My Twitter Tottering (aka “learning”)

Posted on 20 February 2013 by Jim

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Ante Up

Posted on 21 January 2013 by Jim

This connectivism keeps messing with my time management aspirations.
Prodded by Alec Couros’ tweet referencing Kevin Stranack’s “Guerrilla Connectivism“, and inspired by Roy Beasley’s “Confessions of a MOOC Dropout“, I posted the following “Reply All” last evening in response to a college-wide email promoting Coursera’s Aboriginal Worldviews & Education:

“Would any Aurora College staff be interested in going through it together as a cohort? With our shared northern context, we could add value to our own learning by meeting for online or teleconference discussions and/or discussion forums.  Sort of build our own support structure around the free Coursera course.”

Only 24 hours later, I have four takers from four different campuses!  And that’s just from the diehards who check work email on weekends.  In the MOOC world where “massive” is measured in 3 to 6 figures, it’s a speck; in my world where two talking is a success, it’s overwhelming.  Looks like it’s time to put my money where my mouth is (no wait – “invest my time where my typing fingers have made promises” ?? – more accurate, but just doesn’t have the same ring to it.)  Once again, ideas from a MOOC launch me into an activity that takes away time I’d like to spend actively participating in the MOOC that launched me.  This time I’ll blame/credit #etmooc.  Well, I have wondered about all the hype/trash-talk about xMOOCs.  Guess I’ll see.  Aboriginal Worldview is certainly a relevant topic for me.  Maybe I’ll even have time to blog it.

Did I mention that our college President is second among the respondents?  I wonder if the domain name “connectivistevangelist” is taken… or maybe “outonalimb”.

 

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Hey! Something weird is happening

Posted on 14 January 2013 by Jim

Harry Keller* tells this story:
I once had a student come to me … and say, “I tried all of the different pendulum masses, and they all had the same period. What did I do wrong?”

To my great delight, the Adult learners in my ABE class got caught up in making the non-Euclidian planes.  (See previous posting) After some initial “We did this in Kindergarten” murmurs, I saw them begin to engage as the things took shape. They quickly recognized that the hexagons and pentagons would make a soccer ball if they kept going.  I put on my lecture hat and explained that this is a curved plane, guided them to recognize that if it is pressed flat, there is not enough material to cover the ground – there are gaps between the hexagons.  Then I asked them (deliberately misleading) to speculate whether combining the hexagons with the heptagons would make larger or smaller gaps.  They weren’t sure, some guessed larger, some smaller, and some guessed one way then changed their mind.

When they went to assemble the pieces and found there were overlaps instead of gaps, I pointed out how my question had misled by implying that there would be gaps at all.  I then asked them what kind of curve they thought they would get once they finished.  If a shape with gaps made a ball when they were brought together, would overlap make the opposite? And just what is the opposite of a ball?  Would it be like the inside of a ball?  I threw out these questions without demanding answers.  They were playing various songs from YouTube as they worked.

Suddenly D. voiced what has to be my favourite quote for the month (if not semester).  “Hey! Something weird is happening.  Look!  Is it supposed to be like this?”  The beautiful serendipity was that he was playing Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall” at the time:

We don’t need no education!
We don’t need no thought control!
Teacher, leave them kids alone!

We laughed together in the joy of his discovery.  Only later did I point out the relationship of his question to the song.  It didn’t really matter what I told him was “supposed” to happen, he would free himself from thought-control by discovering the reality for himself.

*Harry Keller in a second-page comment on Edutopia post Sep 2011 http://www.edutopia.org/blog/benefits-mistakes-classroom-alina-tugend

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HEEEeeeeeerrr’s …

Posted on 14 January 2013 by Jim

Introducing myself for #etMOOC orientation week

My first project with the revamped Prezi
View at http://prezi.com/1fsnozgyimvg/who-is-jim/ if the embedded player doesn’t work.

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CMC 11 live session on Visual Communication

Posted on 3 December 2012 by Jim

I’ve created a World Clock event for the upcoming CMC 11 “Visual Communication” live session.  In case anyone else is as dyslexic about time zones as I am, click the image below to find your local time for the event:world clock 2012-12-05

or bit.ly/SCv7yS if you prefer the shortened version

See http://cdlprojects.com/post/56585 for description of the event and a link to the Blackboard Collaborate session.

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Tiling the non-Euclidian Plane

Posted on 20 November 2012 by Jim

I’ve always been intrigued by the soccer ball with its hexagons and pentagons, and with the mind-bending artwork of M.C. Escher.  The fact that the two were mathematically related totally escaped me until recently.  I do OK with basic arithmetic, but quickly get lost when they start mixing non-Roman script with the variables.  So I approached the VizMath MOOC with an expectation that I was going to be totally lost.  I am lost, but wander in amazement at the genius and the beauty.  I am not particularly worried about finding my way.

Daina Taimina’s crocheted creations are a good example.  While not even pretending to understand how these might represent (or fail to represent) the shape of the universe, they drew me in, made me believe I might copy them, if never understand them.  It wasn’t until she showed us the rough approximations of her work in hexagons though, that I found my inspiration to act – and blog.

positive vs. negative curvature

In an attempt to share some of the wonder with my ABE math students, I created a sheet of pentagons, hexagons, and heptagons to cut out and tape together.  There are enough polygons on one sheet to make a complete circle of both curved and negatively curved (hyperbolic) planes.  Extension of the planes, either to a complete sphere or complete insanity will require additional sheets, and probably collaborative effort.

download linkClick the image at the left to download a PDF version of my worksheet.

(And yes, I do know there are extra hexagons. I couldn’t bring myself to waste the white space when it’s so easy to crowd them.  Just be thankful my childhood training in frugality wasn’t so overpowering that I had to tile them.  I was tempted…)

 

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Technology Overshadows Pedagogy

Posted on 4 November 2012 by Jim

My online Tlicho Language class for government employees came out of the starting blocks over the last two weeks like snails at a sprint.  Hope it goes the distance like the proverbial turtle.  It’s sure no hare.  Struggles with technology sort of overshadow community building at this point.  Considering that part of the class is making their Skype call over a 768 kbps satellite connection, it’s actually amazing that we can do synchronous at all.

Vodburner – I’m sure that wasn’t the screen I shared

This week we all dialed into my freeConferenceCall.com to prevent losing audio.  That meant everyone had to mute their Skype microphones – but each time they got dropped, their mics were on again when I added them back to the Skype video conference.  With all this struggle with technology, I never did get around to the most important discussion about the assignments in our half-hour session.  It’s a very small class.  I intend to make phone calls to each participant before our next session to encourage them to participate in the asynchronous online environment.  I’m hoping I can walk them through the steps individually.  No one has taken an online class before.

I received encouraging support from the organizers for my philosophy that the live class sessions were for learning techniques and solving problems.  Learners are asked to select something they can use in everyday life as their first learning project and post a description to the forum.  I then work with language experts to find a culturally appropriate way of expressing this idea and make recordings or tools for practice.  Actual learning and practice is to take place in their everyday work and social lives where they are surrounded by native speakers of the language.  For the participants, it’s a change from the “taking-a-course=credentials” model they are conditioned to expect.

3 simple nouns

I created my first simple VoiceThread this week in response to one student’s posting.  It seems an ideal tool for language learning. Moodle kept erasing the embed code until Lisa Lane  reminded me to check a specific Moodle security setting.  I’ve put a screenshot in this blogpost rather than embedding it here to protect learner privacy.  My beef about VoiceThread is the same as about Wikispaces though.  No matter how open and public you make the privacy settings, no one can comment without creating an account.  That is a barrier to participation – all the more so for anyone who is unconvinced of the value of collaboration (legacy of old-style schooling where cheating was punished even more severely and painfully than being wrong – but now I’m on the soapbox).

Considering the amount of time I’m spending tweaking (and struggling with) Moodle, yes, online teaching definitely takes more time than face-to-face. Besides constantly second-guessing myself about the clarity of my instructions, I still cannot add text in our target language.

I’m in. Now where’s my database?

I’m working with Bluehost to venture into the murky world of SQL database editing.  Apparently I need to correct the Unicode settings from a command line interface.  (I’m open to anyone willing to assist me via Skype, join.me or BBCollaborate.)

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Unimaginative Title for POTCERT Week-6 Post

Posted on 15 October 2012 by Jim

I had relegated Hyper Text Markup Language old books
to the same dusty corner where my “DOS for Dummies” lay forgotten and irrelevant.  Why bother creating a web page the hard way?  I have WYSIWYG† authoring options ranging from Nightmare (MS Word) to Dreamweaver.

Then I started using WordPress and Moodle.  Formatting buttons are kind of limited there, but Hey, there’s an HTML tab where I could enter code to do more imaginative stuff, if I could remember the tags.  And it’s so nice of WP to allow a bit of formatting in comments too.  So I dusted off the old tome (figuratively speaking – literal translation=I Googled it) and found W3 School and HTML Code Tutorial – the two resources I raid when I want almost anything beyond the basic bold, underline, and italics tags.  I still can’t remember where the quotes go in img src= nor the syntax for span which replaces the font tag in version 5, but I don’t have to.  Sure, if I use them frequently enough I’ll remember; but just knowing that I can find the code goes a long way.  And understanding what it’s supposed to do allows me to play with the parameters when I copy and paste snippets I’m too lazy to type.

I usually paste the embed codes from YouTube or Vimeo into the HTML view, but I’ll try just pasting the URL into Visual view without creating a link as per the edublogs video.

Well, how about that?  Sure enough, it works!  Something new and easier.
This video from an earlier language class has a dual-purpose, hard and soft.  One can learn the names of the ten objects on the table, but it also demonstrates a learning procedure which can be adapted beyond just identifying nouns.

Now about RSS – It’s dead easy to subscribe to a tag or blog with Google Reader – “Really Simple Syndication” is an accurate name.  My problem is, when am I going to find time to read all the posts that get harvested?  My best intentions are forgotten in the flood of new stuff from the firehose.  My DS106 subscription alone has over a thousand unread posts.  Even POTCERT Subscribed a few weeks ago, shows 142 (now 139 because I got sidetracked looking at it).  Ignoring my RSS subscriptions is a choice I make, just like ignoring most of my Facebook notifications and email lists.

 

† WYSIWYG (pronounced “wizzy-wig”) stands for “What You See Is What You Get”, just another example of  disgustingly cute acronyms for unimaginative computer-speak.  It’s even in spell-check for goodness sake!  More examples of this pocket-protector vocabulary are TWAIN for Thing Without An Interesting Name,  SCSI (pronounced “scuzzy”) for the now thankfully obsolete Small Computer Serial Interface, and GUI (pronounced “gooey”) for Graphic User Interface.  Masquerading as jargon, these unsavoury characters get away with sounding acceptable when they should be marched out and shot along with all the nouns like interface, mouse, key, blog, surf, etc. that have the chutzpa to aspire to action verbs.
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VizMath Live Session

Posted on 14 October 2012 by Jim

I’ve created an event in WorldClock to keep me from getting confused with time zones.    Now if I miss the first VizMath live session, I’ll have to find something else to blame.

Click Here to find the time for your city.

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Dismembering the Procrustean Syllabus

Posted on 14 October 2012 by Jim

WARNING: hostile rant against syllabus – read no further if syllabus is sacred to you.

My current attitudes toward “the” syllabus have been shaped by,
1. “a” syllabus for a recent course that was confusing, contradictory, and fragmented, and
2. by a much-quoted 2007 article “Death to the Syllabus” where Mano Singham decries “the rule-infested, punitive, controlling syllabus that is handed out to students on the first day of class.”

Procrustean bed

  In Greek mythology, Procrustes was notorious for making all his captives fit his iron bed, racking them if they were too short, or amputating if they were too tall. My encounters with syllabi as a student have felt somewhat like being strapped to that bed.  I feel that Procustes’ method is more suitably applied to the syllabus than to the student or to the course. I will allow that dismembering (adapting) the syllabus may be more reasonable than killing it outright. I originally wanted to make this the title of my post:  
DEATH DISMEMBERMENT TO THE SYLLABUS!
but couldn’t insert HTML <strike> tags into the WordPress title.

I do appreciate Ko & Rossen’s† summary of the syllabus as a map  and a schedule.  I prefer to see those details woven into appropriate places in the course rather than in a separate document though. Pilar has given a good example in her screencast of putting the details where the student will be needing them.

Something fundamental inside me absolutely rebels, however, against the idea of “the contract“.  Why start with that of all things?  It smells so much like authoritarian, “they-owe-me” arrogance.  I know. I know. That’s a distortion; but before you flame me, count the lines.  What portion of “the contract” is my promise to serve up quality to the students, and how much is devoted to grounds for dismissal, disqualification, and docking points?  Does the syllabus treat students as learners?  Does it arouse the excitement of learning? Or does it reflect an assumption that students are not really interested in learning, will exploit every possible loophole, and cheat to get credit for doing as little as possible? Maybe we are treating students like customers, but why treat them like used-car buyers or discount-life-insurance clients who receive pages and pages of fine print circumscribing their options?

I’m going to try crafting an un-syllabus for my upcoming online language classes.
Short.
No threats.
Flexible schedule.
Collaboratively created course content and assessment criteria.
Instead of calling it a syllabus, it will be an “Introduction” or a “Welcome” section.  The rest of the information I will build into the interactive course outline – made available and updated as it becomes relevant.
Who knows, in 3 months I may have cause to adjust my attitude toward legalistic syllabi.

 

† Ko, Susan; Rossen, Steve (2010-03-03). Teaching Online: A Practical Guide, Third Edition (p. 120, 122). Taylor & Francis. Kindle Edition.
Note: No instructors were maimed in the dismemberment of the syllabus.
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