umair haque (@umairh)9/1/13 4:05 PM
It's precisely why we must. “@ikashefi: @umairh how do you stay optimistic in a world plagued by climate change, economic contraction etc?”
Scott McLeod (@mcleod)9/2/13 6:30 AM
House on Wheels: Architecture Student Converts Old School Bus Into Modular Living Spacebit.ly/1dG8QfN
Harvard Biz Review (@HarvardBiz)9/2/13 6:30 AM
Please Stop Complaining About How Busy You Ares.hbr.org/19c08Q9
HuffPostEducation (@HuffPostEdu)9/2/13 6:30 AM
“You see a lot of teachers judge and stigmatize their students based on where they come from"huff.to/1dA2765
 Jennifer Sertl (@JenniferSertl)9/2/13 6:37 AM 3) #LaborDay: The Future of Talent Lies In Clusters blogs.hbr.org/cs/2013/02/the… HT@guirepso #a3r
A cluster typically consists of five to eight people, is hired by a business with a clear scope of work, and remunerated based on outcomes. ....The cluster manages itself by finding, hiring and firing members; governing itself and resolving conflicts; creating and sustaining work practices and tools; and managing its engagement with other clusters, teams, people and organizations in order to fulfill its direct business goals and to nurture itself.
In short, a cluster is an extreme version of a self-managed team.
Jennifer Sertl (@JenniferSertl)9/2/13 6:40 AM 2) #LaborDay: Just how much is enough? or the business case for @SOCAPmarketsnyti.ms/OHv6Yc #a3r
Interestingly, and usefully, it turns out that what we do with our money plays a far more important role than how much money we make
A decade of research has demonstrated that if you insist on spending money on yourself, you should shift from buying stuff (TVs and cars) to experiences (trips and special evenings out). Our own recent research shows that in addition to buying more experiences, you’re better served in many cases by simply buying less — and buying for others
Indulgence is often closely trailed by its chubby sidekick, overindulgence. While the concept of overindulgence is probably all too familiar to anyone who’s ever attended a Thanksgiving dinner, the word “underindulgence” doesn’t exist. (Type it into Dictionary.com, and you’ll be asked, “Did you mean counter intelligence?”) But research shows that underindulgence — indulging a little less than you usually do — holds one key to getting more happiness for your money.
To be clear, having more goldfish (or more gold) doesn’t decrease our happiness — those first few crackers may provide a genuine burst of delight. But rather than focusing on how much we’ve got in our bowl, we should think more carefully about what we do with what we’ve got — which might mean indulging less, and may even mean giving others the opportunity to indulge instead
 Tony Wagner (@DrTonyWagner)9/2/13 6:59 AM Eastern Vs Western Views on need to struggle with learning. We have a huge challenge to develop kids' grit NPRn.pr/15Pnyeo  Michel Bauwens (@mbauwens)9/2/13 6:47 AM The ‘unstoppable’ renewable grid | SmartPlanet smartplanet.com/blog/take/the-  Salon.com (@Salon)9/2/13 6:47 AM We don't want you, Starbucks and Wal-Mart: Amazing new wins in big cities' fight against chain stores.slnm.us/8CBf397  Martin King (@timekord)9/2/13 6:57 AM "The educated learned to suppress" ~ salman khan\ "Education came from war" ~ Sugra Mitragoo.gl/l0rWGn  Fred Bartels (@fredbartels)9/2/13 6:53 AM #cMOOCs are playgrounds where we can become better at playing neuronal roles. Help make #cityMOOC the coolest playground yet.  Christina Hendricks (@clhendricksbc)5/6/13 5:20 AM Starting to get a pretty decent collection of blog posts & articles on #connectivism & #cMOOCs. Most or all gratis:zotero.org/clhendricksbc/… Christina Hendricks (@clhendricksbc)6/6/13 5:05 PM (2nd time) New post: “Difficulties researching effectiveness of #cMOOCs”blogs.ubc.ca/chendricks/201…
The connectivist MOOC model as implemented so far by people such as Dave Cormier, Alec Couros, Stephen Downes and George Siemens encourages participants to set their own goals and purposes for participation, rather than determining what these are to be for all participants (see, e.g., McAuley, Stewart, Siemens, & Cormier, 2010(pp. 4-5, 40); see The MOOC Guide for a history of cMOOC-type courses, and lists of more recent connectivist MOOCs here and here). As Stephen Downes puts it:
Thus, it’s hard to say in advance what participants might get out of a particular cMOOC, in part because it’s impossible to say in advance what the course will actually be like (beyond the scheduled presentations, which are only one of many parts of a cMOOC). Stephen Downes talks about this in “Creating the Connectivist Course” when he says that he and George Siemens tried to make the “Connectivism and Connective Knowledge” course in 2008 “as much like a network as possible.” In this video on how to succeed in a MOOC, Dave Cormier emphasizes the value of connecting with others in the course through commenting on their blog posts, participating in discussion fora, and other ways. The connections made in this way are, Cormier says, “what the course is all about.” Now, of course, Cormier states at the beginning and end of the video that MOOCs are open to different ways of success and this is just “his” way, but the tone of the video suggests that it would be useful for others as well. Cormier says something similar in this video on knowledge in a MOOC: participants in a MOOC “are [ideally?] going to come out with a knowledge network, a network of people and ideas that’s going to carry long past the end of [the] course date.”
So it made sense to me at first to consider asking about the effectiveness or success of a cMOOC through looking at whether and how participants made connections with each other, and especially whether those continue beyond the end of the course. But again, there are some complications, besides the important questions of just how to define “connections” so as to decide what data to gather, and then the technical issues regarding how to get that data.
perhaps the brain via c app..
the ongoing node connections.. sign of healthmakes sense given the nature of cMOOCs, since if there were no participation in these ways then there would be little left of the course but a set of presentations by experts that could be downloaded and watched. Perhaps one could say that even if we can’t decide exactly how much participation (or connection, for that matter) is needed for “success,” an increase in participation (or connection) over time might indicate some degree of success.
[Update June 7, 2013] I just came across this post by George Siemens, in which he doubts the value of lurking, at least in a personal learning network (PLN). There are likely differences of opinion amongst cMOOC proponents and those who offer them, on the value of letting learners decide exactly how much to participate.
It is, of course, possible that the whole approach I’m taking is misguided, namely trying to determine how one measure whether a cMOOC has been successful or not. I’m open to that possibility, but haven’t given up yet–not until I explore other avenues.
I had one other section to this post, but as it is already quite long, I moved that section to a new post, in which I discuss a suggestion by Stephen Downes as to how to evaluate the “success” of MOOCs. In that and/or perhaps another post I will also discuss some of the published literature so far on cMOOCs, and what the research questions and methods were in those studies. |
