Just a reminder...

IIRC, Facebook was started as a way for college students to share their thoughts and experiences regarding college -- all of it, not just classes, learning, opinions about professors or frustration with learning content but the entire social aspect of the university, who not to date, great places to get a beer, frats to avoid, etc. In a way, FB replaced some of the more traditional ways of interacting with other students, i.e., forming a club, electing officers, drafting a charter, roping in a faculty sponsor, setting an agenda and scheduling meeting times that were the most convenient for everyone involved.

Back in the day, before the World Wide Web, there was a series (tens of thousands, actually) of discussion boards on something called USENET that pretty much had everything one was interested in discussing. They all began with "alt." such that, if you were interested in discussing a particular topic (or even finding a companion), you searched groups like, "alt.cognitivescience" or even subgroups such as "alt.cognitivescience.quantum.theory" to engage with like-minded students and individuals. The FB inventors took that idea and made it Web 2.0 since, the old USENET groups were moderated (it's where the terms "flamer" and "lurker" originated, among other things) and one would sometimes wait for days for a reply to a post (bearing in mind that, back then, very few people had access to the Internet) -- suddenly, interaction was immediate and IRT (in real time). The meeting was ongoing and asynchronous.


That's what this PLN is supposed to be about -- Web 2.0 technology used for the purpose of sharing information, interests, gripes, opinions, insights, input, arguments and anything else we can throw into this that will add to the dialog -- and our own education.

Collaborative learning, critical questioning and decompression

I have finally finished this week's individual assignment (you can view my work here as well as the lesson plan that accompanied it) and am ready to enjoy the rest of the day with some beer, baseball, and barbecue -- so nothing special about the last part, donchaknow?

Before calling it a day (and an end to Week 3), it occurs to me that I worked to include a collaborative learning element into my individual project and, in meta-fashion, asking my students to include a collaborative element into the PBL I designed for them. Additionally, I included two critical questions (one, the aforementioned collaborative element) for them to answer in response to the assignment.

Trying to walk the talk, here, it occurs to me that I need to ask a critical question for myself: Do I embrace opportunities for collaborative learning when they are assigned?

I have to say that I am enjoying this PLN immensely and, it just so happens, the current members are also on my Learning Team for school. I was fortunate that the instructor for this class accommodated us in honoring our requests for team membership. having said that, I have not always had the best experience with learning teams; indeed, I have griped in the past about being forced to work with people who seemed to have no motivation to learn or produce the best product possible but were only participating because they believed they would eventually acquire a credential but were seemingly uninterested in acquiring knowledge or skills.

Many assumptions are made about the benefits of collaborative learning and, I confess that I am largely a fan of the method. However, my critical question for today is: Is collaborative learning only effective when members are equally motivated to learn or is the potential for disparity inherent in the method, where the more motivated members actually become instructors (to a degree) when compensating for less-motivated group members?

OK, enjoy your Memorial Day Holiday and think about your answer when we're back on task. Have a beer and enjoy the barbecue!

Sunday morning Skype session

It's past noon and our group is Skyping (as I type this), to determine which direction our PLN will take... we're feeling very 21st century! In addition, the group (Karla and Mikki) are watching my screen as I demonstrate some of the functions, gadgets and widgets available in Blogger -- pretty much participating in the activities that define a PLN (Professional Learning Network). At the end of our Skype session (the first sentence of this post was typed while providing an example of how to use Blogger, labels for posts in this case), we agreed that we were grateful to have been given this assignment since this is a tool each of us can use beyond this assignment, this class and even this program (Adult Education and Training), a place where we can share new knowledge, ask questions, share our experience with the technologies we're using, air our frustrations... isn't that what a PLN is about?

Without putting too fine a point on this (and avoiding the temptation to turn this post into a paper on Connectivism or shared VLEs), I just want to say that, with the exception that this blog arose from an assignment to this learning team (the existing PLN on this blog), everything has evolved organically, through mutual agreement, one of the defining characteristics of a PLN.

Having said that, I want to point to a massive resource that will add to my understanding of what a PLN is and can be (mostly because I haven't had the time to really work on my Diigo presence):
PLN blogs on Edutopia.

That should do it, for now. In the meantime, I'm hoping to see this PLN's blogroll grow... and, while that happens, having this place attract the attention of other professionals like us who would like to participate!