Eric Calvert's List: LMS, PLE, PLN

• The article argues that it is necessary to move e-learning beyond learning  management systems and engage students in an active use of the web as a resource  for their self-governed, problem-based and collaborative activities. The purpose  of the article is to discuss the potential of social software to move e-learning  beyond learning management systems.
• Further, it is argued that students' self-governed  learning processes are supported by providing students with personal tools  and engaging them in different kinds of social networks.

• Transparent and Trackable

   

  So what literacies must we educators master before we can help students make the most of these powerful potentials? It starts, as author Clay Shirky (2008) suggests, with an understanding of how transparency fosters connections and with a willingness to share our work and, to some extent, our personal lives. Sharing is the fundamental building block for building connections and networks; it may take the form of ruminations on life in a blog, photos of the latest family picnic on Flickr, or discussion notes students post to a classroom wiki for others to read and contribute to.

   

  Publishing content online not only begins the process of becoming "Googleable," it also makes us findable by others who share our passions or interests.

• Younger students need to see their teachers engaging experts in synchronous or asynchronous online conversations about content, and they need to begin to practice intelligently and appropriately sharing work with global audiences. Middle school students should be engaged in the process of cooperating and collaborating with others outside the classroom around their shared passions, just as they have seen their teachers do. And older students should be engaging in the hard work of what Shirky (2008) calls "collective action," sharing responsibility and outcomes in doing real work for real purposes for real audiences online.

   

  But to do all that, we educators must first own these technologies and be able to take advantage of these networked learning spaces. In this way, we can fully prepare students not just to be Googled well, but to be findable in good ways by people who share their passions for learning and who may well end up being lifelong teachers, mentors, or friends.

• • Karen Stephenson - bibliography search? "I store my knowledge in my friends."

• Gonzalez (2004) describes the challenges   of rapidly diminishing knowledge life:

   

   

  “One of the most persuasive factors is the shrinking   half-life of knowledge. The “half-life of knowledge” is   the time span from when knowledge is gained to when it becomes obsolete.   Half of what is known today was not known 10 years ago. The amount of   knowledge in the world has doubled in the past 10 years and is doubling   every 18 months according to the American Society of Training and Documentation   (ASTD). To combat the shrinking half-life of knowledge, organizations   have been forced to develop new methods of deploying instruction.”

• Limitations of Behaviorism, Cognitivism,   and Constructivism

   

  A central tenet of most learning theories is that learning occurs inside   a person. Even social constructivist views, which hold that learning is   a socially enacted process, promotes the principality of the individual   (and her/his physical presence – i.e. brain-based) in learning.   These theories do not address learning that occurs outside of people (i.e.   learning that is stored and manipulated by technology). They also fail   to describe how learning happens within organizations
• When knowledge is subject to   paucity, the process of assessing worthiness is assumed to be intrinsic   to learning. When knowledge is abundant, the rapid evaluation of knowledge   is important. Additional concerns arise from the rapid increase in information.   In today’s environment, action is often needed without personal   learning – that is, we need to act by drawing information outside   of our primary knowledge. The ability to synthesize and recognize connections   and patterns is a valuable skill.
• • How are learning theories impacted when knowledge is no longer acquired   in the linear manner?
   
  • What adjustments need to made with learning theories when technology   performs many of the cognitive operations previously performed by learners   (information storage and retrieval).
   
  • How can we continue to stay current in a rapidly evolving information   ecology?
• Learning, as a self-organizing process   requires that the system (personal or organizational learning systems)   “be informationally open, that is, for it to be able to classify   its own interaction with an environment, it must be able to change its   structure…” (p.4). Wiley and Edwards acknowledge the importance   of self-organization as a learning process: “Jacobs argues that   communities self-organize is a manner similar to social insects: instead   of thousands of ants crossing each other’s pheromone trails and   changing their behavior accordingly, thousands of humans pass each other   on the sidewalk and change their behavior accordingly.”. Self-organization   on a personal level is a micro-process of the larger self-organizing knowledge   constructs created within corporate or institutional environments. The   capacity to form connections between sources of information, and thereby   create useful information patterns, is required to learn in our knowledge   economy.
• Albert-László Barabási states that “nodes   always compete for connections because links represent survival in an   interconnected world” (2002, p.106).

  • Get Barabasi article.
• Learning (defined as   actionable knowledge) can reside outside of ourselves (within an organization   or a database), is focused on connecting specialized information sets,   and the connections that enable us to learn more are more important than   our current state of knowing.

• Principles of connectivism:

   
   
  • Learning and knowledge rests in diversity of opinions.
   
  • Learning is a process of connecting specialized nodes or information   sources.
   
  • Learning may reside in non-human appliances.
   
  • Capacity to know more is more critical than what is currently known
   
  • Nurturing and maintaining connections is needed to facilitate continual   learning.
   
  • Ability to see connections between fields, ideas, and concepts is   a core skill.
   
  • Currency (accurate, up-to-date knowledge) is the intent of all connectivist   learning activities.
• Choosing what to learn   and the meaning of incoming information is seen through the lens of   a shifting reality.

  • Intersection with lifelong learning and metacognition
• Knowledge that resides in a database   needs to be connected with the right people in the right context in order   to be classified as learning.

  • We have a lot of educational "data" that is not used at the level where the system interacts with the student. We have a lot of "information," relatively little "knowledge"
• “quantum theory of trust” which “explains not just how   to recognize the collective cognitive capability of an organization, but   how to cultivate and increase it”.

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• The administration of US President Barack Obama is reportedly also considering the merits of establishing a free online university. According to draft discussion documents obtained by Inside Higher Ed in June, the administration has had high level discussions about creating courses aimed at community college attendees that would be delivered online for free. According to the report, the government is considering a $50 million per year budget to “pay for (and own) courses that would be free for all, as well as setting up a system to assess learning in those courses.”

   

  “According to the draft materials from the administration, the program would support the development of 20-25 “high quality” courses a year, with a mix of high school and community college courses. Initial preference would go to “career oriented” courses. The courses would be owned by the government and would be free for anyone to take. Courses would be selected competitively, through peer review, for support. And the courses would be “modular” or “object based” such that they would be “interoperable” and could be offered with a variety of technology platforms.” — Inside Higher Ed
• OpenCourseWare doesn’t confer degrees, but it allows anyone to audit classes at some of the world’s most prestigious institutes of higher education for only the cost of bandwidth. However, because OpenCourseWare course materials are released under a Creative Commons license that essentially allows for the materials to be shared and remixed for non-commercial purposes with attribution, it’s easy to imagine that they could someday be used by institutions like the University of the People or Obama’s theoretical online community college as part of a degree granting program.
• “Knowledge is, as the economists say, a non-rival good,” wrote venture capitalist Brad Burnham in May. “If I eat an apple, you cannot also eat that same apple; but if I learn something, there is no reason you cannot also learn that thing. Information goods lend themselves to being created, distributed and consumed on the web. It is not so different from music, or classified advertising, or news.”

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• POINT 1. The PLE differs from the general usage of the LMS in that it is not course focused, but rather focuses on the learning the student is doing over the length of their learning journey. By extension it tends to allow for the student to control the way their own work is organized.

• POINT 2 – PLEs are (to me at least) the ecologies within which PLNs operate

   
• I think that this work done by Jim Groom is the most rarefied version of the PLE in Higher Education. Students are instructed to choose their own domain, find a hosting service and create their own blog space.

• POINT 3 PLEs need not be supported by educational institutions

   

• POINT 4 Ownership(personal) and Time(network) are critical impediments to implementing PLEs and PLNs in formal education. That’s not to say it isn’t possible, just that they need to be addressed.

   
• POINT 5 Putting the responsibility for reporting networked open work on students is ok as long as you give them a low and high end of the amount of work that is reasonable.

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• . Developing Personal Learning Networks for Open and Social Learning
  Alec Couros
• 9. Personal Learning Environments
   Trey Martindale & Michael Dowdy

• A 2009 Horizon Report sponsored by the New Media Consortium identifies the "personal web" as "a collection of technologies that confer the ability to reorganise, configure, and manage online content rather than just view it; but part of the personal web is the underlying idea that web content can be sorted, displayed, and even built upon according to an individual's personal needs and interests" (Four to Five Years: The Personal Web section, para. 2).
• The Networked Student Model adapts Couros' vision for teacher professional development in a format that is applicable to the K-12 student. It includes four primary categories, each with many components evident in the networked teacher version (Figure 2). 

   

    

   Figure 2: The Networked Student 

   

   These include academic social contacts, synchronous communication, information management, and really simple syndication (RSS). Social contacts include teachers, classmates, students outside of the class, and subject matter experts. Synchronous communication refers to video conferencing and instant messaging. Information management activities include locating experts, evaluating resources, accessing scholarly works, and finding other open educational resources (OER). RSS encompasses blogging, subscription readers, podcasts, wikis, social bookmarking, and other social networks. Students will not necessarily make use of every subcategory; however, this list represents the tools available to the student for constructing a personal learning environment on a specific topic of study.

• If you're new to this world, personal learning networks are created by an individual learner, specific to the learner’s needs extending relevant learning connections to like-interested people around the globe.