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Openness in education

A relationship of sharing between 2 or more people. David Wiley

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I thank Viv Rolfe for the title of this post! Her post helped me reflect on my own motivations and role what I have been labelling ‘open online education’ in this blog. I responded to Viv’s post with a comment published in Known that I titled Virtues and Vices. In that post I reflected on how sad it was that we had to apologise for asking questions that challenged conventional wisdom and the importance of making ourselves keep asking them,

I am thinking about all of those things, Viv. I also find myself ‘questioning not just openness but my motives behind wanting to contribute to it.’ Some people have already said adios. If we do not take time to consider the vices as well as the virtues, in the spirit of inquiry rather than self-righteousness, many more more might say adios in the not too distant future. Is this how we want it to be?

It is not how I want it to be. My first step in taking action to feel free to say what I want to say is to close comments on this blog. This post talks about how I hope my decision might help me tackle virtues, vices and heffalumps.

Continue reading “What’s not being said and where’s that elephant?” →

Social Networks then and now

As is often the case with my learning online many paths start with a tweet.

In my digital storytelling work I have of late become interested in Twitter Bots. There are wonderful bots as well as crappy spam ones. Just as in the rest of life amongst humans. Some make art for you, others poetry, and yet others make a fine go at sounding wise mediated by text at least, like @everyadage above. I have made several posters illustrating the sayings as they are in that uncanny valley space of almost making sense and that interests me.

The saying made me stop and reflect. The sense it made for me was in connection with the light and shadow side of groups of people who come together to learn (apologies for the long description but other terms such as communities, connections or networks come with too much baggage for my purpose here) in open online learning events. I have written before and often about the implications of a free-for-all ethos where no social or psychological contract is agreed upon or followed through by participants or facilitators.

Continue reading “Social Networks then and now” →

Design by @mdvfunes based on content by J. Mackness and F. Bell
Design by @mdvfunes based on content by J. Mackness and F. Bell

All images licensed CC BY. Sources:

I am helping Frances and Jenny with their next research paper on a Rhizomatic Learning course which ran in 2014. I made a graphic for the paper based on their words in Canva.

Alan Levine speaks martian!

I spoke with Alan Levine about the hyperlink a few weeks ago. It was my hope that I could use the recording to help students and faculty where I work understand why it mattered that we had no permalinks in our learning management system’s course blog platform. I also wanted them to understand why knowing how to ‘speak web’ mattered to mediated dialogue and mindful communication.

I never managed to edit the video during the course and when I started editing the Skype recording I made turned out to be rather precarious. Still, I felt that what Alan and I spoke about was important. I did some tacky editing to hide some of the glitches. I hope I have done enough to at least enable those interested to listen to the content if not admire my editing skills!

We had a great talk and whilst we did not keep to the order of our planned questions, we explored below our mind walking in a meandering sort of way:

  • How would you describe the hyperlink to a martian?
  • In what ways does the hyperlink embody the idea of connection?
  • How would you explain to the martian the importance of weaving/making the web?
  • What do you mean by “the original dream of hyperlinks as being bi-directional” and how does the modern web not embody this?
  • Why should I care about the hyperlink at all?

Enjoy.

#Thoughtvectors – The quiet MOOC

Just as I realised nearly 2 years on just how useful DS106 Headless 13 had been to my professional life, I am only now realising that the  Thought Vectors on Concept Space MOOC (TVCS in what follows) has been the most impactful MOOC I have taken part  in since my first DS106 experience. What did I say about DS106 recently?

[23/01/2015 13:03:30] Mariana Funes: I just wanted to say thank you! I am so grateful to all I have learnt on DS106 about making stuff…only today I am seeing how useful it has been beyond making art to the business of buying kibble for Colin 🙂 have a good day.

[23/01/2015 17:04:49] Alan Levine: This is the kind of evaluation of a course that means something, it comes much later than the end of a course.

This post is about  TVCS and the impact it has had in my journey to become an open educator. It has done so much and so quietly that only now, a year on, I realise how privileged I have been to be part of something that is showing me in a very practical way the true potential of this form of open learning.

Warning: this is a very long post (when are these short?) as I want to use this as a reminder of our work this semester to learn for next year when the course will run again.

Continue reading “#Thoughtvectors – The quiet MOOC” →

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