I have finally managed to listen to Grainne Conole and view the slide presentation (thanks Kristina) and was interested in her Slide 100 with three questions, which I have been thinking about.

1. How can we encourage a culture of sharing ideas and designs?

A lot will need to change in HE before a culture of sharing ideas and designs becomes truly established if it ever does. Currently the whole system is geared to promoting individual advancement, in research, teaching and management. I think Stephen has the answer when he says it needs to be done through modelling and demonstration, which is just what he and George have done with this course. They have shown that it can be done. It would be interesting to know how many of their colleagues at the University of Manitoba freely share their ideas and designs. And how many people on this course will go back to their universities/institutions and request to be allowed to start open courses with free access to their ideas and course designs. My experience is that you can’t even take your own work to a new job in another institution, as work done for an institution is regarded as the property of that institution!

2. Why has there been little uptake of educational repositories?

My feeling is that the answer to this question lies in what I was trying to get at in my last post – and here I want to thank Rodd Lucier for his comment.

Although there wasn’t mention of commenting on Cloudworks products produced by others, the use of a common template would make such projects easily recognizable, shareable and editable. I think that’s what makes the WebQuest model of rich project development such a useful framework.

Another benefit to the tool Grainne shared, is that it walks teacher-designers through a thoughtful process of building a lesson, unit, or course. Educators are forced to consider a relevant lesson components from expectations thru roles and activities.

I don’t disagree with anything Rodd has said, but his points don’t answer my original concern and that is that a teaching idea is only of use when it can be practically applied in the classroom and that that is context dependent. Having listened to Grainne’s talk and it seems that she considers Cloudworks to be a social network, but I can’t see on the site where the discussions are going to take place. I suspect they will take place off the site, which could lead to a site which people take from, rather than give to and take from. If there hasn’t been an uptake on educational repositories it’s because they don’t provide what people need.

3. Can we apply web 2.0 principles to an educational context?

I think this course is proof that we can, but there has been plenty of discussion this week about the gap between the web 2.0 principles and many educational contexts. I thought Stephen overstepped the mark a little in tonight’s Elluminate session when he all but suggested that Lisa would either have to be content with only applying web 2.0 principles to her own learning, or might have to choose to leave her job if she couldn’t apply them in her current situation. He did retract rather quickly after this (I wonder if he heard my sharp intake of breath!). Of all people Stephen will know that there is a big gap between our traditional education systems and the principles to which web 2.0 technologies aspire. This is not going to go away and I think it’s probably a preferable option to try and change a system from the inside rather than from the outside (although loads of politicans seem to manage it from the outside!). Stephen himself has said that teachers need to model and demonstrate and this makes perfect sense to me. We just take small steps to begin with, modelling and demonstrating in small ways what can be achieved and celebrating success as we go along and gradually things start to move, but it will be a slow process. Rome wasn’t built in a day – as they say!

Well, I haven’t managed to locate a recording of Grainne’s talk yet. In fact – this is an open question for anyone who can answer it – is there somewhere on the CCK08 site where all past recordings are stored? If there is, I haven’t yet managed to find it. It would be useful to be able to return to some of the presentations.

In the absence of having heard Grainne – I have read her papers and had a quick look at the Cloudworks site.

I have to say that I’ve got my doubts about how successful this site will be and I’ve been trying to sort out why I’ve got this ‘niggly’ feeling about it. The site looks great and doesn’t everyone want and need access to ideas for their teaching?

If I have understood this correctly, then the idea behind this is that people socialise and share around an object. We see this in Flickr (photos), Youtube (videos) Slideshare (presentations) – incidentally, I really don’t like slideshare much, but that’s another story – so the idea behind cloudworks is that people will socialise and share around ideas for teaching.

As I see it, Flickr, Youtube and slideshare work well because they share ‘finished’ objects. People don’t have to do anything with the photos, videos and presentations – only enjoy and appreciate them. Whereas an idea for teaching is of absolutely no use unless you do something with it and without the sharing of that process, then I think a resource of teaching ideas is of limited use.

I might have missed this, but although I can see the possibility for commenting on the teaching ideas uploaded onto Cloudworks, I can’t see any discussion possibilities. Of course, Grainne might have explained this is her talk (which I haven’t heard) or it may be that you have to be signed up to have access to discussion – but without the discussion I’m not sure how successful the site will be.

It seems to me that Cloudworks needs to incorporate both the sharing of objects idea from Flickr etc. and the sharing of discussion from social networking sites such as Facebook. Each teacher’s context is so individual that whilst a resource of teaching ideas can be a help and time saver, the resource still has to be adapted for the individual context and I suspect that’s where most of the help is needed and those are the ideas that most teachers would like to interact around.

Well I missed last week’s Ustream session on Friday because it started earlier than expected. I had a meeting booked at the same time, but hoped to be able to catch the end of it, which I might have done had the time not been changed, without me knowing.  I have listened to the recording, but it is just not the same. I suppose this is the difference between connecting conceptually and connecting socially. I find the latter more motivating.

And now I find I can’t get into the Elluminate session, which is supposed to be happening right now as I write this, but the University of Manitoba site seems to be down. If I find that the session has been going on without me, then I will despair, as I have tried every which way to connect.

It’s so frustrating when you want to connect and you just can’t. Currently, I am researching learner experiences in virtual communities of practice and I am really interested in the ‘how’ of making connections. I loved Ailsa’s post in her blog  CCK08 short paper, connectivism, what is it, where is it and can i get some? where she writes:

In this exchange, there needs to be movement for learning to have occurred.

Well, I have moved, and I still haven’t connected and so I haven’t learned.  If the learning is to be ‘e’, then the first hurdle will be in being able to and knowing how to make the connections online. Will the technology, or our understanding of the technology, let us/enable us to make those initial tentative connections which are going to be so important in our learning process?

I am not a ‘techie’, so I’m not super confident with technology  and I’ve just got this horrible suspicion that not being able to get into the Elluminate session might be something to do with my lack of understanding of how technology works. But, on the other hand, I know that compared to some of my colleagues I am ahead of the game. George says that all learning starts with a connection, but how can we help people make those initial connections online?

Well it’s 6.03 and I’ve just managed to get in, to find there are 27 participants on the call and Grainne Conole is on slide number 100 – Aaaaargh! And there does seem to have been trouble with the Manitoba server and with Grainne’s server. That makes me feel much better, although I still haven’t a clue what has been said up to now when I can access the site, so what is being said at the moment has little meaning.  I can see that there are 143 slides – although I’ve had to go to slideshare to see it – thanks to Pat Parslow for the link! – I can’t see it on Elluminate.

And now it’s 6.35 pm and although I’ve listened to the last half hour and read the chat, I’m still none the wiser – cloudmaking, cloudscape and compendiums seem to be the new words, but currently I have no idea what they mean. Hopefully there will be a recording, but it just won’t be the same.

And I was so looking forward to this session – just my area of interest! So I’m feeling thoroughly disconnected tonight!