Using social media for personal learning

Today I ran a short session where I shared how I use social media to enhance my learning. I've blogged previous about this topic in the post Social Media for YOUR learning but now I've refined my thinking and developed a better presentation about this I thought I'd share my thinking again.

I decided to represent my thinking in the below pearltree.  Pearltree is a website where you can create mindmap-type groups of bubbles which links to websites.  I've started using it as my main bookmarking site.  It took a bit of getting used to but its good if you want to group things and is certainly more visually appealing than a normal bookmarking service.

Making sense of how I use social media to aid my learning is a tricky business.   However, I have a sort of system and this what I wanted to share.  Although the process is iterative some types of activity do present themselves.  An important point is that different aspects of the same tool fit into the different categories I identify.

• Seeking and consuming knowledge - This is mainly my RSS reader and twitter.  I use google reader and have a carefully refine list of blogs and learning technologies news services which I subscribe to.  With twitter, I don't spend as much time as I could or should on this.  I'm following 170 or so people and it purely about learning technologies.  I have a seperate account for fun stuff as it's useful to differentiate between my learning and social life.  In the pearltree below I've also included google and linkedin as these are also important places I look for things.
• Aggregation - Very closely associated with seeking knowledge is the aggregation of knowledge.  You need to aggregate before you can consume in a discerning fashion.  RSS and the process of subscribing are fundamentally components of this.  Gradually twitter is muscling in on my time but I still love my google reader.  Also included below are evernote where the different folders I create and the notes I take are a form of aggregation for review later and diigo.  I use diigo because it allows for groups which, along with the normal tagging, allow me to easily find types of bookmarks.
• Website note-taking - I tend not to do this in its purest sense but it deserves its place as there are a host of services which can be utilised for this purpose.  Of the sites listed in this pearl below, my activity is mainy confined to evernote which I use to copy/paste the best bits, the golden nuggets of knowledge I find.  By creating a note for each set of such nuggets, I can include a weblink and tag for future reference.  The important point here is that you find time to review later - that's the learning.  I also ensure that when I bookmark in diigo I write a few words to remind myself what the site is about.  However, with bookmarking proper tagging are key.  Bounce and scrible are note-taking on the website tools.
• Knowledge sharing - This is an important part of the ethos of social media and web 2.0 - you share as well as consume, you give as well as receive.  My chief forum for this is twitter where I get benefit from articulating the key points in a tweet and from generating more contacts to follow and be followed.
• Brainstorming/sense-making - Here I've included a drawing tool and a couple of mindmapping tools.  I use mindmapping tools a lot to helping create relationship between concepts and play with my ideas.
• Text-based dialogue learning - This will be different for everyone.  My networks for this include a couple of learning technology groups and some linkedin groups, but I've also included my blog where dialogue can occur in the comments.
• Writtern reflection - This completes the circle.  It's what I'm doing now and it a vital component for my learning.  The fact that I've not done much blogging over the last few months isn't good and I know I learn less when do less blogging.  The process of articulating for an potential audience is right at the heart of learning.  By refining my words, I refine my learning.

I would be interested in hearing anyone's thoughts on my PLE and hearing about the tools you use.

Social media for YOUR learning

Happy new year.

We are learning all the time. Structuring and directing this learning doesn’t need to be confined to courses and formal education. For an individual learner it is possible to construct your own personal learning environment utlitising different online tools for different purposes. It’s always been possible but social media tools make it far, far easier than previously possible. I’ve conceptualised some of the possibilities in this mindmap:

I’ve divided it into two categories: Personal Learning and Collaborative Learning. However, because social media is inherently social there are opportunities for communication and collaboration throughout. It’s important to think about the type of learning activity a particular tool ‘affords’. I find affordance a useful concept when thinking about technology and learning. It basically means what a tool lends itself towards doing. Mindjumpers is all about articulating for companies what each social media tool affords for them in terms of marketing; for me, its learning. So, in the above mindmap, I don’t just say blogging, I say written reflection; because this is the part of the learning process that this social media tool affords.

I could sum up the personal learning side of the mindmap by saying:

You can use different social media tools to seek out knowledge/content, aggregate it so that you can store it/find it later in an organised fashion, reflect on this knowledge perhaps using visualisation tools and articulate it in writing.

This post continues thinking from http://tpreskett.blogspot.com/2011/10/in-post-social-media-supporting-teacher.html

Formal/Informal learning

It's been a while since I last blogged. This is mainly due to getting married and going on honeymoon. A welcome distraction from my Learning Technology Learning.

Recently I've found myself reading more academic articles than blogs. I aimed to catch up with my blog reading but it's been enlightening to gain some academic perspectives. Overall, blog reading is easier. It fits in with my informal learning ethos and lends itself to the extraction of ideas which I can then weave together as I reflect. Academic article reading is hard but rewarding. Hopefully I can achieve a good balance of learning from both in the future.

A recent bit of learning has been around formal learning on reading the paper Theories of formal and informal learning in the world of web 2.0 by Charles Crook (2008). He says:

"It is the act of deliberate teaching that ‘formalises’ learning. But deliberate teaching is complemented by deliberate learning. Ideally, both parties in the
educational contract have a degree of this intent – albeit not equally well or equally enthusiastically developed."

It is easy to bash formal education but the above reminds us that, in essence, its a wonderful thing. It's about deliberately engendering learning and this should be celebrated. So what's the place of informal learning? I promote informal learning because I know how powerful it can be and I would disagree with the notion that the only "proper" learning is done through formal education. Where it's good quality a formal course is the best and easiest way of accelerate your learning in a certain subject. But such instances are not always available when, and where, you want them. This is where informal learning comes into play. It's take a certain skillset and mindset to do it effectively but these can be learned. And certainly from my perspective, technology is fundamental to being able to realise it.

The above quote hints that motivation isn't always there with formal learning. Essentially in schools, we are forcing people to learn whether they want to or not. Or, at least, we are trying to. Informal learning only exists where there is motivation to learn. But if we took away formal education I'm not so sure that everyone would jump into doing it themselves enthusiastically. The learner control aspect is often mooted is a big plus the informal learning and that this can aid with learners who are disenfranchised from formal education. Here there is a clear role for informal learning and what we need are processes and support mechanism in place to help learner get started.

Levels of learning

Also published on the Educational Technology and Change Journal

I'm doing a lot of consultancy this month in various contexts under various titles designated by my clients. These include etutoring and master class in blended learning. The latter of these is good for my ego but is perhaps a bit grandiose. The content is never exactly the same as different emphasis is required with changing contexts. As long as my overall message is the same I am happy.

Titling is an issue I need to get to grips with. I haven't hit upon a one that I'm fantastically happy with. I've been using Web2.0Learning a lot but I don't want to be totally web 2.0 tool focused and the content often reflects this now. One important development has been that I've introduced a section which broaches the subject of practical issues surrounding teaching at a distance or blended. I find that there's a black hole of practical issues that don't get accounted for. Educators either get taught how to use a technology or something on the pedagogy - so more theoretical stuff. The praciticalities get left behind. Recently, I've been shoehorning in content which covers the reality of what changes in the life of an educator and organising oneself is so important. It's all pretty logical stuff but important nonetheless. I will reflect here on how things go in a few week.

What I wanted to record here today is how valuable the creative process is for me. What I learn through social media and my experiences at work get reflected on in this blog. I'm lucky that when called upon to deliver a consultancy session it involved crystallising my thinking from this learning for a public audience. It feels like a two stage process - writing down my thought forces me to clarify my thinking (and that's the first level of learning) whereas designing and delivering a session crystallises it even further (this is the second level of learning). I guess the third level is analysing the respective success or failure of the output!

Learning Technologies promote conversation

I stumbled upon How Managers Learn by Good Practice for Leaders and Managers. Although aimed at businesses rather than education there is one very interesting finding that's obvious when you think about it:

The most-used as well as the most effective informal learning method was: informal chats with colleagues... Conversations carry news, create meaning, foster cooperation, and spark innovation.

The excellent Harold Jarche observed

There are many great tools and technologies to facilitate conversation... but the key is having a culture of conversation.

Think about education, think about the pedagogy. Facilitating conversation is really what social media is all about; it's what a lot of Web 2.0 of all about; it's what many learning technologies try to do. Maybe describing things in this manner will be useful when describing (sorry selling) learning technologies in my work context. The more I think about it, the more I believe it. It's difficult not to reveal a bias towards the active/communicative pedagogies as a natural consequence of being a Learning Technologist (at least for me anyway). The problem with this is that it's open to question/debate particularly in the academic world I inhabit and rightly so. For some reason, it seems less controversial and more valid to talk about things in terms of promoting conversation. Even though it's feels more facile and too simplistic.

Anyway, this feels quite powerful and I can here myself saying it and hear it sounding ok.

Formal Learning/Informal Learning/Just Plain Learning

There are no real interest new ideas in this post, just some reflections on a personal venture of mine. I felt the need for self-disclosure - satisfying the basic human need to share and communicate.

It's been a long time since my last post. This is mostly due to an assignment I am writing for an MA I've just started. I've toyed with the idea of doing one for a while now. I work in an academic institution but my role is mainly one of learning design, advising people on learning design, delivering training, setting up VLE pages. There is no immediate imperative to become 'academic'. However, I resolve to do one for the following reasons:

- It's free (as a member of staff at the Institute of Education)
- The subject matter is ICT in Education so it should be topics that I can relate to
- I aim to learn, learn, learn. This is the main reason. I'll be forced to research areas where I currently scratch the surface giving myself an academic rigour to some of my ideas. That's the theory anyway.
- I'm a firm believer in informal learning. My use of this blog and reading other blogs is my primary learning method and it works for me. However, for many of those in education they want to stamp of approval that an award like this gives. It's the only language they understand. So by doing this I will hopefully gain respect, gain validity. The validity I want is validity for my ideas and suggestions around learning technologies.
- I hope to gain insight into being a student in Higher Education. I've already done a lot of this. I'm learning first hand about the type of students we get, the approaches the lecturers take and difficulties students face.

I did two thirds of an MA 5 years ago but never got around to finishing it. At the time I couldn't see any real point. It had no real impact on what I was doing but now is different. So now I am starting again from scratch and viewing it as a learning exercise. The only real downside is that studying competed with my time previously devoted to my informal learning in the blogosphere. I will hopefully manage this better from now on.

I will also say this. It's hard to study and work. I'm used to working, coming home and not working. Now things are different. However, I guess this is now in line with my views on learning. Learning doesn't just happen within formal education structures, it happens all the time at the learner's discretion. I'm trying to view much of my work as learning so why not extent this out beyond the four wall of my office. I think that makes sense.

Happy Xmas everyone.

Choose your own path and collaborate!

I read Graham Atwell’s post Cartoon Planet – A Pedagogy of Change a few days ago. I set it aside to study later because I knew there was lots to reflect on. I’ve now found time to do this and there has been one major learning point. Prompted from the quotes below, I’ve been able to think through the two major themes of Web 2.0 learning – Personal Learning and Collaborative Learning in a more coherent way.

The below 4 quotes give insight on this:

“Whilst young learners in the 21st century are seen as being increasingly independent, simultaneously group skills are more important than ever before.”
“The ‘educational shift’, grounded on social and personalised pedagogies, as advocated by most of the literature, is still in progress (Williamson and Payto, 2009).”
“The construction of new knowledge through collaborative and cooperative activities, which are personally meaningful to the learners, are core to a pedagogy of change (Learning and Teaching Scotland, 2007).”
“Learning relies both on granting the individual an active voice and creating an environment for collective listening and mutual support (UNESCO, 2002).”

These quotes crystallises the issue for me. Everyone can pick and choose their collaborative path. Look at how social networking works, everyone chooses their friends on facebook, they each join the groups they want and communicate with each set of people separately. The choice is entirely theirs and everyone has different connections. Groups can be subject specific or a particular social context or grouping. I think network is a more helpful word here than community. But what’s most important is that the learner is creating their network for themselves.

Let’s think about education. Well, let’s face it, it’s not set up to cater for this type of freedom. Any group work is strictly controlled and limited, be it physical or virtual. With this control, you can compromise achieving what’s “personally meaningful to the learners”. This has the best chance of coming when you give a level of independence. The learner creates and chooses their own path. Downes’ and Siemens connectivism course delivery shows what can be done (it’s a pity I’ve pretty much dropped off this (next year maybe)). I think control is at the heart of what education is all about so this is tough nut to crack. But it’s worth recognising that by controlling how students learn, you can inhibit their ability to learn – both now and in the future.

This has ended somewhere different to where I expected. I had intended to highlight how important the personal and collaborative elements are to my ‘informal’ learning in the blogosphere. I have created my own bloglist which gets refined all the time; I study them, as well as the odd article; I do my job and learn things; I collaborate by talking to a couple of key colleagues; I collaborate in the comments of blogs; I reflect on all this and blog myself. The most important part of this for me is the reflection. Previously, I never found time to reflect and this is the missing elements for lots of people. The other things can happen naturally, if you are lucky, but standing back and reflecting often gets lost.

Question from John Traxler - 'Education - Fit for purpose?'

John Traxler commented on my post from last Saturday Review of Traxler’s ‘Students and Mobile Devices’ and stated that the following question was his overriding concern for the article:

My over-riding question... is something like 'do the social changes associated with universal connectedness and mobility mean major aspects of the education system are bust and not 'fit-for-purpose'? or will technical/tactical fixes (maybe 'mobile learning' is one of these) and compromises continue to see us thro?'

It took a while for me to get my head around what this is asking, but once I did I could see that it was worth reflecting on. In essence, what John is asking is:

Does the social media/Web 2.o mean that the education system isn't 'fit for purpose?' Or can we compromise the protect what we have?

The short answer is YES. And we will compromise but in my utopia we shouldn't.

The first thing to consider is what has Web 2.0 taught us about learning? Most importantly, it's taught us that humans are SOCIAL. We are social beings, we want to communicate, share and network with eachother. It this wasn't true facebook and twitter wouldn't have exploded or we wouldn't keep inventing new and better ways to communicate with eachother. So what does this have to do with learning and changes to our educational system? I guess this has to do with how important you think these things are to learning. For me, communicating, sharing and networking are a fundamental of it. What Web 2.0 does it give this 'social learning' a massive outlet. An outlet that grows and develops all the time. Why not utilise this? By the way, I've deliberately stayed away from talking about pedagogy here. Partly because I'm no expert on this and partly because I try to keep things non-academic on this blog.

So to put this issue simply, the education system isn't social enough and, by using the social media (amongst other things), we should make it more so. All this threatens is the didactic, transmissive model of teaching which for many IS teaching.

Other things Web 2.0 has taught us? There's the whole area of formal vs informal learning which I'm going to link here to the issue of why have a physical entity that is the school or university. These areas are both challenging the notion that you can compartmentalise learning. That you can give learning a elite status that can only be accessed through formal educational institutions when and where they deam to convey it. This is just rubbish. Learning happen all the time, or it can do if you believe and recognise this. Web 2.0 allows us to believe and recognise this. It's been called 'informal' learning which is useful when you want to distinguish it from 'formal' learning but really it's just learning. Of course, you can and do learn in the specialise learning environment, but there is an artificial exclusiveness about it which programmes us the wrong way.

The final area I'm going to raise is the issue of personal choice. Personal choice doesn't exist much in the learning journey through education at the moment. Well it can now! The main reason here is the access to information, access to others to learn from has exploded through Web 2.o - OER, OET, social networking, blogging, micro-blogging etc.

So what about the compromise. I said that we will compromise but shouldn't. Iit's probably better to say dilute instead of compromise. This is because currently any tool adopted gets diluted as we seek to fit it neatly into what we have. By diluting, we lose the essence. For example, sticking a blog tool in an LMS closes it in and thus loses it's social, open nature. This cuts it off from the blogosphere which is the lifeblood of any blog (in my view). So why the compromise? It's because education is run by the educational institutions for the educational institutions. New ideas and tools are fine as long as they don't threatens their existence. In these circumstances they will, of course, defend their patch. You have to think about it in terms of what's most important - if it's the educational institutions then you dilute anything new to fit in what you've got; if it's the learners or the learning there interests come first. The best learning experience is debatable but it would be an easier debate if you took out the inhibiting factors of the rights and interests of the educational institutions.

Interestingly, what links the 3 areas I raised above is CONTROL. Educational institutions will resist them because they cannot control them. In some ways, current education is about control.

Anyway, these are some thoughts on this question which you could probably write a book about. If you have any comments on this, I'd be interested to hear them because there are lots of angles you could come at it from.

Clarifying Informal Learning & Web 2.0

I've been reading The CU Online Handbook which I found through someone's else blog. It's a fairly big document and I wasn't sure it was worth wading through. However, early on I've found a good article which has some insightful comments on Informal and Web 2.0.

Apart from a belief that informal learning needs to be acknowledged and utilize in our education, I have a lot of "learning" to do on informal. The following quote by Phil Antonelli in the chapter Make, Share, Find: Web 2.0 and Informal Learning has helped:

"learning is a natural human cognitive process that is constantly occurring whether someone is in a formal learning setting or not. A simple example of this is how toddlers learn to speak their native tongue. They may be "coached" by parents and familiy members but barring physical deficits there are no formal classes necesary to learn ot speak. This type of learning had been defined as informal learning."

This is a useful example. Just as I hope we can eventually drop the e off e-learning, I hope we can eventually drop the informal/formal prefix to learning. Let's just learn! And not have it defined against our organisational structure or the delivery methods.

Phil also uses a useful classification structure of Make, Share, Find with Web 2.0. In the past, I've used the classification from the document Education 2.0? Designing the web for teaching and learning which aligned web 2.0 with four typically human dispositions:

• Socialising the playful: games and virtual worlds
• Socialising the expressive: media design, sharing, and publication
• Socialising the reflective: blogs, social networks, and wikis
• Socialising the exploratory: syndication, recommenders, folksonomies

The latter is more comprehensive and more academic, but the former feels like a better way of spreading the message. I always look for the simplist way to explain something. You could align:

• Make with playful and expressive
• Share with reflective
• Find with exploratory

I'll keep reading and share the learning here.