Some of our solutions that would be useful in the design of the community were identified and the best possible outcome was achieved in terms of usability of the software, its availability, and easy of training others to use. We defined many open source systems due to their community of support and the fact that they are part of their own communities of practice; we could therefore involve ourselves in feedback to the community to enhance the systems if we felt the need to. Also in defining our systems to support the learning community we stumbled upon a hitch. There is no paper trail with audio conferencing unless the chat is recorded somewhat. The role with audio conferencing was to provide synchronous chat functionalities that complimented the learning community. (Weller, Peglar, Mason 2004 P65) Unfortunately with synchronous systems, the people who are not present do not benefit from the audio conference.

In our community it was an important factor to ensure participants gained a deeper learning. As “within a community of inquiry, participants must see themselves as both individuals and as an active participant in the learning community” (Redmond Lock 2006 P271). To be actively involved means to contribute, review and evaluate processes and to have the functionality to do so. We analysed what they did and documented there processes and decided that programming was a system we could duplicate. Collegiality and academic process is found in the wiki as a solution for our needs. The wiki gives teachers the ability to review and examine the processes of current methodologies and best represents the system of processes a teacher may go through in practice and academically. The wiki would form the new type of academia publication and become alive. No need for 2^nd, 3^rd or 16^th editions, edits can be made on the fly thus creating a living document open for peer review. (Horizon Report 2007, Yeo J Blog)

Consistency and online identities, how each and everyone hide behind some form of avatar or random pseudo name to personify their virtual existence (Identity, Purplegrrl Blog). If a person wants to own a body of work they need to be able to own that body of work as themselves. If we are enhancing communication within the organisation we need people to represent themselves. The reason is that the organisation exists in physical and virtual forms.

This can somewhat upset a community of learning. Even through my own experiences people are not held massively accountable for their online actions because we simply don’t know who they are. People need to represent themselves in a similar manner as if they were talk to someone face to face. Consistency is needed in order to pass on accountability for that person’s online identity.

Recently watching a video presentation on ted.com (http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/216) it was interesting to see the correlation between our project and its ultimate success… without giving myself or Angus a big head. The system we are developing should be successful because of the complex interdependency of the system and the participants. The video specifically mentions success through co-operation instead of success though domination. We are trying to bring the bigger schools into the organisation, and analyse the strategic viability and business success models of sharing. All we need to ensure is the learning community becomes an thriving community of practice.

For my own experiences, this subject has been a massive eye opener, coupled with new terminology that has been somewhat difficult to grasp. It has also been difficult to deal with a totally different way of thinking. I have dealt with exact sciences in previous lives, in terms of numbers and program code, imperial quantitative data, but reviewing experiences and reading articles with complex theories and terminologies have been interesting none the less, but also have proved challenging qualitative data. What I am seeing here from a programming perspective is that qualitative data in many respects is just variables that are too complex to define easily. I can see that this data is something that can be defined, but is not always easily defined. I’m use to making decisions based on cost, simple mathematical data, however I can see what we have learnt in this subject, draws upon something that in inherently true in ourselves and in our social natures that it makes it difficult to define and mentally resists quantification. Nothing though is too hard of a challenge. It just depends on the motivation and the behaviourisms of the individual. I won’t go into particulars of my motivations and particulars, that is of another post. However I will mention that my somewhat jaded view of education and its future has changed, not just from this course but also dealing with people who use this on a constant basis and Angus has been the collegial mentor to me in terms of my educational desires. I see the mix of my project management, accounting, programming and web suaveness and rather large asset and to couple those with online learning abilities I see real opportunity in the future.

Brett, N. 2008, Who are you again, Sydney, viewed 5 June 2008, < http://purplegrrl.edublogs.org/2008/06/04/who-are-you-again/>

Callahan, S. Schenk, M. White, N Building a Collaborative Workplace Anecdote Whitepaper

Horizon Report, 2007, The New Media Consortium and the EDUCause Learning Initiative, As seen at: Yeo, J. 2008, New Horizon, Sydney, viewed 5 June 2008, < http://joeblog.edublogs.org/new-horizon/>.

Redmond, P & Lock, J. 2006, ‘A flexible framework for online collaborative learning’, Internet and Higher Education, 9, pp. 267-76.

Way-new collaboration Filmed 2005, Video recording, viewed 5 June 2008< http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/216>

Weller, M. Pegler, C. Mason,R. 2004, ‘Use of innovative technologies on an e-learning course’, Internet and Higher Education, 8, pp. 61-71.

]]> http://jasongray.edublogs.org/2008/06/06/assignment-2-part-2/feed/ 0 http://jasongray.edublogs.org/2008/06/03/whacky/ http://jasongray.edublogs.org/2008/06/03/whacky/#comments Tue, 03 Jun 2008 12:33:53 +0000 jasongray http://jasongray.edublogs.org/?p=9 There are many facets of learning. None of which I fully understand, but a basic knowledge and just some simple commonsense prevail. Learning from my own experiences has been, tough, and thwart with many perils… these perils being the many facinating distractions surrounding our digital age. Mark Pesce recently spoke to a group of educators in Sydney about kids these days. His speech ranted on the fact that kids nowadays communicated in very different ways to what we as adults perceive as “normal”. Normal is in inverted commas as it is a word that has a varied meaning to each indivudal. What is normal to our kids in terms of communication and social interaction is very different to how we use to communitcate. Even some of us adults are adopting the communication and getting ‘hyperconnected’.

In order for our model to work we need to remove the boundaries of mis-communication and open the social networks in which our children openly interact with each other everyday. Obviously there needs to be education in terms of netiquette and we will also need to monitor the communication between the students to combat bullying, foul and offensive behaviour etc. Having a semi closed system could combat the outside world looking in and poluting the childs mind, but then they can go home and connect to these mediums anyway. The system is not perfect but maintained and built correctly could really take advantage of the social interactive learning our children take on board so easily.
Those Whacky Kids – M Pesce

The goals of WSG are to educate designers and web programmers in the art of standards coding and to provide the support and forum for discussion and interaction with community members to take place. WSG makes use of a web based forum, email lists and advanced article submissions. The forum is rather simplistic in design and functionality and does not appear to be a very active area, compared to some forum boards I have been apart of. The email list is where the majority of the grunt learning power exists. You could almost say its a very cognitive learning environment were people learn through other peoples coding. Ian Crawford mentions that the accessibility to information is important when enabling learning to take place. The cognitive learning model within WSG is the learning from other peoples trial and errors and gaining access to the wealth of knowledge and experience of peers in the group. Shirley Saunders found that “adults learn extensively from belonging to and participating in groups of people”, much the same can be said for members of WSG who subscribe to the mailing list. Quiet often there are questions emailed not just on web standards but more so on how to code something to work correctly. The questions is not directly targeting the web standards but in order for the individual to correctly code the markup language they enquire with the community. There are usually more than one answer directed back at the question asked. People appear to be mostly polite in their manner and generally form some sort of informed answer that provides assistance. There was recently an email sent around regarding DocType’s, what each meant and which was better. There were many responses, some more confusing than others, but all the participants were trying their best to put forward their own interpretations based on their own past experiences and learning’s on the topic. As part of the social learning, it came down to creditability as to which response I found was more convincing.

Some other activities that are included in the WSG mailing list are weekly reading/links on general topics of web standards, coding principles, coding hints/tips and other best web practices.

Learning in this group could be classified as passive community of learning. Passive in being that you don’t learn if you don’t participate/read the weekly readings, email lists etc. There is definitely a presence of learning. People are contributing to other people’s questions on standards and coding principles and those who are lurking learn also. If they take note of the discussion and can use the hints in practice. The WSG is a community of practice where by community members interact on a mere social level to achieve better web standards and practices. They are consistently interacting with each other to enhance the community and spread the good stuff to all members in the community. Without the interaction between members the community would not thrive and therefore learning would be at a minimum.

Social Learning to me prior to reading this article was focused on learning skills and tasks whilst interacting in a community or group or workplace. Cornford makes note that “there has been increased recognition that much learning occurs in settings such as workplaces, in shops and eceryday activities.(p73). I can draw on my own experiences as totally agree with what was said.  The majority of my learning my current skills in web development and php programming came from social interaction and learning my doing. I also immersed myself in the world of code and programming as much as possible with the outside of work commitments and I can feel myself become better at what I do everyday.  Also when I was “studying” my undergraduate degree in commerce, the best knowledge I learnt was from actually doing or for use of better words, practising accounting. Being able to demonstrate and pass on those skills also strengthened my knowledge and of course contributed to the social learning of others.

I also call on fond memories of an online gaming community that I help start with Angus :p  With user motivation high at the time there was great success with social learning and teaching. Newer members were brought up to speed on the groups social etiquette when it came to online gaming and competitive play. The willingness for new members to join, required them to read and understand the groups guidelines and abide by them in order to stay apart of the community. This forms the basis of social cognitive theory where there are interactions between the individual and the environment.

more to follow…

The most significant change since Brown’s report has been the emergence and availability of high speed broadband internet. This has enabled many home users to access larger amounts of information in a short period of time. It has also allowed for higher quality video streaming which has opened the doors to sharing various savoury and unsavoury videos, eg YouTube. This has also opened opportunities to develop more complex video tutorials and web applications. Access to the internet has become available to everyone, it is affordable and can even be used on a compatible mobile phone.

Today many activities are channelled through internet traffic. Everyday activities like shopping for groceries, to your favourite book can be obtained over the internet.

The advance in technology and the ease of access have allowed for this generation to gain a greater knowledge of the world and have access to answers by “googling” the question. Google has become the biggest search engine across the globe in its short life span and the phrase “just google it” has become a common term in today’s language.