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My new blog location is here

I've finally taken the time to move my Movable Type blog to WordPress over the weekend. It's not ready for primetime as I could not decide on which WordPress theme to choose from. Do I go with Elegant Grunge because of its photoblog tab page or Green Light because of its rustic look? What if I want a constantly changing theme? Is there such a theme? Or should I call it a meta-theme where it changes themes regularly without me doing any more changes? There's quite a lot of themes to choose from (free or otherwise) and as it becomes the "new me" (rebranding, if you may) then it needs to be right (or at least a work-in-progress). So its not ready yet but it will be and I'll let you know when.... What did you do over the weekend?

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I was testing an activity with a pilot class the other week and it proved to me once again what I think would be Instructional Design 101 - Create multiple versions of the same learning activity, whenever possible, so as to gain expected knowledge transfer goals, especially when it comes to complex topics.

Resources and deadline limitations aside, one of the values of having multiple exercises is the ability for the instructor to pick and choose which will work for the current set of students they have. How many times have you heard your instructors saying that they need a new exercise because the one built does not work for a particular set of students they have?

Here's what was being taught at our pilot: Backend programming of a financial product. Don't growl, although it is a bit dry for those leaning towards soft skills training, others do enjoy it. But knowing that there will be these types of students in the same classroom, it was important to have at least two versions of the same learning engagement activity. Those not too keen on learning purely financial processing viewed the number crunching exercises as mind numbing while those who enjoy this type of activity viewed the exercise with music as inappropriate, a distraction, and a waste of their time. Having two sets of activities to fit the type of students make sense but when they were in the same class, a melding of the two was also equally effective. This meant using the music as a timer to indicate that the time to complete the exercise was about to end rather than playing throughout the activity.

Thus my question to you today. Do you create multiple versions of your activities? Is so, for what purpose if not the same as what I've written above? And the challenge to those creating courseware is to determine if your instructors would be willing to have multiple versions for their toolkit. Let me know what they say.
photo by wildcatdunny

In determining what's a fun activity that is out-of-the-box, one idea is to look at everyday items and see if there is a correlation you can make between that item and your learning objectives. If so, how can you incorporate it in class so that it does not look like it was forced but actually transitioned properly to a learning engagement activity. So while at a brainstorming exercise, I realized that we were all munching our little snacks and I took this photo and said, "how about using these alphabet gummies?" We were developing an exercise that was full of acronyms anyway and these alphabets will work well.

As I kid, I remembered games that my mom used to incorporate in my study time at home so I could memorize whatever it was I needed to remember for an exam. So, for example, I was to remember the 10 highest mountains in the world, she would create small mounds out of whatever dish we had that night and I had to name the mountains before I could munch on the mound. There was an immediate gratification from the good response and fear of not getting to the good mound meant flexing my memory synapses.

With that memory came this idea of using what we were snacking on. Initially there was excitement until comments like "what happens to those who are ultra health conscious?", "you need to make sure people don't touch the gummies," "will they eat the gummies afterwards" or "what if they eat it before you even start the activity?" immediately dampened the idea as quickly as the build up. But the resulting product turned out to still be good - we ended up using cut out letters that achieved the same learning goal as when the gummies were thought to be involved.

So why post this today? Because one of my colleagues asked "Where do you come up with these games?" and I figured some of you may be asking the same question. My exercises come from a variety of sources: memories of childhood activities, games we played with our peers, activities that worked from previous workplace environments, those we've learned in school, maybe learning activities we've imagined and now have the chance to experiment with. The classroom is only as fun as you create it so whenever you have the chance to build your own activities, create those that are fun for you as well because we all know that we learn as much, if not more, from our students too.

Networks are entities connected to other entitites as per George Siemens CCK08 week 3 session discussion. As such I took this discussion into practice with a simple test. Will I be able to gain 200 friends in my Facebook network in one week? Can I leverage on commonalities such as hobbies, lifestyle, book clubs, professional and academic groups, (like our CCK08 FB group) to make up "small worlds" and gain friends?

Well, yes and no. From a 200 friend goal I've made well over 350 kicking my network over 1k but in the process I also received an FB "reaching limit" message (below).

Does Facebook think that I could not make that many friends at such a short of time? Does it think that I'm spamming and should therebore be block when I have a sudden surge of friend requests? Technology issues aside, networks, in themselves, as per CCK08 discussion, become viable options for connectivity and when leveraged properly hopefully gain valuable knowledge. Referencial to everyone's need for belongingness; this "networks theory" gains my vote.

Further analysis of this quick test indicates that stronger and quicker bonds resulting in immediate connection (or acceptance of the friend request) comes from one's self-identification rather than seeming fantastic confabulation of one's self-reference. What does that mean to Facebook friend requests? Connecting by lifestyle for example is quicker (as in within 20 minutes at about 35% of the time) than niche groups like "fight for smoke-free restaurants" or "party on Sunday at ... " I also found that those who are famous or would want to be famous would connect quicker. Famous in their own industry (not just celebs) although Martha Stewart's FB account seemed to have just gone to limbo, for example. I like those "friends" that post comments on your profile's wall. They make the effort to actually connect to the next level - much like someone at a bar saying "another round of drinks for us." I do find that others connect to me only to connect with my network. Do you find this annoying? How do I even know? Because I would get an email from my friends indicating whether I know so-and-so. It does mimic real life though? You're at a party and you meet a friend's friend and before you know it, your new friends decide to be closer friends with the other people in the party rather than with you when you were the catalyst for the relationship. Do you feel an online backstabbing going on?

What I find amazing though is that although there is a relative weak tie with new class CCK08, it is still a strong enough connection to allow people to not just connect but post a profile comment and say "hello."

What's the next step in this interesting study? Cohesion will be my next step - will these relationships hold or just drop? I already have seen a .0004 drop since I started this. Or will new found "friends" forget the connection or actually continue the relationship by strengthening it? Are these people just collectors and once they have new friends, just leave it?

Just because I initiated the friendship, friendship to me (as would you, I imagine) is definitely two-way. Don't you agree?

According to Le, Oh, Shaffer, and Schmidt (Aug 2007)* practitioners do not read researched materials that affect their work due to lack of time, articles are needlessly complicated and difficult to understand, inability to grasp complex diatribes, topics are not directly relevant to practitioners, and some have inconsistent, non-replicable results.

As a practitioner who likes reading researched work, I find myself spending my subway ride time to reading whenever I peel myself away from iPhone apps. I think a good 10-20 minutes per day will allow me to finish a journal in a week or week and a half. It's not that much time really and scholar-practitioners do this regularly.

My challenge for you today is to pick up a journal (at your local library, bookstore, neighbour) and let me know what researched material you're reading by posting a comment here.

Continue reading "Do you have time and/or energy to sit for 10 minutes to read a researched article?" »

Found a book I wanted to share with you. Levitin's book, World in Six Songs: How the Musical Brain Created Human Nature, explains his theory on the human brain evolved to play and listen to music in six forms — for knowledge, friendship, ceremony, joy, comfort, and love. Levitin outlines how music was able to create a cooperative and social environment conducive for the evolvement of society. Daniel Levitin is a professor of Psychology and Behavioral Neuroscience at McGill University in Montreal.

Today I'm listening to music that I enjoy and use to enhance my creativity as I'm producing written work but within a deadline - is that music a combination of Levitin would call "joy, knowledge and comfort?" I wonder. What song plays in your head for each of these six forms? Looks like a tag meme coming - 6 songs for the 6 forms of music.

Mine currently (as they do change throughout various stages in my life) would be -
Knowledge: Sergei Rachmaninoff's Paganini Rhapsody
Friendship: A couple of old Mike Francis songs "Dusty Road" "Let me in" (but I can't seem to find them online somewhere - anyone who finds this gets good karma - do post in the comments).
Ceremony: Pomp and Circumstance March no.1
Joy: I'm currently listening Virgin Radio and their music gives me joy (ok not all of it but most)
Comfort: Celtic Music reminds me of the spa for some reason so I'm putting that in as music that brings me "comfort."
Love: Jim Brickman's The Gift

So even though I'm tagging my friends for their six songs, post your songs as comments here as well: Jeffrey , Joost , Steve, Junnie, and Shai

After reading all the materials for this week's Connectivism and Connected Knowledge (CCK) session (CCK08) as well as getting a glimpse of the multitude of opportunities for cohort discussions on Second Life, Language specific Google Groups (like Italian or the Hungarian groups), Facebook, and more, a video that came to mind is the one above.

There's a lot of discussions that will enrich our understanding of CCK(08) and all I have to do is pick one. (yeah well its not as easy as that) The problem of course is not just figuring out which one but also what happens to the other discussions that I can potentially miss out of because I wasn't there. But then there's real life - work, family, and personal time that need to be balanced with school discussions. With 1900 students in this class, one has to resign to the fact that there will be discussions that may fall through the cracks (especially since some of these discussions are in other languages - Chinese, Spanish, and others). A way I have to organize this in my mind is through some form of a lifestream, much like what I have on Netvibes for my personal variant postings through different social networks and concept maps through the CMAP tools provides a visual of the CCK big picture.

What is interesting to me though is that as I look at how my colleagues in the class put together their thoughts on paper or how they form opportunities for interactions whatever that form may be, it does reflect upon how there continues to be the need to grasp moving learning targets in a way that makes sense to them. To me, this provides an opportunity for further inquiry into our need for what I`m thinking as ``knowledge clusters`` (reflecting on Wellman`s Little Boxes article) as seemingly `patterns from chaos` need to emerge for continue ``aha`` moments to occur. At least, that`s how I see my learning. As I get further into connectivism discussions, I will continue my postings on my own learning experiences here.

Wow, 1800+ participants. Are you going to join this online Connectivism and Connected Knowledge (CCK08) class as well? You should. The first live session starts tonight. You can take it as a for-credit class or not. And its free if you don't want any credit for the class. George Siemens and Stephen Downes are facilitating. Click the image above to see the outline of the session; or click here.

Colleagues and I were brainstorming yesterday for out-of-the-box ways instructors can group students to perform a knowledge check/learning engagement activity that we've built. We all have done "count off's in two's, three's, four's" before, we've done "everyone in this side of the room, you form one group and the other side, another", and we've done "everyone with last names from A-J form one group, etc" and so forth. Then our conversation turned into "How about splitting them into animals," "I like bears, let's split them into different types of bears," "Oh! How about personalities using Myers-Briggs" onto "How about those ink things, what are they called?" And I said "Rorschach ink blot tests! I like it!"

So this is what we came up with. Choose a couple of ink blot tests that will match the number of groups that you'd like to have in your activity. Print these onto coloured paper. Hand out to students and they have to look for their matches and that forms a group.

Then we added a twist. The coloured paper are also distributed into another number of people in a group that we needed for another exercise. When we're ready for that exercise, we informed the students to not look at the ink blots but instead look for the match of the coloured paper and that becomes the group. We made sure to print the ink blots on unmatched coloured paper so that when this colour-paper grouping comes around, there will be different members for a group.

How does this help the overall instructional design of the class you've built?
Team Building - people working with different people after every activity.
Engagement - students not knowing how they will be grouped - they have to be on top of their game
Enablement - for your instructors to learn to think creativity and outside the box
Cost Containment - multi-purpose use of a pre-activity activity
Energizer - you've set a multilayered fun learning activity - at the grouping of teams stage and hopefully at the activity level as well.

I'm sure you can come up with other variations of this idea. Share those thoughts and post them here.

photo by sleevage