My informL Unworkshop

Following the frustrating experience of listening to the Session 6 Open Space discussion I decided that I needed to learn more about it. That is in spite of the fact that I cannot see any possibility of making use of the technique at the moment.

There is definitely a bit of the Butterfly in my learning style. Still it has paid dividens many times in my career. Having discovered the excitement and transformational power of learning collaboratively at the end of my career is not stopping me from wanting to get involved and continue to contribute as best I can.

There is a fascinating amount of material on Open Space technology out there. So If you were new to it too and want to dig a bit deeper you might try some of these links.

Open Space Technology is an article at www.co-intelligence.org that provides a quick overview of the discipline. A couple of Book titles and web links complete the page.

The originator of Open Space technology is Michael Herman who has a website with a Blog which describes the fantastic projects that he and his team are involved with. (Inspirational reading for me)

By way of something completely different I enjoyed the gentle rant at www.linuxjournal.com. Googleing can be fun!!

The Wikipedia article on ‘Open Space Conference’ was not the clearest for me. However the links at the bottom of the article are interesting especially the links to Lisa Heft’s web site which were worth following.

1. Lisa Heft’s article Opening Space for Collaboration and Communication with Open Space Technology not only covers the positive but also looks at pitfalls and dealing with them.
2. The Galley of photographs at bring it all alive for a visual learner like me.

To use Open Space conference technology in a virtual environment the German Change Facilitator Gabriela Ender has developed a web (2.0?) application. It could be a delightful way to work with the geographically dispersed. Possibly a tool for Jay to use to convene an Unconference on Informal Learning and web 2.0 for all the alumini of say InformL Unworkshops 1 to 6. Now that could be a great experience.

This could be relevant to our work on “Communities of Practice”.For a variety of reasons I have had my eye off developments in elearning in the last few year and am only now beginning to update myself. It shows, It shows!!

During conversations with various people on the unworkshop I have revealed something of my enthusiasm for the benefits of small group collaborative learning using non real time approaches. (asynchronous, if Jay will allow me that unfavourite word J )

I have suggested to a couple of people that my original interest was stimulated by learning from a fellow that, I and a sizeable number of others, regard as one of Europe’s early pioneers of ‘successful e-learning’. His name is Gerald (Gerry) Prendergast. He is one of Eire’s charming, humorous exports. These days he operates as a small consultancy from his base in the English Cotswolds. A glorious part of the world. Anyone interested can find out a bit more about him from his website at http://www.abacus-uk.com/

For those interested in his approach he is always willing to make available some of his many published papers. If you are wanted to you could probably catch up with him during one of his trips to North America.

With this post Gerry has allowed me to upload a copy of a paper of his “Stimulating Learner ‘ Psychological buy in’ on Online Blended Learning courses”. The paper is to be published in a (Conference Proceedings, or similar I think) book later this year. I’d love to hear what you think of this approach and how it compares with what you think of as “current practice“.

Here is the file STIMULATING BUY IN.pdf

I am learning that my project “Opening Learning for Open Source Software” http://www.oloss.blogspot.com/ is going to prove a rather large enterprise.

So I have been mulling over what I am going to need to accomplish if I am to be able to achieve the impact that I believe is needed. Seeing the levels of expertise displayed by so many in the Unworkshop has caused me to take something of a reality check. This has resulted in an attempt to list what I am going to need to master and utilise.

1. A personal Knowlege Management system that will be private to me at least in the early days as I begin to assemble the information that supports my arguements.
- An Agregator that works smoothly looks essential. Pity about SuperGlu. I will watch with interest the work undertaken by Jay to get oneto run well.
- A tool like Squidoo looks extremely important too. I have been very impressed with the use made by Harold Jarche and Loretta Donovan.
- A wiki to use for composing the content that will eventually be published. At The moment I like the look of StikiPad but PBWiki would also be a contender. I am going to need good support for uploading files. I use MindManager for exploring all sorts of ideas and will want to layout maps and texts in the wiki.

2. In all of this I have got to get my head around tagging. For uncovering the research findings that underpin my ideas and for enabling the assemblly of information. So high on the list has to be some reading and some exploration of the del.icio.us and Technorati web sites.

3. A possible alternative for my own “personal learning landscape” could turn out to be Elgg  Ihave much to explore here too. A look at http://elgg.net/tour_9.php will give an instant overview of the range of capabilities that are already built in. What is exciting is that Elgg is currently undergoing a period of extensive development.

Now if only my brain could keep up with the speed of ‘Internet Time’ I would feel on top of it rather than at the inflection point of the exponential curve.

As this is a one person project forthe forseeable futurethe priority has to be Tagging. See you later I have some web sites to surf!!

The Blog and Podcasting review with Loretta Donovan proved an interesting exercise. I was looking forward to hearing another viewpoint on Wikis and wondered if I would be able to
deal with my lack of comfort with podcasting. I cannot fathom what it is that seems to get so many people that I respect so excited.

What a surprise our views were so similar. “Hey look mom, I am not the only one out of step with the crowd.”

So while I have found that it seems very easy to embrace this increasingly popular technology I have yet to see myself making other than a tenative experiment or two with it.

Note to self. YOU will try it for size.!!

So I am therefore looking forward to reading the posings from the other pairs and hope that there might be someting to find that will cause the ‘penny to drop’ and see me joining the crowd.

The examination of Wikis was far more rewarding. It is easy to see the potential benefits now that the point & click user is to be accomodated. The chalenge will probably be figuring out a set of criteria to judge which of the competing applications meet my needs or more importantly the needs of others that I might try to assist.

I am looking forward in the weeks following the Unworkshop coming back and trying out these many new applications. I think I am going to have a few problems sorting out a sequence to work through. There is so much to explore that random experimentation would waste effort.

Camille Jensen Skyped me early in her morning and we took a Blog Tour together. Lots of  unplanned informal learning for us both as we discussed ‘life, the universe and the meaning of life’ as well as the Blogs that we were looking at.

Camille suggested We started with www.fullcirc.com/weblog/onfacblog (Nancy White) The news from Stephen Downes an existing and respected source for us both had to be discussed before we dug down. This will be one for my Aggregator (When I set it up) We found that the Blog explores material of real interest to us both. The big surprise is that whilst it displays perfectly in Firefox it does not work well in Internet Explorer.

Next was www.edtechpost.ca/mt/ (Scott Leslie) was next on the list. His interest in ‘Technologies for Learning, Thinking & Collaborating’ make this one that will be of interest to many on the Unworkshop. (From here I linked to and bookmarked http://elgg.net/dtosh/weblog/ (Dave Tosh) because this is one for my future investigation.

By way of contrast we visited TD Blog at http://tdblog.typepad.com/ by R Davenport the editor of ASTD’s T+D mag. This Blog is in many ways advertorial and seeks to sell articles to non subscribers. For many that would limit the usefulness of the site and provides a distinct contrast to …

eleaningcentre.typepad.com A Blog site spun of the home site of a UK e-learning consultant http://www.e-learningjobcentre.co.uk/ The bulk of the information on this easy to navigate site appears to be free of charge. A notice board advertising and seeking e-learning employment may well be a good reason to revisit for many in the UK. The Bookstore lists a variety of interesting titles such as. “Classroom blogging: a teacher’s guide to the blogosphere” should provide and launch ideas for harnessing both Formal and informal learning. Elsewhere I have read of the powerful impact for learning derived from feedback comments left on Blogs as the Blogger discovers and interacts with their audience. A collection of advice and information is also maintained here including this for the new Blogger:- “Most weblog audiences are small, but with time and regular updates audiences grow. Bloggers may never have more than a few hundred readers, but the people who return to (your Blog) regularly are generally interested in what you have to say.”….Here’s Hoping for that success.

I started out by giving myself Visual indigestion by opening all the suggested Blog links in Firefox’s Tabs. Not a good idea. Selection became essential.

Overall reaction. There is a great deal of interesting material out there. Developing some kind of search  process and being selective will be essential if I am not to drown in excess information. And to think I plan contribute to the Blogsphere as well!

Before Camille joined me I had looked at a number of others including…

elearnopedia.com Is a great example of the many sites that work as an ever growing resource. Including such blogs in an Agregator like SuperGlu or Skidoo will enable an quick and easy way to keep up to date (well nearly) on this exploding web 2.0 field.

http://jaycross.suprglu.com/
Is a good example of how to create an aggregation of the blogs that will enable the necesary skimming of the less than eye catching posts and in depth reading when our favoured Bloggers post matters that hook our interest.

koolabora.com Is a Group Blog site bringing together all sorts of practical guidance to enable implementation of all sorts of web 2.0 initiatives for all kinds of organizations from the very large through to the smallest SOHO operation.eg. “Identify Your Ideal Online Collaboration Tool In Four Easy Steps” The home page provides a wide ranging News service covering not just the technology but also the human side as well.

Parkinslot.blogspot.com This is like so many other blogs an opportunity for reflection and trialing of ideas by an individual who has a good track record as a Thought Leader. To me some of the posts read as a little too self confident but then my cultural heritage has a fear of setting onself up as a “tall poppy’ and so inviting being cut down to size. How refreshing to read outside my habitual box.

Jay suggests that we run with two Blogs. One for our project and one for the Unworkshop. Seems like a good idea and might help get some discussion underway betwen us all.

I have been surfing through the InformL Unworkshop wiki pages and browsing what the team have posted on their Blogs through the SuperGlu aggregator. We are indeed a diverse bunch of people pointing in many different directions. At the moment I am feeling somewhat overwhelmed by the enormous range of material that I seem to need to read,digest and apply.

I have been in similar situations before and survived and loook forward to begining to get on top of the challenge. One dissapointment has been the discovery that HTML has not been completely buried and hidden from WEB 2.0 users in appiications like Blogger and Wikis. I had formed the (eronious) idea that “The Geeks” had final accepted that they should not force us mere mortals into mastering their language. Just because I remember how wordprocessing “took off” when WISIWIG software arrived about 20 years ago.

So it seems that I should be able to use HTML if I am to make full use of a Wiki. After a search I find that Blogger expects me to work in HTML in order to post my mug shot to my profile and to format comments. Very sad. If someone as experienced as Dave Ferguson (Agam Fhéin) can run into obstacles what chance do I have.

This is bad news. To me that means these applications suffer from what I would describe as incomplete developmet. A pity because that will stop me recommending such tools to the non tech (point & click only) user. Whilst their numbers may be shrinking they will in my,long held, opinion remain a significant proportion of the population and are the people who must be able to use web2.0 if the exciting possibilities are to become a reality.