Month: February 2009

CCK08 Wrap Up

Posted on by Jon K.

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.

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Twitter Week 5

Posted on by Jon K.

Really interesting article in the Guardian (which I found out about through a twitter post by Guardian Tech) that shows several levels of usage – one that seems to be common is to promote a business or product. It’s interesting at some levels because business, marketing and advertising has been looking for the perfect 15 second soundbite to sell a product. The same sort of thing happens with RSS feeds, about 150 characters are scrolling by on my desktop widget….

Another side to using Twitter is that you can follow your favourite celebrity (although whether or not it’s actually them is another story). A few NBA stars, like Shaq and Chris Bosh, are using Twitter – of course both are fellas with a good sense of humor… so maybe that’s telling.

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Twitter Week 3/4

Posted on by Jon K.

So, as the pattern of adoption settles in (rabid initial use, followed by less use as one tries to conceptualize how and why to use, which will lead into either disuse or adoption and continued use), I’ve maintained my ability to use twitter at least once a day. I don’t post everyday. As I’ve said before I’m more of a reflective learner/user, I need to be able to think about what the purpose of the tool is or the reason for using it. I’m still not sure why I’m using it, but I do get why other people are using it.

One of the uses that others use Twitter, is to share information – I do not tend to forward these on to my “followers” because most of them are connected already to the source. It’s interesting to see my RSS feeds drop a new tidbit of information, then my Twitter account update with a new tweet with that information as well. Seems that I’m following the same sort of sources as my friends on Twitter.

I suspect that at some point in the near future, the next big social app/web 3.0 thing will be the convergence of your multiple digital selves being able to be managed in one spot. Your Twitter feeds, RSS feeds, blog posts, real life friends, online friends, colleagues and maybe your learning environments all become one. They won’t necessarily interact, though. For instance, my e-learning circle could be separated from my punk rock record collecting circle, so that people from one circle aren’t able to browse my entire life, just the parts from which they came – unless I allow it. Facebook already does this (and Livejournal did this ages ago) by allowing people to be put into groups and based on which group you’re in dictates what access you have. I suppose that takes away from the voyeur aspect of social networking sites – the ability to get a sense of the person you’re looking at.

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Expanding On A Comment

Posted on by Jon K.

So, in my travels of the web sometime last week I commented (and I’m not sure where it was or else I would link to it):

As information broadcasting grows, people will learn to segment, filter and otherwise cognitively deal with it. It will be interesting to see if this turns into a new form of learning disability or if people who cannot deal with information in mass quantities will have an information psychosis of some sort.

I was wondering if ADD/ADHD might be the brain’s way of trying to cope with information overload – speed up the cognitive process as new information comes in. Then ADD fades for most people as they approach adulthood as they begin to be able to cope with information. Just spitballin’ a theory, which probably has a whole bunch of holes in it already. Time for caffiene.

EDIT: Found the link – http://ulop.wordpress.com/2009/01/31/data-reduction/

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Looking Forward To..

Posted on by Jon K.

Hmm. I’ve been really hammering at my department to start thinking mobile. It’s kind of an uphill battle, but I think that overall it’s one worth fighting. For instance, we know that the developing world is mostly using mobile technology to access websites and connect. I know that Asian and European countries are way ahead of us in 3G phone usage and technology. If we are to market this institution as a place of education for the international student, it would make sense to hit them where they actually look.

I’ve been pushing to investigate ways to broadcast SMS video clips (initially I thought for second language learners, but anyone who needs vocabulary growth can benefit from it). Now, I know that you can do SMS text broadcasts (providing you know the numbers of the recipients). I know very, very little about SMS, cellphones (hell, I don’t even own one) and most of that technology. I do understand that for learning to be effective, you have to give people the options to take it whenever they can. If they’re on the bus, this gives them a twenty second clip to study. If they’re going somewhere, they could get a link to browse the clip later.

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