So I've been writing lately documentation for Desire2Learn's ePortfolio tool specifically for our instance of the platform. I've put together a diagram that shows the different parts of the layout with pixel dimensions, a guide to setting up the Chrome plug-in, and now a guide to using the Chrome plug-in. In my initial draft, I had examples of how one might use the plug-in, because it seems to me, you have to know why you might add a file, or take a screenshot of a webpage, before you actually do it. Maybe these examples will be held up as some sort of  "best practice" or worse still "the way to do something'? I have always strived to write neutral documentation, where it just told you how to do something, with pictures illustrating the concepts. With ePortfolio though, you can do many tasks in different ways, none of the wrong or lesser than another. You can add an Artifact through the plug-in, through the Learning Environment, and there are valid reasons to add that Artifact both ways. You can tag things, you can choose to use collections if you want. You can have a big mess of things in your ePortfolio.

Who am I to tell someone that the way they're doing it is wrong?

Apparently, I'm the one to tell people how to do it. The problem is that I instinctively want to find the most efficient way to use a tool - that's part of my job. With ePortfolio, each path is equally complex (if you let it) or simple. There is no best path, there is no way to do it "right", which again, will frustrate many, annoy others, and please a small few. The design of the tool pleases me ultimately, because I'm fascinated with how people deal with obstacles in learning. Unfortunately, there's a part of me that wants the technology to not get in the way. Maybe that's what my problem is ultimately.

When people are faced with problems they tend to either get collaborative and/or creative. Both of these conditions I love, because frankly the world can use more of both qualities at the moment. Does providing a path for those to follow stunt people's instinctive creativeness? Is there a way with documentation to make it useful without making many decisions on what goes in, and that editing process then leaves alternative paths to grow over and be forgotten? Or is this another way to see who is really creative and thinking differently, because it allows everyone access to the tool, and then those who are energized by it, can take it places I've never thought about?

There's the more connectivist MOOCs, and these seem a little more freeform. I know that in the Connectivist and Connective Knowledge and DS106 models, there's more empowerment. Still, there's George and Stephen, or Jim, Alan and Martha at the heads of those MOOCs. Those mentioned will really balk at my idea of them being at the head of those courses and will point to the many others that make them happen (in front of the proverbial curtain and behind), and my statement isn't intended as a slight against them. The personalities of those contributors are key in driving people to those ideas within those courses/events/happenings.  Within that structure, people will look to those who champion the idea to guide how they experience it. How does one break that implicit power structure?

I think the next step in breaking the power structure is to set up an open course on a loose subject and have people set their own objectives. Guidance should be given on how to set good objectives, and other's objectives should be ranked/rated using the Coursera peer marking strategy (except up the number of people marking to 5 or 6 to improve the reliability of the results). So if you set up a too easy, or too difficult to manage objective, the crowd can give you feedback on how to challenge yourself or how to manage your expectations. Scalable is important... then students use the tools they have to to find and aggregate content. Using the DS106 model, they can design their own assignments and periodically submit them for peer marking.  Pull in Howard Rheingold's work with information reliability on the Internet. Really, the whole thing becomes crowd sourced, content, marking, assessment, how to assess your own learning, setting your own goals, creating your submissions.. everything.

Of course, all this pipe dreaming is predicated on the open web staying open. As copyright lawyers seem intent on locking down information behind paywalls, this approach may not be possible. Hell, it may not be possible now...

Unlike many of the other students, I like messy learning. The sort of thing where you're overwhelmed with ideas, concepts, thoughts and half-baked ideas, and you muddle through and wrestle with some of the ideas - then pick what you want to focus on, and move forward with that. I wasn't put off by this approach - it's a sound pedagogical approach for me, but clearly not everyone is in the same space as I am.

I really, really like Coursera's peer marking structure (when it works). I would've preferred a more robust scale and rubric, as I'm a bit of an easy marker. There were areas that I was stretching for connections to the content, if I had clearer marking objectives, I probably would've been able to give better feedback. I don't think I gave terrible feedback at all, but it would've been better had I been able to interpret how the instructors (or facilitators in this case) would've liked to see. Again, I know why they chose the path they went down, and I agree with their approach pedagogically, but as a user/student, I needed just a little bit more.

The course has to be considered a success due to the sheer number of resources added to the course - starting out with four videos, and then watching the discussion boards grow with other resources was wild.

I purposefully chose to use other media to contribute, and I'm not sure how successful that approach was - twitter comments I made about the course seemed to be received well; blog posts were less viewed and commented on. I do cultivate my twitter feed much better than my blog, which is a bit sad I suppose. I could've pimped my thoughts and ideas through the discussion board (and a good web marketer would've probably done that for the positive linkbait it would be) but that felt, well, like a late-night TV commercial... I'm not selling a flowbee or a slapchop, in fact I'm not selling anything.

I was motivated by the piece of paper. I never really thought about it, but I was engaged because of the carrot at the end of the stick. Despite how ultimately worthless another piece of paper is, I wanted it. What can I say? I don't have enough trophies in my life I guess.

It was interesting to see how many of the people I follow were part of the EDCMOOC - however that didn't seem to generate any discussion outside of the discussion boards.

I wonder what would happen if all students rejected the peer marking approach. Is that the fault-line that no one will talk about?

EDCMOOC Project/Artifact from Jon Kruithof on Vimeo.

For accessibilty issues, I didn't have time to caption the video, but the script is here:

So you want to talk about technology in education, seeing if it meets your needs for utopia, or dystopia. We could examine the benefits of how each technological advances changes or reinforces education.

We could look at the ways we teach better today with technology, or reinforce the same power system that keep us teaching in a manner that we were taught. Maybe that's right?

Or maybe the conversation should be about finding the words to describe how we're going to make education better tomorrow. Maybe it's about taking time to think and act on how ways we can affect change and make education better. More like one's utopian concept rather than what education currently is.

I typically get asked how long it takes to do these sorts of things - this one minute video took about 12 hours to construct from writing the script, fine tuning words, finding creative commons licensed images and video, creating the title screens in Photoshop and Gimp, selecting a typeface, working with the images and finally putting it together in Windows Movie Maker. Yes, Windows Movie Maker is a great free program for stitching together videos. I created the music using Fruity Loops, there's demos out there and the software has a good academic/student license.

Anyways, I'm surprised to see this relationship in regards to education - where usually we're navigating the 99% between the polar opposites of the extremes. I sit in the middle with most of these online tools, where how they are used, and intended to be used, is much more important than the potential ways they could be used. Education should be associated with the same things that utopia is associated with - filled with hope, a sense of better things to come. The reality is that perhaps education has become something dystopian - filled with dread, anxiety; crushed by authoritarian, herded like cattle into a room and treated as if one were a (student) number. At least in first year...

Is that because of the education system? Or the shift from education as a human interest to an economic interest? I think society as a whole has shifted from a society focused to an individual focused entity, which is in some part, due to neoliberalism. Recognizing that, and doing something about it is a whole different ballgame I suppose.

The ironic thing is that the course is presented in what might be the ultimate forum for data acquisition (a Fordian notion of efficiency, quantifying what is done, and justifying what you do)  - Coursera's platform for MOOCs. The underlying subtext of the first week was certainly exploring the idea of utopia, and in my opinion, you have to relate it back to what is happening within the course context - it's a course about education online. Putting the pieces together, perhaps the designers are saying this is not such a good way to run a course...

For 2012, the Questions are here.

For those questions here's some answers:

1. Pearson LMS? No big deal. I think the Blackboard free LMS is more important in the LMS space, but Pearson may be doing some things, but nothing big or earth shattering. Of course, a lot of faculty I work with don't use Pearson texts.

2. Web mining useful? Ultimately yes, but increasingly difficult to do. With Twitter becoming more walled off, Instagram way more walled off and Facebook increasingly walled off, it's much more difficult to use something like Ifttt to get something cool to mashup. It'll be interesting to see how open data sources survive, and whether APIs will wither. I'd like to see more open data - I think it's where we'll see growth and interesting possibilities emerge. From an economics standpoint, these sorts of niche areas will be tremendous economic generation in the future.

3. MITx? In and of itself is not that big, but EdX, Udacity, Coursera and the others are making MOOCamania running wild on you. Credentials is still a big thing, but I suspect that's the gateway and where these startups will make their money - partnering with a school who will rubber stamp their findings - or partially rubber stamping credit.

4. Android tablets in Education? Big fart of air. iPads still rule. Android will suffer for the hundred of crappy tablets and lag of killer apps on the platform. For phones, it's fine; for tablets, not so great.

5. Learning Technologists? Still play their/our marginal role.

So I've been using Soundcloud for probably two or three years now. It's essentially a web based application that you can save or record audio files to and share with others. It has brilliant and immediate application for second language learners, and I think could serve as a multimedia resource for other areas as well. How great would an essay replacement with a radio play be? It would engage the creative side of students; perhaps a theatrical debate to reframe the classic argumentative essay.

What about a way of recording discussions between students? The Soundcloud app (Android/iOS) can do that. I was playing around with it for the Android platform, and it really is a remarkable application where you record from your phone, and it's available in minutes.

Soundcloud often gets pitched as something that has great web tracking/analytics, however that's a for-pay feature.

Sorry I've been quiet lately, work has been very busy and I haven't really been sharing what goes on here as I'm still sorting that out. I do have a couple of things in the hopper, not quite yet ready to go - more in the edtech vein that I'm usually writing in, but practical in nature.

Happy New Year as well, hope yours is as good as mine will be.

I suppose that a lot of teaching is tactical - short term events leading to a long term outcome - however a lot of current online learning doesn't really touch on these ideas of spontaneity or in-the-moment teaching. Those are the things I remember most from my own education. Throughout my life I've been a bit of a questioner - in high school this tendency could lead my teachers off track so often when the lecture part of class was boring I would ask a question that would eat at an issue that was related but would be sure to railroad the teacher into a monologue that would either be a) entertaining or b) take up a lot of time.

In grade 11 history, we could get Mr. Whyte off track really quickly by mentioning Quebec, French language privilege and the Meech Lake Accord. I'll never forget those rants - impassioned pleas of "Haven't the French had enough accomodations from Canada?" and throwing chalk at the board. It didn't change my view of Quebec (in fact it's probably made my view of Quebec much more sympathetic), but it did leave a mark.  I'm sure you have those moments where teaching has left an indelible mark on you - otherwise you probably wouldn't be in the field.

Another related event that struck me was whenever a teacher would stop the lesson mid-stream to either go off on a tangent, or to review something in the moment. It happened in my Math classes in high school (the ones where I was asked if I was planning on taking math higher than grade 12, to which I said no, and the teacher said good) often - talking about a higher algebraic concept then re-teaching the rules of some other concept. The act, stuck with me; the content, well, not so much.

More recently, in CCK08 (hard to believe it's been four years), Stephen Downes force subscribed everyone to a discussion thread, to illustrate a power dynamic in groups and networks. While a constructed event and not serendipitous, it was brilliant teaching. I'll remember that for a long, long time.

I often wonder if these moments in time, my personal aha! moments, could be what really are interesting about teaching and learning. More importantly, they may be what I'm missing with the whole Coursera, Udacity, Content Driven MOOT (Massive Online Open Training) thing. Those moments when learning really happens, the moments that stick, they don't happen in these training events that are out there under the guises of MOOCs. There is no connection between myself and the instructor from Udacity (Dave? I forget his name, nor frankly do I care) for the course I took. I was just a number. There was no tactical teaching that occurred - they may argue that the weekly questions were somewhat tactical, I suppose they might be - perhaps I would feel different if one of my questions were answered. Not that I had questions, I understood the content well enough.  And for the course, that's the measure of success.

Success shouldn't be so simple, because success is not a simple condition - it's complex and situational. Which brings me back to tactical media. Tactical media arises, creates an event as a response to an idea, and then leaves an artifact to ponder. Doesn't that sound like good teaching?

So when Khan Academy, Coursera, MITx or any of the other learning mills churn out chunks of content to advance education, it's not learning - and it's definitely not teaching. I guess I've got a case of the Mondays on Tuesday, because I get so irritated with how online teachers dictate, even at the highest levels. Sure structure is needed for these online learning events - a framework. Loose meanderings are not always what I want to see either - but why is it that I have to listen to some prat go on about programming logic, then take a conceptually vapid multiple choice question, get a grade (which has as much value as lint) and then do that again and again and again? Is that learning? No, that's producing widgets. I'm truly disheartened with the state of the Internet as it is (closing down it's freedom) and efforts to education online. I guess I'll sit out online learning and wait to see if mobile learning ever provides the out and freedom with context I'm looking for.

The first reservation is that the tool looks old. While there are workarounds, and ways to make it look better - the templates provided look like junk. Especially now that Desire2Learn's LMS looks beautiful, sleek and modern. At the organization level, we've done our best to address the clunkiness of the ePortfolio templates - replacing ones that are better suited to a K-12 environment with a more adult, er, professional look. I'm sure that the templating system will change in forthcoming revisions to the tool - it's something I know I've complained about, a couple of times, directly to D2L - they now have shown they can create an elegant, modular product, so I expect those changes that have been made to the LE be moved into other tools throughout the suite.

The looks aren't the only thing. Faculty are going to have to get a handle on changing how they teach - which is problematic from an institution viewpoint. People change slowly, but the institution demands change - probably because the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities are breathing down their neck too. Of course, it doesn't help when austerity measures in the province of Ontario are hitting all the public sector workers - we are offered 0% wage increases over the next two years. I can stomach that - I have a comfortable job that affords me a world of luxury that I didn't have previously. I recognize that. I also recognize when MTCU and the Ministry of Finance are at odds over funding of development in the education sector. It's funny how on one hand they want people to do more (with more students) and the best practices point to more student-centered approaches, when there clearly is no way that those approaches are able to be met. Portfolios are a great example - here's an alternative way to run a class, but no one's thinking about the nitty-gritty part of it - how to manage all the information that portfolios generate. That costs money.

Combine new rules at the Federal level (Bill C-11 comes to mind, with new restrictions on fair use in education) - and ultimately it's the support people who end up doing the grunt work on supporting the initiatives (and might end up Federal watch, er, lapdogs as well).