Feeding the Elgg

Since my exchange with A J Cann, about feeding selected posts to the Emerge site, I have started this blog. In it, I have created a number of categories for my posts, such as "Community IT Centre", and "R&D Projects" and "Emerge". I wanted to be able to select only those posts that were tagged … Continue reading Feeding the Elgg

Digital literacy: a starter guide for HE?

I read Josie Fraser's, Notes towards digital literacy, and Terry Wassal's recent comment on it with interest. This post has stimulated a lot of discussion in the comments and on other blogs. When thinking about the Brookes elearning strategy, I recently took an opposite, narrow view. I do not want to argue against the broad … Continue reading Digital literacy: a starter guide for HE?

Academia.edu, eportfolio/PLE PDR and identity

Spent the morning acquainting myself with some of the features of academia.edu. My (limited) profile is here. In the publish or perish tradition there is a facility to upload citations for your papers and conference "talks" and list your research interests but there is no facility to list the courses you teach. Clearly a site … Continue reading Academia.edu, eportfolio/PLE PDR and identity

Personal learning environments (PLEs), please

The term PLE is going to come into its own in 2009, because of the prominence of the digital literacy/academic literacy and lifelong learning debates. There has been much discussion of PLEs over the past four or five years (yes, that long). I was led to this reflection by Graham Attwell's post, How my Personal … Continue reading Personal learning environments (PLEs), please

Education 2.0? Designing the web for teaching and learning.

ESRC/EPSRC commentary (pdf) edited by Neil Selwyn, with contributions from Charles Crook (University of Nottingham), Diane Carr (London Knowledge Lab), Patrick Carmichael, (University of Cambridge) and Richard Noss (LKL/TLRP-TEL), sets out to challenge the confident portrayal of web 2.0. We'll see.

PLE Chicken Roost

A. J. Cann asked 200 first years, "...to draw a mind map of their personal learning environment (PLE)." The PLE chickens come home to roost He says, "following what these students were reading on Google Reader and bookmarking on delicious throughout the past term has been a fascinating and for the most part rewarding experience. … Continue reading PLE Chicken Roost

Participatory and hierarchic governance

We all subordinate ourselves to, and participate in, groups. These may be states or other institutions at various scales: families, workplaces, corporations, education. In the context of a world in which "Absolutely everything is changing all the time," at a recent Harvard Berkman centre seminar, Irving Wladawsky-Berger, (read his blog) President Emeritus of the IBM … Continue reading Participatory and hierarchic governance

A theory for our time?

Like politicians, do we get the theories we deserve? The Ur text of connectivism is George Siemens (2005) "Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age." Siemens is a good speaker and has clearly spent a long time thinking about elearning. He gave a good keynote at the Emerge April 08 conference, "Technology and Community … Continue reading A theory for our time?