Flexknowlogy – Jared Stein's ARCHIVED blog – update to jaredstein.org » Defining "Creepy Treehouse" x28’s new Blog » Blog Archive » #PLENK2010 Growing knowledge with PIM. If you are a definition person, you might insist that knowledge management can be discussed only after defining knowledge, because this is what must be managed to warrant the term, otherwise it might be called only information management. I think that not every usage of a term like knowledge or information needs to refer to the same concept, and I would argue that: managing/ dealing with/ traversing pieces of information might well be called knowledge management because it generates or grows knowledge.
Navigating, or traversing information nodes like websites or desktop folders, discovering links and creating shortcuts, is a great way to create or strengthen conceptual connections. However, I don’t duck out of the inevitable D-I-K (-W) definition started in the forums. Here is an old answer that does not yet account for connectivist relatedness patterns. Today, I would also put more emphasis on the diverging usages of the term “knowledge”, in particular. SHARING THE KNOWLEDGE, #PLENK2010. The online discussion yesterday in #PLENK2010 was very interesting contemplating the nature of data, information, knowledge and the relationship between these concepts.
It was new territory for me, and it was a mind-stretching experience. I'm sorry to be missing tomorrow's online session with Harold Jarche, but I'm off to a local conference for the next two days where I will be attempting to share what knowledge I have acquired about PLEs over the past two months. I'll have to catch up on the recording later--that place where I always think I will have more time than now.
When I originally submitted a conference proposal with a colleague, much earlier in the year, that would examine PLEs in relation to ESL/TESL teaching and learning, I must admit my view of the topic was rather circumscribed. With this course, my view has widenend, but in many respects, it's still difficult to grasp, and the ideas are difficult to put into a format for easy presentation. Stephen Downes: Deinstitutionalizing Education. While a great deal of virtual ink has been spilled over the need to reform our schools and universities, I think we need to question how we manage education altogether. For it is manifest that the institution, the form in which we have managed education and society in general, has ultimately come to failure.
The Harvard Business Review blog recently ran an interesting post directly applicable to this discussion. While Bruce Nussbaum runs through a number of reasons why people are losing faith in corporations in the United States, I think his list has a wider applicability to institutions in general, including not only corporations, but also governmental agencies, including schools and universities. 1.
Outsourcing -- the column takes an American perspective, but the phenomenon is experienced globally. Nussbaum writes, "The truth is that most U.S. corporations chased cheap labor to boost their profits over this period... The trend is the same across the board. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. Rethinking Assessment « Pedablogy: Musings on the Art & Craft of Teaching. Our school is engaging in a major effort to revamp and improve institutional assessment.
Like many schools, we have been “doing” assessment for about 15 years. Or I should say, we’ve been going through the motions. Assessment was viewed as a necessary response to an external mandate from the State (we are a public institution) and from our accrediting body. But few academic units took assessment very seriously. In general, we did some minimal assessment, then filed the results away without thinking much about them. Real assessment requires careful thought about the findings to guide changes in our actions to improve our programs, something we haven’t done. And why not? Assessment appears threatening to many faculty. Do all academics teach at Lake Wobegon U? Admittedly, excellent teaching is only one input towards student learning. A first step in our new initiative is to develop a vision for our goal of creating a “culture of assessment.” Questions I’m no Longer Asking. I strive to strike a reasonable balance between reading blogs, books, and peer-reviewed articles.
Different topics flair up in popularity (such as web 2.0 and now social media) and then fade. A few concepts have longevity such as “how effective is technology enhanced learning when contrasted with traditional classrooms?”. Questions like this are boring. And unanswerable given the tremendous number of variables involved in teaching online and in classrooms. I’m firmly convinced of the following: 1. Obviously there are numerous questions that need to be addressed in terms of social/relational impact of technology, how individuals connect and create information with participative tools, and so on. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. Which questions are you no longer asking about the role of technology in learning? PLE Links. #PLENK2010 The Tyranny of Teaching Content. November 1, 2010 by jennymackness A few days ago I made a post about the place of content in teaching and learning, which prompted this response from Chris Jobling - As a lecturer looking to be released from ‘the tyranny of delivering content’, I’d be interested in hearing more about that!
But I appreciate that you’d have to charge me ;-) I have interpreted this as a ‘throwing down of the gauntlet’ – which I will now pick up with the return of a wink to Chris ;-) I’ll get the lesser point out of the way first. Chris has said ‘But I appreciate that you’d have to charge me’. The second point about releasing lecturers from the ‘tyranny of delivering content’ is a much more difficult topic to discuss, and I have picked up Chris’ gauntlet as I feel I should ‘put my money where my mouth is’ :-) – so I have tried to think through the strategies that I myself use. My own background is teaching in schools and then teacher training in Higher Education where my subject was science. #PLENK2010 Reflection on Learning and Assessment | Suifaijohnmak's Weblog.
LATE FOR WEEK 7 #PLENK2010. Last week seemed to get away from me; in part it was general work pressure, but also because I didn't relate well to the question being asked about creating our own tools. I understand the question only too well because I teach in the asynchronous online environment, and I am always searching to find what is available to satisfy the needs of my particular students. Nearly four years ago, I started using blogging technology (I use that term because these are not traditional blogs) with my students (ESL and Writing) to help them to practice and gadually integrate some of the concepts in these courses while providing them with a rudimentary SN possibility to reduce the isolation of online/distance learners.
It seems to be an oxymoron to call them non-traditional blogs. I currently have a proposal in for the Electronic Village Online Fair for the TESOL conference in New Orleans next year called When is a blog not a blog? I guess this all leads to a question of my own. The Way Forward - PLE or LMS. Is This A Dagger I See Before Me?
I question whether the battle of the acronyms need really be as fierce as it's made out to be. Perhaps a productive method of contrasting the two systems is to look at the deficiencies of each and then offer some possible strategies for circumventing any threats to the learner's acquisition of knowledge. I stumbled upon Graham Attwell's presentation which questions the 'ostrich' reaction of educational institutions to the whole concept of social networking.Buzan's comparison of the brain to a Swiss army knife had me thinking "what a wonderful analogy to use for a PLE", however, having read Mohamed Amine Chatti's post I agree that his perception of the PLE as Toolbox and the LMS as Swiss knife is much closer to the truth as I now see it.
Similar to the knife the LMS may be limited and constrained by its structure while the PLE functions unrestrained. The article reinforces my belief that the complacency in the education sector stains all levels.