Karen Stephenson - bibliography search? "I store my knowledge in my friends."
Abstract: Abstract. Much thinking about digital cities is in terms of community groups. Yet, the world is composed of social networks and not of groups. This paper traces how communities have changed from densely-knit “Little Boxes” (densely-knit, linking people door-to-door) to “Glocalized” networks (sparsely- knit but with clusters, linking households both locally and globally) to “Networked Individualism” (sparsely-knit, linking individuals with little regard to space). The transformation affects design considerations for computer systems that would support digital cities.
So what literacies must we educators master before we can help students make the most of these powerful potentials? It starts, as author Clay Shirky (2008) suggests, with an understanding of how transparency fosters connections and with a willingness to share our work and, to some extent, our personal lives. Sharing is the fundamental building block for building connections and networks; it may take the form of ruminations on life in a blog, photos of the latest family picnic on Flickr, or discussion notes students post to a classroom wiki for others to read and contribute to.
Publishing content online not only begins the process of becoming "Googleable," it also makes us findable by others who share our passions or interests.
Younger students need to see their teachers engaging experts in synchronous or asynchronous online conversations about content, and they need to begin to practice intelligently and appropriately sharing work with global audiences. Middle school students should be engaged in the process of cooperating and collaborating with others outside the classroom around their shared passions, just as they have seen their teachers do. And older students should be engaging in the hard work of what Shirky (2008) calls "collective action," sharing responsibility and outcomes in doing real work for real purposes for real audiences online.
But to do all that, we educators must first own these technologies and be able to take advantage of these networked learning spaces. In this way, we can fully prepare students not just to be Googled well, but to be findable in good ways by people who share their passions for learning and who may well end up being lifelong teachers, mentors, or friends.
Karen Stephenson - bibliography search? "I store my knowledge in my friends."
Gonzalez (2004) describes the challenges of rapidly diminishing knowledge life:
“One of the most persuasive factors is the shrinking half-life of knowledge. The “half-life of knowledge” is the time span from when knowledge is gained to when it becomes obsolete. Half of what is known today was not known 10 years ago. The amount of knowledge in the world has doubled in the past 10 years and is doubling every 18 months according to the American Society of Training and Documentation (ASTD). To combat the shrinking half-life of knowledge, organizations have been forced to develop new methods of deploying instruction.”
Intro: In the summer of 1998, over two frantic weeks in July, I wrote an essay titled The Future of Online Learning. (Downes, 1998) At the time, I was working as a distance education and new media design specialist at Assiniboine Community College, and I wrote the essay to defend the work I was doing at the time. “We want a plan,” said my managers, and so I outline the future as I thought it would – and should – unfold. In the ten years that have followed, this vision of the future has proven to be remarkably robust. I have found, on rereading and reworking the essay, that though there may have been some movement in the margins, the overall thrust of the paper was essentially correct. This gives me
confidence in my understanding of those forces and trends that are moving education today.
In this essay I offer a renewal of those predictions. I look at each of the points I addressed in 1998,
and with the benefit of ten year’s experience, recast and rewrite each prediction. This essay is not
an attempt to vindicate the previous paper – time has done that – but to carry on in the same spirit,
and to push that vision ten years deeper into the future.
Intro: The average cost of yearly tuition at a private, four-year college in the US this year was $25,143, and for public schools, students could expect to pay $6,585 on average for the 2008-09 school year, according to the College Board. That was up 5.9% and 6.4% respectively over the previous year, which is well ahead of the national average rate of inflation. What that means is that for many people, college is out of reach financially. But what if social media tools would allow the cost of an education to drop nearly all the way down to zero?
The administration of US President Barack Obama is reportedly also considering the merits of establishing a free online university. According to draft discussion documents obtained by Inside Higher Ed in June, the administration has had high level discussions about creating courses aimed at community college attendees that would be delivered online for free. According to the report, the government is considering a $50 million per year budget to “pay for (and own) courses that would be free for all, as well as setting up a system to assess learning in those courses.”
“According to the draft materials from the administration, the program would support the development of 20-25 “high quality” courses a year, with a mix of high school and community college courses. Initial preference would go to “career oriented” courses. The courses would be owned by the government and would be free for anyone to take. Courses would be selected competitively, through peer review, for support. And the courses would be “modular” or “object based” such that they would be “interoperable” and could be offered with a variety of technology platforms.” — Inside Higher Ed
POINT 2 – PLEs are (to me at least) the ecologies within which PLNs operate
Two great chapters on personal learning environments and personal learning networks available as free downloads from this e-book. (See highlights.)
Figure 2: The Networked Student
These include academic social contacts, synchronous communication, information management, and really simple syndication (RSS). Social contacts include teachers, classmates, students outside of the class, and subject matter experts. Synchronous communication refers to video conferencing and instant messaging. Information management activities include locating experts, evaluating resources, accessing scholarly works, and finding other open educational resources (OER). RSS encompasses blogging, subscription readers, podcasts, wikis, social bookmarking, and other social networks. Students will not necessarily make use of every subcategory; however, this list represents the tools available to the student for constructing a personal learning environment on a specific topic of study.
Steps new PLN users can take to get started.