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This is from the guys who brought us Wordle.  I didn’t know about all this other functionality.

I stumbled upon this post from Gardner Campbells blog Gardner Writes: Kathy Sierra Lives.

A little quote:

Can we find a way to work with our legacy brain to get cognition and affect to work together to get us to our goals?

I can’t help pointing out the John Donne connection here. T. S. Eliot wrote this about Donne: “To Donne, a thought was an experience: it modified his sensibility.” And I think the process will work in reverse.

Kathy notes that we must choose our cognitive/affect triggers carefully so we encourage relevant practice and not irrelevant personal tangents. I agree, though there’s real artistry needed here, as that legacy brain spam filter will skew “relevance” toward very narrow channels if we’re not careful.

Great point here: adopting a more conversational voice triggers the hold-up-my-end-of-the-conversation reflex in our minds. We feel we’re in a real give-and-take, not simply a one-way broadcast.

We are still in a time delimited workshop training session mentality in many respects.  In the dreadful staff development 90 minute sessions, can we find better ways to engage and focus without imposing a pathway, a straitjacket, a lack of mystery and magic and taking the minds in the room off creativity and originality?

A post worth reading.  I’m sure there are more seeds of Kathy’s recent thoughts floating around on the net.  The top of the Google search produced this from just 11 days ago, a nice 6 minutes that obviously includes some of the ideas in the presentation Gardner comments on:

She didn’t call her blog “Creating passionate Users” for nothing.

The VC has announced serious planned changes.  UCTL to be broken into several chunks, splitting Teaching and learning policy from operational (ie academic development), moving Institutional research into another section away from Academic development, putting the learning Skills centre somewhere else (maybe back where it was 22 months ago).  About a month for submissions.

Sharing is very powerful. In Leigh’s circle, people have sought to develop stuff, posted it as a work in progress to find other people working on similar things just down the road. Bingo: collaboration, synergy, time saving and dare I say it, saving time and feeling better about things. Oh and doing a better job.

What is an OER (Open Educational Resource)?

Open educational resources are educational materials and resources offered freely and openly for anyone to use and under some licenses to re-mix, improve and redistribute. Open educational resources include:

* Learning content: full courses, course materials, content modules, learning objects, collections, and journals.
* Tools: Software to support the creation, delivery, use and improvement of open learning content including searching and organization of content, content and learning management systems, content development tools, and on-line learning communities.
* Implementation resources: Intellectual property licenses to promote open publishing of materials, design-principles, and localization of content.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_educational_resources

The term comes from a UNESCO conference in 2002.

There is a LOT of work in developing countries at the moment, building synergy between institutions. Resoures currently being used are worked up and improved. or new resources created. Often funded by some group.

Some think this is a new form of colonialism. http://leighblackall.blogspot.com/2009/08/looking-into-sky-open-ed-oh-nine.html

A quick history of Open Education (from one perspective)

Norman Freisen: http://wikieducator.org/Open_Education:_Precursors

I presented on day one: http://openedconference.org/program/program-schedule-at-a-glance
I’ve summarised some of the material in some posts here and here.

OK, of what value was this conference?

1. Conversations. I learned a lot about processes for dialogue and moving on thinking. I’m convinced of the unconference model. We just don’t get it in New Zealand. We have a great opportunity at the next e-fest conference, with an unconference day, based on open space approaches. But what are we doing? Starting it with a keynote.
2. Personal. This has been quite remarkable. There was the inner core of mainly guys, but they were generally very approachable. (I’m not sure I’d go so far as the post here: …  to come when I find it)
3. University back home: there is a lot I have learned. I think this whole open ed idea is a thing of the heart. You need to have some sense of connections. Once you do this, things become quite different.
   OK then: how to engage in this at an institutional level? or a department level? or a team level?
4. Global. Still thinking.
   I’d like to go to China or Bangladesh.  I have a proposal.
5. Local. New Zealand wide? Christchurch wide? Too much competition.  But it may be possible on a micro level.

That’s it for now.  If you want to meet: Friday 28th, 12.00pm at Okover house.  But check in with me in case the venue changes.

Twitter emerged at the OPenEd conference complete with conference tag: #opened09.  Not as a trickle, but a steady stream.  I wondered a little at how people kept up until I saw they used some other applications.  Moving into using TweetDeck instantly quadrupled my productivity and ease of use of Twiter. In other words, if you dabble just using the regular Tweeter interface it takes too much time and there are too many overheads.

But when and how do we learn about these new things?

1. There is a discipline in following up on a piece of new technology
2. You need to make some decisions on how beneficial it is, or is not going to be, and we often don’t get this right
3. It took this conference as a catalyst to properly lure me into this.

Aside: The buzz word is microblogging.  I stumbled on this little romantic piece about twittering from Richard Smith who we met last Saturday: Is twitter the latest thing? Or is it an ancient thing, writ new? I argue the latter.

It seemed to me there was not much blogging about the conference during the conference, and that many people were putting their energy into tweets and personal conversations. Probably a good thing. Here is Tony Hirsts’s post on visualizing Twitter and the connections at the conference:

http://ouseful.wordpress.com/2009/08/13/preliminary-thoughts-on-visualising-the-opened09-twitter-network/

Long term I’m not sure how I will cope with Twitter.  There is such a flow of information, the responses and the follow up often are so fragmentary.  But we shall see.  I’ll get a plug in on this blog.  Which one? To be decided.

But, during the conference it was stimulating, sparking off many side conversations.  It favours the quick typists, then the people who can think two things at once, or quickly change from a moment, send their tweet and then return.  Several observations:

Lost gems: Some passing comments seemed to just disappear into the flow of posts. Others got picked up and retweeted. I notice in the help documentation the abbreviation RT for retweet is not regarded as a standard Twitter phrase but is extremely popular.

Democracy (or not): In some respects, some voices are louder than others. On the other hand, there is a democratization process at work and a comment from somebody, even a non-attender of a conference via Twitter, can help bring a new thought into the conversations.

Unfinished conversations: Just like some things can get lost, some things can be just unfinished. An example of this, in particular, is the final session on Thursday with David Wiley looking at the quality of OERs. The question of voting, metadata, personal recommendations, tags and so on was completely unresolved at the time, and there were a lot of half-finished conversations.  There were a large number of diverse threads to this particular discussion. Personally I was finding it difficult to decide what to give my attention to. Often it came down to a case of what was personally interesting to me at the time, versus what might have had specific long-term value for my work situation back home; after all they have helped to fund this trip.

The serious blogging came after the conference.

• Divide the board into sections
• Hold the chalk at the horizontal
• Use the same colours for headings and subheadings each time
• Underline with a squiggly line rather than a straight line (because nobody can draw a straight line)
• Keep a section for first appearance of terms, vocab
• Throw the blackboard duster at a student
• Rub off section by section so slow scribblers can catch up on copying what you wrote 10 minutes ago
• Have blackboard monitors or helpers, beacause kids love erasing and clapping out dusters
• Colour in a new blackboard with side of a piece of chalk, then erase normally to ³prime² it for use
• Fun fact: chalk is not actually made from chalk rock (calcium carbonate), but from calcium sulfate in its dihydrate form, gypsum.

From an e-mail Mike Dickison http://www.giantflightlessbirds.com/

Yesterday, the last of the conference, a trip to Whistler.

Last night tea with Randy, Patricia Schmitt and Christine Geith, all with a Wikieducator connection.

Today is Saturday, we took the Ferry to Bowen Island for a meetup with Peter Rawsthorne http://www.rawsthorne.org/ after some canoeing (6 hours, I didn’t think I was up to it so I’m hanging around the organic market waiting for the bluegrass music festival to start). This is 20 minutes free internet in the library.

Close to being like paradise here.

http://umwblogs.org/

“No parameters, just engage honestly with what you are doing, thinking about” – Jim Groom, in his OpenEd session.

2900 users in 2300 blogs.  People given their own spaces.  Jim’s Blog.

Case study: “I want my students to build a literary journal”  http://literaryjournals.umwblogs.org/ They did it.

Random links: Flickr blog shots | The Blog story |

Some emergent conference planning principles:

1. Provide minimal paper, and no conference bag.
2. Minimal paper=conference programme in pocket size form.
3. Provide wireless.
4. Have a comprehensive website with things you need to know.
5. Don’t provide food. Just park the conference near a ton of nice places to eat.
6. Give 90 minutes for lunch.
7. Have 15 minute breaks between all sessions. (45 minute sessions @OpenEd)
8. One result is that conference organisers can potter round in a relaxed fashion and talk or catch up with people.
9. Have fresh coffee and cold drinks on tap.
10. Have an unconference stream.

It is the first time I have BEEN at the conference with microblogging.

Twitter feed has been fun. So: you can ask a question about where to go, what’s best, what’s happening – as well as comment on what’s happening, what’s significant.  There is probably more, this is just so I don’t forget.

Afterthoughts

Used the wrong title for my session: it’s really all about the power of micronetworks.  Maybe the key factor in the way ahead.  The benefits to the participants that are benefits of the heart, the morale.  As well as efficiency and focus.  And quality.  And learning.

I’ve rarely felt quite so nervous before in a presentation. First, I was way out of my comfort zone.  My expertise in OER and is very embryonic, my track record is small and my approach chaotic.  PLUS:  Microblogging.  I could see at any given time 5 or 6 typing.  Including Stephen Downes. There were 400 new tweets in 45 minutes:

A few of these were about my session, from the audience.

Can entities like ccLearn OpenEd REALLY provide the technology for the communities to support? Will it be easy enough?  They have some small communities.  Will the system work?

One question was about the micro-network vs the organisation.

Stephen Downes tweeted: Downes #opened09 – role of micronetworks (community of communities) in OER… vs. large nets, broadcasts… small nets propagate, large nets grow

Jon Mott: jonmott @Downes: micronetworks are consistent with Shirky’s discussion of barriers to organization & coordination.

kiyanwang RT @boonebgorges Chirnside: The prospect of further audience heightens sensitivity to the quality of one’s own work #opened09

jonmott Chirnside: Little, informal networks for sharing & making personal recs=effective OER adoption strategy. #opened09

kiyanwang RT @boonebgorges Chirnside: Resistance to releasing teaching resources result of disproportionate attention on research v teaching #opened09

As usual, I learned more anyone I suspect, what with the thinking, the writing, the paring down to 17 minutes.  My methodology is a little chaotic, pragmatic and local.  How much do I also need to pay attention to the bigger issues of the Global, the International, the BIG repositories.  I was please to follow Arash.