Sir Ken and his creativity

A pretty inspiring guy really.

Having just watched a 5 min youtube about creativity being applied imagination, I come away with new thoughts, and guess what I'm doing something with these (so they aren't imagination anymore its creativity)

Some key points from his presentation that struck a chord with me were

Creativity is a process, not an event

It evolves

Ideas you end up with are not normally what you began with

And this is because as you learn more about what you are doing you are able to apply values to a context and gain more relevance.

For us as teachers, the idea of process is great.

Teaching a process is tangible. It's both understandable and teachable. What however is not predictable is the outcome of the process. Our students can follow a process to produce an end product - this is true, the creative ideas in the end product are not however predictable. Example: We can teach how to write a piece of creative writing, but we will have no idea what words or themes the student will use.

How does this link in to the OLC? I think we can develop the learning community in such a manner that we give control of the processes to the students/participants. Still I remain a skeptic and belong to the If we build it they won't come . I feel the inability to predict the kind of creative writing is transferrable to this idea. I have no idea how students will respond to tools on the OLC, and this instils a fear that if they aren't used at all, or if used sporadically this will devalue the trust that they may be trying to build in the OLC.

No trust, no regular use, no community

Collaboration and Co-operation

A fellow student (Tony Allan) put this link on our uni moodle

Wiki’s and Open Source: Collaborative or Cooperative?

And I really like this link about moving from cooperation to collaboration
http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/aasl/conferencesandevents/confarchive/CoopToCollab.pdf

As well as the ideas that Collaboration is Horizontal, whilst co-operation is vertical.

Implementation Issues

This will be where I place implementation issues through the semester. It will be messy to begin with.

Wireless - Harrison 2004
Talks about the benefits that portable devices do not dominate over the usual set up and learning in a face to face classroom.
Am wondering in the learning communities which are not in regular classrooms, if the concept of wireless is equally important.

Social equity - If the OLC is designed must this be considered?
Can already see that with emergence of tablets (ipads, kindle, ipod and many others) they have some terrific apps that could be used in OLCs, however how/what must be considered by the OLCs that are designed instead of emergent to attract or rather not dissuade users from joining who do not have all the latest gadgets.

The explana blog entry Tablets and Learning, Content and Connections

Beginning definition of learning community

Regardless of whether the web based learning community is emergent or designed, there is general consensus among the readings that it is dynamic in nature and evolves through nurturing conditions, much the same as learning occurs most effectively in face to face settings once icebreakers and friendships are formed.

Pratt (1999) cited in Ke & Hoadley (2009) define four stages of virtual community development:
(1) the initial phase,
(2) the conflict phase,
(3) the intimacy and work phase, and
(4) the termination phase.

And they go on to suggest that a learning community emerges only in phase 3––when language, learning practices, collaboration customs, and resources in the setting develop into an ideal state (Haythornthwaite et al. 2000).

I am in agreeance with this concept and am looking further into which Web 2.0 tools are more often used by both designers and users to facilitate the sense of community in OLCs.

Finding a learning community

There is nothing worse than doing research on something that does not interest you. And as this unit has asked me to join a learning community and essentially expose it, I have to say that while for years I have been an external student and self motivated teacher who reads blogs to find, follow and hopefully replicate others' great ideas the idea of actually looking for a community is a little daunting.

I'm just curious what kind of learning communities people are leaning to for this project? I've never taught in the MYP and was considering trying to kill two birds with one stone.

Is it expected that we enrol in or take a course, where an administrator or teacher as such gets us to first participate in social interaction and ensures we are able to login and see everything then step up to more demanding tasks like Salmon 2002 suggests.



Ref: Salmon, Gilly. 2002 'The five - stage framework and e-tivities' In: E-tivities : the key to active online learning / Gilly Salmon. London : Kogan Page, 2002. Chapter 2, pp. 10-36

Or is it OK that we join a learning community, that may simply be a blog or site where we get to simply ask, answer and support peers who have come together almost by pure chance?

I'm asking this mostly because I'm still trying to get my mind around what a learning community is. I'm in agreeance with the desire for it to be a social and also carry the belief that learning is a social process. However when I look at my own choice of online learning (self directed no enrolment) sometimes I follow people totally anonymously, while other times I am intrigued and email them for follow ups. I'm not a huge twitter fan, as I find it difficult to track, especially as I don't check twitter regularly and facebook pages, well behind the Chinese "Great" Fire Wall this needs a VPN and whilst it can be useful for finding topics of interest, once I've found them I tend to subscribe to their "proper" websites rather than join the page.

What's this all about?

I am currently a Masters in Education student at UNE in Australia studying externally from China. This semester I am undertaking a unit on Web based Learning Communities. This blog will follow my thoughts and experiences as I attempt to join an online learning community and will be useful when I reflect back on the journey and complete more formal papers to be titled "Learning Community Exposed"

Technical Hiccups

Hi

Many thanks to those who tried to help me with my UNE blog. But after still finding it cumbersome I have chosen to jump ship and try a different platform.

Hope to meet you all through the semester.

Cheers
Jo