Collaboration online

Many online courses now require students to collaborate, but we know that just putting people together in the same space isn’t enough? What should a tutor do to prepare students for collaborative tasks?
Gilly Salmon’s 5-stage model provides very good guidelines on how to prepare for collaborative tasks online. These are usually designed into Stage 4 of [...]

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Engaging learners with technology

How do you ensure that learners engage with the technology?
This is the second question from my list and my immediate response is similar to my initial thoughts about the last question. My primary concern, as a teacher, is to engage learners with learning. Technology is only a tool – a means to an end.
Most of my career [...]

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Openness and Research

In an interesting recent post Stephen Downes  has pointed once again to the four elements that  ’distinguish a knowledge-generating network from a mere set of connected elements.’  – Diversity, Openness, Autonomy and Interactivity and Connectedness.
I have been thinking about the question of  ‘Openness’ quite a lot in relation to research networks. Currently I am involved in [...]

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Choosing to blog

Thanks to John and Matthias I am still thinking about if blogs might offer a distinctive type of conversation compared to other types of online communication and if so how are they distinctive?
A quick internet search has shown that people have been writing about reasons for blogging, and characteristics of bloggers for the past 5 years. [...]

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Jenny connected? -yes I think so

Reflecting on this whole experience, the first thing that occurs to me is that I did manage to get connected even if only temporarily. So I have taken the question mark out of the title of my blog. Connecting took quite a bit of persistence and I had to ‘go for it’. Public blogging is a new experience and I never [...]

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Community, networks, reciprocity and responsibility

 I have just dipped in here tonight and come across Dave’s post on his blog. When the word community appears, my ears prick up, because throughout this course my perception is that what many people have been seeking is a learning community, whereas, in fact, what connectivism as explained by this course offers, is a learning network [...]

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That can’t be right!

I have finally managed to get into a live session  (today’s Ustream) after missing the last three and it’s amazing how much more connected I feel! There’s a lesson in there somewhere for online learning and learning in networks!
Discussion this week obviously focussed on power, authority and control in networks. I still haven’t mastered keeping up with the [...]

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Thinking aloud about power, authority and control

It has been an interesting experience returning from being away (where I have not been online) to a deluge of emails. It has also been interesting to read the range of different responses, from those who thought Stephen made his point well, to those who just thought it was a bit of a laugh, to those who [...]

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Grainne Conole’s questions

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 [...]

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Succumbing to the tyranny of participation?

I have just made this blog public. I have kept quite a few blogs before but they have never been public. In the past I have invited a few people in and used them either as reflective journals or as a means of keeping my thinking about a given project in one place. This has always served my [...]

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