David Wiley's instance of OE at openeducation.us. Participants are asked to engage in academic work, bootstrapping the content for the next wave. Earn badges. And Wiley's method gets promoted. I like it - and the badges, well, they are hypericonic.

From humanities BLAST so you know what to expect.

A set of diagrams and maps illustrating how learners make sense of their early encounter with a PLE/MOOC environ.

"The teacher’s coherence or subject views aren’t “duplicated” by students. Of course some basic knowledge elements exist, but the way we come to know them in networks is different from the process of coming to know them in classrooms."

1. They reflect the sensemaking activity that the individual has experienced – how he connected different concepts within a course or how he came to understand the relationship between different entities.

2. They are a sensegiving tool. When learners are transparent in their learning through the production and sharing of artifacts, they teach others.

from George Siemens

mooc takes a lead

Puff piece but mentions some thoughtful people in the last half - without linking to them.

Taming a mini-mooc-like environment, with the emphasis on co-learning.

A step back from the Siemens-Wiley debate. Cormier considers the tensions in a MOOC: "If the MOOC challenges anything, it challenges the idea that a teacher can decide what people need to know, how much they currently know and what they should get out of the learning process. You can’t. You just can’t do it, not consistently, not over time, not for the majority of your students, not for millions of teachers. The solution presented by the MOOC is that the learner should begin to take control of how and what they are to learn."

Survey results of the CCK08 course. Reviews the short history of MOOCs, places them as OER with interaction. "the course attracted adult, informal learners, who were not concerned about course completion. Time constraints, language barriers, and ICT skills affected the participants’ choice of tools; for example, learners favoured the passive, time-saving mailing list over interactive, time-consuming discussions forums and blogs. Some recommendations for future MOOCs include highlighting the purpose of the tools (e.g., skill-building) and stating clearly that the learners can choose their preferred tools. Further research on sustainability and facilitator workload should be conducted to determine the cost and effectiveness of MOOCs. Investigation is also necessary to understand MOOC participant profiles as they relate to course outcomes and retention and whether terms such as course and attrition are appropriate in this context."

Good entry point to the Siemens and WIley debating some of the qualities and position of MOOCs. "the fact that people don’t have the skills to participate in distributed networks for learning and sensemaking is exactly why we need MOOCs."

Framed in a google search clone. "We call for examining the ways in which researchers actually use online resources for scholarly projects rather than lamenting how these researchers are not following prescribed models of efficient, purposeful online research. We, in other words, seek to consider the value of researchers' existing practices. In this early research, we find that for the participant-researchers in this study:

Multiple online resources are used together in unadvertised, collaborative ways.
“Unstructured” online research can be inventional."

Buzz page for pdf and hard-copy editions of a text on OER and open textbook creation compiled by Sharon Fitzpatrick.

siemens clarfying some misconceptions about ples: "Being connected, without creating and contributing, is a self-focused, self-centered state. I’ve ranted about this before, but there is never a good time to be a lurker. Lurking=taking. The concept of legitimate peripheral participation sounds very nice, but is actually negative. Even when we are newcomers in a network or community, we should be creating and sharing our growing understanding. We noticed this time and again in CCK08/09/EdFutures/PLENK: a resource (image, blog post) created by someone trying to understand a topic is often more valuable than instructor-provided readings. Why? Well, novices and experts have different approaches to topics and tasks. A novice who is grappling with an idea is likely better able to connect with another novice than an expert who advances a more nuanced, pattern-based assessment of a topic."

Last time (1968), the cultural revolution took over and reformed the campuses. This time (2011), conservative cuts to education will inspire students to create their education elsewhere. Jennifer Jones on MOOCs, VLEs, and student occupation writ large.

Siemens and Conole. Editorial intro to IRRODL special issue on connectivism. The entire issue is brings us up to speed for 2011 on PLEs and MOOCs. "As the first full journal issue, that we’re aware of, devoted to connectivism, this special issue of IRRODL presents a somewhat confusing landscape. Some themes are emerging around the relationship of connectivism to existing theories of learning and social interaction (communities of practice, actor-network theory, and activity theory being most prominent). Critiques of connectivism also reveal themes: the need for ongoing research, the suitability of existing theories in answering the questions that connectivism attempts to address, and the status of connectivism as a theory of learning."

via zombiescholar. Brian Lamb on OER, new academic cultures, EduPunk and all the rest of it this place is getting to me I can't take it any more I could get out of here and move to Canada that's where stuff it happening or maybe someplace in Cumbria Far Sawrey looked good

Weller and Groom. State of the academy: " The uptake of new technologies in research and associated practices can be seen as a barometer for innovation within higher education. ... We suggest one possible antidote to this zombification of higher education is the use of new technologies and particularly the cultural norms they embody." Yes, and yes again. Complication arises when the local culture is a Dawn of the Dead shopping mall.

More zen mindfulness.

Short reflection from a participant in CCK11 on bounded forum v open/PLE. Lots of openings into a further consideration here. Lars has found the CMS an anchor, a place where things are structured for him - which is echoed in the comments. Valid point for traditional learning, which doesn't consider the learner cutting the path.

About lists and their use in the everyday. A loose connection with PLEs and MOOCs comes through a consideration of the everyday. a mooc makes learning an everyday occurrence.

update on SCORM on OER.

a good article for en3177, in part for the subject of discussion but even more for the aggregatating and repurposing the writer's doing. trace the inputs and outputs and diagram how he links it all together. this is learning.

Looks like it could be a core for a PLE.

Overview of recent studies and commentary on affects and position of online and extra-curricular writing. Ranges from "stylistically impoverished," to Yancey: "If we don't invite students to figure out the lessons they've learned from that writing outside of school and bring those inside of school, what will happen is only the very bright students" will do it themselves, Ms. Yancey says. "It's the rest of the population that we're worried about."

Siemens sketches his concerns about MOOCs as they become more popular. MOOCs are a new paradigm and redefine design, practice, responsibility and other aspects. Means that it's going to be hard to fit them into current thinking and current interests.

Dave Cornier's post announcing the release of the "The MOOC Model for Digital Practice" (qv).  Includes 3 excellent vids on MOOCs, learning in a MOOC, and knowledge in a MOOC. 

I'm envious of the brave. Jim Groom is brave. Jim has a hellava course started here that I'm going to shamelessly emulate in designing the backend of Weblogs and Wikis as it goes open. Assignments are central, and those I have seen are doozies. But aggregation and syndication are the pedagogical magic.

Some interesting consideration of how to move the act of once-considered-private reading (annotations, notes, synopses, summaries, responses, discussions) into an online social environment. Ties to aggregate and remix in Downes's frame of a MOOC. Might be good to ease readers into PLE frames and repurposing.

Draft in progress of a taxonomy to start making sense of what reading becomes online. Social practices from annotation to discussion boards to other alternatives.

Good intro and o review of MOOCs and open ed in general: movement towards the Socratic and away from content-centered.

Brief overview of open courses - that gets a number of matters wrong (ie: You don't open Bboard. You move to a different platform). Worth referring to in order to see how open courses are an attitude, not a technology. Comments from Siemens and Drexler correct the article.

: "What was different was the radically decentralized, "kids in control" environment. Instead of restricting posts to a closed discussion forum in a system like Blackboard, the class left students free to debate anywhere. Some used Moodle, an open-source course-management system. Others preferred blogs, Twitter, or Ning. In the virtual world Second Life, students built two Spanish-language sites. Some even got together face-to-face to discuss the material."

Here's a chord. Here's another. Now go form a band. Brian Lamb and Jim Groom critique open ed, sneaky commodification, Vivienne Westwood, and the coming New Romantics. This is where we are, again. Like old home week. "It may not surprise readers that the two of us—a couple of embittered Gen-X'ers who've been associated with the "edupunk" aesthetic—look at the commodification of online educational environments with distaste. At the risk of indulging our stereotypical knee-jerk anti-corporatism, we note here several concerns."

"MOOCs embody, rather than reflect, practices within the digital economy" and other premises. nice reflexive piece on designing, practicing, and convincing deans that MOOCs are worth trying

John Seely Brown and Richard P. Adler social learning is based on the premise that our understanding of content is socially constructed through conversations about that content and through grounded interactions, especially with others, around problems or