Leading by Example

The Big Question

The Learning Circuits Big Question this month is about learning professionals, leadership, and literacies. Tony breaks it down as several questions, but the Learning Revolutionary summed all the questions up nicely:

Should learning professionals be leading the charge around new work literacies such as social media and informal learning?

Because I’m outside the corporate world, I’m going to look at this from the perspective of 21st century literacy skills rather than “work literacy.” Granted, I think there’s a lot of overlap between the work literacy ideas and the Framework for 21st Century Skills. I see this as similar goals but different contexts.

Let’s start with the idea that K-12 students should be supported in learning 21st century literacy skills. This should not be a controversial starting point; after all, 80% of American voters agree that the skills students need now aren’t the same as the skills needed in the past.

If students need to learn these skills, then their teachers need to have them too, right? Granted, some students will learn the skills outside the system, in spite of whatever the schools teach. But we’re looking at what we want to happen, and I want these skills to be supported by the schools. That means teachers need to have the skills. They have to be able to model the skills for students.

Where will the teachers learn the skills? I don’t think there’s a single answer here: professional learning communities, workshops, conferences, university courses, and mentoring all play a part. Since I work in the higher ed realm though, that’s where I’m going to focus. I think our instructors should have 21st century skills. These are the people who are teaching the teachers, who pride themselves on being the “best of the best” in the field of education. They’re the next group of people who need the skills.

But where are they going to learn? From me and the other people on our team. We have to lead by example for these skills. Our team is leading the charge, and we are making progress. It isn’t nearly as fast as I’d like, but when I look at how far we’ve come in our little corner of the world, it does give me hope.

I want the K-12 students to learn those 21st century skills, but I don’t have access to them directly. Therefore, my responsibility is to work on my own sphere of influence, starting with our online course development team leading by example for our facilitators. When the facilitators have strong 21st century skills, they’ll pass those skills on to the teachers, who in turn will be leaders for their students. If I want others to lead in these skills, I have to do my part to lead by example too. It would be hypocritical to ask them to teach technology skills without practicing what I preach (that is, after all, why I started this blog in the first place).

If I had to focus on one single skill, it would be lifelong learning. Perhaps this isn’t a skill so much as an attitude. It drives me crazy to see educators who think they’ve learned all they need to learn and aren’t willing to even try to learn anything new anymore. Cultivating a culture of learning, where people expect and enjoy continuous learning, is the underlying solution for everything else. We’re never going to get teachers to use technology if they’re determined they don’t need to learn anything anymore. Until they accept their role as learner as well as teacher, we won’t get the changes to happen. Creating a culture that supports lifelong learning needs to start with the professionals who lead by example.

If you had to focus on one skill for this leading by example, what would it be? What’s the underlying skill that supports all the rest, the one where you will concentrate your efforts first?

Technorati Tags: workliteracy, learning+circuits, leadership, changemanagement

Atmosphere for Commenting

Rather than posting for every day of the 31 Day Comment Challenge, I’m summarizing multiple tasks into one post as I did for tasks 2 through 8. Tasks 9 through 12 all seem to be about the atmosphere for commenting on your blog, so I’m combining these into one post.

Day 9: Should We Be Commenting on Blogs?

I think if the goal of the blog is learning, then yes, we should be commenting on blogs and allowing comments on our own. Allowing and even encouraging comments doesn’t prevent other forms of conversations (like linked blog posts) from happening. It does, however, allow people who don’t have a blog to participate in the conversations. I think commenting can also encourage interaction outside our usual niches. For example, one of my friends is a web programmer. He has his own site, but it’s very much focused on what he does. He has commented here before when he felt he could add to the conversation. However, his comment wouldn’t have fit with the content of his own site.

For purposes of learning, I think leaving it open to comments is very valuable. However, I do understand that people use blogs for other purposes where commenting wouldn’t make as much sense. Just because this is what’s best for me doesn’t mean it’s best for others. People are entitled to create a different atmosphere on their own blogs; it’s their space!

Day 10: Do a Comment Audit on Your Own Blog

In this task, we’re asked to look at six reasons why people might not comment on your blog.

1. You sound like a press release.

Nope, I don’t think I do this one. I certainly have seen it though. Blogs that sound like press releases don’t just discourage me from commenting, they discourage me from even subscribing.

2. You sound like an infomercial.

In my normal posts, no, I don’t think I sound like an infomercial. Sometimes when I’m excited about a tool I wonder if I do sound that way though. What do you think–do posts like Diigo’s New Release or my Synergy feature overview sound too much like a sales pitch?

3. You sound like a know-it-all.

This is something I know I do sometimes in real life, so it’s the one thing on this list that most concerns me. Michele noted that she gets more comments when she gives incomplete answers and asks questions. I’m looking forward to Task 18 where we try to look for patterns in what generates comments because I wonder if I’ll see the same thing. Without actually doing the analysis yet, my guess (or at least my hope) is that I sounded more know-it-all early in my blog writing. I’m much more comfortable blogging now, and that makes it easier to ask questions and put half-formed thoughts out there.

4. You haven’t showed them how.

I hadn’t done this until today. I copied Tony Karrer’s First Time Visitor’s Guide idea and included some directions there. It will be interesting to see if I get more comments that way. That idea worked really well for our team blog, where most of our audience (other employees in the company) isn’t familiar with blogs. After six months, the guide is still the most popular page.

5. You haven’t created the right atmosphere.

This is something I think I’ve improved over time, although maybe it’s just the issue of a blog needing time to build up readers and a community. I didn’t participate in the 31 Day Build a Better Blog challenge, but I did pick up tips from others who did complete it. One of those was emailing new commenters. That technique alone has done wonders for improving conversations and getting people to comment more than once.

6. You just don’t seem that into it.

Nope, not a problem. I think people can see that I’m a geek and that I enjoy all of this without any trouble.

What do you think?

For those of you who have been reading my blog for a while and those of you who have just recently discovered it, how do you think I’m doing in these six areas? Have I been honest in my self-assessment?

Day 11: Write a Blog Comment Policy

Done, and included in my new First Time Visitor’s Guide.

Day 12: Make Sure Your Blog Technology is “Comment Friendly”

No captcha, no moderation. Akismet is pretty terrific at picking up the spam, so I don’t need it. It does occasionally flag things as spam that aren’t, usually because a comment has too many links. I do ask for email addresses, but I use those to contact new commenters.

Technorati Tags: comment08, Comment+Challenge, Michele+Martin, Tony+Karrer, conversation, learning

Community Size & Connection Strength

Britt Watwood asked a thought-provoking question in a comment, and he graciously agreed to let me promote his comment to a post.

A question I think for all of us - which ties in with Shirky’s latest book - is at what point does a “communuity” grow to the point where you can no longer connect with everyone. I have 40 some blogs that I track with RSS…which to me can be managed. Any thoughts or suggestions?

I haven’t read Clay Shirky’s Here Comes Everybody yet, so I can’t respond to that part of the question. However, the idea of community size and an upper limit for size is intriguing.

Some of this certainly depends on the individual; where Britt can manage 40, others might only really be able to manage 15. I have many more than 40 RSS subscriptions, but I don’t really interact with everyone in my reader.

Perhaps in my network, I see different degrees of connection intensity. Don’t look at this as definite layers with clear starting and stopping points; there’s a lot of blurring between them. It’s more of a gradual change.

• Strong: I have a handful of people I interact with pretty regularly, like Michele Martin. Those are stronger connections.
• Medium: I have a bigger group of people I’ve interacted with several times, but maybe it’s less regular.
  • These medium connections might be people I interacted with several times over the course of a few weeks but haven’t talked to in months since then.
  • They might also be people I interact with sporadically: a comment or two every so often.
• Weak: I have a large group of weak connections.
  • Some of these are blogs I read but haven’t ever directly talked to. I read Stephen Downes for months before I commented on his site or emailed him; ditto for Jane Hart, David Warlick, and many others. I have had direct contact with all 3 of those people now, but they started out as very weak, one-way connections.
  • I consider blogs I read but have only commented on once to be weak connections.
  • Sometimes I might comment on a blog once but not subscribe. That happens now when I get trackbacks here. I try to go out and read any posts where someone links to me, and I often comment. Sometimes I do subscribe, but I admit that I have too many subscriptions already to add everyone to my list. So I might have a weak connection to someone who reads my blog, but I don’t read theirs.

Then again, even in face-to-face communities, you don’t have the same relationship with everyone. Do you have the level of connection with everyone in your department or team at work? What about in religious or volunteer organizations? Heck, do you have the same relationship with every member of your own extended family?

Perhaps when I think of “community” online, I don’t see it as something with hard and fast borders. The edges are much fuzzier than that; it sort of gradually fades from strong to weak. Face-to-face communities seem to have harder edges; you either are employed by a company or not, you are a member of an organization or not. It’s easier to identify who’s “in” and who’s “out” offline. There’s a clear line between people who have an online presence and those who aren’t online at all, of course. But once you have a blog, I don’t see bright line distinctions anymore, just different intensity in the connections. There’s affinity, but not a clear boundary.

Obviously, not everyone sees the online community that way. The recent conversations about whether the edublogosphere is a closed, elite cocktail party certainly demonstrate that some people do feel like they are outside looking in. I guess I’ve never really felt that way online though; I’ve always known I could express my thoughts and join the conversations anywhere I wanted to. (As a side note, I just have to point out that I find it very ironic to look at Stephen Downes and think he’s elitist. Elitist != socialist. I’m just sayin’…)

Getting back to Britt’s original question, I think there might be a soft upper limit on how many strong connections any single person can manage—with the caveat that the “limit” varies widely between individuals and can change over time. I think the technology allows us to have many more medium and weak connections and to manage those effectively.

That raises some other questions:

• Do the medium and weak connections constitute a “community,” or are they something else?
• Does a community have to have a distinct boundary, or can it be something more fluid and dynamic?

Technorati Tags: Britt+Watwood, community, Clay+Shirky, Stephen+Downes, Jane+Hart, David+Warlick, connections

TCC08: Social Bookmarking to Support Professional Practice

Using a Social Bookmark Site to Assist in Diffusion of Online Information to Support Professional Practices

Presented by Heather Carter-Templeton, University of Tennessee Health Science Center, Memphis, Tennessee

Working to improve information literacy skills in nurses

Professor #1

• Does online research
• Gets email subscriptions
• Can’t find the information she wants when she needs it–it’s at home when she needs it at work, etc.

Professor #2

• Uses social bookmarking so can find what he needs

Tagging with social bookmarking can help peers & colleagues find information more easily

Social Bookmarking Sites

• CiteULike: academic papers & links, does citations
• Connotea: citation manager
• Del.icio.us: most popular, emphasis is on community
• Digg: community-based news, user ranking
• Furl: keeps a cache, offers full-text searching. Tagging is secondary.
• Reddit: news article bookmarking like Digg
• Simpy: can track others’ bookmarks by creating topics
• Spurl: Bookmarking & search engine, like Furl

Pros of Social Bookmarking:

• New communities
• Gain insight
• Easy access
• Organized based on your needs
• Can view how others have organized their thoughts
• Easy to use

Cons:

• Have to maintain and update the site throughout a project–clean out the dead links
• No oversight for tagging

Their list for the project: http://del.icio.us/listenuphealth

Sources were collected by SMEs and nursing librarians

Documented their search strategies in a Google Spreadsheet This would be useful for teaching students information literacy

Tagging System

• Had to change sometimes after the list grew that they needed to adjust
• Tried to make it useful for the nurses
• used lots of compound tags
• Tagging structure: subject, keywords, type of media
• Bundled tags

Nurses really like the central repository–they can find the information they need quickly. It’s too new to have data on how they use it though.

This is an interesting concept–I guess I’m not sure that I see as much use for resources only collected by experts without the users contributing on their own. Certainly there’s a place for having a starting point created for students, like I my list for Building Online Collaborative Environments. But I’d want students to use that themselves. Certainly for a professional practice, the act of saving and annotating on your own is valuable too.

Read the other liveblogged posts from this conference.

Technorati Tags: tcc08, tcc2008, social+bookmarking, research, community

TCC08: Wikis and Blogs and Tags: Oh Why?

Presenters:

• Alice Bedard-Voorhees, Colorado Mountain College, Glenwood Springs, Colorado, USA
• Lisa Cheney-Steen, Colorado Community College System, Denver, Colorado, USA

Starting with an intro to Web 2.0

New tools pop up all the time

Why not just use the features in your LMS?

• Information or Presentation
• Social Connection
• Collaboration

Categories overlap & aren’t clean distinctions

Information & Presentation

• Blogs
• Podcasts
• Voicethread
• Slideshare

“Information is not always text” This is a really important point

If it is text, a blog is good

In chat, Alan Selig pointed out that using tools outside the LMS is important b/c they’ll have them after they graduate.

• Life is not a closed situation like an LMS
• Show students what you are reading–demonstrate importance of material outside the classroom
• Add “real world” content by bringing things in from outside (podcasts, blogs, etc.)

Audience is important!

Question about FERPA (student privacy law in the US)

• Important to protect feedback and grades
• They checked that moving student writing outside was OK
• May have students use pseudonyms
• Cynthia Calongne said for game-based rubrics she adds NPCs to disguise the real scores

Social Connection Tools

“Increased engagement = Opportunity for Increased Learning”

Engagement is the why for these tools

Information Literacy & Sharing Discoveries

• delicious
• Diigo
• Twitter

Annotations on sites helps information literacy.

Diigo = “delicious on steroids” with more annotations or conversations, sticky notes. More social community.

Cynthia uses Twitter for keeping track of bookmarks–lets her tag it with who shared it with her and when to give her context

Collaboration Tools

• Wikipedia
• Kaltura–collaborative video editing
• Google Docs
• Diigo

Create a sharing community

Important to teach students collaborative skills to prepare for work

Teams are goal-directed

Wikis as classic example of collaborative tool

• Gave an example of faculty handbook created with wiki (using MediaWiki)
• Wikis make it very clear who did what–always a problem with group work for grading

Students learn how to judge the stability of information & collective intelligence through using a wiki

They get complaints that their website information is out of date but that the wiki information keeps changing.

Wikis have more work application for students too

Diigo

• Set up a group
• Have everyone in the group highlight and add sticky notes to discuss the content
• Diigo’s dashboard has forums for discussion
• Automatic notification available so instructors can keep track of discussion
• Help connect learning in class to learning outside

How do you pronounce Diigo? Is it DEE-Go?

LMS is nice to have as a launching point so students have a home base

They have had good support from their administration.

If students are really uncomfortable sharing online, you need to make accomodations–one participant said he dropped a class b/c it required Blogger and he doesn’t like Google’s privacy policies

You need to set expectations for writing style–if you grade on grammar and tell them what is acceptable, they will write with an appropriate level of communication for that level. Ask students what they want to be remembered for–is it l33t speak?

Privacy issues: Edublogs may be better than Blogger, or do it on your own servers to control information.

Image: ‘Ruby Slippers by Peter Alexander‘
www.flickr.com/photos/14351900@N00/2128542926

Update: I switched the image for this–I didn’t realize that my original choice had graffiti over the picture; I was just seeing Dorothy and Toto.

Read the other liveblogged posts from this conference.

Technorati Tags: tcc08, tcc2008, wiki, blog, diigo, privacy, education, writing

TCC08: What can Educators Learn from Online Religious Communities?

This is another liveblogged post from the TCC 2008 conference.

Presented by Scot Headley, Amy Dee, Sue Phillips, Tricia Meyer, Jeanette Eggert

Doctoral students at George Fox University

Based on seminar where doctoral students created online community projects

Used a wiki for the course–most content went through the wiki, not through Moodle.

The seminar raised a question about whether online religious communities could be a model for online educational experiences.

Amy Dee: Wiki-Mania

• Used wiki for communication with a church small group
• People were used to checking email, not the wiki

Missed most of her presentation due to a phone call

Tricia Meyer

• Moodle–Used Moodlerooms
• Invited 10 students (10th grade) and 5 guest hosts (employees of school/church)

Successes:

• Idea received positively by students
• Students did thoughtful posts
• High quality information from guest hosts
• Good feedback from students

Failures

• 50-60% involvement
• Minimal interaction with each other–students responded to adults but not each other
• No evidence of learning from others’ posts
• Technical problems

Conclusions

• Students don’t have much time but they like it
• Forum is good for giving students time and space to think carefully and express themselves
• Didn’t really create a sense of community

Sue Phillips

• Used MySpace & a wiki
• Chose MySpace b/c lots of existing religious tools available (e.g., Bible verse of the day)
• Also explored specifically Christian sites, but secular sites like MySpace may offer better options

Jeanette Eggert

She had not used a chat room, IM, Facebook, or MySpace before joining a site called OurPrayer.org

Joined a group that did live chat

She’s still active in the group even after her class assignment

• Chat has structure
• People assigned as a leader and an “usher”–one person is designated to welcome newcomers through a private message and help them get started
• Everyone can contribute
• 30 minute chat, 2X a day
• Fellowship time before and after official time

Feels a sense of community with the group–technology has connected her with others. Provided opportunity for isolated individuals to experience community,

For education

• It’s hard to do synchronous and get everyone there at the same time
• A larger total population may give you enough people
• Chat does add pressure for spelling and typing, even when the group is accepting

Scot Headley: Quaker Meeting in Second Life

• Second Life focused his attention–unprogrammed worship requires that focus, not multitasking
• Respect for people behind the avatar
• Consensus decision making
• Encouragement and accountability online
• Learned about philosophical and practical aspects of online practice

Questions:

Most people in the online communities were part of other face-to-face Christian communities

Audio might be better for people who have trouble typing

Technorati Tags: tcc08, tcc2008, education, religion, community, web20

TCC08: Cultural Diversity in Online Education

I am again liveblogging during the Technology, Colleges, and Community (TCC) 2008 conference. Read the other liveblogged posts from this conference.

Cultural Diversity and Its Impact in an Online Education Environment

Presenters:

Penny Lorenzo, Kaplan University, Cave Creek, AZ, USA
Gurmit Kaur, Kaplan University, Phoenix, AZ, USA

World is becoming more interconnected, so we should prepare students to function in an interconnected, multicultural world

Cultural diversity enriches organizations & encourages different approaches to teaching and learning

Need awareness of cultures to understand impact on learning process

Instructors can relate content to international current events, even with a set syllabus

Clearly assuming their audience is all instructors in how they are approaching this

Example with researching the Hague Convention countries

Students who are more sensitive to cultural diversity will be more valuable to employers

In an online environment, you may not know immediately what culture someone is from or what their primary language is. When you see a different spelling, do you think it’s a typo or do you consider the cultural perspective?

Especially in online education, language is a big aspect. Using a common language helps to build a learning community. Speaking another language doesn’t mean giving up your identity; it means adding to it. If you’re preparing students for jobs in the US, they should be able to speak and write well in English.

How we label things & what words we choose matters–words reflect power structures and cultural perspectives. Sometimes you need to discuss terms together and come to common understanding of meanings. We did this for the Cultural Competence course, discussing how “racism” would be defined for the class.

For Sikhs, all males have the last name “Singh” and females have the last name “Kaur.” Historically, this was a way to get away from the caste system. I had no idea–this was totally new to me.

Diversity enhances our lives, helps us understand ourselves better

Provide support for students who need it so all students can be successful

Understanding diversity & cultural heritage can help retention rates

Important to create a learning environment where everyone can feel comfortable with the diversity they bring to the community. Students must know it’s OK to be different and to have individual perspectives.

Learn about the culture to make them feel special, like learning about the holidays

• Use e-cards to let students know you are learning about their holidays
• Had a student who learned a few words of Malay to speak with her, made her feel special
• Take a step towards the students and learn about them

IM can be useful for building relationships b/c the expectations for spelling and language aren’t so formal

Reach out to the students, celebrate them. Be open to learning from them.

Technorati Tags: diversity, online+education, culture

TCC08: Creating and Teaching a College-Level Undergraduate Course in Social Networking

This is another liveblogged post from the TCC 2008 conference, presented by Robert Fulkerth, Ageno School of Business, Golden Gate University, San Francisco, CA.

• Developed a course on social networking for business
• Will teach with blogs and a wiki
• Using the tools to teach the content–mostly avoiding the LMS
• Use online library databases to research social networking

Past predictions about online communities assumed text because that was what was available. Now YouTube and multimedia are important.

May get invites from people you only vaguely remember–instructors may not remember every student they taught

(Provided a bunch of stats on social networking usage–I’m not taking notes on all that)

Many businesses consider time on social networking sites wasted, but not all

Wachovia is testing social networking for sharing information and developing community within the community

Businesses fear the lack of message control, but some hope that by creating a safe and pleasant environment internally that employees will talk internally rather than out in public

Premises

• Social networking is driven by the desire of people to “demonstrate themselves”
• Predicts a tiered structure will develop
• Right now, this is “Tier 1″
  • Proprietary with some customization (like Facebook & MySpace)
  • Owned by major companies
  • Mass subscription with low/no barriers to entry
  • Free or low-cost, available to all online, use task-specific tools
• Social networking sites will continue to be important, but they require active leadership
• Ease of entry will allow more personalized websites

Tools Used:

• Used Weblog.com to create the blog
• Google Sites for the wiki
• Myspace
• LinkedIn
• Facebook
• Plaxo–aggregating from multiple social sites
• YouTube–lots of educational resources
• iTunes University
• Second Life

Future Trends

• More for younger generations
• More communities of practice
• Move from passive to active participation (Isn’t that already happening? I don’t think that’s future, that’s now)
• Lines between social networking and formal education will blur
• Social networking sites will reflect changing roles in online engagement

In the chat, there was some good discussion about how sites like Facebook may not be the best for meeting new people, but rather for maintaining and improving existing relationships. Some good discussion about differences in social networking along racial and class lines and the opportunities for networking in the Hispanic community.

Read the other liveblogged posts from this conference.

Image: ‘My social network‘
http://www.flickr.com/photos/49503019876@N01/1804295568

Technorati Tags: socialnetworking, business, tcc08, web20

Diigo User Communities

I just realized that Diigo lets me see everyone who has bookmarked my site and what they saved. They call this the “User Community” around a site; there’s also communities around tags. Here’s Site Community for my blog; you can enter your own URL there to see your user community. If you’re more interested in the people than the pages and tags, the People Search By Site is a better tool.

I like being able to see this information to learn about what my readers like from my blog. Obviously the information’s a bit limited because only 12 people have bookmarked my site, but it’s still fun to look at what they saved and how they tagged it. A site with more bookmarks, like Vicki Davis’ site community, has much richer information.

In del.icio.us, it’s much harder to find this information, and much of it simply isn’t available. I periodically check how many people have bookmarked my site on del.icio.us, but that only picks up people who have saved the main page. If I want to see who has bookmarked a particular post, I have to enter that URL separately. (Unless I’m missing something–if there’s an easier way, somebody please fill me in.)

I know that some bloggers put their own posts in del.icio.us to help them track who else is saving those posts. I do agree that what gets bookmarked is one measure of our posts’ value to others. I’ve never done that bookmarking though because it seemed like too much work. Diigo doesn’t require any prep work on my part though, which makes it much more likely that I’m going to actually use the information.

Here endeth today’s commercial for Diigo. Seriously, I know I sound like I’m doing marketing for them, but I promise I’m not on their payroll. I just was really excited by this discovery today and wanted to share.

Technorati Tags: Diigo, delicious, socialbookmarking, Vicki+Davis, community

Free Subscription

If you enjoyed this post, consider a free subscription so you can receive automatic updates. Don’t worry, I hate spam as much as you do, so I’ll never share your email address with anyone.

  Subscribe by RSS feed

  Subscribe by Email

Diigo’s New Release

Diigo recently released version 3 of their social bookmarking application. This is what I use to keep track of all my resources and what generates my Daily Bookmarks posts. I was involved in the testing for this release, which was fun. I’ve never participated in private testing like that, and it was cool to see the process and how the features were changed over time based on feedback from the testers.

The biggest change in this version is really the emphasis on the social part of social bookmarking. Diigo had groups before, but the sharing tools are improved now. You can also have a profile and add friends like social networking sites. Diigo identifies other users who tag the same sites and use the same tags as you, so it’s easier to find people with similar interests. They really are trying to create ways to easily find communities around specific topics and sites; this has some real possibilities for building learning communities.

I admit that I don’t use all these features; I still end up mostly using Diigo as my personal research tool. Having the ability to highlight and annotate text makes it much more useful as part of my personal learning environment than delicious. Personally, I think Diigo just looks a lot nicer than the barebones interface for delicious, especially in this version.

This video was definitely written for marketing purposes, but if you can ignore the sales-y tone, it’s a nice overview of all the features.

Technorati Tags: diigo, socialbookmarking, socialnetworking