Hubs and experts

Eugene's discussion on SocialText and its use in 'the real word' was very interesting--especially the concept of hubs. Like in search engines, if you map who references whom, you will find certain websites standout as being referenced more than others: the experts. In the SocialText paradigm, you look at how many followers people have. The assumption is that people with lots of followers can act as hubs of communications and information. Certainly the greater the followers, the more communications to that person will be 'heard' by others. Another useful measure would be who receives the most communications from others. If one could assume that a large percentage of these communications were queries of some sort; you might be able to conclude that this person is an information broker. Being able to identify such information brokers is a useful because these are the people who, as Eugene said, know who knows.

Everyone loves ice cream

I've always loved making ice cream (and of course eating it also). I think I like making it so much because it gives people such joy to eat it. I've tried to capture that joy with my photo essay.

Andragogy and emerging technologies

This article expressed an idea that has become a common theme this semester: the emerging class of social learning tools implies a shift in the role of the instructor. No longer is the instructor the 'dispenser of wisdom' who leads students along the learning journey based on his or her superior knowledge of the subject matter. Instead, the instructor is leading students along this journey based on his or her ability to facilitate learning among students. The students are now discovering the knowledge or even constructing the knowledge with a little help from the instructor. No where is this paradigm more true than in the case of adult learning. Adults tend to be much more self-directed than younger students. Adults have an opinion on what is important for them to learn and they act upon that opinion. They want 'just in time' learning rather than 'just in case' learning. And the emerging social learning tools support that paradigm nicely allowing adults to collaborate with each other in a learning environment under the facilitation of an instructor. Of course, for this paradigm to succeed, both the instructor and the student need to accept their new roles. With the power to direct their own learning comes the responsibility to do so!

A Whole New Mind (Chpts 1-3)

In the first part of Pink's book, the author describes the two parts of our brain and how they differ from each other: both at a low level--control of body parts--and a higher level--reasoning, pattern recognition. After that, the author takes us through an historical perspective describing the dominance of left brain thinking and the more recent rise of right brain thinking. He even offers several drivers for this rise of the right brain. The story is fascinating; but it makes me want to go back to learning for the 21st century. In learning for the 21st century, the authors describe a group of skills that are a 'must' for successful education. However, it is interesting to note that most of the skills/tasks described in that article were pretty much left brain thinking. There was not really an emphasis on the right brain skills that Pink talks about. Is this because we have don't yet know how to interject right brain learning exercises into our schools? To me, this seems like a critical point. I tend to agree with what Pink is saying about right brain skills and since these are so 'foreign' to our currrent culture, we have to make an even greater effort to exercise and develop these skills in our schools. I think this could be a major challenge for 21st century learning.

For a mind map of the first three chapters, see my wiki.

A student on vacation

I just returned from a week's vacation--both physically and metaphysically. I was on the East coast and almost completely disconnected from my normal life (no wireless in my cabin, cell phone reception was spotty, I had to go to the library or K-Mart for computer access, but I had my Kindle with me). It was both a good feeling and a bad feeling. I did access my email several times during the vacation and kept up with the text book readings via my Kindle; but I had no communications with my fellow students. No blogging, no ninging. So now I am back and I can spend some time reacquainting myself with the joys of asynchronous communications. It is good to be away; but it is also good to be back.