Curation As A Method of Digital Teaching
George Siemens, Connectivism ruminator, has explored the idea of teacher as a curator previously, and it has come up again today courtesy of a tweet from @hjarche. Even though I was a participant in CCK08, and marginally involved in CCK09, I didn't recall these ideas of what the teacher would become, although I do recall discussing the concept a few times in the chats in Elluminate. Curation is an interesting metaphor for teaching in the new technological environment - gather and display evidence, sometimes in a structured path, and allow conversation to develop from there. Allow the user/learner to make sense and meaning, then interject to either drive conceptual points further, or provide counter-points. I'd like to think this is what I do, but I'm not so sure. Even though feedback about my teaching is always positive, and people feel that they've learned something... I don't know if that's true. Maybe I need to ask better questions.
Riding the Wave of Crowds
There's a lot of talk out there amongst y'all about distributed learning. Considering that we're on the web and all, that's a fairly insightful statement. Crowd sourcing was an interesting concept that I hadn't heard about before, of course I'm not up to date on my marketing theories. I started thinking about how this is partially a business to individuals relationship and how it really emphasizes the power of crowds. Of course, marketing has always been about public opinion and (in my opinion) the power of many to influence.
Originally I read crowd sourcing as crowd surfing, which in my head, could describe the way individuals survey ideas on the web. Pick and choose from search results, go on facebook and ask your network of people questions, search on twitter for tweets about it, read wikipedia - you get the idea. Anyways, like a crowd surfer - you ride the crowd like a wave, eventually crashing to the floor when you have enough information to make a concrete connection to reality again - whether that's to buy a product, engage in a service, or not do any of that at all.
I like that description of how online activities work sometimes. Plus it's a nice tie-in to edupunk.
CCK08 Wrap Up
I'm listening to the CCK08 Wrap Up and one of my favourite topics - lurking - came up again. I stated at the time that lurking was a selfish statement - although you could lurk in CCK08, but take your knowledge elsewhere to a different group or network of connections.
Stephen said this in the chat, then expanded on it around the 53 minute mark:
Moderator (Stephen Downes): Yes - the activities themselves bcome patterns that are mtched to competences or expertise - activities = demonstration of performance
Here's another drawback to lurking, you get no feedback on your thoughts. Yes, I understand the reflective learner, I'm almost always better when I've thought about things for a bit (at least that seems to be the pattern). But if you provide no activities to demonstrate your learning, you have a fundamental problem in getting anyone to recognize your ability in that area. Sure, it may be satisfying enough to know you can do it... but unfortunately, very few people will take you at your word. It's a lot like trustworthyness - you have to earn it. External sources validate the internal ones.
So I'm sorry I missed the wrap up, there's lots of things I wanted to add during the session, but couldn't because I was only 8 hours late.
Singularity and Connectivism
Last week, I watched a documentary on Alan Moore, who's a fairly interesting fellow. One of the things that he said was the rate of information was growing at an exponential rate. For anyone who knows calculus, you can half any number an infinite amount of times and never equal zero - you only get so close to zero that you approximate it. In this case, zero is the length of time it takes for human knowledge to double. So doing some internet research brought up this article about the law of accelerating returns. That article refers to the moment that the double exponential growth of human knowledge and the moment when knowledge grows almost instantaneously as the singularity. Mindblowing, especially so considering that it was written in 2001. If you're familiar with The Hitchiker's Guide To The Galaxy, you know the Vogons come and "pave 
over" the Earth at the moment that the Earth (as computer) is to uncover the meaning of life, the universe and everything. So maybe everyone's read a few too many good books?
As a total aside, if you want to create some bad Vogon poetry, the BBC has decided to allow that to happen. I don't think they understand what they have unleashed...
Now what does this all have to do with education? Well, clearly, a new paradigm will be required for knowledge growth that expands immediately.
In connectivism, it's more important to know how to access data, than what the data is. Getting information and assessing it is crucial to applying that information in a successful way. It also addresses the concept of singularity and instantaneous exponential growth of human knowledge. Now, the Kurzweil article talks about how artificial intelligence will be able to exceed human intelligence in the next twenty years or so (although this isn't a fixed number by any stretch). It certainly is only one hypothesis. The article continues on to speculate about what might occur to allow for this singularity.
Bringing it back to Alan Moore, he also talks about the singularity and addresses it in a more spiritual manner - where this singularity might be seen as a spiritual enlightenment. Kurzweil also points to this as some sort of transformative incident, although the article doesn't really speculate that much about the future beyond the singularity.
New Job, Old Tasks
Ah, yes, the post-semester lull - everyone is busy marking (including me) and I've had a ton of rewrites to complete my work for the facilitation course I've been taking. Finally, seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. I also was in the process of changing jobs, which officially occurs next Monday. I'll be still working within e-learning, just no longer limited to second language learners and language in general. It's a step up in my opinion. I've talked to them about revamping their blog, and working on some e-learning evangelical stuff. Also I'm hoping we can make some Wii Remote Interactive Screens.
I also want to create a Wii Theremin originally seen through Boing Boing, if I can at home.
Of course, there's going to be some roadblocks. IT may be reluctant to put the software behind this on their image. The handling of creating many of these infrared/UV pens will be unknown (who's responsible for this?). There's going to be some issues I'm sure. And then there's always application of such a technology. I can think of using it as an illustration tool to highlight an idea on a powerpoint, or in demonstration of an AutoCAD function. Beyond that, it's still a cool cool toy.
So if this blog becomes a little less frequently updated, I apologize. I didn't intend to continue to post here post CCK08. Now that I am though, it's maybe a nice little way to stay in touch with some of those folks (which is part of the reason I took the course).
Reflections on The Future and Research – Week 12
CCK08 - I missed the Friday session last week, and the review of it is one that I'm sad I missed. It's a huge relief to have it over. In the future I hope that courses in this reality we go in a couple of slightly different ways.
The Daily - you need some sort of central location to allow people to sift through the vast array of materials before they can select their aggregation of feeds.
Moodle - I would not use it next time. Strongly suggest blogs, and e-mail a listserv (the Daily listserv?) to announce your blog.
Emotionality - Stephen makes a point about emotions and motivation at 9 minutes or so in the wrap up, and how the student should be responsible enough, and intellectual enough, to disavow those emotions. I don't think that's right, or even just. I would hope that someone in my peer group would think of the consequences of their actions, and how it might have an effect on others. I would've thought that Stephen would consider another's emotions, and the emotionality of learning - this stuff isn't as dispassionate as that. Learning is confusing, frustrating, angering, reflecting... It's part of the role of a facilitator to consider the emotions of the participants. I don't know if there's anything else than that.
Twitter - I never really got this technology. I'm into depth of understanding. I don't think this provides it. I have an account, follow a few people... but largely I'm not that interested in twitter.
CCK08 Concept Map as of Week 12
Here is my "final" concept map.
Overall, I guess my position has softened somewhat on concept maps. I no longer loathe them, merely dislike them. Maybe they reveal how confused and muddled my thinking is?