Learning Journey

Last weekend I traveled all the way to Ilmenau, Germany. I must say that it was not the easiest city to get to (physically - I think the virtual participants have no complaints here ) , BUT it hosted the best learning event I have recently been to.
It was not just the fact that it was well organized, and that the commitment of the people organizing it did show all the way through. It was also because it was not organized enough and people could do their thing their own way. The Saturday started with the negotiation of sessions suggested and available time slots. Now, that is probably the first time you hear about a conference in which speakers are not selected or recommended, but rather self- nominated. Impressed? I was. Not so much for the idea, but more for the daring of putting it into practice in such an extraordinary, yet natural way. You simply have to grab a mic and announce your session, I was told! And that was part of the magic of the educamp. The other aspect that got my attention from the beginning was the fact that it brought together researchers and practitioners with students in an open forum. And I mean quite a few students. From future Realschule teachers, to computer sciences students.  I loved the mixture of experiences and views. I was impressed with the engagement of all and the support this ‘do it yourself’ event has received from internal as well as external sponsors. [just wish I had had more time to talk to more people ]
I am sorry to say that I won’t classify  it as a conference. I wouldn’t call it an unconference either. It’s much more meaningful than that. It was more of a casual gathering – a party where people came to to congregate and talk to each other. It was the rather casual, easy-going atmosphere participants jointly created that made this an incredible event. Space for individual voice as well as collective thinking was created.
This is the living proof that things are changing. We can also argue that things are permanently changing and that this debate has been on for ages, as it was stated during educamp. That’s true too, but somehow we need to keep making sense of that change and meaningfully link it to education. It is high time we did what we have been preaching for years…
I think I can say that slowly we are getting there. Gradually we are involving the institutions in supporting the shift through events and initiatives like these. Such happenings might seem small, but their impact is huge at different levels. Changing the way things ‘are done around here’ takes time, requires effort and persistence. Transforming minds and procedures as well as defying academic tradition are challenges contemporaneous theories envisage, but that practice is still trying to catch up with.

But isn’t that the main mission of education: to engage in a process of change and redefinition of ideas and knowledge while trying to develop a deeper understanding of the world we interact with? Isn’t that knowing – the never-ending path into knowledge?

Things are changing because some people [are these the enthusiasts, the pioneers, the innovators, the rebels...?! I don't know...] are making an extra effort for them to change. These people are not particularly seen as heroes, nor do they want to (although they might be seen as trouble!!!), but they do attempt to challenge the norm, push boundaries and experiment learning, teaching and research (the world contained in it too) through different perspectives. They are willing to try. And they have the confidence to do so. Some categorize them as edupunks, others have stated it’s more about hacking into the educational system. As much as I like these phrases – they convey a certain sense of rebellion against an established, impersonal system, I still prefer no labels attached. These are just educators – Just?! - committed to give their very best to make the difference while trying to catch up with a world in rapid digital motion.
The urge of using technology is not to automate content or replace the individual. It is rather to extend their reach to a wider community and thus create many more real learning opportunities even if through virtual environments. It’s the human factor that matters the most: how we connect to people and allow them to connect back to us. It just broadens our world, extends our possibilities to learning, teaching, researching… being…  with different people who otherwise we would probably not have access to!

Educamp made justice to this. By the same token we instinctively provided glimpses of our activity in Ilmenau, through video, microblogging and web-radio, people  also had the chance to be ‘brought in’ through the same channels, if they chose to. [ choice is important, but often misinterpreted as dangerous!]

Communication is indeed a two-way road, and learning and teaching is based on a reciprocal activity of expressing and listening to one another’s ideas. One doesn’t happen without the other.

As a final thought, I just would like to emphasize we need to keep working on this and push the change at all levels: and this include transformation of learning spaces, balance between presentations and conversations/discussions [one thing is to develop a voice, another thing is to listen to your own voice all the time...!]…

And in the end what we need is confidence to instigate change (learning itself is an ongoing process of changing) and passion to inspire and motivate that change. People will follow and co-lead if they feel they belong and have something to contribute to such environment. Educamp proved to have that charisma!

If you miss this one, watch out for the next Educamp in Graz (Nov 2009)

I have a feeling it will be as exciting and relevant!

I thoroughly enjoyed today’s session as part of Buth’s workshop. There were very though provoking questions there! It is great to connect to new people all the time…it’s just brilliant to be challenged by people’s ideas and experiences. It makes me think, it helps me reflect, and most important it helps me see things from someone else’s eyes.
Now that is what I call a great learning experience.

I have been thinking about what someone in the room said. I have written about this before too and I do understand where she (sorry didn’t get the participant’s name! ) was coming from.
We, the enthusiastic about everything that involves pushing a button, has a plug and enables interaction, sometimes come across as evangelists, or at least as people who think technology is the answer for all our problems, when, in matter a fact, that is not what we think and neither what we believe in.
But the fact is that there was, there has been, and probably there will always be really good and also really bad teaching. [my best teacher was my 3rd grade teacher...in such a poor  school that we didn't even have a phone... wonder if that would be possible today...?].

But as I was saying… Technology is not everything…it’s not even that much to be honest, but it can be something that can help us reach out to a wider world, simultaneously widen the classroom and make it closer to the world…
Technology is about bridging connections, open new communication channels, enable collaboration at a larger scale and situate the learning activity in environments and spaces as never possible before.

For me, technology is only useful if it enables me to enable my students with the opportunity to efficiently and effectively learn in a more realistic context. After all, learning has never been limited to the classroom walls…how many of us have not advised our students to travel in order to get closer to the reality, the culture and the language they are studying? How many of us haven’t made meaningful experiences outside the official learning place and schedule? And how many of us didn’t wish we had more opportunities to do so? Oh well… technology provide us with new ways of traveling, of making new experiences, and of transforming our practice and approach at the push of a button.  Of course, it is not the push of the button that really matters, but rather where we allow that button (that channel) to take us to…

Times are changing, and the change changes us too.
Like I once said, my grandfather used to ride a donkey, my father had a motorbike, but soon realized that a car was better for him. These days I spend a lot of hours on airplanes to reach the places where I have to be. We live in a changing world! We need to adapt to continue to be relevant, to provide students with more opportunities… I wonder what the future awaits us, but I am sure my offspring will be experiencing many different channels I haven’t dreamed of yet… maybe because they are still not part of my reality, hence embedded in my habits and part of my needs.

Here is the presentation I attempted to give yesterday. It was developed in collaboration with Carla Arena

Feel free to contact us. we love to connect!

…at least for once, this can actually be fun!

Tuesday at 1230 UK time, join us and tell us your story!

Here is how it works:
Bring your brown bag and join us for a story lunch, this Tuesday (24/02/2009) at 12:30 GMT (check your local time here). The session will happen  in elluminate, and aims to provide you with the opportunity to be a STARR , i.e, to brief tell YOUR story or give an example of how you share. There will also be the chance to explore our learning stories according to the PLANET project’s methodology. 

An open wiki has been created for this activity, but we welcome different, creative ways of telling and sharing your story!

If you haven’t had time to create your story, join us all the same.What matters in that we connect!

We really look forward to talking to you in real time!

We’d also like to see pictures of your real lunch at our virtual meeting, but try not to spill your tea on the keyboard.

The EXTEND project team, funded by JISC-EMERGE Benefits and Realisation, are holding an asynchronous discussion event from Sunday 15 Feb-Sunday 1 Mar 2009 where we will be exploring the topic Sharing practice: how and where. Along with JISC-EMERGE colleague Janet Finlay from PLANET, we would like to invite you to join us in this conversation around Communities of Practice and Pattern Language.

Just sign in (you might need to sign up too!) to CABWEB and join the conversation!

I just came across this video today. And I think quite captures the essence of learning today…

The ideas are not new…we have all been talking about this…Some of us have been doing it, but it is never to much to remind people of this issues…realities.

I was also ver intrigued by the final question: ‘why do we need open access to education?’, which kind of makes me want to reply with another question: Why did we close it in the first place?

And yes I know, it is related to power, social and political issues… but I am glad we are slowly moving into a culture of openess and sharing. We are still not quite there and there are areas where this is more evident than others. So is the process of change. It takes time, and it takes patience, and, above all, it takes willing and experience. We just can’t give up now. I think that as educators, we need to keep taking this movement forward, if we are to contribute to a more transparent and open approach where empowering people with new knowing experiences is concerned. That is where knowledge finds its essence: in the (joint) effort of individuals trying to make sense of a reality that concerns them particular. A reality in which they exist and which they can (should) no longer ignore.

If for nothing else, because the change changes us too.

This is a response to Peter Lake’s blog post, since I am not able to submit my comment in his blog.

Peter is being cautious about the social networking phenomenon. And I don’t blame him. There’s a lot going on and the opinions are diverse. But I share the opinion that to form our own ideas about social networking there is nothing like trying. I don’t want to convey the message that everything will be roses, but there are a lot of good things that can be achieved through social networking in the classroom when a good strategy is in place. I especially like the fact that the social web has enabled me to make my classroom take part in a bigger world than that the school I taught in could offer them. These experiences are important and students appreciate them. Such experiences are also exciting and can be key for individual and collective engagement, collaboration and communication. That is learning for me!

So here is my answer to Peter:

I think you already started answering your answer: Students are using and so will the teachers next door, so how can we avoid it? Kids will demand to use it as part of their classroom too if they see others doing so.

Then it comes the time…indeed we spend a lot of time on the Internet…but that is probably a change we will have to get used to do. Before we had telephones, we spent time writing letters or traveling miles to visit people. Today we ‘give them a ring’ and no one gives much thought about it. The world is changing and those changes change us too.
It’s hard to understand this phenomenon if we are reluctant to be part of it. Having said that, not everything are roses nor is this a perfect system… there’s a lot of chatter, a lot of distraction and not everything is relevant or pedagogical useful. But that is life…made up of different components, different people, etc…
Above all I think social networking provide us the opportunity to learn in a more realistic environment and make us more open to listen to and talk to others. I think the context is important.
Another aspect I would like to stress is that social networking cannot - should not - be approached in a traditional way because there is nothing traditional about it! Or better, there is a lot of tradition, but not the modern tradition. To me it resembles to the ancient times where people learned while engaging in philosophical discussions, listened and told stories based on someone’s experiences, or worked with and observed the more experienced ones in their work… I think above all, it is about getting people together and bring out the best of them through a relaxed, fun yet meaningful conversation.
But that is something we only come to realize with time and within the networks that add something to our experience. cultivating the ‘right-for-you’ network around you is crucial in that sense. The key is to look for like-minded people, I guess. We will be bale to relate more to them than to those we will have little in common with.

Like you, when I started this journey into technologies, I didn’t know where it would take me, so I blogged about it…somehow it helped me think…and start creating my learning bonds on the web.

his first week has just been amazing.  We have had a great time connecting in our EVO Workshop.
It started with a very simple, yet quite intriguing ice-breaker activity Nellie Deutsch came up  with. It consisted on asking participants to connect to ours and discover what their birth order inside their family was. No instructions on how to do this were provided. After all it’s their learning and we wanted them to explore their creative side their own way. And boy, did they do it! After a couple of hours the activity in the ning was running at full speed. People created surveys, developed online forms, twittered about it, send private messages to their ning friends, used videos and their blogs… everything to answer to challenge #1!  What a blast!!! We were also learning with one another’s’ reactions and consequently trying out the toys that were being used during that first half of the week. There is nothing like learning in context. It’s not about learning the dry commands of a tool, but rather using something that might help you find your way inside your learning path. I am a true believer that contextualized learning is the way forward. If we create the conditions for a friendly, cosy environment, the interactive atmosphere grows much more meaningful, and from that context relevant content usually arises. The support of all those involved is the best information resources one can get to support his/her learning.
Five years ago I took a course at the University of Coimbra. At the time these tools were not available, but the course leaders were providing their own tool, which was a virtual space they shared with the rest of the members of the course. To our surprise not even one resource, one artifact was available there for us. ‘Man , they are not making this easy’ I thought at the time… and in fact that was not their purpose. If we were to inhabit a ‘part’ of that environment, it was up to us to decorate in our own taste and manner,  with our learning activity. And if the place were also for communal gathering, then it was up to us as a group to define and create the spaces we thought to benefit out joint online existence. Their point was to make that a totally constructivist approach. So we constructed. We were to work to be a the community and reach our goals. We were to make it as much a personal experience as well as a joint learning enterprise. And the fact is that we did, even though we did not even pay much attention to it at the time. We set up our personal space, decorating it as well as we could or wanted with resources, blog post, while contributing to the development of the communal spaces with groups discussions, group work, resources and also with a space dedicated to pure chatter - because we all are interested in more things than the disciplines that characterize our professional activity.
Somehow, this week reminded me of that experienced. This workshop seems to symbolize  what Bee Dieu wrote in the title of her former blog: Freedom to roam. How important is that in the learning context?
I have always enjoyed freedom and loved to be able to add something personal to the way I represent my learning. Creative freedom makes the journey to knowledge much more pleasant and enjoyable. I think we learn better when our heart is it it. At least, I am like that. I find it hard to follow someone who is incapable  of showing enthusiasm for what they do. I find it also difficult to get interested in dry information. I do enjoy my lonely moments of reflection - when I try to seek quiet, deep personalized understanding of the latest experiences and content, but what really triggers my activity as a learners is the people that surround me and which whom I develop joint conclusions.  That is why many times I end up publishing my personal reflections in my blog, as a way of sharing this more closed part of me with others. That is also a way of refining my thoughts. I think my blog is my Digifolio - the place where I condense the ideas and thoughts I acquire and develop from all the other places I so eagerly belong and contribute to. Consequently that sharing also helps define who I am and withwhom/ how I learn. It also helps the building of my professional ID as a Digital Learner…

Ok, and here the stories start. I believe in the power of telling stories.Story telling is an important aspect in our daily life. We learn with one another - there is no doubt about that - and we especially learn with the stories the others have to tell. Listening to is a very important activity in one’s learning. Somehow in online spaces this is more achievable than in face to face scenarios. Maybe because off-line we are always short for time; online it takes time! This is the only way we are able to present ourselves to the others and show evidence that we are ‘listening to’ what they say, also with the expectation they will also pay attention to our contributions. Then there is also the impact of the written word which is amazingly powerful in establishing learning connections. Through words we express ourselves better, we are able to go deeper in our beliefs and feelings - it allows us to open up more without being exposed to the naked eye of our interlocutor. In short, the process of expressing ourselves in words often concedes us the time to mature our message in a cohesive speech as well as to deepen our learning bonds …
For some reason books still haven’t disappeared, some of the best (love) stories began in epistolary format and blogs have increased the popularity of writing the the last decade or more.  The web as it stands today also enables us to develop stories in many other formats. What is important is that we don’t keep the narrative inclosed ourselves. After all, a good story is always worth telling. And who doesn’t like a good one?
The second half of the week when we started telling our own stories … sharing a bit more of ourselves. Once again creativity was welcome and the originality of people’s story formats as well and the genuineness of their narratives was just amazing.
I am not sure of what the others think, as I can only speak for myself, but I have learned a lot this week and been having a lot of fun talking to people and exploring the different spots that have created inside the ning.

This post was originally posted here.

…well, it will eventually end, but until it does, I hope to enjoy every minute of it!

Here is the beginning.

Click here if you can’t see the resource above, or if you want to see it in a bigger size.

And here is a song to go with it (I somehow wasn’t able to embed it in the scrapblog)

Post originally published here.

Less than one week into this workshop and I am completely blown away by people’s frenetic contributions.
I just can’t get enough.
It has been an interesting week. I must say I was a bit nervous before this session started. I always get a bit nervous when I start working with a new group… always to realize how much I love to be part of it.

The most interesting part has been that we all are doing it our own way {can I hear Sinatra singing?! ].

We have been using the tools we think best for our purpose… also the ones we knowa about. We engage in the spaces we feel more compelled to do so, and throughout this exploratoty journey we establish parallel conversations with those we think to have more affinities with.
I see that being the greatest power of participatory media which helps bridge conversation in context. The content?….
ahhh…information you mean? Well… the content emerges from that same context and from the enthusiastic conversations powered by human interaction. That is what I call real user-generated content, which is based on genuine dialogues and exchange of perspectives. It’s real sharing! It dysplays Intrinsic motivation! Enthusiasm.  Pure learning. And a lot of fun too.
I have learned so much with everyone’s views and ways of addressing issues and challenges. I like to observe people in action. I learn a lot from other people’s practices. It also instigates my trying to do something new, change my practice, alter my views.
I am here to be convinced. To develop my perceptions. I love seeing the landscape from someone else’s eyes. We always find something different, something new we haven’t seen yet…through a new optic.
This is being a great learning opportunity for me. We had had some considerable fun dreaming about it (planning it?). But now, reshaping it to meet to try to meet people’s personalities and create engaging situations is even more interesting.  Amazing also is the creativity of all those on board this virtual adventure.

Let’s keep going.

I love this speech - he speaks in such an inspiring way and gets the essence of community - when we care about the others while following our passion and heart- these are the greatest ingredients for meaningful learning to happen!
Learning is about listening to people; provide meaningful feedback and keep the communication channels open!
So trying to use Randy’s lesson: learning is a journey. And it’s not how much you can travel, it is how well you can travel it! That requires finding ourselves within the communities we belong to…the one we feel we can contribute to… it’s about peer work / team spirit!!
Video available here: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=RcYv5×6gZTA

And try not to cry while listening to his words of wisdom!