I’ve always been a bit of a hippy. Raised by people with a healthy interest in such idealist pursuits as Intentional Community. My reading list varies but one that I keep coming back to and really enjoy is Dave Pollard for Intentional Community. One aspect to his journey that I find interesting though that when trying to think about coping with change, better options etc he has created a fairly rigid timetable of activity. For me I’m still at the beginning of the journey of doing things the way that feels right, I try to change my habits so that the routines are more important than the activities but it just doesn’t happen, I end up following leads, chewing on thoughts and talking to people.
Learning
‘The tendency seems to be for most educational institutions…’ (and I would suggest people) ‘to fall imperceptibily into a role devoted exclusively to the conservation of old ideas, concepts, atttitudes, skills and perceptions. This happens largely because of the unconciously held belief that these old ways of thinking and doing are necessary to the survival of the group and that is largely true if the group inhabits an environment where change happens very, very slowly.’ This is a quote from a vlog by Howard Rheingold entitled Does The Use of Social Media Necessitate Changes in Pedagogy. He goes on to say something along the lines of in groups where the environment changes rapidly different skills are required including the ability to forget. In an educational context I that a real focus on the value of the task rather than the outcomes could be a good place for us to start thinking about changing the ways we learn.
Being
One thing I have realised is that making time for producing content in a variety of ways helps me deal with the change. It isn’t really that useful for me to tag things and put them into Diigo or del.icio.us , I only really focus on what I’m reading and how it affects me when I write or create. I wonder if artists have always know this? I also wonder if when we’re kids we get this impression that if you’re not going to make a career out of it it doesn’t matter too much so we stop creating anything just for the sake of it. Steve Hargadon discusses his thoughts on the topic in his post ‘The Solution to Content Overload: A Thought Takes Hold‘. This tool, the Social Technographics Profiler enables you to look at the different demographics and their relationship to content.
I think we have always know the best way to teach, the best way to live, the best way to work - it is now time for us to put our knowledge into practice. It is about being at one with the change and that really means being a fluid kind of being. For practical tips on doing this check out this post by Zen Habits, 8 Great Anti-Hacks to Fundamentally Change Your Life, it challenges some of our assumptions about goal setting and work habits. It includes such counter-intuitive tips as; denounce the culture of permanance, stop hiding behind the comfort of stepping stones, say no to the industrial productivity complex and convert money back to time.
Anyway this has been a big week in my head and also lots on so I hope this post makes sense, at least to me a month from now. It’s time for me to direct my attention to music and learning and to practice some of these new skills.
To understand how to generate a fluid learning experience.
Practice working in groups online.
To better understand how you can work to a goal as you define the goal.
To purposefully connect with others and making sure I make time and space to make those connections visible through linking to my blog and posting things on Twitter.
To understand how to better communicate the processes and benefits of working in online communities to those who have limited technical skills
My first frustration is that I can’t see the webcast of the first meeting. Hopefully the video file comes up soon so I can get a sense of the discussion so far.
In trying to get my head around this I think the first step for me is to figure out the parameters of the course. To me one way of establishing this is through the main portals of information.
I’m really keen to complete the facilitating an online event and hopefully I can do this with the community I work within using me.edu.au.
I am also completing the Connectivism course, hopefully the two courses have slightly different approaches. I’m sure I’ll take away different things from connecting with different educators.
Understanding the educational blogs and bloggers. A while ago I wrote about my process of uncovering the people behind the blogs I was reading. This was really useful. Since then I have been more concerned with the management of those people.
As I began to read various educational blogs I noticed a few things:
Sometimes I was reading really similar stuff over and over
Sometimes it was from different angles but mostly it was from one of two poles
I try really hard to comment lots but sometimes when you’re moving fast it’s hard. The balance between reading/writing and commenting is hard to find.
Copyright doesn’t only apply to a book or even to your blog post. It applies to your comments as well. (link)
Sometimes when I read something very different I found it easier to get inspired to do something or write something.
My favourite people to read are those who provide insights into teaching practice as well as web2.0 tools like Larry Ferlazzo’s blog. It also has links to student work and I find that really useful
Outside of that I read lots of different blogs from Pyschology Blogs to Pop Culture to Research.
I have tried to find a good process for blogging on a regular basis. Chris Brogan has a great example of a blogging workflow. He basically helps you define what you are trying accomplish with your blog and then work from their to identify what you need to write and how to get inspiration. One of the most interesting questions for me was ‘What’s the point of having a blog if you can’t get a conversation started?’ This is definately something I’m always thinking about.
I think it’s possible that the processes of really realising the benefits of blogging is moving in slowly constricting circles until you are reading blogs and writing your own in a community where their is mutual benefit.
Reading and Writing on The Same Page
One thing that has really helped me understand the close, close link between reading and writing is Zemanta. Usually how this works for me is that I start off with a few ideas from blogs that I have been reading or something I’m trying to do. Then Zemanta suggests a few other articles which I might check out for example this one. As I write more it suggests more. So I’m literally reading and writing at the same time. This is something I do without Zemanta but Zemanta makes it much easier and I read much more than I would without it. Additionally it will suggest Creative Commons pictures from Flickr that might be useful. The picture above is a Zemanta suggestion.
Zemanta is also a tool that does a number of things to supercharge your blogging. It can automatically suggest tags and add reference links.
What I’m Still Struggling With In My Writing
Lack of consistent feedback
Deciding where I write and for what purpose. I think I write mostly to remember the context of links and explore my own thinking but… (link)
I’d like to Focus more on reading and writing in a way that encourages both polarisation, homogeny and diversity (link)
I’d like to think more seriously about if I’m improving the quality of my writing. (Chris Brogan again)
I’d like to find new ways to reuse other peoples content rather than just link to it, for example the Ed Techie’s Eduwomble concept.. I wish I could find the time to make a video or audio file sometimes instead.
I’ve listened to bits and pieces of Clay Shirky before but listening to his entire talk made me think in a practical way about the impact of large numbers of connections and the fact that having more numbers of things increases these connections exponentially. The thing I think we need to be careful of is that we are using our numbers and our connections for. I’m starting to think this idea of ‘value’ will become more tangible and measurable than money, maybe our currency will change over time, certainly sites such as BookMooch suggest this might be the case.
Now I don’t care much about money I’m not an economist or anything like that but I do care about what people in my world care about. And obviously a shift in economics is going to have an impact on our education, social lives and the way we draw meaning from our lives. In trying to understand this idea I have explored lots of different angles
The Wikinomics playbook talks about the shift towards a paradigm where ‘the goals is a refined idea… not an idea beaten into consensus!’. I think a focus on the abstract concept of money is part of the problem and that is why we end up with inferior stuff all the time. We all know this that because the deadline, profit, money has to happen we put all the really good ideas on hold and let them go bad, and most of what we do is inefficient and generally bad for long term growth. Now this seems to effect us both indvidually and in business.
The current world is a world of goals and achievement, they are how we decide if we’re doing the right thing. Goals and achievement seem to be the wrong language for our new world. They suggest that something is over at a point. But it is never over and usually this prevents us as workers from doing a good job or learners from learning new things. It makes us fear anything that will take us off the path of achievement and goals. But if in the world we are moving into they lose value what will they be replaced by? I think it will be a much stronger sense of true value and the processes that are influential in ensuring this. Thinking about things in those terms makes articles such as this one, the standard look at your outcomes the create action plans etc.. a bit hard to swallow for me.
So my thoughts on the ‘value’ of work have intesected with a couple of articles I have read recently about the growth mindset and being ‘Open To Growth‘ and that this helps us feel connected to others and at the same time achieve more and feel more valued for our achievements because we’re not competing and always feeling bad that someone is doing better. Whichever way we look at it these ideas of value, achievement, growth and worth all mean that the way we approach our everyday work needs to change.
It almost needs us to reverse our thinking:
We need to take value from the things we do now
We need to thinking long-term as a way to create more value in the things we do now in the future
I know this seems to be a bit of a fuzzy kind of idea but it’s one I hope to develop through my work and study. For now at a practical level the important thing for me personally is that each day I am doing things that I believe contribute to the whole and that also provide value in and of themselves.
This usually means each day I spend some time working on products that are useful to others (videos, lesson plans, blogs), I spend some time reviewing what other people are doing and I spend some time documenting (through videos or blogs) the process I go through to achieve a product.
Each of these activities leads me in slightly different directions but they all end up contributing to each other. Slowly I’m begining to get to the point where I can do much more in much less time and I like the things I work on a lot more.
If anyone has any really good resources for planning for constant value rather than achievement I’d love to read them.
I have just finished listening to this presentation by George Seimens. I found it a very good summary of the challenges and opportunities associated with Web2.0 or the read/write web:
The connections come before content.
Content can be stored and there can be multiple versions of it. We need to work on understanding this ambiguity.
There is a growing need to become more skilled in recognisining patterns.
For the education field (and probably other areas of the population) to participate the tools need to be aggregated into a Virtual Learning Environment. A place to connect. A place to share.
I will also be participating in an online course on Connectivism and Connective Knowledge. I thought it would be a good way to immerse myself in the subject matter by standing out on a limb a little and going to a university that is half-way across the world, conducted by 2 lecturers, where I will be able to collaborate with other educators. It will be interesting to see the types of activities we get up to and how these topics are dealt with collaboration, goal setting, openness, problem solving, authenticity, connection, awareness, sensitivity and technology. It will also be interesting to see if the work is creative commons commercially licensed, who knows where that might lead.
There is so much debate over the best and the worst of the internet. It’s just a different view isn’t it? With some people trying to be too clever, too popular, fake. Too earnest, too serious, tooo overdramatic. I look for heart. Don’t others?
My final summary of what has been a great learning journey for me. One that left me with more questions than answers but the knowledge and relationships required to continue cycling through questions and answers at least for the next few years.
