• Digital Literacy

• Data Visualization

• Diaryland

• Design for all

• The Digital Scholar

• Deep Learning

• Dewey

Everyone needs to develop digital literacy alongside literacy and numeracy. Knowing your way around the Internet and skill at using computers, whether they are in your pocket or on someone else's desktop matters in the 21st century.

Data visualised and animated, with a voice over, can help explain the complex. Beware the nonsense infographic produced by an advertising agency though.

The Digital Scholar is a spurious and elitist concept. Either a person is or is not scholarly whether or not they use the Internet a lot or not at all. For digital we could just as well so e-Scholar, which rather undermines my idea for the 'A to Z or e-learning' as, if not already, and to some, learning is learning however it is achieved and where it matters is in the brain of the student wherever they read or do.

Whether learning goes deep or is left a the surface is platform non-specific too. Indeed, too many games or watching videos might be the surface learning that is of such little value compared to the effort of reading, the effort of sitting in class and the effort of revising for and taking an exam.

Diaryland is one of the earliest blogging platforms where much that we see online was first played with: friends, likes, groups, surveys, stats, advertising ... 

Dewey is one of a couple of dozen learning gurus that you need to know about to understand learning, which is no less important just because you stick an 'e' in front of it. Dewey saw reflection as a specialised form of thinking. ‘a kind of thinking that consists in turning a subject over in the mind and giving it serious thought’. More on reflection later. Here the Internet has a valuable role to play - you reflect online in order to share thoughts, issues and ideas.

• Comments

• Grainné Conole

• Connectedness

• Constructed Learning

• Cognitive Learning

• Communities of Practice

• Compendium

• Curation

• Cognitive Overload

• Collaboration

• Complexity Theory

• Constructed Knowledge

• Csicksentmihalyi

• Creative Commons

• Crowd Sourcing

• Cox

• City & Guilds

• CREET

• Composting

• Doug Clow

• Communities of Practice - Etienne Wenger

• Curation

Connectedness, Comments, Curation and Collaboration are interrelated: you get 'connectedness', a George Siemens coined term, as a result of curation (putting content online) which garners comments and thus creates collaboration. Comments bring like minds together and the learning experience is enhanced as a result. 

Prof Grainné Conole would be in any 'who's who of e-learning' along with a couple of dozen others. Follow her blog, read her many books and papers. I can't think that there is an MAODE module where she does not have an influence.

I've added cognitive overload as a warning really; some modules and e-learning tries to hard. Less is best. I love Rosetta Stone as a language learning platform as it keeps it simple - like playing with coloured bricks, whereas some modules I have done become unduly complex, with too many 'optional' activities and extra reading which simply adds to the complexity. Our educators are there to make choices for us.

Csicksentmihalyi isn't taught in the MAODE modules, though he ought to be. I came across him in an MBA module on creativity, innovation and change. Csicksentmihalyi coined the phrase 'in the flow' and neatly explains that balance between boredom and stress that is cured by further learning and training so that we are challenged and progress.

City & Guilds I've added as with their acquisition of Kineo, an e-learning agency, they have become a global learning and development provider online as well as off. The OU has baulked at being a global player, pulling out of Europe and resisting developing further afield. Other players, Phoenix comes to mind, are becoming global universities.

'Composting' is an odd one without explanation - it is my term to describe the need for space in learning, that whatever it is you learn takes time to bed down. It matters to me that students take two to three years to master their subject. The modular nature of OU courses may be convenient, and the 'end of year' or 'end of course' exam largely avoid, but I feel this is a significant loss. The final written exams, by their nature, galvanise your effort and pull your thinking together and produce a lasting effect. 

Communities of Practice

Wenger (1998) identifies three essential features:

• mutual engagement

• a joint enterprise

• a shared repertoire.

Engaging in practice over a period of time develops a shared repertoire of practices,

understandings, routines, actions, and artefacts (Wenger 1998).

Participation in communities of practice is not only about learning to do, but as a part of doing, it is about learning to be (Lave and Wenger 1991)

Firstly, it shifts the focus from teaching to learning and the practices the learner engages in (Adler 1998).

Secondly, it recharacterises the role of the teacher as not primarily being a holder of knowledge but an expert in the practices of a subject based community. The teacher exemplifies for the learner how to legitimately participate in these practices.

Thirdly, as a situated theory of learning it helps to explains the issue of a lack of ‘transfer’ of knowledge from school to non-school contexts (see Evans 2000; Lave 1988; Lerman 1999, for a discussion of this issue).

Fourthly, it recognises the intimate connection between the ‘subject’ practices and the pedagogical practices and therefore helps us to understand why different pedagogies not only influence the amount that is learned but also what is learned. The acquisition (Lave 1988) or representational model (Seely Brown and Duguid 1989) of learning in school contexts distinguishes between what the students are to learn or to ‘acquire’, and the means by which this learning occurs. A division is made between subject and pedagogy.

Fifthly, it highlights the extent to which educators are not imparting knowledge nor even only helping their students to engage in particular social practices but rather to become particular types of human beings. Thus it opens avenues of inquiry to understand learners' patterns of identification and non-identification with schools mathematics (see for example, Boaler 2000)

The community of practice model, based on the metaphor or actuality of apprenticeship learning identifies three basic positions that participants take up.

These can be referred to in the following way:

• master/old-timer/expert,

• journeyman/established-member/adept,

• apprentice/newcomer/novice.

REFERENCE

Adler, J. (1998) "Lights and limits: Recontextualising Lave and Wenger to theorise knowledge ofteaching and of learning school mathematics." In Situated Cognition and the Learning of Mathematics, ed. Anne Watson, 161-177. Oxford: Centre for Mathematics Education, University of Oxford Department of Educational Studies.

Boaler, J. (2000) "Mathematics from another world: Traditional communities and the alienation of learners." Journal of Mathematical Behaviour 18, no. 3: 379-397.

Boylan, M (2004) Questioning (in) school mathematics: Lifeworlds and ecologies of practice PhD Thesis. Sheffield Hallam University

Herting, K (2006) Balancing on a thin line - Thoughts from a study of Swedish voluntary leaders in children’s football. AARE’s 36th Annual International Education Research Conference Adelaide Australia November 27 -30 2006

Lave, J, and Wenger.E (1991) Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Lemke, J. (1997) "Cognition, context, and learning: A social semiotic perspective." In Situated Cognition: Social, Semiotic, and Psychological Perspectives, ed. David Kirshner and JamesWhitson, 37-56. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Lerman, S. (1998) "Learning as social practice: An appreciative critique." In Situated

Cognition and the Learning of Mathematics, ed. Anne Watson, 33-42. Oxford: Centre for

Mathematics Education, University of Oxford Department of Educational Studies.

Seely Brown, J, and P. Duguid. (1991) Organisational learning and communities of practice: Toward a unified view of working, learning and innovation. Accessed November 2000. Available from http://www.parc.xerox.com/ops/members/brown/papers/orglearning.htm.

Wenger, E. (1998) Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning and Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Cox, R. (2006) Vicarious Learning and Case-based Teaching of Clinical Reasoning Skills (2004–2006) [online], http://www.esrcsocietytoday.ac.uk/ esrcinfocentre/ viewawardpage.aspx?awardnumber=RES-139-25-0127 [(last accessed 10 March 2011).

Conole, G. (2011) ‘Stepping over the edge: the implications of new technologies for education’ in Lee, M.J.W. and McLoughlin, C. (eds) Web 2.0-based E-learning: Applying Social Informatics for Tertiary Teaching, Hershey

Conole, G. (2004). E-learning: the hype and the reality. Journal of Interactive Media in Education, 12

Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly (1975). Beyond Boredom and Anxiety: Experiencing Flow in Work and Play, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. ISBN 0-87589-261-2

Despite the rhetoric of the content industry, the most valuable contribution to our economy comes from connectivity, not content’. Lawrence Lessig (2008:89) CF Andrew Odlyzko ‘Content is not King’.

Calvani, A. (2009). Connectivism: new paradigm or fascinating pot-pourri?. Journal of E-learning and Knowledge Society, 4(1).

Kop, R., & Hill, A. (2008). Connectivism: Learning theory of the future or vestige of the past?. The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning,9(3).

Connectivism: Its place in theory-informed research and innovation in technology-enabled learning

de Waard, I. (2011). Explore a new learning frontier: MOOCs. Retrieved from Learning Solutions Magazine website: http://bit. ly/mSi4q

Bruner, J. (1986). Actual Minds, Possible Worlds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Driscoll, M. P. (2000). Psychology of learning for instruction. 2nd ed. Needham Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon.

Cobb, P. (1994). Where is the Mind? Constructivist and sociocultural perspectives on mathematic development. Educational Researcher, 23 (7), pp. 13-20

Fosnot, C. T. (1996). (Ed.) Constructivism: Theory, perspectives, and practice. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.

Jonassen, D. H. (1992). Evaluating constructivist learning. In T. M. Duffy, & D. H. Jonassen (eds), Constructivism and the technology of instruction: A conversation. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Association.

Piaget, J. (1985). The equilibration of cognitive structures. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Smith, P. L., & Ragan, T. J. (1999). Instructional Design. 2nd ed. New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Von Glaserfeld (1992). Constructivism reconstruction: A reply to Suchting. Science and Education, 1, 379-384.

Vyogtsky, L. S. (1979). Consciousness as a problem in the psychology of behavior.Soviet Psychology, 17 (4), 3-35. (Original work published in 19-24).

Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychology process. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. (Original published in 1930).

Wertsch, J. V. (1992). L. S. Vygotsky and contemporary developmental psychology. Developmental Psychology, 28 *4), 548-557. Vygotsky, L. (1986). Thought and language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. (Original work published 1962).

• A List Apart
• Academic Writing
• A room of my own
• Accessibility
• Activity Theory
• Applied Learning
• Amazon
• Ackoff
• Action Research
• Assessment
• Assignment
• Assistive technology
• Augmented Learning
• Asynchronous
• Auto-ethnography
• Alt-C
• Analytics
• Apps
• Terry Anderson

I continual scramble learning and e-learning as separating the too seems so foolish - we learn and use whatever tools we have to hand and society and our moment in history makes available to us. The age of the printed book is not over, it has simply found over forms of expression, both linear and interactive, with moving images and sound. 

This is to be an A to Z of E-learning though so 'Apps' must head my list as I have come to rely and love so many. Having various apps on your tablet or smart phone supports learning in all kinds of ways, whether you are organising your time, drawing a mind map, or simple drawing and manipulating images and charts. Then there are apps that offer insights and support learning 'in the field' ... and the many thousands of choices too.

I have lived either side of Rodmell for the last 14 years so Virginia Woolf's life, work and death are forever present, not least as I often walk our dog along the River Ouse between Rodmell and Piddinghoe where the writer drowned herself by filling the pockets of an overcoat with rocks. The point, relevant to all learning, is to have 'a room of your own' - though a space will do and I dare so we can all make head-space with a pair of headphones and then work on a smartphone or iPad. Having space, the time and geographical kind, matters in all learning. 

Accessibility in e-learning, like all things, needs to be in the design, like inclusivity as the MAODE module H810 spells out. E-learning's strongest card is the ability to use technology to assist and augment experiences for students who may have struggled with traditional modes and methods of learning. Now font and text sizes and contrasts can be adjusted, the page can be read to you and various inputting devices attached.

Activity Theory is one of those vital models that help explain the world and how we behave in groups or between institutions. 

Applied Learning, from an apprenticeship to an MBA, to any learning that is situated in and of the workplace means that the constructed part of the learning process is actively putting the learning into practice. 

Amazon comes ahead of Apps in my personal experience. Whilst I have a number of Apps I love to use, the support my learning, from iWriter on the iPad, to SimpleMinds and Studio, it is the ease by which I can track down books and eBooks that makes Amazon like the Bodleian Library I knew as an undergraduate. I feel I can get, beneath my gaze, just about any book, in days, if not in moments. I wish to chase up a reference I can find the book and have it on my Kindle in minutes. I find an out of print book that has not been digitised and it arrives in a day or two - often old stock from an university library. And then there are quite special texts that organisations such as the Library of Congress have digitised and print on demand and send over. These are just the books, then there are the forum like reviews where readers tussle over the strengths and weaknesses of a publication.

For an A to Z of E-learning this is the easiest letter to fulfil. I could write a book on blogging alone. Indeed it's about time I stopped accumulating and writing on blogging and instead my bit to push it as a platform for education good.

Why blog?

• As a learning journal or e-portfolio
• To share research
• To build and retain an audience
• For professional credibility
• For a personal and professional to create and keep a social media presence
• To connect with others.
• To find 'like minds'

I did a Mindmap too, some 24 reasons why an academic should blog, and another one for students. Even if you post privately there is value, that grows over the weeks and years, to have so much content logged, tagged and in one place. 

If you have some other 'Bs' to add to an 'A to Z of e-learning' please offer them. 

• Helen Beetham
• Blook (this is what a publisher thought a book from a blog should be called in 2006)

Fig.1. My ever changing desk

Some weeks into preparing a 4000 word essay I finally, painfully, through copious notes, and assemblages of arguments to support my chosen thesis hit 'Word Count' and to my amazement find this fourth draft far from massively overfilling the cup comes in at 4036 words. It is with an uncharacteristic confession that I should know by now that this kind of considered effort will deliver, while writing as if in a blog will never do. A few marks short of a distinction for my last effort what I need now to do is prioritise the multitude of references that I've attached - some 67 (from a core set of seven or so books and eBooks). Actually I am still missing a dozen references at least. Whilst some of the ideas are mine, most are not, when it comes to the First World War, thousands have been there already (some 23,000 publications on the topic).

There is method to this. All other approaches having failed the above is to be the approach I take for my very last effort to constructing, rather than writing, a novel. It has its moments in the First World War, though it covers a period that a lecturer at the weekend expressed in the phrase, as 'From Super Power to the three day week'. He wanted to know how Britain had gone from Empire to near collapse over 75 years; this just so happens to be the period my main character lives through. 

Over the last four years I migrated from pen and paper, to purist working on and from digital platforms only. Today my approach is blended - anything and everything that works. This means hard back reference books as well as eBooks, a pad of paper and an ink pen and the interface an iPad, and laptop or desktop - documents in Google Docs so quite frankly anything that gets me online will work. Often I take photos of a book rather than take notes. With eBooks I highlight, add notes - then assemble choice points onto Rolledex cards. What counts, I have learnt, is the time and quality of engagement with the subject matter. At some stage the fog does clear and it makes sense well enough for you to be able to talk about it willingly and in an informed way if you so choose - recommended, where and if you can find some many willing and able to listen and respond. 

The result is my understanding of 'Why Britain went to war in 1914'. It is not the conclusion I would have come to a few weeks ago. It has relevance today as 100 years ago too - it comes down to a handful of political leaders: who they are, what they desire and represent, how they behave and to whom (if anyone) and how, they are accountable. 

Somewhere across these posts there are other images of 'my working space' and my 'Personal Learning Environment'. This space is temporary: its the kitchen/dining table for a start. When my teenage daughter gets in from college she takes over with art materials and a sewing machine and I retire to a corner of the bedroom with an iPad. 

This numbers game is what drove me obsessively to blog between 1999 and 2003/4. Back then being the first to have blogged every day for a year, then two then three. To be the first to blog 1000 words a day for a month and so on, we all thought, meant something. Most potty of all was the 24 hour blogathon I initiated in 2002 where participants had to post 1000 freshly written words an hour for 24 hours. An interesting exercise.

What makes any diarist do it?

There is, after many years, great personal pleasure in looking back: I kept a diary for some twenty years between the age of 13 1/2 and into my early thirties ... with a significant fizzle out I should add when I got engaged and married, only revising the format when the children were planned and born - that not gives me a record of their first actions and words.

As a learning tool it is great too - putting your first ideas here, then building on them means that you can watch how an essay that got a 53 moves to a 63, 73, 83 and beyond. 

My reading may have reached 2000 pages on the subject (including several hundred original documents).

My target is a 4000 word essay.

Writing 40,000 words is easy; a Tweet is easy too - Blame Reich Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg, Kaiser Wilhelm II and Moltke.

A summary of 600 words, expanded to 2000 words is straightforward too. The problem is 4000 words - here the need and expectation to prove a point required considerable fine and considered editing of the mass of evidence.

There are over 23000 books on the First World War. I've read perhaps 40 of them and own 100. Do I know enough? Have I satisfied this itch once and for all?

'There is no
Small annoyance
Small sigh
Small shrug of the shoulders
Small feeling nervous
Small insult
There is no small incivility
Overall, prefer the serenity'

Is how Google translate delivers.

What do you think works best?

I have a sense of what it means.

I say this poster in the booking office of SNCF in Dieppe.

I know in England such posters are more likely to state that aggressive behaviour will lead to prosecution.

If you know the poetry of Jacques Prevert, that this is what it made me thinking of. The English translation needs to be as poetic. I don't think repeating the word 'small' does it for me.

Any suggestions?!

There are times when you are taught something new that you feel you should concentrate - all I worry about is remembering how to turn it off. An avalanche looks inocuous from a distance, skiing alongside a recent fall you see boulders of snow the size of a mini. Snow like a cloud, turning into a duvet that by mid-after was turning a little like fudge. Falls turned you into a snowman. Skied 'Brown Trouser Ridge' four times - others felt that way, I simply dismissed a moment of panic and tried not to look down.

From Skiing New Year 2013/14

On Sunday I head to French Alps. Ferry and overnight train from Gar du Nord. Old school. Far cheaper and I can read en route. 

I am taking Kylie Minogue with me. In my teens it was Donna Summer and 'Love to love you, Babe' - Kylie Minogue 'Kiss Me Once' is ski turn madness. Preparation for the last couple of months has been walks on the South Downs with the dog ... and a rucksack containing three old ski boots and a dried up pot of paint wrapped in bubble wrap. My thighs aren't quite Chris Hoy but they feel like it.

And it's snowing. Skiers care about these things. For the last month the Alps have been in melt down as the freezing point rose over 3000m. By the time I make it early on Monday morning the freezing point will be down to 1000m and there'll be 45cm of fresh snow on the mountain. 

Dressed like the someone official if I stood still for too long people would ski over abd ask for directions.

Three years ago I attended a day long course on social media advertising in higher education run by Zoe Cairns. She is a former PR/marketing person from Warwick Business School - I was representing the OU Business School. Those attending included LSE,  Bath, Imperial College ... LBS? And several others (blog post someone in here I should think). Zoe has just launched an self-managed e-learning version of the same. Having gone from 120 delegates or so a month she may now globally reach 1,200 a month? All this for the cost of investing in a web design and platform and approach that looks reassuringly familiar. I did a bit of something like this with Manchester Metropolitian a couple of years ago. 

Three things strike me:

1) Her plausible transition from facilitator to online brand hoping to reap the rewards of having more participants. This is the hardback book of the past. The 'how to ...' of e-learning in an inviting an saleable package.

2) The prospect, as I see it, of the subject champion, not the institution becoming the educator we seek out in a 'who's who' of learning. You feel, whether it is the case or not, that a big name of the subject is 'teaching you' - Niall Ferguson on history, Martin Weller on e-learning, Richard Dawkins on ... what is his thing? Atheasism? Biology? Zoology?

3) The value of repeating, refreshing or repeating a topic until you feel like you are starting to master it - practice for want of a word: continual professional development for the technical term. I take the view that a qualification is no more, nor better than a motorway sign - do you pull over at the first service station on passing it, or press on? And imagine this motorway on a hill: if you stop you can only roll backwards.

P.S. Over the last 24 hours this blog has received over 2,000 views. I have no way at all of knowing why, or who is reading this stuff! Do say 'hi!'

H818: The Networked Practitioner introduced all manner of traits that might be developed in relation to openness and online learning in particular. One idea was that of 'asking' - so crowd funding at one level and direct requests at the other rather than simply passively waiting for someone to come along and as if by osmosis offer their assistance with really knowing what it is that you want.

Asking to some, is selling to others. They are the same thing. We ask for funding, we ask for fees, we ask to be paid for our services.

The simplest example of an easy ask that is a by product of simply 'getting stuff out there' came yesterday from the British Library. They have just launched a web resource that gives free access to many hundreds of files, images  and artefacts that relate to the First World War.

The simple ask was for me to link to them from my blog on the First World War. My views aren't big, it is a niche subject to be interest in the Machine Gun Corps 1914-1918! But the 'ask' worked and in a small way this 'connectedness' with a little direct input should help give the subject matter some vibrancy.