Twitter (attachment to address box of firefox) and Tweet Deck( input the first, and output the second).

Tumblr (microblogger with multiple options–video,photo,text, quotes and links)

Word Press … a “traditional’ blog. And the class chat column.

None of this complexity is absolutely necessary… just an excuse to resort and organize my online tools.

On the input side I have ChangeMooc pages… one to track blog posts and the other for tracking/attending  the live session (change.mooc.ca/meetings.htm)

Too good for Violence, Too Good for Drugs and Violence and Building Decision
Skills were the three projects that had sufficiently extensive evidence (rightmost
column, “Extent of Evidence”) that also reported large percentile changes
(“Improvement Index”)

“Course Link

“Connectivism course starts Monday…

As mentioned in June, we are offering an open online course on Connectivism. The course begins on Monday and is freely available to anyone with an interest in learning more about the topic. You can sign up for free here. The course outline is also available. And, for a bit more information, I’ve put together a short introductory presentation on how the course operates.
For learners wishing formal credit through University of Manitoba, a paid enrollment option is also available.”

Whether you’re a teacher or a researcher the combination of weblogging and the proliferation of incredible knowledge-making/communicating tools is causing, I believe, a knowledge and power explosion.

We’ve barely accounted for the change in communication content that derives from the removal of corporate and governmental stranglehold on what information and knowledge is disseminated to whom. The internet, we are seeing, does quite a bit to equalize access to information and to forums in which one can, if one’s argument and information are sufficiently compelling, move public opinion. It’s a big, No!, HUGE, topic but not the one I want to talk about at the moment.

My emphasis is upon the tools for thinking and communicating that are now available that were unavailable, say, twenty years ago. Let’s look at what a professional educator and communicator had 30 years ago: chalk, blackboard, overhead, book, movie. S/he was bounded both in what was learned or constructed and what s/he disseminated by those tools.

We’re only indirectly talking about machines. Yes, this thinking and communicating is done on machines and with the aid of thinking devices made possible by machines. But all of this has magnified our ability to know, to teach, to communicate and to organize– as I will explain below:

The addition of tools for thinking and communicating thought

Now add personal abilities to

• construct and manipulate data-bases,
• converse, with anyone, near or on the other side of the planet, at length and in depth (via discussion groups, blogs, chat rooms, etc),
• access and/or collaboratively construct complex knowledge systems on wikis, and
• construct concept/mind maps (FreeMind, (NovaMInd), or specialized thought mapping systems such the construction of timelines via (Dipity).

With these tools we’ve considerably aided our ability to think and communicate as individuals.

It’s not just that we’ve empowered groups of people to think and decide as a group. We have! (Bravo!!)

It’s that we’ve given tools for thinking and communicating to individuals which considerably enhance each person’s processing, organization communication of complex ideas to others.Individuals with enhanced idea processing and accessing power are working with others who have been similarly transformed.

We should expect a magnified ability for learners to conduct self-directed learning and for teachers to communicate information directly and, more importantly, to aid individuals in their quest for information and skills that give them the power to manage their own life spaces.

If part of the ability to rule is to control information flow and to minimize subject peoples’ understanding and organizing power, then government that aims to benefit the few off the backs and lives of the many will be crippled by
this change. Former stooges will do an end-run around ignorance and become empowered.

I eagerly await new developments. There will be lots of adjustments

In the meantime, Teachers! Get busy learning and communicating using the new tools of enlightenment.

25 tools (from the introductory page at 25 tools):

1. Web browser – Firefox

   More than just a browser with 100s of extensions available to provide an enormous range of extra functionality not found with other browsers.

2. Email tool – gMail/Google Mail

   No more worrying about an email client on your desktop and dealing with spam and viruses – and tons of free storage space.

   * Resource gMail/Google Mail: Mini Tutorial

3. Instant Messenger – Skype

   An easy way of not only text messaging your contacts but also free voice calls – with low charges out to landlines.

4. Social bookmarking tool – Delicious

   Store your bookmarks online, tag them and share them with others, students, colleagues and so on.

5. RSS Reader – Google Reader

   Subscribe to website and blog feeds and the news is delivered automatically to you. Effortless!

   * Resource Google Reader : Mini Tutorial

6. Real-time messaging tool – Twitter

   If you want to stay in touch with people no matter where you are or what you’re doing.

7. Online calendar – Google Calendar

   Don’t keep your calendar to yourself, share it and make scheduling events an easier process.

   * Resource Google Calendar : Mini Tutorial

8. Office suite – Google Docs

   An online suite of office tools for personal use or to collaborate with other. It can read in Microsoft Office documents too.

   * Resource Google Docs : Mini Tutorial

9. Mind mapping tool – FreeMind

   For organising your thoughts or just brainstorming

10. Start page tool – iGoogle

    Aggregate all your resources, mail, RSS feeds, etc, in one place.

11. Blogging tool – WordPress

    Use it to create a personal or professional blog

12. Web authoring tool – Nvu

    A versatile web authoring to build web pages and web sites.

13. Wiki tool – PBwiki

    Create editable websites for collaborative writing and working.

    * Resource PBwiki : Mini Tutorial

14. Photo hosting and sharing tool – Flickr

    Host your personal or professional picture collection, and share them with friends, colleagues and others.

15. Presentation hosting and sharing tool – Slideshare

    Upload presentations, tag them and share them with others. Synchronise them with an audio file to create a narrated presentation

16. Video hosting and sharing tool – YouTube

    A large collection of shareable videos – host your own there tool.

17. Collaborative presenation tool – Voicethread

    Create a slideshow around images and invite comments (audio or text) from others.

    * Resource Voicethread : Mini Tutorial

18. Podcasting tool – Audacity

    Record and edit audio and, with the extra encoder, convert your audio files into MP3 podcasts

    * Resource Audacity : Mini Tutorial

19. Screen capture and screencasting tool – Jing

    An “always-ready” program that instantly captures and shares images and video.

    * Resource Jing : Mini Tutorial

20. Polling and survey tool – PollDaddy

    Want to get some quick feedback? Set up a poll, and track responses.

    * Resource PollDaddy : Mini Tutorial

21. Web meeting tool – Yugma

    For small meetings of up to 10 people, to whiteboard, annotate and share files. You can even use Skype.

    * Resource Yugma : Mini Tutorial

22. Live broadcasting tool – Ustream

    Live interactive video broadcasting to a global audience. All it takes is a camera and an internet connection.

    * Resource Ustream : Mini Tutorial

23. Social networking tool – Ning

    Create and customise a private (secure if required) community for a group of like-minded people, large or small.

    * Resource Ning : Mini Tutorial

24. Course authoring tool – eXe

    Create SCORM-compliant learning content that doesn’t require you to be proficient in HTML or XML markup.

    * Resource eXe : Mini Tutorial
    * SCORM/AICC eXe Tutorial

25. Course management tool – Moodle

    Host a complete course or program or simply provide user authentication for other training materials.

    * Resource Moodle : Mini Tutorial

The complication. 25Tools and, specifically, eXe. We have Clemme, Ray, Spike and now Ron Miller all agreeing to teach and
taking Rays lead by preparing syllabi (as part of the Viterbo clearance to teach).

I think eXe is a really fine way to get anything put together for the web”

edu2.0 seems good too (free and many features)

(Via .)

The real difficulty is to find people who have both the wish and the ability to teach. I’ll leave that very large topic until another time. Abandoned, for the moment, so that we can talk about the already competent face to face teacher [another time, remember] and the web.

But at least a preface about the the teacher as an existential “type”. There is, as far as I can tell, no theoretical limitation to human capabilities and inclinations as they are parceled out to us as individuals. In my own experience, however, there are existential and developmental limits on this special combination of human abilities and inclinations.

For example, the wish to interact with and nurture the becoming of others is relatively rare as a primary, or close to primary, individual drive (I am not here discussing the “wired-in” protectiveness that seems to be part of the human and mammalian package). Also, the wish to and ability to communicate effectively in multiple situations with varying ages, genders, groups and personalities is also fairly rare. While related, these two skills are more rarely found in one person. For a “teacher-type” add to these two, wishing to support/nurture the achievement/becoming of others and comprehensive set of one-to-one and group communication skills two other skills, the ability to “sense” and/or “deduce” the conceptual processing of another, and the ability to communicate about and structure situations such that the learner can move from their own position on something like a learning ladder of skills to a next level of learning . This, based only upon the teacher/student transactions and the information and learning experiences and informational materials provided to the student.

As you can see this is a relatively unlikely combination of human skills, having one may increase the motivation to develop another in the set but does not guarantee that that skill will develop.

I hope you now see that nothing in this teacher disposition (my reference to this set of motivations and skills) relates directly to mathematics, logic, technology. And, one could argue, for personalities inclined in this direction, the development of such skills would require a distinctly different set drives and predispositions than those which drive the teacher we have described above.

In short, I would argue that it is a very rare combination indeed that finds both in depth computer language skills (html among them) and teacher skills in the same person. Particularly in adults who received elementary, secondary and postsecondary training prior to, say, 2000.

It is far more likely, however, that such teaching inclined adults, those born before 2000, have acquired lesson design skills, and even curriculum development skills, on top of their “package” of skills and inclinations that move them to teach. The gift of eXe is that it allows such a person to put lessons and teaching online by means which are in reach. With eXe the face-to-face teacher can reach out to construct for her/himself a teaching and learning environment which can work work her/his live classroom or even for students who we will be doing online learning alone.

————–
Links
eXe blog
25tools for eXe and other online learning support applications. (All are Open Source, incidentally. There is now much less
in the form of technical or fiscal limit that stops the teacher type from trying to reach out online. Hooray)

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