storytelling. They had set out on a campaign to spruik their new product by sending the same tweet to different users, therefore filling up the feed and gaining some sort of traction. On pulling them up on this approach, the company responded to Couros with a series of personal attacks.



What the situation highlights is what Malcolm Gladwell identifies in his book David and Goliath, as the the inverted U-shaped curse. Gladwell discusses the negatives associated with either ends of the extremes. At some point you either don't publish your links enough, therefore no one even knows you are out there, or you go to the point of spamming and people don't even want to know you are there. Often it is presumed that sharing out links and continuing the conversation is always a good thing. However, at some point it can become too much of a good thing. The effort and intention to connect and engage in this situation has the opposite effect.

The reality is that connecting is not about volume or frequency, it is about chance and relationship. I am sure that there are many great ideas that go unread, that are not shared very much or which just don't garner traction with a wider audience. However, sometimes the sharing of ideas is about connecting with the community. As +John Spencer suggested in a recent post, "For me, blogging has been more like a community of friends. It’s been where I find rest and wrestle with ideas and interact with a community that challenges me."

Sometimes if an idea doesn't take it isn't so much about the idea, it is about the community. If we don't build relationships, then in reality, who is going to relate to us. It was interesting that +Bill Ferriter recently reflected on disconnecting from social media in order to properly connect at ISTE14. Maybe this says something, that at its heart connecting with a PLN is about opening a dialogue and to do that you need a relationship. 

Therefore in the end, if there is no community to belong to, no tribe to unite with, then maybe this is where people need to start, otherwise it will only ever be the noisy radicals that will stand out in the crowd. So the question needs to be asked, who are you connecting with that challenges your thinking? And what relationships are you building online?

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Originally posted on Art Museum Teaching:
Submitted by Alex Freeman, Director of Special Projects, New Media Consortium The New Media Consortium’s upcoming Future of Museums Symposium will bring together a collaborative global conversation around issues of technology, museums, and the future. This free, online Virtual Symposium will be held on Wednesday, July 23rd, 2014, and will feature keynote speakers…

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Some might be interested in Symbolic Interactionism, the journal Symbolic Interaction and the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction. You’ll find the respective blogs here: Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction Symbolic Interaction (Journal) Symbolic Interaction and Music  

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I’ve been thinking about “voice” lately – how you can’t fake it and you can’t find it when you don’t care about the thing you are writing. I’ve read a lot of student papers through the years that have no voice, or they have just bare glimmers of it, tiny voices scratching through dead writing, […]

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Dear friends like I write in my blog in previous year, your comments and feed-back is welcome.    I rediscover last year more than 100 edtools , ipad apps using #iste13 hastag  http://bitly.com/iste13edtools but now  when is  organized #iste2014 I @LucianeCurator will launch in 1 august #startupeuchat (a chat for european startup tools and ipad apps ) organized weekly, 1 hour,  friday from 7 p.m to 8 p.m  Bucharest time and I will share here in my blog Top 100 startupEU tools every mounth  like you can see down of this page . In my previous post here  http://bitly.com/iste2014byLucianeCurator I describe #iste2014. 
#iste2014 #edchat #ukedchat If you are based in EU,a #startup #edtool or #ipad app join every friday #startupeuchat pic.twitter.com/0qORxJoIxD
— LucianeCurator (@LucianeCurator) June 27, 2014
  Since 4 years now, a revolution has been taking place in software development when 1st Ipad by Apple was relased on 3 april 2010 and since then this mobile device evolve and now are more than 1 Milion apps in Apple store, most of them are free and for this reason every day this mounth I will share in my blog Top 10 ipad apps in all of kind of categories . With iPad in Education , your classroom materials go way beyond the classroom. Discover over 65,000 apps just for education, interactive books on every subject, and speeches, virtual tours, and videos from experts and institutions around the world. Extending of mobile devices in Europe presents an opportunity for those concerned with education to explore their potential for mobile learning – learning facilitated by mobile technologies ( Learning in hand )– to enhance education. This highlights a missed opportunity for educators and policymakers, as mobile telephones – especially windows phones, iphones, ipads, smartphones, – can be equally powerful learning tools that are significantly less expensive than other devices like laptops and tablets, promoting BYOD ( bring your own device ). According to a September 2013 report from Gartner, over 102 billion apps were downloaded worldwide in 2013; 90% of those apps free. Simple but useful apps have found their way into almost every form of human endeavour, and a popular app can see millions of downloads in a very short time. The huge market for apps has spawned a flood of creativity that is instantly apparent in the extensive collections available in the app stores. Online app marketplaces provide an easy and highly efficient way to deliver software that reduces distribution and marketing costs significantly. Mobile apps are particularly useful for learning as they enable people to learn and experience new concepts wherever they are, often across multiple devices. People everywhere, but especially in Europe, increasingly expect to be constantly connected to the Internet and the rich tapestry of knowledge it contains wherever they go. According to the 2013 “ICT Facts and Figures” report, Europe enjoys the highest Internet penetration rate in the world (75%). The mobile penetration rate in Europe is at 1.26, meaning most Europeans carry more than one mobile device — 30% higher than the global rate, and multiple studies document that when people access the Internet they are most likely to do so with their personal device. London-based research firm CONTEXT reported that in the first half of 2013, tablet sales increased by 137% across Europe, with the Central and East European region one of the strongest growing markets worldwide. The unprecedented evolution of these devices and the apps that run on them has opened the door to myriad uses for education. Learning institutions all over the world are adopting apps into their curricula and modifying websites, educational materials, resources, and tools so they are optimised for mobile devices. The significance for teaching and learning is that these devices have the potential to facilitate almost any educational experience, allowing learners to organise virtual video meetings with peers all over the world, use specialised software and tools, and collaborate on shared documents or projects in the cloud, among many other things. In contrast to how mobile devices are used for learning, traditional ICT-based learning seems oddly place-bound.
What notebook ipad app I should add to the list ?

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Dear friends like I write in my blog in previous year, your comments and feed-back is welcome.    I rediscover last year more than 100 edtools , ipad apps using #iste13 hastag  http://bitly.com/iste13edtools but now  when is  organized #iste2014 I @LucianeCurator is social media manager in https://twitter.com/euneoscourses
  Since 4 years now, a revolution has been taking place in software development when 1st Ipad by Apple was relased on 3 april 2010 and since then this mobile device evolve and now are more than 1 Milion apps in Apple store, most of them are free and for this reason every day this mounth I will share in my blog Top 10 ipad apps in all of kind of categories . With iPad in Education , your classroom materials go way beyond the classroom. Discover over 65,000 apps just for education, interactive books on every subject, and speeches, virtual tours, and videos from experts and institutions around the world. Extending of mobile devices in Europe presents an opportunity for those concerned with education to explore their potential for mobile learning – learning facilitated by mobile technologies ( Learning in hand )– to enhance education. This highlights a missed opportunity for educators and policymakers, as mobile telephones – especially windows phones, iphones, ipads, smartphones, – can be equally powerful learning tools that are significantly less expensive than other devices like laptops and tablets, promoting BYOD ( bring your own device ). According to a September 2013 report from Gartner, over 102 billion apps were downloaded worldwide in 2013; 90% of those apps free. Simple but useful apps have found their way into almost every form of human endeavour, and a popular app can see millions of downloads in a very short time. The huge market for apps has spawned a flood of creativity that is instantly apparent in the extensive collections available in the app stores. Online app marketplaces provide an easy and highly efficient way to deliver software that reduces distribution and marketing costs significantly. Mobile apps are particularly useful for learning as they enable people to learn and experience new concepts wherever they are, often across multiple devices. People everywhere, but especially in Europe, increasingly expect to be constantly connected to the Internet and the rich tapestry of knowledge it contains wherever they go. According to the 2013 “ICT Facts and Figures” report, Europe enjoys the highest Internet penetration rate in the world (75%). The mobile penetration rate in Europe is at 1.26, meaning most Europeans carry more than one mobile device — 30% higher than the global rate, and multiple studies document that when people access the Internet they are most likely to do so with their personal device. London-based research firm CONTEXT reported that in the first half of 2013, tablet sales increased by 137% across Europe, with the Central and East European region one of the strongest growing markets worldwide. The unprecedented evolution of these devices and the apps that run on them has opened the door to myriad uses for education. Learning institutions all over the world are adopting apps into their curricula and modifying websites, educational materials, resources, and tools so they are optimised for mobile devices. The significance for teaching and learning is that these devices have the potential to facilitate almost any educational experience, allowing learners to organise virtual video meetings with peers all over the world, use specialised software and tools, and collaborate on shared documents or projects in the cloud, among many other things. In contrast to how mobile devices are used for learning, traditional ICT-based learning seems oddly place-bound.
What notebook ipad app I should add to the list ?

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It is the fourth week of the VCU thought vectors cMOOC, and the focus continues but with greater emphasis: create and curate ultra-rich learning environments. This is the concept I wish to focus on today particularly as it relates to faculty learning in communities of practice. Last week I wrote identified two emerging characteristics of […]

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When asked ‘what is the difference between #rhizo14 and other MOOCs’, I’m reminded of the community. A phrase that has been used for the ‘course’ is “the community is the curriculum”. Some rhizoers don’t necessarily feel like what we have is community, but I certainly do. Two weeks ago, I was diagnosed with breast cancer…

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