M-25 LTG meeting-comments and feedback

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The Storify of our afternoon meeting at University of Westminster

 

 

DML Central | Taking Another Look at the Digital Credentials Landscape

via DML Central | Taking Another Look at the Digital Credentials Landscape.

More resources to think about open badge as a way to map students skills while designing their own digital space.

PLE’s Castaneda Linda slideshare

This needs to be explored more in depth, an excellent presentation. Need to take notes and think about it. Homework with a big jar of coffee 🙂

A Personal Cyberinfrastructure | EDUCAUSE.edu

A Personal Cyberinfrastructure (EDUCAUSE Review) | EDUCAUSE.edu.

Personal learning environment and the learning of mathematics. Possibility or reality?

I have participated in a conference organised in Belgrade by Singidunum University. They are oriented towards business and the conference mainly approached themes about the impact of the Internet on business activities in Serbia. They  have plans to broaden their offer and include educational studies. So for this conference they invited speakers and papers that relate education and the Internet, which is my case. My interest lies in between these two areas.  I am looking at how can the affordances of digital technologies be explored and exploited by teacher-students (prospective teachers)  in the learning of mathematics. Is a personal learning environment an effective and powerful tool to stage-manage the learning/teaching experience of teacher-students and build experience in the field? If the hypothetical answer is yes, why is it so and how should this space be conceived? What are some features such a space should have?
In the time I have been working in this -for now only theoretically prototype idea-  I have changed the RME for just an E.  It is now E–DynamicSpace (E stands for empty, as this space starts as an empty workbench for teacher-students which will be filled with their work, ideas, knowledge artefacts, tools and all what for them is needed to process and learn mathematics through its history and the ignitors for the work are teacher-student questions.
So it starts as an empty place and it will end as the imagination and curiosity of each user will take them.
More details of my idea in this paper which is online in the conference site:
http://portal.sinteza.singidunum.ac.rs/paper/114

What the experts have to say about PLEs

A very short summary of some of the relevant aspects (for me) that I took from a slide share of Illona Buchen about different definitions of personalised learning environments

 

The Rise of The Empowered Employee

This vision is interesting to have in mind because there is an intime connection between this new mindset of empowered employees and what we do in education, the goals of the educational system. There must be a change in how we organise the learning experience. I propose a shift in the view of students as patients as empty vessels that receive almost submissively  the learning plan, the schedules, the learning goals to students as agents of her/his learning experience. That is not a default mode. It has to be learned and practiced so it becomes second nature. The best way to do it -in my perspective- is through the daily learning experience. In my view, there is nothing more powerful than the every day experience, it is the best opportunity to teach.

I use the analogy of how I educated my own children (3) using as opportunities the daily experience. I used simple issues to teach profound values and important skills -emotional and intellectual-.
That is what I suggest with using the daily classroom experience which is almost ubiquitous in young students, it happens 5 days a week and it implies a huge amount of students time.  There, we as teachers should use a different approach to learning encouraging students to be agents instead of patients. We must encourage students to use the affordances of Web 2.0 to orchestrate their own learning transforming themselves into self-organised agents. “The ability to self-organise in order to produce and repurpose products and information” (a sentence I took from the blog I am linking)  should be a goal in the classroom. That is perfectly possible. It is a matter of changing our approach to learning and teaching -of course!  All this happening in a safe environment with a trusted community where learning therefore making mistakes and improving  is the default mode. This is an ideal condition for this learning to happen.
My proposal is to use the PLE as an approach to learning improving the agency of the students, empowering them and giving them the freedom to self-organise their learning experience so they are in the future strong and already empowered “gig employes” or even better “gig entrepreneurs” that engage actively in their society which is no longer a local one but a global and digital one, where living is understood as a two dimensional presence: virtual and physical.
Existing in this new society demands a new mindset that an important percentage of young people have had the chance to naturally grow into it but teachers not necessarily have done so. Maybe this is also a good chance for teachers to transform into empowered employees that inevitably are part of a global gig economy!
Enjoy the read!!

NETVIBES possible PLE?

NETVIBES possible PLE?

Difference between a VLE and PLE

P2PU

Peer to peer University, exploring possibilities