Friday, October 21, 2011

MOOC/Librarian connection

I put together a MOOC/librarian concept map for a conference on professional development for academic librarians. My professional focus is information literacy instruction, which the map reflects. I'm mixing and matching ACRL and SCONUL views of info lit, so I apologize to any purists. I may be missing some important connections due to my focus. I would appreciate any comments, suggestions or input.

Friday, October 7, 2011

your images tell a story of anything at all.

How do my images tell a story of anything at all? This image says something about symbiosis, I suppose, or emergence. Or the problems of getting good focus on an iphone, for that matter. Taken as a whole, my photos might tell a tale of bizarre obsession.
I took a walk during a break at work a few years ago, and found this strange fungus growing out of the side of a tree, like a bark-born starfish fungus hatching to life, in a ritzy suburban area where expert lawncare appears mandatory, and mushrooms are probably a zoning violation. It occurred to me at the time that I had a camera in my phone that I never used, so I took a picture. I kept running into more interesting growths, and ended up with a Flickr-ful of them. I found a huge one in the cemetery, where the groundkeepers had carefully mowed around it, probably thinking a rock or headstone. It seems like I should do something with them, but I have no idea what...

Saturday, September 24, 2011

zotero and cmc11

I've been interested in creativity for a long time, and I've been meaning to give it some serious study. Life always gets in the way though. I'm hopeful that CMC11 can help me regain some focus.

Being a librarian, I'm sometimes inclined to collect and organize things. Probably more the former than the latter - so I'm thankful that my wife is so tolerant. I started a Zotero group bibliography of some of the material that's been referred to in the course so far. I should do some tagging and add notes, if I find the time. If others think it a worthwhile endeavor, they're welcome to contribute whatever they like. If enough of us add, tag and annotate material, we would build a valuable resource.

In the course of doing that, I found that I already had a creativity folder in my Zotero collection, so I copied the contents to the group library. I guess the course has paid off already in reminding me to look over some of these things. If only I can find the time to start connecting some dots...

Thursday, January 20, 2011

#CCK11 : week 1 readings

One thing I'm seeing in the first week's readings on connectivism is the idea of changing theories for changing times. Technology impacts the way we live and work, and the way we learn as well. Our lives are more networked in more ways with more groups and individuals - connections abound.

That theories should change and evolve seems perfectly sensible to me. The philosopher types seem to like to argue about the value and validity of new theories. It's not a bad idea to put them to the test, of course, but I get the sense that there's some either/or thinking going on - that one theory is right and the others are wrong. But as was quoted in one of the LAK11 readings, "all the models are wrong." Some theories are more useful than others in different situations, as suggested by hte "types of learning best explained" row in the comparison chart.

Some statements I find questionable. "Technology is altering... our brains." This implies passivity on the part of the brain. Would it not be better to say that we are adapting - as we always have?

I got stuck for a while on one part: "When knowledge is subject to paucity, the process of assessing worthiness is assumed to be intrinsic to learning. When knowledge is abundant, the rapid evaluation of knowledge is important." Does "knowledge" here actually mean information? Isn't knowledge the result of learning? Since "information" is used in the same paragraph, I'm assuming there is a distinction. Confused. Maybe it's talking about specialization - if my colleagues know something, then maybe I don't need to since I can rely on them - my value is what I bring to the table that wasn't there before. Maybe "rapid evaluation of knowledge" refers to self-evaluation: is there something lacking within us that we need to acquire this new information?

Some statements jumped out at me: "Know-how and know-what is being supplemented with know-where" As one who teaches information literacy, the recognition of this is comforting.

Sunday, January 16, 2011

connections

I remember being fascinated by the Wired article about Big Data when it came out. I thought of it again a few months later as I was reading in the Council on Library and Information Resources' No Brief Candle report that "Over the next five years we will collect more scientific data than we have collected in all of human history" (Luce, 2008, p.45). As a librarian (technically a librarian-wannabe), I had to wonder: How do we organize information of that volume, growing at that rate? Visualization has long fascinated me as well, due to my art and design background. This is a way of handling large volumes of data, a way of working with it in an unorganized state, a way of coaxing the aggregate data to speak. So the current week's readings connect with me in a number of ways. Thinking of visualization reminded me of a recent documentary-type thing I had seen, "Journalism in the Age of Data." While I don't recall that it addresses anything related to learning analytics, it is about communication, which is the key to making analytic information truly useful. I found the presentation format of the film as fascinating as the content, much like the LAK MOOC.

Interestingly, in looking for the link to the documentary I came across a Google ad, one of those things that typically doesn't even register on my consciousness, leading to visualizing.org, which appears to be an amazing resource. A number of their visualizations and data sets are health-related. The potentials of health information is another area of interest for me. So I was pleased to find a blog post from Dianne Rees linked on the LAK Facebook page commenting on the commonalities between LAK and health informatics. She links to another reading that will have to go near the top of my pile, The Digital Infrastructure for a Learning Health System. I'll be adding Instructional Design Fusions to my Google Reader as well.

Funny that all these connections should show up on the eve of a course on connectivism...

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

random thoughts for 01/11/11

I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who views Hunch with disdain. It seemed to be a marketing engine targeted to people well above my pay grade. The recommendations were very poor, which is quite typical, but, as one of the readings said, "all the models are wrong." In the case on Hunch, I'm not sure that the model is particularly useful either.

The discussion board brings up the idea of using a hunch-like tool to identify learning styles in students. There was mention of "the necessity of some classification." I've always been suspicious of learning styles and multiple intelligences precisely due to to classification. I often see these concepts used for pigeonholing. The key point is multiplicity - we aren't limited to one type, but rather use all the types, each to differing degrees. I think there would need to be some sort of fuzzy logic that recognizes this degreeness and multiplicity, and that learning styles may be more relevant to the subject than the learner.

A strand of the thread muses on "what if higher ed needs to open up, so their courses can be screened by students?" I love this idea. I was rather disappointed by some of my last experiences in grad school. Had course descriptions been more detailed and clear, I might have been able to make better choices. That's a personal gripe rather than an LAK comment, I suppose.

Side discussion on the ELI presentation talks about the privacy issue as it relates to libraries. "Private or confidential? Couldn't library patrons learn what subjects are being actively pursued or researched, while keeping the identity of patrons confidential?" It's a good question. Librarian ethics place a high value on privacy. There could be a bit of professional resistance to making library data open to an extensive use of analytics.

Friday, January 7, 2011

hunch

One of the activities for the week is to investigate Hunch. It claims to be about personalizing the internet, but appears to be about marketing. I've found recommendation engines like this to be remarkably poor, but perhaps that has more to do with me and my quirks.

How could something like this be used for teaching and learning? It's a way of exploring connections, and finding new connections, which sounds a lot like learning to me. But it seems like the Hunch model needs to have massive participation to be truly effective. And does it offer anything that isn't already out there? I'm not seeing it, so I'll have to think on it some more.

MOOCS

This is a new experience for me: a massively online open course. I'm curious to see if I can take something from this format and apply it to my own course, without making it unnecessarily complicated. I don't know how I will be able to apply the subject of analytics to what I do (information literacy instructor/librarian) but it's certain to get me thinking.