Weller, M (2011) The Digital Scholar. How technology is transforming scholarly practice. Bloomsbury

This OU profs new book 'The Digital Scholar' deliberately had a Creative Commons licence allowing all kinds of things to be done to it.

All I've done is read it cover to cover, type up notes and my thoughts along e way and then posted up ALL of this. See Below or use the 'search this blog facility.'

'We are learning what role those new tools play in our lives, and there will inevitably be mistakes, misapplication, overuse and correction'. Weller (2011)

Reference

Weller, M (2011) The Digital Scholar. How technology is transforming scholarly practice. Bloomsbury

'Many if the characteristics which would be frowned upon in scholarly articles, such as subjectivity, humour, and personal opinion, are vital elements in developing a dialogue in blogs'. Weller (2011)

I had another stab at this (did one yesterday on the fly). This one I've given a bit more thought as I am keen to promote the idea of blogging to colleagues; the more the merrier to me. It goes under the title 'User Generate Content'.

I do wonder though if it isn't a mindset, that I'd have the same issues getting people to take up drawing or singing.

You either do or don't?

I realise that to get this right in the learning context you must define who the learner is and put it in context.

QUESTIONS

• Why do you blog?
• If you've just started will you keep going?
• What's the incentive?
• Do you have an external blog too?

The Digital Scholar Martin Weller

Chapter 10

Network Weather

Adam Greenfield (2010) Networked Weather

He talks of Foursquare and a night out, Weller talks of the academic conference.

· Knowledge sharing

· Validation

· Networking

· Recognition

· Socialising

· Remote participation

· Twitter backchannel

· Amplified events

· Socialisation

Twitter hashtags

Blogging

Live blogging

Video

Flickr

Cloudworks and Friendfeed

50% networking

75% content

In 25% of the time

75% greener

Participants not an audience

Backchannel adds another layer, but can be a negative experience for the speaker (Boyd, 2009)

Amplification of the conference

Archive of multimedia, range of tone.

Preservation and curation of such a record

Brian Kelly (2008)

Amplification of:

· Audience's voice

· Speaker's talk

· Across time

· Of slides

· Of feedback

· Collective memory of the event

· Of the learning

· Of the long term conference outputs

Experimentation with:

· Micro-presentations

· Nan-presentations

· Random selection of speakers

· Backchannel

Used to be a choice of attending or not, now there are many alternatives (JV least attending more than one conference at the same time).

2010 Martin Weller ran Openness in Education over two days using Elluminate and Cloudworks.

Four sessions all recorded and made available through Cloudworks.

Sessions chinned and released as podcasts

Also used:

· Twitter

· SurveyMonkey

· Blogs

· YouTube

· slideShare

· Animoto

· Xtranormal

· Pre conference

· And video before and during

Speakers, including Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia.

287 attended synchronous Elluminate sessions

3,500 viewed in CloudWorks

From 14 countries

48% would not have attended in person

Cost 2,500 rather than 30,000

They have a legitimacy deficit to some.

· Attendees not given time from the workplace to attend virtually and readily interrupted.

· Doesn't command as much attention

· Don't plan ahead, so may drop out.

· Technical problems on the day are too late to resolve.

'The Camelot comparison - accentuating the positives of the entrenched practice'.

Hard to compare as they do things differently (and can be blended)

Chapter 11 Reward and Tenure

If it isn't recognised then it isn't recognised when it comes to getting promotion.

Research (more equal than the others)

Teaching

Service or management

Contribution to society

Academic esteem

A conservative value and reward system

'Assessing quality in a reliable and transparent manner is a significant problem in the recognition of digital scholarship, and its intangibility and complexity are enough to make many give up and fall back on the practices they know and trust.

· Recreating the existing model

· Finding digital equivalents

· Generating guidelines that include digital scholarship

· Using metrics (500 views, 4 embeds and a keynote too simplistic)

· Peer review

· Micro-credit

· Developing alternative methods

Keynote speech and reputation

Metrics can be cheated (Hirsh 2005) and gamed (Ealagas and Alexiou 2008)

REF Research Excellence Framework

'A digital scholar is likely to have a distributed online identity, all of which can be seen to represent factors such as reputation, impact, influence and productivity'.

'We continually make the error of subjugating technology to our present practice rather than allowing it to free us from the tyranny of past mistakes'. Stephen Heppell (2001)

'Many if the characteristics which would be frowned upon in scholarly articles, such as subjectivity, humour, and personal opinion, are vital elements in developing a dialogue in blogs'.

· Towards the portfolio approach:

· A range of digital outputs demonstrating impact

· Commendations from the community

· Recognised experts

· Overarching narrative making the case for the work as a whole.

· Peer review = reliability and authority.

· Which could also strangle innovation. (Fitzpatrick 2009)

Chapter 12 Publishing

· Research

· Authoring

· Submission

· Rejection/modification

· Publication

· Dissemination

WHY?

· Accepted practice

· Academic respectability

· Reward and tenure

· Dissemination

· Curation

NB Bellow's Law

'Once the journal has been liberated from the printed format, a number of related assumptions begin to unravel and lead to more fundamental questions.'

22,000 peer reviewed journals from 9,900 publishers.

Questioning the scholarly communication process ... Often the current model does not stand up to scrutiny.

The trucker's deal Wiley 2009b

McGuigan and Russell (2008) Deutsche Bank on how 7,000 people in academic publishing add value to justify 40% margins - they don't.

Advantages of open access publishing Harnad (2005)

· Early advantage

· Arxiv advantage

· Quality bias

· Quality advantage

· Competitive advantage

· Usage advantage

Weller's POV

· Citation advantage

· Time lag to publication

· Copyright

· Alternative publishing methods

Desire for greatest impact and widest dissemination (without compromising its quality or findings).

VS. Time to publication due to peer review and a print mentality that restricts number of items in a journal and how often it is published.

Creative commons keeps rights with the author.

Alternative methods for communication, publishing and debate which are more rewarding.

The traditional article begins to seem remote and dry in comparison.

Google knol web-based authoring.

PLoS hubs

New forms of representation and communication.

Shift from filtering on the way into filtering on the way out. Weinberger (2007)

As they are the product of public funding they should be out there.

We're at a transition state, and Weller gives in ten years for the change to occur. I see it differently as one of the early aeronauts looking out across at English Channel wanting to cross as soon as the weather permits knowing that I may just make it, wait ten years and others will be looking to cross the Atlantic.

Ware (2008) reasons to peer review (for free)

· To play your part as a member of the academic community

· To enjoy being able to improve the paper

· To enjoy seeing Newquay work ahead of publication

· To reciprocate the benefit when others review your postings.

Towards the 'approbation of discerning readers'. Martin Rees (2010)

Chapter 13

Skimming and skipping about instead of deep reading. Easily distracted, or persuasively detracted. But the overall tenure will be rearing to you hear the narrative.

· British Library Google Generation study (Rowlands et al. 2008)

· Has the need to learn by rote diminished?

· Outsourcing mundane memory to Google.

· Skittish bouncing behaviour Wijekumar et al. (2006)

· Web 2.0 and the 'mass democratisation of expression'.

NB 'low quality individual items because of their obvious ease of production, can be seen as an invitation to participate'. Weller

'If the intention is to encourage engagement then low-quality routes may be more fruitful than seeking to produce professional broadcast material'. Weller

'Amateurs' often create content which addresses subjects that academics may nit and also in a manner which differs from traditional teaching', Weller

A facial truism.. Any time you learn anything your brain is 'rewired' at a synaptic level. VS. The pronouncements of the likes of Carr and Greenfield.

Vague and ill-founded arguments.

Plasticity is as true of playing a computer game, or from my experience, coaching swimmers. Adaptation is desirable, ditto for touch-typing, drawing, sight reading when playing a musical instrument even driving a car.

... Based on supposition and anecdote.

'The Internet hasn't changed the way we think any more than the microwave oven has changed the way we digest food'. Joshua Greene.

Also see Gerschenfeld (2010)

... VS pseudo-scientific explanations to back up prejudices will not help us address the issues. Weller

CF Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age. Mayer-Schonberger (2009)

Idea of giving internet content a shelf-life. I disagree. Once rain water flows from a river into the ocean it is there, for potentially consigned to the depths, for ever.

Bug successes, something going viral, is not the norm.

For success, choice of tools and their perceived relevance to the main area of study are crucial elements. See Cann and Badge (2010).

VS. Creepy tree house syndrome (Stein 2008)

VS an LMS that is 'organisationally controlled, bland and singular in focus'.

NB how to do it? 'By making mistakes' with each iteration generating an improvement (Hilbert space et al. 2000/2001)

Experience is required to understand what approaches are suitable.

It also requires a reasonable mass of contributions to work, a motivation for those contributions and an easy means to contribute.

Just as with the initial dot.com. Hubble, the fact that there is hype doesn't mean the overall direction isn't correct. A technology may not completely change the world in the next 18 months, but it may significantly change practice in the next decade'. Weller (2001)

Roy Amara: we tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run. In Weller (2011)

It will never go back to the way it was.

The people best placed to understand it and adapt to it will be those who have immersed themselves in the current technological climate.

A willingness to experiment with new approaches and to explore the tensions between new possibilities and established practice is essential. Weller 2011

Chapter 14 Digital Resilience

Current scholars - anxieties, scepticism and resistance should be replaced with engagement and reflection.

Just as Clay Shirky looks at 20 years ahead.

QWERTY has been too entrenched to over through.

When distribution becomes abundant, rather than scare, open and shared rather than rivalrous, 'whole industries begin to look weak'.

We are learning what role those new tools play in our lives, and there will inevitably be mistakes, misapplication, overuse and correction'. Weller (2011)

CF Kahneman and Tversky's prospect theory (1979) and our feelings about loss and gain.

The world my daughter will inhabit ...

Rather grand-parents and great-grandparents with cars, planes, cinema, radio and TV and for someone born in 1896 who died in 1993 two world wars, the atomic bomb, men on the moon, the Pill, higher education for all, loss of Empire and a video player that allowed him to see his favourite films from Charlie Chaplin to 'All Quiet on the Western Front'.

'This is a period of transition for scholarship, as significant as any other in its history, from the founding of universities to the establishment of peer review and the scientific method. It is also a period that holds tension and even some paradoxes: it is both business as usual and yet a time for considerable change; individual scholars are being highly innovative and yet the overall picture is one of reluctance; technology is creating new opportunities while simultaneously generating new concerns and problems'. Weller (2011)

Research, Application, Integration and Teaching to Engagement, Experimentation, Reflection and Sharing

If Boyer's four main scholarly functions were research, application, integration and teaching, then I would propose that those of the digital scholar are engagement, experimentation, reflection and sharing'. Weller (2011).

Martin Weller (2011)

INTRODUCTION

Introduced to the power of blogging by John Naughton

(Worth following in the Guardian. Surely a demonstration of how academics blur the line between academic and journalistic writing styles successfully, just as Weller intimates that students will have to learn to differentiate between social networking writing styles and the academic style of an assignment, paper or thesis?)

· Explain things in depth

· Give all sides to the argument

· Why academics can't do the elevator pitch

The Digital Scholar was written through a blog to explore the advent of new technologies.

Wrote his last book on VLEs in 2004.

(By coincidence I am using it to prop up the iPad)

• Online databases
• Searching
• Bookmarks from Delicious
• Google Reader
• cited posts from blogs, but not only text, also video.

Blogging for around five years

Also keeps a scrapbook like blog in Tumblr.

(I’ve used Flickr, and Tumblr, even Kodak Gallery in its time. Now I put everything into Picasa Web. The 250 grabs, charts and images are open to share. Dion Hinchcliffe offers his social media diagrams free as separate assets in Flickr River).

• A way to offer drafts to ask for feedback
• Sharing resources
• Working in an intellectually vibrant environment
• Google alerts providing updates on key words
• Keeping abreast of the field
• Declining attendance of conferences

‘With special thanks to’

By sharing content online I believe I may finally find my own way to publication.

Many of these services did not exist or were in their infancy in 2004.

Blogs in particular

A book

There significant changes:

1) The quantity of information available - all digital compared

2) 3000 on Twitter, 2000 subscribe to his blog

Appeals

Distributed, global resource to contemporary issues, puss of new technologies,

contributions by video and audio

3) The richness and range of contributions to include blogs, comments and

debate, video and conferences.

A shift I attitude to the legitimacy of these contributions.

Both a physical object and complementary material.

Grainne Conole using cloudworks.

Another posting a weekly video to encourage debate.

Concept of scholarship

Suffiently broad term, not only teaching and research,

not just engaged in research and employed by universities.

In a digital

Someone who employs digital and open technologies in a particular field.

Bloggers link to each other, democratic and easy to set up.

Epitomy of the kind

of technlogy that results in innovation.

Read or unread, daily or months,

specialist or generalist.

How do we recognise talent?

Should people separate out that academic and informal lives?

· Quantity

· Role of social networks

· Range of resources

Transformation of practice

All scholars are digital if they use a word processor and PowerPoint. But this

is 'business as usual'.

1) Digital

All digital files and shared by the same method.

2) Networked, nor longer isolated.

Easy distribution VS restriction of

scholarship to libraries, conferences, lectures and seminars. Once digitised the

barriers come down.

Dunbar. Friends 150. Reinforce with interaction. Online with a wide group of

peers.

3) Openness

Tim O'Reilly 2004 the architecture of participation.

Finely worked material of the journal, compared to seeing where things will lead

by sharing.

Digital, Networked, Open.

E.g collaboration between two people (Frank & Sally)

The value of a person's individual network for distribution.

The collaboration of two academics sharing their outputs they go along ... Just

a shift?

Collective impact changes everything.

Fast, cheap and out of control.

Brian Lamb. 1970 documentary. intersection of

all three is significant to education.

Fast to write and set up, no need for central services.

Cheap tools that have a premium, no need to turn to a budget holder.

Out of control. Outside normal institutional controls.

Money/payment and the need to persist with a certain system.

Student record systems need to be robust.

The good enough revolution. Wired (2009)

E.g. Flip video ... Cheap, fast and everywhere.

Dinky, lower power technology that is just good enough.

VS. Dystopian and Utopian points of view.

VS. Technological determination - humans controlled by the kit, rather than the

kit controlling the people.

Unpredictable

Taking something and using it in a way never imagined

E.g. Flickr started as a game that used photo sharing.

Social construction of technology

Complex process of co-construction

Adoption of new technology is changing scholarship. Boyer 1990

1) Context

2) Evidence

3) Other industry changes in music and newspapers

4) Boyer 1990 scholarship discovery, integration, practice, application,

teaching

*

*

*

*

9) How digital scholarship may change teaching

10) Analogy of networked weather - you can't help but be touched by it.

Digital

Networked

Open

New publishing and conferencing

13) adoption

14) anxieties

Education

1

2

3) Irrelevant

Not peripheral, or an issue to resolve, but rather changes to society ... As

John Seely Brown.

VS. Suggestions that our students have changed and cites Marc Prensky.

Separating myths from the hype.

What are the solid foundations.

A truism regarding exposure to computers. Prensky 5,000 books, 10,000 digital,

20,000 TV US

75% of 9-19 have access to a computer at home UK

72% South Africa

To get information

To research say on personal health

Oblinger and oblinger

Livingstone

Net Gen disappointed

Gen X against pointless interaction in class and kind of connection online.

Cannot correlate truancy to educational irrelevance.

net Gens more likely to be disappointed by how tech is used.

Net gens differentiate between writing to socialise compared to writing for

school.

Those who like writing and have an aptitude are more likely to blog so no point

in getting those with poor writing skills to blog.

A good deal of variance.

Brown 2009.

Teens poor performance, low patience, poor

reading and poor research skills.

· Express themselves in personal language

· Just print off

· Visiting a narrow range of sites

· Don't question its reliability

· 21% blogs

The net Gen literature sees difference where none exists.

• Older gens did homework in front of TV
• Did a previous gen have an ambiguous view.
• Similar angst amongst students in 1908, 1960s and now. Unable to show causality.
• Differences between net gen students and general public. Differences are not
• significant.
• General decline in literature reading.

Bennett et al (2008) not net Gen difference.

18-22 students outnumbered by mature students in the US.

Google, Dec 2009.

87 billion of 131 billion searches.

55.6 million in 2007 to Wikipedia

Facebook, 500m, 130 friends, once a day

YouTube, in June 2008, content 91 viewers in 2008

Significant activity online across a range of society.

Future liberation of topics.

Griffiths (2008) graffiti artists share and behave in a way that educationalists

would design into a programme of learning, and so it is with many other topics,

on or off the curriculum, formal or informal, from knitting to physics.

Learn as the key motivational desire.

Physics 100,000

FLOSS communities

Demonstrates many of the characteristics:

Mentoring

Communities of practice

Learning by doing

Self directed learning

Communities can form that would have previously been unable to do so due to

geographical and other barriers.

Openness in education - shift driven by technology.

Make academic papers open.

Broader trend and philosophy of the Internet.

Web 2.0

Top 10

Public or semi-public sharing of personal information

MIT Open 2002

1 million visitors

132 million tertiary students worldwide in 2004

OU 3 million within 2 years and helped recruit students to courses 7,000.

Slideshare

More traffic than MIT

Several hundred years to create the lecture Based models

Using third party content in their lectures.

How do universities remain relevant to society?

Apple to iTunes

Guardian to Podcasts

Stephen Downes 10,000 hits per day (video)

Boundaries between sectors less clear-cut

Some perfect storm ... Convenient for some to see. The Net Gen literature is

exaggerated, overblown, HE is not about to face a tectonic shift.

Firm evidence of benefits and that it is necessary.

Critical mass

Ubiquity

Invisibility

Brown

2007 those using social networks in the minority, now in the majority.

Give students relevant skills.

Asses which of these technologies will be significant.

Why do Students choose a university?

Not because of the technology used.

Core suitability

Academic reputation

Jobs

Teaching qualities

Non-academic reasons:

Proximity to homes

Scholarships

Non academic services

Cost of living in the uni area

Job prospects (while studying)

Dion Hinchcliffe Social Enterprise networking thinking

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hinchcliffe/the-promise-and-challenges-of-benioffs-social-enterprise-vision/1722?tag=search-results-rivers;item0

____________________________________________

Dion Hinchcliffe keynote speech (2011)

http://dionhinchcliffe.com/2011/08/31/dreamforce-11-live-blogging-the-benioff-keynote/

____________________________________________

Whizzy charts from Dion Hinchcliffe in Flickr

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dionh/6093074681/

How best to use social networking in an intranet

http://www.ebizq.net/blogs/enterprise/2011/05/making_an_intranet_more_social.php

____________________________________________

_______________________________________________________________________________________

How viral is your social network?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dionh/6069343004/in/photostream/

Dion Hinchcliffe design social business capability

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dionh/6046080068/in/photostream/

Dion Hinchliffe social enterprise workforce engagement

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dionh/6029463580/in/photostream/

Dion Hinchcliffe key social business trends

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dionh/5951245850/in/photostream/

Dion Hinchcliffe Attributes of Modern Communication and collaboration methods

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dionh/5716256964/in/photostream/

Dion Hinchcliffe Social Business Ecosystem Chart

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dionh/5653961068/in/photostream/

Illl-health has impacted on my activity online. This in itself is an insight. On the one hand we lable people for analysis, putting them into groups that vary from 'creator' all the way through to 'inactive' in order to simply its complexity, but more importantly in order to be able to share and discuss.

It has to be two, even three years since I did some long overdue 'digital housekeeping'. It isn't in my nature to go through my virtual pack of cards to put them in order; indeed, is order of any kind necessary so long as you have tagger thoroughly? It is, because such tags are no less valid just because you thoughts, ideas, assignments, references, quotes, pics, charts, grabs and so on are now collated. Indeed, these groups, chronologies and narratives are offering their own insights.

I've been inclined to equate 'stuff' (digital assets) as vegetation in a compost bin, however, this 'stuff' doesn't simply rot, rather it replicates itself ... then rots and transmogrifies in various ways. You think too hard and analogies fail because of the versatility, fluidity and complexity of the World Wide Web 2.0.

Creation is a part of what I do. There is considerable searching, grabbing, highlighting and note-taking too. Screen grabs and 'Snips' are treated like photographs and dealt with off-line in 'Picasa', online they are uploaded to Picasa Web and Dropbox. From here the url is shared in various ways in this blog and elsewhere. This 200GB album was looking like Wembley Stadium after a rock concert so I've gone in and begun to sort out and clean up my 'digital litter'.

What I find is that a grab, chart or image can instantly induce recollection of why I chose the image in the first place; the thinking behind the choice is revived. On their own these images will mean very different things to others until I add the text.

ON REFLECTION

Certain habits, such as titles, tags and references save you scrambling around later. Too often a great chart from a survey is rendered, in academic circles, useless, if I cannot locate the source. I can feel like riding a bicycle with square wheels ensuring that quotes and images are properly referenced at the time you highlight, note or grab, but it means that when you put them into an assignment, or simply a presentation or blog, this reference, usually with a URL is readily available.

This suits the kind of person who for a very short period (one month), not only kept a diary, but stuck the ephemera of the day into the folder/scrapbook too. Unsustainable, but extraordinary how a 3d bus ticket from the 1970s does more to remind me of the Yellow 45 bus I took along the 'Great North Road' to primary school then any words (that I couldn't have written at the time) to explain it.

Intermittently, having come across him during H808, I think about the Microsoft programmer who uses a digital device to RECORD everything he does, all day (sound and vision). That's the easy part. The hard part is creating the software to extract and store content of worth. The problem is that the mind, which must equate to how innovative we are, is anything but well ordered.

How often do we stop and think?

I may be an atheist but perhaps on the seventh day we should rest; we unplugged the router, put the phone on charge for the following week, turn off the TV and buy a paper? Or go to church ... or the non-religious equivalent.

A search for 'Microsoft' in this diary brings me the name 'Gordon Bell', the entry I wrote in January and a link to the New Scientist article and its author. Gordon Bell wrote that he hoped eventually to unconver some patterns 'you would never have gleaned unaided.'

I very rarely look at old diaries. Doing so I was in despair. Neither the chronology, nor the day of the week is relevant, rather it is the unlinked themes that run through it, but to get at those requires transcription and digitisation.

I'd prefer to live life than live about the life I lived.

What Microsoft may achieve, though Google are surely doing it, is to formulate a better way to manager knowledge.

Which brings me to my final though for now, and that is to go entirely Google.

I use Google tools extensively already.

I've never done much with 'Blogger' prefering 'Wordpress,' but Google makes it seamless, indeed, collectively Google tools are half-way between a virtual learning environment (VLE) and that amorphous collection of tools we collectively give the term 'personal learning environment' (PLE).

A call from a colleague with a major corporate and we talk social media learning for nearly three hours.

During this time I repeatedly search this blog, using the e-portfolio that it has become, sending charts and grabs from Picasa and from the iPad, creating a mind-map in Bubbl.us and balancing how the MA in Open and Distance Learning compares to the OU MBA he completed last year and the MRes he is doing now.

Just a phone call. We could have gone to Skype, Elluminate or even Google+. The phone freed up the laptop. Several photos picked up from workshops, as well as screen grabs, were emailed from the iPad which was also running.

Fig.1. Social Media Learning Mind Map

Timely as I am procrastinating over the ECA which will be on the use of Forums and Mobile devices in e-learning.

A reminder of how a synchronous conversation can achieve so much, especially when there were items set before our eyes to discuss.

We also discussed (I hadn't the energy to take many notes. In retrospect I wish I'd recorded it):

• Belbin Team Roles
• Activity Theory
• Management Mindsets
• Silos
• Web 2.0
• Learning on the periphery
• Vicarious Learning
• Medical Market Research
• TV Production
• The role of an Alumni Board
• Narrative
• Research
• Assessment
• Blogs as 'electronic paper'

It was invaluable to have the external point of view, someone from a global comany of thousands talking about social media learning. Looking at the devices we now have, such as smartphones and tablets, it was particularly interesting to be reminded of human nature, how devices may be used for things and in ways that they were not designed.

Whilst the iPad permits mobility, we often use it when static: in our favourite chair, recumbant on the sofa, even in bed or in the bath. Is this mobile learning? It's hardly getting out of the house, drawing down data on the run using augmented technology to enhance the environment your in. And simply having content on an iPad so that you can using the touch screen to open and close the text, enlarging text, flipping the screen size between portrait and landscape all the time - the joy of its tactile nature. Unable to sleep I use the light from the iPad as a torch to sneak away from the marital bed and passed the children's bedrooms and to find my way downstairs withouth having to put the landing light on.

It also was clear how both devices and approaches to learning cannot be isolated, we got our joint heads around Engestrom's 'Activity Systems'. The technology is complementary, the move to personalise everything through device and software choices.

I'd played Devil's Adocat a couple of times suggesting that 'nothing had changed' only to come away agreeing that many of my behaviours were/are different as a direct result of Web 2.0. I have gone from learning in private, hunched over my books never showing it to anyone to a situations where, more like someone tending a public garden, or at least one seen from the street, people can see my thinking. Ironically, it is the end result that often fails to appear because I'm not about to post TMAs and ECAs online.

Some authors I quoted/cited during the conversation:

• Vygotsky
• Engestrom
• Richardson
• Moon
• Cox
• John Seely Brown
• Jonathan Swift

To which I subsequently add as a result of browsing the blog and so re-engaging with my own experience within the chronology of the module; it is this, after all, that is to be examined, rather than my knowledge from this and the preceding modules. A learning design fault?

• H807 You diddle about with every instrument in the orchestra and several that have just been invented.
• H808 You learn to conduct, or at least why a conductor is important (even if you can't play an instrument or read music).
• H800 You learn to play an electronic keyboard

I quoted Swift as saying (paraphrasing) 'I don't know what I mean until I hear myself speak'. If anyone has any idea how to cite this please do offer your thoughts.

More authors to consider in this context (mobile learning, forums, e-learning, web 2.0):

• Haythornthwaite
• O'Reilly
• Weller
• Traxler
• Gregory
• Mason
• Sharpe
• Beetham
• Belshaw
• Hinchcliffe
• Bacon and Dillon
• Siemens
• Boyer
• Wenger
• Bruner

Other topics that we should have discussed:

• User Generated Content
• Collective Intelligence
• Apprenticeships
• Problem based learning
• Participation
• Demand Pull

BEING DEVELOPED FURTHER HERE

http://socialmedia4education.wordpress.com/2011/09/08/social-learning-for-corporates/

This has me thinking and going through http://www3.open.ac.uk/study/postgraduate/qualification/F10.htm

With the MA in mind I have done:

H807 Innovations in e-learning

H808 The e-learning professional

And will complete next month:

H800 Technology Enhanced Learning

For the 180 credits required for the MA there is no choice (unless I am misreading it) but to do the only two remaining 30 credit modules:

H810 Accessible Online Learning

H809 Practice-based  Research in Educational Technology

Or have I got that wrong?

With this in mind it's H810 in September then H809 in February 2012.

To confuse issues there are professional reasons to start the MBA programme from October. Decision time then as I won't be doing two courses concurrently. Something I tried by doing over a three year period the UKCC ASA Senior Club Coach (swimming) qualification ... 

Freedom is LACK of choice.

I look forward to H810. Search H810 in the OU Student Blogs for an idea of what it is about; we did a rich, engaging and valuable period on accessibility in H807.

I'd do H807 again as I feel it was wasted on me. It took me six months to get into the postgraduate groove and my IT skills despite being online for a decade were woefully inadequate. The disappointment is that the reading and activities cannot possibly be contemporary so that you feel as if it is 2005 at best, 2003 at worst. I expected technological fireworks; at least I understand why that is not realistic. Perhaps the model whereby a module that aims to be innovative is designed and reinvented continually?

H800 is the 60 pointer but I have found it LESS onerous that previous 30 Pointer modules, not only is it spread thinner, but the pace is adjusted, the roll-over and degree of repetition embeds the learning outcomes and a TMA as prep for the ECA is inspired.

What next is asked by many MA qualified postgraduates I am finding. We hanker after more but short of a PhD what can be offered? Indeed, I think there is a gap in Tertiarty, or should it be called 'quartertiary' education?

If offered a further choice of modules beyond the MA I'd do them ... Towards at MA+ or MA* ?? Though in truth for how the thinking is applied, as a form of CPD.

Too much theory without practice was described by the owner of a successful specialist engineering firm in Germany today as 'like trying to learn to swim from a book.'

Apprenticeship in Germany run for 3 1/2 years of which 8 months a year is practical. The remainder of the year they go to a special school. 'If you  only learn theory it is like learning swimming from reading a book so you need both.' Leonardo  Duritchich, Chief Technial Water, Sief Steiner Pianos.   The Today Programme, 27h36, Wednesday 17th  August.

I agree, though when it comes to swimming, there are some great books made all the better in electronic form. This is 'The Swim Drill Book.'

Putting into practice what you learn, learning construction rather than simply knowledge acquisition; I believe this to be the case with something like The OU Business School MBA, something I needed each time I started businesses in the 2980s and 1990s.
As a swimming coach it matters that you swam competitively and/or still swim. A flightless bird cannot teach a bird to fly. So engineers learn through doing, often from apprenticeship. Junior Doctors need to put in the hours, solicitors start as trainees, the list goes on. It is particularly the case in the TV business where after starting as a trainee producer I was happier with kit, shooting, editing and drafting scripts, learning my trade, something that an a degree had not prepared me for.

Episode One (Saved in BBC iPlayer for one week from broadcast)

Episode Two (10h45 Today, repeated 19h45 this evening)

This first episode is a wonderful interplay between domestic and civil life, the prospect of joining the ship that will fetch the King from exile, while the 'wench' who works for them refuses to kill the turkey they've been feeding up because it's her friend.

On the 1st of January 1660, the 26 year old Samuel Pepys decides to start keeping a diary.

He's behind with his rent, he goes out too often, and drinks too much. He lies awake worrying about work, and despite being happily married, can't keep his hands off other women.

He gives us eyewitness accounts of some of the great events of the 17th century but he also tells us what people ate, wore, what they did for fun, the tricks they played on each other, what they expected of marriage, and of love affairs.

This BBC radio drama is on every day at 10.45 and again in the evening at 19.45. Episode 2 today.

Follow Samuel Pepys on Twitter. You get regular 140 characters or less updates.

Read his diary, offered on a the basis of 'on this day 350 years ago.'

Nothing's changed much, the most important things in our life are loves, family and friends. Our lives may touch on the politics and events of the time, they may not. Pepy's got through the restoration of the King, Plague and the Fire of London.

He so often ends is entry with, 'and so to bed'.

For radio for boring bits have been left out; it therfore reads like a novel.

Not a recommended style for these pages, but great for an external blog in Wordpress, Blogger or LiveJournal. Or my favourite, Diaryland.

I've set myself a challenge to take mobile learning to the nth degree, 'testing to destruction'.

If I thought the iPad would survive the experience I thought perhaps a jacuzzi or sauna?

Signal might not be good.

In my gap year eons ago I discovered that the hotel owner (4 star) thought it great that guests and staff, including a very lowly teen me, could 'chill' out together in 'his' sauna.

There is relevance and that is the idea of 'informal' learning.

Indeed, I wonder if many OU students, enjoying and enrolled in a 'life of learning' practice in a more informal way then us 'regular' students who (and I applaud it) take it reasonably seriously.

I could knock out the TMAO4 in a first draft before lunch today, not bother with much referencing and checking meaning, grammar etc: and submit expecting to scrape through with a 40 something at worst, a 50 something more likely. The problem I have is enjoying the present too much and even with e-learning being fed the latest through the likes of Zite and Stumbleupon.

Recording our hang-out session may have made for fun viewing.

On the other hand by doing so it radically changes the dynamic. I wouldn't want the student me confused with the business me.

(Four months in to a 12 month fixed contract).

That said I'd love a playback of my slow descent below the frame.

This is the trickster at play.

Belbin I believe categorises people and how they work in teams, I know where I belong! The very fact that it has become a catalyst for conversation shows it's value; where now Elluminate?

I've started to make comparisons in my OU Student Blog.