Tacit knowledge, abundant examples, and deliberate practice | Jon Udell

http://blog.jonudell.net/2013/08/26/tacit-knowledge-abundant-examples-and-deliberate-practice/

• 3 Things That People With Good Habits Do Differently

  • 3 Things That People With Good Habits Do Differently

     by James Clear
  • 1. They start with a habit that is so easy they can’t say no.
  • 2. They understand exactly what is holding them back.
  • 3. They have a plan for when they fail.

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Gatekeepers of a Different Kind: Virgil not NSA

http://coffeeforthebrain.blogspot.com/2013/08/teachers-stop-acting-like-gatekeepers.html?utm_content=buffer52866&utm_source=buffer&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Buffer

http://gatekeepingtheory.weebly.com/

 

• Sometimes I think that we need to ask this question because it is at the root of so much of what learning is all about:  who has the power?  Our learners, young or old, are in a state of wanting the power they think we have when they need to be tapping what they already have to get more of what they need.  And what is this power?  First, each of us is the product of millions of years of sometimes brutal natural selection and our DNA is the tightly helixed core of that power both instinctive and conscious.  Second, our system of government while highly in need of perfection has created learning pathways, some highly formalized (degree granting) and others highly informalized (#clmooc, public libraries, shared experience). These are dynamos for sharing The Knowledge as London cabbies call it.
  
  Teachers are in fact gatekeepers for good, for sharing, and for knowledge but you rightly flatten the hierarchy.  I prefer to think of them as gatekeepers of another kind.  They open doors to every single person and they make sure that there is equitable access to the dozen adjacent possible doors of power beyond them.  We are also the Virgil to their Dante at times, concierge to the hell that is the status quo for some of them.  Ideally, we want to be their Beatrice guiding to the gates of heaven. That kind of gatekeeping is not likely.
  
  My feelings about gatekeeper function are mixed.  I do not entirely agree that we don't need to be gatekeepers, but I agree that we don't want to be like God in her heaven parsing out the sheep from the goats like we do now.  Learning and knowledge are not scarce resources.  Let's not treat them as such.

Perhaps we can think of ourselves as 'gatekeep-peers'?

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Toyhacking and connected learning | Language Publics

A very fine blog post below by Saskia Still that prompted more questions from her reflections.  Very valuable.

 

Toyhacking and connected learning | Language Publics

• • Takeaway #1: We now have a pool of tools for hacking, but I have a query: 

    Were your children taking something and questioning its assumptions and changing the toy to match their beliefs? I think hacking is a natural way to learn much like walking and talking, probably not overtly analytical like Chad's adult definition of hacking. Are your kids showning you that hacking is just a larger form of pattern making. That is what the brain does so very well.

• • Takeaway #2: We need to hack our children's idea of play. Is that a make or a hack?   

 

too mny devices

too mny devices, a photo by Tellio on Flickr.

Tellio's Cell Blog Mark sample intrusive scaffolding

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My Word for 2013

• Please share your words today. #slice2013 « TWO WRITING TEACHERS

  Connect–I spent August connecting with other teachers nationwide. When August was over, I stopped. I miss it terribly and realize that while I am not great at connecting generally, I am good at being helpful. I will connect with those I already know through the channels I already have. I will connect with those I don’t know but follow. I will be helpful and grateful as my primary tools for connecting.

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James Howard Kunstler on Why Technology Won't Save Us | Jeff Goodell | Politics News | Rolling Stone

Once again stuff from outside one's domain can be a serious kick to the head.  This one comes from uber-curmudgeon James Howard Kunstler.   He addresses an issue I smash up against in education circles--disagreement.  When I disagree, I am branded as negative at best and ignored at worst.  I get pretty bent when I get treated like a troll and all I want is a conversation.  His remarks here are a nearly perfect echo to that frustration.

I don’t like talking about "solutions."  I prefer talking about intelligent responses.  My beef with the whole "solutions" thing comes from my travels around the country, talking on college campuses and such; there is this whole clamor for "solutions."  The idea is, if you’re not optimistic enough, you should shut up.  But there are subtexts to all these things.  And the subtext to that particular meme is, "Give us the solutions that will allow us to keep running our stuff the same way we’re running it now, except by other means."  They don’t really want to hear about other arrangements.  They want to keep on running all the cars, only differently.  You know, like hybrid electric cars, or electric cars, or cars that run on algae secretions.  But they don’t get that we’re done with that way of life.  The mandates of reality are telling us something very different.  They are telling us we have to inhabit the landscape and move around in it very differently in the future. 

You gotta love it:  mandates of reality, the prevailing subtext, and 'done with that way of life'.   Read the whole article and hope he is wrong.  I don't think he is.

 

•  

James Howard Kunstler on Why Technology Won't Save Us | Jeff Goodell | Politics News | Rolling Stone

Using Catch Notes

Okiedokie

Sent from Catch Notes on iPhone

Sent from my iPod

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Authentic Learning Group Diigo (weekly)

• JogNog | Top 100 World Dates

  Tags: dates, JogNog, social, studies, world

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Untitled

Sent from my iPad

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Authentic Learning Group Diigo (weekly)

• Busting the Myths of Digital Learning

  Results of JogNog Digital Learning Survey

  Tags: digital, learning, JogNog

  • - By Cara Whitehead

• Busting the Myths of Digital Learning

  Survey from JogNog reveals schools unprepared to support digital learning - EdTech Times

  Tags: digital, learning, JogNog

  • - By Cara Whitehead

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New World of Informal/Unstructured Training

• Take off those rose coloured glasses | Harold Jarche

  tags: ifttt delicious diigo

  • The new reality is that, at least implicitly, business units are realizing that work is learning and that they need to empower workers to learn and solve problems collaboratively.

  • What will your training role be in the future? The author describes four future roles:

     
     
    1. Design & Create Courses
    2. Enable Learning
    3. Support Learning
    4. Be a change agent for development
  • The future will not be L&D 2.0 but rather a new organizational learning approach, where learning is integrated into the workflow.

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Jenna Wortham: What I Read - Entertainment - The Atlantic Wire

• Jenna Wortham: What I Read - Entertainment - The Atlantic Wire

  • I wake up around 7 or 7:30 a.m. and check the news on my iPhone. I usually sleep with my laptop nearby, but the phone is quicker.
  • I've set a few select Twitter feeds to push their tweets to my phone via SMS from 7 in the morning till 2 at night.
  • I listen to music while I get dressed. I’ve done that since high school. It prepares me for the long day ahead.
  • During the ten minutes it takes me to walk to the train, I’ll quickly check Twitter for the news of the day, Tumblr for reactions to the news and Instagram for social news, to see if anything is heating up that might make for a good daily story or blog post -- a big news event, a backlash to something, a particularly timely meme, viral video or some other important topic.
  • During the first half of my commute, I listen to podcasts on my ride into the city. I use a terrific app called Instacast to keep track of the ones I like
  • I also read most of the New York Times through our iPhone app on my commute in.
  • I try to absorb at least an article a day.
  • For the second leg, I start preparing myself for the office. I reply to as many emails as I can in the last 15-20 minutes of my ride.
  • Once I get to work, around 10, I open Twitter and Facebook -- these stay open throughout the day and I stick my head back into them repeatedly to keep an eye out for any news that might be bubbling up.
  • I’ve got several secret Twitter lists that I use to help filter the news. The two that are the most useful contains all the founders, investors and start-ups that I'm keeping a close eye on and the other is full of reporters, tech and beyond, whose work I admire, so that I can see what they're tweeting about and linking to.
  • I favorite about 50 things (or more) a day on Twitter -- articles to read, ideas I liked, books to read, songs. I use ifttt recipe to send my Twitter faves to my Gmail inbox so I can sift through them later.
  • I have breakfast and skim my trades -- Hacker News, Reddit, GigaOm, The Verge, Gizmodo, BetaBeat, BuzzFeed FWD, TechCrunch, Techmeme, All Things D and The Atlantic Wire.
  • While I skim, I take notes the old-fashioned way: With a fine-point Sharpie and a stack Post-it notes. I do a lot of pattern matching -- emerging themes among new start-ups, the types of companies that are getting funded, a VC or entrepreneur catches my eye -- and make a note or a list, and I keep these in a row on my desk for easy reference.
  • For my beat, I need to see what new service or app is bubbling up and pay attention to how people are using the web, their mobile devices and new technologies, but it can often take awhile for things to catch on, so I'm constantly monitoring for that groundswell when a new service or behavior breaks out beyond my professional and social circle and starts to catch on in a bigger way.
  • often take photos of these handwritten notes and file them in a separate folder on my iPhone for easy perusal later.
  • I keep a fresh Steno notebook for each cluster of stories and blog posts I’m working on each week, and I always keep a graph-paper Rhodia notebook on me for longer to-do lists, general observations, story ideas. I avoiding spending a lot of time in my inbox -- it’s the equivalent quicksand -- so instead, I keep an eye on the emails to address anything urgent that comes in and make a list of people to reply to via email during a late-afternoon coffee break or before bed at the end of the night.
  • f there's no breaking news that requires immediate attention, I'll file a blog post or two and then transition into interviews and reporting for the features I'm working on that week and calls and meetings with sources that last until late afternoon, when I have lunch. Then, I’ll go back to those same sites and see what I’ve missed.
  • During lunch, I check in on my favorite writers. In my regular rotation each week: Willa Paskin at Salon, Mary H.K. Choi at MTV and Wired, Edith and everyone at The Hairpin, Mat Honan at Gizmodo, Parislemon, Amanda Peyton on Tumblr, Robin Sloan’s blog, Shortform blog, Chris Dixon, Silicon Filter, Anil Dash, Waxy.org, Liz and Peter at All Things D, Guernica, The New Inquiry, Jonah Lerer, Clive Thompson, Vulture’s Mad Men and Game of Thrones recaps, The New Yorker’s Culture Desk, the picks of Longform, Rembert Browne and Jay Caspian King at Grantland, Anthony de Rosa at Reuters, David Carr and Brian Stelter, RConversation, Daring Fireball, Farhad Manjoo, Fred Wilson, Matt Buchanan and John Herrman at BuzzFeed FWD, Matt Stopera, Whitney Jefferson and Katie Notopoulos at BuzzFeed, Alexis Madrigal at The Atlantic, Rebecca Greenfield at The Atlantic Wire, Tim Carmody at Wired, Kashmir Hill at Forbes, to name a few
  • I really admire iPad apps like Longform and Percolate. Lately, I use Pocket or Flipboard to see if I can unearth any new content that I should be paying attention to, although between Twitter, Tumblr and Facebook, I get sent down enough unusual and satisfying rabbit holes to keep me awash in new content.
  • At the end of the day, I crave time away from the screen. I’ll go on a run, or to a show, or a tech event or a drinks thing to catch up with friends -

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Open course in digital storytelling enjoys modest success | Inside Higher Ed

Open course in digital storytelling enjoys modest success | Inside Higher Ed

MOOC stands for 'massively open online course' And the emphasis is on massive. One at Stanford University had had enrollment upwards of 200,000.On the smaller side,Jim Groom's MOOC, DS 106-digital storytelling, had only a few hundred. But it definitely is something new under the pedagogical sun.  It is all about imagination, folksonomy, and creative chaos.  Reminiscent of the Occupy Movement, these courses represent a case study in leaderless, emergent organization.

 

The characteristics of this 'new new thing'  include: no textbook, no lectures, and a student-driven course design where  F2F attendance is optional. Students are free to design and re-design the course on the fly. Remix is encouraged and social upvoting of others' works a la Reddit and Digg is built in. Weekly assignments are student created. F2F students are required to create assignments and tutorials for skills need to complete them. Groom points out that there are over 1300 learners are online who get no course credit yet they produce the majority of the assignments.

 

Jim Groom has lofty hopes for this revolutionary course model, "The goal of DS106 is to teach students how to be creative, capable Internet citizens, able to consciously shape their own identities and narratives online. Minus the modicum of structure and authority exerted by the instructors, the course operates much as the Web does." Or as he calls them the three C's: community, collaboration, and coordination.

Canadian MOOC pioneer George Siemens remarks that Grooms course is different from the Stanford model. "The MOOCs at Stanford and Udacity are instructivist,” says Siemens. “Learners largely duplicate the knowledge base of the educator or designer.” In other words students are following in the instructor's learning footsteps much like the silhouettes of shoes in old dance studios showed learners the steps. What Groom and company are doing is to create an environment for learners to construct their own steps.

Is there a place at Western for such a course? Is anyone out there willing to facilitate? Is there something in your discipline that you have been dying to collaborate on in a similar open environment? I would love to work with someone to do this. You can get in touch with me at terry dot elliott at gmail dot com.

 

 

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Authentic Learning Group Diigo (weekly)

• Free Printable Worksheets

  Tags: Printables, vocabulary, spelling

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Authentic Learning Group Diigo (weekly)

• Science Vocabulary

  Tags: science, vocabulary

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Authentic Learning Group Diigo (weekly)

• I2Mag - Internet & Design Inspiration Magazine

  Tags: safety, history, research, blogging

  • - By Karan Chopra

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Authentic Learning Group Diigo (weekly)

• 3. 4 Promote dialogue as a means of learning

  Tags: learning, dialogue, teaching

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I’m not a participant, I participate! « In dubio

Terrific implications for "teaching".  For example, if I am teaching how to summarize how can I get them to tell me about summarizing?  Gget them to do it in class then draw inferences from what they have learned, have them research it, ask them to do it for unlikely objects then draw inferences. And how can get them to provide feedback on what they do?  Do paired work, small group work, and large group work on how well a text has been summarized from the point of view of the audience-reader.  Might start with a roughly annotated article and get them to read the original article. At that point they can judge what needs to be left out, changed, or put in.

 

I’m not a participant, I participate! « In dubio