Nothing much to report this week. I attended the Elluminate session this morning. We discussed quite a lot of stuff, but it really seemed pretty inconclusive.
On the bright innovative side, I researched the Second Life and Teen Second Life Virtual worlds, and wrote an article about it on IT Toolbox (http://it.toolbox.com/wiki/index.php/Second_Life_Virtual_World)
So not a lot to tell you... Hopefully next week we'll see some changes take place!
If you read this - go out and vote!
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Thursday, October 23, 2008
The Game of Virtual Pilot...
I wanted something new to do so I played Lufthansa Virtual Pilot here:
I did very well. Let's see how well you do.... OK?
Have a terrific day!
:)
I did very well. Let's see how well you do.... OK?
Have a terrific day!
:)
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Whew...! I'm Maxed Out...!!!
You know, I just don't have time for anything.
So I am just going to post this little short piece and then maybe things will change by Friday. Right now I am slammed with a massive writing project. If I don't complete this, I will have a major problem....
So, dear readers, be patient... I will be back! :)
So I am just going to post this little short piece and then maybe things will change by Friday. Right now I am slammed with a massive writing project. If I don't complete this, I will have a major problem....
So, dear readers, be patient... I will be back! :)
Friday, October 10, 2008
The Five-Week Wonder, or Discovering What I Have Learned So Far
You know, there are many things about this course which are not immediately apparent to the eye. One of these is the truly international flavor of the course... We come from all over, not just Canada, Australia, USA and the UK.
There are subgroups meeting in SL which belong to Spain, Argentina, Turkey, Israel and Korea. These subgroups are trying to do the impossible, have a class at all different time zones! This is the point. We relax in a beautiful area of SL surrounded by palm trees and gentle breezes, totally oblivious of the real FL environment which many of us may be in. This is what makes it so special! We set all of the reality aside to bask in the imaginary world, wherever physically we may be. And it is remarkably alluring. It is a magic environment, full of magic beings.
There are subgroups meeting in SL which belong to Spain, Argentina, Turkey, Israel and Korea. These subgroups are trying to do the impossible, have a class at all different time zones! This is the point. We relax in a beautiful area of SL surrounded by palm trees and gentle breezes, totally oblivious of the real FL environment which many of us may be in. This is what makes it so special! We set all of the reality aside to bask in the imaginary world, wherever physically we may be. And it is remarkably alluring. It is a magic environment, full of magic beings.
Monday, October 6, 2008
Getting Down to IT...
So much has happened since the last entry. I have entered the fifth week of Connectivism and Connective Knowledge CCK08. I had a wonderful SL experience on Friday. Here we were, educators sat around a balmy patio in a beautiful villa... What more could anyone want? We discussed methods and learned about each other. It was interesting to see that we had all been brought together: I had emerged from California, United States, and the others were from Argentina, Mexico, Israel and the United Kingdom, a meeting of world minds, but appearing in the same room in SL!
I will probably add to this later on today. Right now, I have rather too much to do...
I will probably add to this later on today. Right now, I have rather too much to do...
Thursday, October 2, 2008
The Deeper Meaning of Networking
To align truly with this week's focus, that of the History of Networks, I thought I would add a few lines in my blog about how this strikes me...
We have seen how people interact and that a group of people or entities, who have an effect on each other constitutes a network. The networks of all time, over eons and ages, were formed by similarities of thinking and focused viewpoints. Let's take Socrates, for example. He had a network of friends, but because of his association with the local community, he was accused of corrupting the youth of that community with his ideologies.
I was led to think about networks of people who have lived and who have already passed on and who presumably belong to a different age, and I was struck particularly by a line or two from a historic novel about seventeenth century Venice. This quote comes from Barbara Quick's novel, "Vivaldi's Virgins" and tells a story about the agelessness of music even though by definition, the statement she makes paints a completely different picture!
"What more can a mere musician possibly hope for?
Music cannot be kept or captured. It unfurls in one miraculous moment in time, and then it's gone. The glorious sound of Marietta's voice in a cantabile aria will be forever lost after she is dead and all of us who ever heard her are dead, too. No matter how well I manage to play, my playing will be forgotten when all those who have heard me have died." (Quick, Vivaldi's Virgins, 254)
This really rings false in this age of shared music, royalty hearings and other copyright legislation, doesn't it? But the network to which Anna Maria belonged had none of the instantaneousness of today's world. Life was indeed slower and possibly more predictable, but nonetheless a valid network of like-minded individuals, having an effect on those people who were around them.
We have seen how people interact and that a group of people or entities, who have an effect on each other constitutes a network. The networks of all time, over eons and ages, were formed by similarities of thinking and focused viewpoints. Let's take Socrates, for example. He had a network of friends, but because of his association with the local community, he was accused of corrupting the youth of that community with his ideologies.
I was led to think about networks of people who have lived and who have already passed on and who presumably belong to a different age, and I was struck particularly by a line or two from a historic novel about seventeenth century Venice. This quote comes from Barbara Quick's novel, "Vivaldi's Virgins" and tells a story about the agelessness of music even though by definition, the statement she makes paints a completely different picture!
"What more can a mere musician possibly hope for?
Music cannot be kept or captured. It unfurls in one miraculous moment in time, and then it's gone. The glorious sound of Marietta's voice in a cantabile aria will be forever lost after she is dead and all of us who ever heard her are dead, too. No matter how well I manage to play, my playing will be forgotten when all those who have heard me have died." (Quick, Vivaldi's Virgins, 254)
This really rings false in this age of shared music, royalty hearings and other copyright legislation, doesn't it? But the network to which Anna Maria belonged had none of the instantaneousness of today's world. Life was indeed slower and possibly more predictable, but nonetheless a valid network of like-minded individuals, having an effect on those people who were around them.
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Networking, Connected to the Full-Blown Stream of Life...
Wow, I have such a lot to catch up on!
This is coming out two days late, because so many landmark things have been happening.
I am now a US citizen, having been "naturalized" in a ceremony at a sports stadium along with 5251 other former green card holders last Friday, September 26th, 2008 (!) However, to me the word, "naturalized," smacks of cowboy films and culture from a former era, not 2008! I can just hear John Wayne telling me: "You're a US citizen. And you're gonna be for the rest of your "natural" life!"
Yesterday I took part in a charity walk which collectively raised $60,000 for the local hospital. Two people's lives very dear to me were saved there, (one of which was mine!) And we all look on it as being a vital local resource.
Enough of this - what about Connectivism? Well, I am looking at two ways of producing my Concept Map. I have started both already and I shall decide which one looks best to me. So far, I have been actively involved in the Moodle Forums, posting whenever and wherever something grabs my attention and feels like something I just cannot let go without some sort of counter argument.
Overall I am finding that there is a very wide divide between some of the participants and others in terms of Web 2.0 awareness and knowledge of Web 2.0 tools and resources.
Before I began this study of Connectivism, I was actively engaged in creating a Wiki for a commercial company, along with tools to facilitate the jobs of engineers employed there. The wiki was solely to facilitate capture of tacit knowledge and apply its practical use to the day-to-day activities of those individuals who needed to learn a proprietary methodology very quickly. I firmly believe that I succeeded in my chosen objective. Wiki is something that was never really used much before ever in the arena of academia and never in companies, because the thought of individuals collaboratively editing a document was thought of as being very nonacademic and therefore not very reliable as a source. After examining methods of attaining information, Wikipedia is still thought of as being very flaky for the serious study of anything academic. If this is the case, why do millions of people go there for answers? I credit Wikipedia as being the stimulus for other really great learning tools like Wiki Answers, Yahoo Answers, and practically all of the forums and posting grounds all over the Internet which are dedicated to a specific subject and which offer instant solutions to technical problems. This is the start, but it is by no means the end!
I am getting ready to promulgate my own position on Connectivism, waiting only to simultaneously publish this and the Concept Map. (I'll be there by next weekend, George and Stephen! Honest!)
I have met many wonderful new people in this course from all over the world. I have had exciting stimulating contact with people in Italy, Australia, Spain, Hungary, UK, Mexico and of course, Canada. It would also be remiss of me to exclude the USA. If I have left out a nation, it is because I missed it in my analysis and there is no excuse for me. (Wow, what a boo-boo I hear you all say!) But I am getting to the point of telling you all that I have tried to be an active part in Connectivas too. I was truly excited to hear that George had spoken at Second Spain in SL for 20 seconds, followed by a translation, followed by further talk, and after each 20 second segment had been translated, he allowed time for questions. I have saved a 41 minute MP3 of this. The only problem I had was that the Spanish translation contrasted with George's English version in that it was pretty badly distorted. I hope they have better success next time (and I sincerely hope that there will be "a next time.") I know that there was lots to talk about after this and it has shown, strangely enough, that there seems to be a really powerful platform for SL in a Hispanic community, probably larger than in the English-speaking community in the participants - the one that seems to dominate.
I have to briefly touch on the very interesting Elluminate session we had on Wednesday, where Valdis Krebs presented on the Meaning of Networks. So much was covered, from the association of people in simple groups to the meaning of larger networks, and how a terrorist organization could not be distinguished from a business organization's network diagram. we viewed many different network charts all of which were given a special meaning by Valdis's exclusive experience working at www.orgnet.com
Rounding out the week, I feel I have a better understanding of Connectivism, but I am beginning to feel just a little overwhelmed by all the subject matter.
Well, this is a longer blog than the ones I have been writing up to now, but so much has happened in the last few days... I hope that it continues in this way. Please note that I abandoned my use of the abstract because it seemed the right thing to do, and what is a blog if it is not completely ad-hoc?
This is coming out two days late, because so many landmark things have been happening.
I am now a US citizen, having been "naturalized" in a ceremony at a sports stadium along with 5251 other former green card holders last Friday, September 26th, 2008 (!) However, to me the word, "naturalized," smacks of cowboy films and culture from a former era, not 2008! I can just hear John Wayne telling me: "You're a US citizen. And you're gonna be for the rest of your "natural" life!"
Yesterday I took part in a charity walk which collectively raised $60,000 for the local hospital. Two people's lives very dear to me were saved there, (one of which was mine!) And we all look on it as being a vital local resource.
Enough of this - what about Connectivism? Well, I am looking at two ways of producing my Concept Map. I have started both already and I shall decide which one looks best to me. So far, I have been actively involved in the Moodle Forums, posting whenever and wherever something grabs my attention and feels like something I just cannot let go without some sort of counter argument.
Overall I am finding that there is a very wide divide between some of the participants and others in terms of Web 2.0 awareness and knowledge of Web 2.0 tools and resources.
Before I began this study of Connectivism, I was actively engaged in creating a Wiki for a commercial company, along with tools to facilitate the jobs of engineers employed there. The wiki was solely to facilitate capture of tacit knowledge and apply its practical use to the day-to-day activities of those individuals who needed to learn a proprietary methodology very quickly. I firmly believe that I succeeded in my chosen objective. Wiki is something that was never really used much before ever in the arena of academia and never in companies, because the thought of individuals collaboratively editing a document was thought of as being very nonacademic and therefore not very reliable as a source. After examining methods of attaining information, Wikipedia is still thought of as being very flaky for the serious study of anything academic. If this is the case, why do millions of people go there for answers? I credit Wikipedia as being the stimulus for other really great learning tools like Wiki Answers, Yahoo Answers, and practically all of the forums and posting grounds all over the Internet which are dedicated to a specific subject and which offer instant solutions to technical problems. This is the start, but it is by no means the end!
I am getting ready to promulgate my own position on Connectivism, waiting only to simultaneously publish this and the Concept Map. (I'll be there by next weekend, George and Stephen! Honest!)
I have met many wonderful new people in this course from all over the world. I have had exciting stimulating contact with people in Italy, Australia, Spain, Hungary, UK, Mexico and of course, Canada. It would also be remiss of me to exclude the USA. If I have left out a nation, it is because I missed it in my analysis and there is no excuse for me. (Wow, what a boo-boo I hear you all say!) But I am getting to the point of telling you all that I have tried to be an active part in Connectivas too. I was truly excited to hear that George had spoken at Second Spain in SL for 20 seconds, followed by a translation, followed by further talk, and after each 20 second segment had been translated, he allowed time for questions. I have saved a 41 minute MP3 of this. The only problem I had was that the Spanish translation contrasted with George's English version in that it was pretty badly distorted. I hope they have better success next time (and I sincerely hope that there will be "a next time.") I know that there was lots to talk about after this and it has shown, strangely enough, that there seems to be a really powerful platform for SL in a Hispanic community, probably larger than in the English-speaking community in the participants - the one that seems to dominate.
I have to briefly touch on the very interesting Elluminate session we had on Wednesday, where Valdis Krebs presented on the Meaning of Networks. So much was covered, from the association of people in simple groups to the meaning of larger networks, and how a terrorist organization could not be distinguished from a business organization's network diagram. we viewed many different network charts all of which were given a special meaning by Valdis's exclusive experience working at www.orgnet.com
Rounding out the week, I feel I have a better understanding of Connectivism, but I am beginning to feel just a little overwhelmed by all the subject matter.
Well, this is a longer blog than the ones I have been writing up to now, but so much has happened in the last few days... I hope that it continues in this way. Please note that I abandoned my use of the abstract because it seemed the right thing to do, and what is a blog if it is not completely ad-hoc?
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