Tag Archives: online learning

McLuhan’s Tetrad⤴

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I’m keeping half an eye on #ETMooc2 at the moment, and one of this week’s suggested activities caught my interest.

Activity #1 – Marshall McLuhan Tetrad of Effects for Generative AI: What are the opportunities and challenges presented by the evolution of technologies in the digital age?
View the following video (3:45) for an example of McLuhan’s Tetrad OR search for other examples.
Brainstorm changes that are already occurring or will occur with the use of generative AI in your context. Add ideas to each of the following four quadrants: enhance, obsolete, retrieve, reverse.

Google Doc

I wondered how this might apply to my favourite non-MOOC activity, the Daily Create.

McLuhan's Tetrad
“McLuhan’s Tetrad” flickr photo by NomadWarMachine shared under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-SA) license

The Daily Create amplifies creativity, by encouraging DS106ers to create something every day. It makes copying obsolete, as the ethos is remix, not plagiarism. It retrieves inspiration, with a new prompt every day. There are no unexpected dissatisfactions, just a warning that #DS106 is #4Life

So long, and thanks for all the TAGS⤴

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clmooc TAGS
“clmooc TAGS” flickr photo by NomadWarMachine shared under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-SA) license

For almost ten years now, whenever I’ve been involved in an activity that involves Twitter conversations I’ve headed over to TAGS and set up a copy to collate tweets and produce visualisations like the one above. So earlier this month, as I was tweeting to the #ETMooc2 hashtag, I was devastated to realise that it was now broken (I knew it was going to be, but I didn’t want to believe that it had happened). I’m too upset to explain the reasons why, and anyway Alan has already done that, I just wanted to say how sad I am that TAGS has gone. My PhD thesis about serendipitous learning was shaped by my ability to collect #CLMooc tweets easily and see what the community conversations looked like, my research into lurkers with Aras, AK and Len used TAGS and similar apps.

So a huge thanks to Martin for all the TAGS. It was great while it lasted.

Speculative Futures on ChatGPT and Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI): A Collective Reflection from the Educational Landscape⤴

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A Collective Reflection from the Educational Landscape
“A Collective Reflection from the Educational Landscape” flickr photo by NomadWarMachine shared under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-SA) license

On 22nd January an invite appeared in my inbox

I am writing to invite you for a collaborative paper on ChatGPT and AI…The planned paper will adopt a speculative future design methodology.

Each of us was invited to write two short stories, one positive and one negative, and then we were invited into a collaborative Google Doc. Over the next few weeks I watched the paper evolve as we wrote and edited together. The final paper was published yesterday and, as Jon Dron says, the stories themselves make great reading.

It’s amazing how quickly things can happen with the right catalyst. Thanks Aras!

Bozkurt, A., Xiao, J., Lambert, S., Pazurek, A., Crompton, H., Koseoglu, S., Farrow, R., Bond, M., Nerantzi, C., Honeychurch, S., Bali, M., Dron, J., Mir, K., Stewart, B., Costello, E., Mason, J., Stracke, C. M., Romero-Hall, E., Koutropoulos, A., Toquero, C. M., Singh, L Tlili, A., Lee, K., Nichols, M., Ossiannilsson, E., Brown, M., Irvine, V., Raffaghelli, J. E., Santos-Hermosa, G Farrell, O., Adam, T., Thong, Y. L., Sani-Bozkurt, S., Sharma, R. C., Hrastinski, S., & Jandrić, P. (2023). Speculative futures on ChatGPT and generative artificial intelligence (AI): A collective reflection from the educational landscape. Asian Journal of Distance Education, 18(1), 53-130. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7636568

Researchers as lurkers⤴

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Researcher as lurker
J McNeil p129

An interesting paragraph in a book I am reading at the moment (Lurking, by Joanne McNeil). We are used to talking about learners as lurkers, but here’s another perspective. What images do we invoke when we think about the researcher as lurker?

The picture of researcher as outsider – as a profiteer swooping in to steal content and to cherry pick meaning to fit their own agenda – was one that gave me pause during my own PhD (I am sure some of you remember the story of the ‘researchers’ who came across a Google Doc that some of us were using to start writing a journal article and used it in a conference presentation without asking or attributing – the affront we felt at that unethical behaviour has stayed with me). I chose participatory research as my methodology, and ultimately ended up writing an autoethnography because I wanted to try to allow my community to have a voice in what I was doing, and to make it clear that what I was saying was my own interpretation.

Of course Twitter is public, and the ToS make it clear that researchers are permitted to use tweets without attribution, but imo that is not the full story – there are also ethical considerations (I say some things about this in my PhD thesis if anyone is interested).

I’m not sure where I am going with this yet – as always I am writing to find out what I am thinking.

An anti-climax⤴

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I didn’t have high hopes for GISH – I didn’t know what to expect. But I had hoped for some sort of collaborative creating and remixing with some like minded people. So I paid my $25.01 (why the .01, I wondered) and waited to see what the challenges would be like.

GISH is a week long event, and this year it ran from 30th July to 6th August. So on Sat 30th I logged in from my PC. First I tried to update my profile, but the web pages kept crashing, so I gave up on that. Next I headed to the Teams tab, expecting to find a chat room or a forum, but there was just a list of names with links to email them individually. Meh, I assumed the captain would be in touch.

And that was pretty much it. I scanned through the challenges and picked up a couple I could do alone from my desk (many of them either specified a specific location in the US or required interaction in busy places, neither of which were possible for me), and wandered off to do other things.

During my busier than usual work week I occasionally wondered why nobody was getting in touch – was I missing something? I checked the Teams tab again, but there was still nothing there. But apparently I was missing everything, as I found out after the event had ended. It turns out that there was a ios/android app, and that’s where my team were chatting. Somehow I’d missed mention of it on the web pages. I know this is all my own fault, and I could have got in touch with the captain (who I did not know), or other team members, but there it is.

And I can’t help feeling a little sad that nobody thought to ask me where I was.

The DS106 Daily Create is 10 years old⤴

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So here’s 10 reasons why you should join us in the Daily Create

Teacher badge
  1. Teacher owl says Daily Creates are better than apples
  2. You too can become a leader
  3. Anyone can be a Daily Create Influencer
  4. It’s free, and open to anyone to participate
  5. You will meet True Friends
  6. You might be able to solve #SockGate
  7. The Daily Create is not speciesist – we have participants from across the animal kingdom
  8. You don’t need to wear a fancy uniform to participate (most of the time you don’t even need to get dressed!
  9. Nobody is the boss of you – in DS106 rules are made to be broken
  10. #DS106 is #4life
Owl in a top hat

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk

Digital Detritus⤴

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Traffic jam
Pic of sheep on Mull

Do you tidy up at the end of a beach party? Are you happy to walk away from the embers of a beach barbeque, ignoring the empty drink cans and food wrappers, or do you carefully collect any rubbish that is there and leave the beach as clean, or cleaner, as it was when you arrived? if you hosted a party in a public place and left before the end would you return once it was all over to take down the gazebo and put away the deck chairs?

Of course you would – or you’d ensure that someone else was doing it.

If you saw others having a party, would you barge in and start talking loudly, ignoring everyone else there? Would you leave your rowdy toddler to stampede through others’ conversations, denying any responsibility for him when others gently mention it?

Of course you wouldn’t.

Two things have got me thinking about this. The first is the tragedy of the commons that is happening in the Scottish Highlands, where hordes of thoughtless tourists are defiling the beautiful beaches with litter, and worse. This makes me cry – the Highlands are beautiful, and fragile. They deserve our respect, our love, our care. Some humans suck.

The second is the tweeting of Twitter bots to some hashtags I use. One of these is a cautionary tale for educators. Some time ago, I am told, a class activity for a course was for each student to create a bot. One such bot still tweets, regularly, to the course hashtag. The creator is long gone, nobody takes responsibility for closing it down. When a friend commented that it was wrecking the tag feed, I realised I’d blocked it. There should be a mechanism for removing this digital clutter.

Soon after this conversation, I noticed another bot had tweeted to #CLMOOC. I’d not have thought much about it, but the other bot was on my mind, so I quote tweeted it. The bot owner replied from her personal account: dismissive of our point of view, arrogant, lacking in empathy. Creating the bot had been fun for her. She did not care what others thought – her five minutes of fun trumped everything. (Looking just now I see that it tweets nonsense every hour – random words taken from the owner’s blog. Not funny, or clever – pointless at best.)

Earlier this year I attended the OERxDomains21 conference, where one of the main platforms was Discord – a multi-channelled happening that had been well designed. It made the conference for me, and as the event ended and we all began to wind down, I appreciated being able to dip back in and see what I’d missed. But what I really appreciated was how the organisers returned some time after the event to tidy the space away and leave no trace of mess.

That’s responsible digital camping.

The emergence of participatory learning: authenticity, serendipity and creative playfulness⤴

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Thesis word cloud

Today I got the final confirmation that I have been awarded my PhD in Education, with the title The emergence of participatory learning: authenticity, serendipity and creative playfulness. The thesis is now uploaded to my Uni library repository, and anyone who likes can read it.

Thanks again CLMOOC, for everything. Hat tip to DS106.

The emergence of participatory learning: authenticity, serendipity and creative playfulness⤴

from

Thesis word cloud

Today I got the final confirmation that I have been awarded my PhD in Education, with the title The emergence of participatory learning: authenticity, serendipity and creative playfulness. The thesis is now uploaded to my Uni library repository, and anyone who likes can read it.

Thanks again CLMOOC, for everything. Hat tip to DS106.

Liked: Caught in the Study Web⤴

from @ wwwd – John's World Wide Wall Display

Liked Caught in the Study Web (every.to)
Exploring Gen Z’s Ambitious and Anxiety-Fuelled Pursuit of Straight A’s Across YouTube, TikTok, Discord, and Twitter

Caught in the Study Web – Cybernaut – Every

Much of Study Web parallels more adult and professional spaces that have emerged in the last decade—revered influencers, a bend towards materialism, and inspiration over analysis.

Really interesting post, strangely l’ve listened to some of the ‘music’ videos as background in my classroom of much younger learners.

Study Web is the space students have constructed for themselves in response to the irl system that just isn’t working. Unable to find a place or person to turn to with their academic and career anxieties, they find internet strangers—strange kin—to speak to, or simply share the same space with, online. Lacking the intrinsic inspiration to study for hours each day, online advice and group accountability provide a solution. Feeling isolated, virtual study partners create a sense of fellowship.

During lockdown I occasionally gave my class time to complete a short piece of work. Turning off my screen and playing some music, often the lofi type mentioned in the article. I wonder if having longer ‘working together’ sessions would have been helpful? Did anyone else try this sort of thing with primary pupils?

Coincidently one year ago I noted: Our Magic Box A poem written by my class in teams w hen I gave them some 5 minute intervals to write.

Link via Waxy.org