"Assessing" the Value of your PLN. . .

Lily The Ballerina Pig

A few housekeeping tips before I discuss my past weeks.  There is no class this Hallow's Eve.  We agreed to meet on Google+ Wednesday evening at 7:30 pm.  Correct me if I am wrong or there are any issues regarding this meeting.  What should be completed: I expect that the Pink 6 Senses website will be completed, you will have more than one new post to discuss (and don't forget to comment on each other's posts, but some posts from the #eci831 class as well), you will have watched at least one of the EC&I classes, and that you will be ready to discuss what you have learned and shared this week. Tomorrow's EC&I 831 class is: Sharing, facilitated by Dean Shareski.  It begins at 6pm PSTand lasts for an hour and a half.  One thing that might be avoiding your consciousness is the weekly participation in at least one educational chat with an accompanying reflection. . .haven't seen one in awhile.  I realize that it is both a challenge and a bit daunting to be responsible for your own learning.  Like anything worth doing, you must take the time to cultivate your practice.
Speaking of cultivating your practice. . .
The first thing I want to discuss is our connection with Dr. Couros and his EC&I 831 Social Media and Open Education class from the University of Regina.  I have been following @courosa for awhile on Twitter and when I saw what he was doing with this course, I contacted him about some possible ways to connect our classes.  It took a few weeks, but he agreed to put us on his Oct 25 agenda and connect our classes.  Here is the connection to their blogs. . .Here is their Twitter list. . .both of which have been shared on Twitter and the #usdedu & #eci831 hashtags.  I watched the recording from the Oct 25 session about Rhizomatic Learning featuring Dave Cormier.  It was a very interesting session.  I loved the way Dave used blank slides to gather information from the group.  Although, the overall experience would have been even more enriching if I had been in the synchronous session.  I look forward to the connections that you all can make for the rest of the semester.
Last Monday, Dr. Lattimer and met with Jason and Jenni, who run the Daraja Academy, a boarding school for Keynan girls who do not have the resources to continue their education.  We discussed their mobile learning grant and ways in which iPads, iPod Touches, and other mobile devices could be used in their school.  It is amazing to me that mobile learning could occur in even remote areas of Keyna! I plan to keep in touch with Jason and Jenni as they begin this journal of technology integration at Daraja Academy.
Last Tuesday, I participated in the 9am #edchat: What are some specific things we can do to involve parents in the education of their children? It was a very active chat and I found myself sharing many ideas. At the end of the chat, I received a DM (direct message) from the moderators asking me to write a summary of the chat for their blog. I was honors to be asked to write the summary and hopefully, it will be published this week! I'll let you know.
Last Wednesday, I found myself struggling to get my joint doctoral program students to understand exactly what it means to cultivate a PLN. I am not a fan of prescribing what it takes to cultivate something like a PLN because it has to be something that comes naturally out of the motivation to learn new ideas and network with like educators. Of course, as I mentioned earlier, it does take time to cultivate this into a practice. I gave guidelines, group discussion, and even a video, but I wasn't seeing the results for which I was hoping. So, I decided to construct a rubric/guideline for how to cultivate a PLN. I started with the exemplary column and worked backward from their. When I finished, I tweeted a link to my work (in GoogleDocs) using the #edchat hashtag. About five minutes later, I received a message from @DataDiva, who is an expert on quality rubrics, noting that she thought I needed more positive language in the lowest column. I asked for her assistance and she first sent this link to her wiki on the important on the lowest levels. After about an hour and a half of back and forth communication, I have what is a pretty awesome guideline on how to cultivate a PLN. I put the guideline on both the EDUC 578 blog and my CSUSM/UCSD JDP blogs. On Thursday, I received a tweet from @DelaneyKirk asking if she could share my PLN guidelines in the Chronicle for Higher Ed. Two things are important here. I have been teaching for almost 15 years and I learned more about rubrics from @DataDiva in our Twitter conversation than I have in any professional development or training/readings. I eventual final product will be a valuable part of my future discussions on PLNs. The second issue is the ability to network with others on Twitter and my willingness to share my work publicly allowed my work to be shared in ways that I couldn't have imagined.  
I hope this post shows you all the value of cultivating your PLN!!


Question: What have you seen as the biggest obstacle in creating/learning in your PLN?

Innovation Week & Beyond

First of all, it was both exciting and scary for me to assign innovation week.  Exciting because I really wanted to see what the results would be without having too many educational "constraints."  Scary because, during the class discussion, I decided to give up all control on the content of your innovation week topic.  Initially, I wanted to tie it to learning and technology, the topic of this course.  However, I soon realized that this would not make it very authentic.  I know that I would have probably picked something techie or educational, but that's because it is what I am consumed with both professionally and personally.  But the look on Christina's face when she immediately thought, "Yoga," really cemented that fact that this was the right thing to do.
Why innovation week?  Well, as most of you can probably tell, I am fascinated with intrinsic motivation when it comes to learning.  I don't believe that learning acquired extrinsically. . ."chasing a carrot," or a grade, produces the type of deep learning that lasts.  I have studied for many a test the evening before, received the carrot, an A, and then completely forgot what I had learned in a week or sooner.  This I believe, is the effect of a ubiquitous cultural value on "winning" and getting good grades. I'm not saying that one cannot receive both good grades and learn deeply, but I am saying that this is more the exception than the rule.
Now that you have all completed your innovation week projects and reflected on them, I want to make a deeper connection to you as a future teacher (although I realize that many of you are also currently teaching).  A few of you have touched on this subject in your reflections, but I would like you to take it a bit deeper. After reading and commenting on your peers' innovation week reflections, I would like you to write about the next step, how you are going to apply what you learned, either conceptually or personally, to your future as a learner and as a teacher. . .I want to hear about the future you; hopefully, someone who has a class full of learners not students ;-)

I have also been working very hard to connect with Professor Alec Couros, who teaches a course called Social Media and Open Education for the University of Regina, in Saskatchewan, Canada.  I am hoping to connect our small class with their class, which is not only attended by U of R students, but by anyone who would like to take the course. . .the open education concept. . .

Here is a link to his course schedule.  The courses are synchronous on Tuesday evening, 8-9:30 pm our time and the recordings are hosted on the class website.  We will discuss the possibilities this evening. . .

Question:  What is your Tuesday evening schedule?

Daniel Pink on Grades

I found this shortened video of Dan Pink on a Washington D.C. television show from Larry Ferlazzo's blog.  As we have been reading Pink and I am extremely interested in the concept of learning versus grades (as we have discussed in class), I thought you all might find this interesting. . .






So my question for the class is this:  By taking grades out of the equation, do you find that you are learning more in this class over a class where you have to worry about the grade? Explain.

So, I was just wondering . . .

Click Here for results

Pink - A Whole New Mind, Part I

Some of my notes from Part I of A Whole New Mind  The Conceptual Age!

Chaper 1: two things that stood out: How the L-Directed Thinkers led to positions/vocations that allowed their individual inclinations to shape families, institutions and societies. This allowed for vocations that were traditionally held by R-Directed Thinkers to be devalued.  This played out in the subjects that were deemed important in our schools.

Chapter 2: I really liked the way Pink discussed the impact of Abundance, Asia, and Automation as the cause of the diminished importance of L-Directed Thinking.
Abundance - prosperity led to an increased value on beauty, spirituality, and emotion
Asia - introduction of the concept of outsourcing jobs that are typical L-directed jobs from the U.S. to India and China
Automation - machines replaced human muscle in the Industrial Age; machines can now 'replace' human brains in the Information Age (Knowledge workers: lawyers, doctors, accountants, engineers, and executives) 

Chapter 3:

Industrial Age (physical strength and personal fortitude)––Information Age (proficiency in L-Directed Thinking)––Conceptual Age (creator and the empathizer, whose distinct ability is mastery of R-Directed Thinking)

"In short, we've progressed from a society of farmers to a society of factory workers to a society of knowledge workers.  And now we're progressing yet again–to a society of creators and empathizers, of pattern recognizers and meaning makers." (Pink, 50)

This leads to what I believe is the thesis of his book, where he emphasizes that we need not look replace the L-Directed Thinker with the R-Directed Thinker, but to take the two 1/2 brains and emphasize the need to be both:

"L-Directed Thinking remains indispensable.  It's just no longer sufficient.  In the Conceptual Age, what we need instead is a whole new mind." (51)

High Concept, High Touch
High Concept: the ability to create artistic and emotional beauty, to detect patterns and opportunities, to craft a satisfying narrative, and to combine seemingly unrelated ideas into a novel invention.
High Touch: ability to empathize, to understand the subtleties of human interaction, to find joy in one's self and to elicit it in others, and to stretch beyond the quotidian, in pursuit of purpose and meaning.

Examples of these abilities increasing in value & moving from the periphery to the center:

• medical schools training students in "narrative medicine"
• medical schools incorporating spirituality in coursework
• Japan's education system now fostering creativity, artistry, and play––education of the heart
• GM's leader saying it's in the art business
• in US number of graphic designers has  increased tenfold in a decade
• since 1970, US has 30% more people earning a living as writers & 50% more as musicians

IQ, EQ & Education

Source: mathematiquesnoir.com via Jeffery on Pinterest

As we can see, it is no surprise that only IQ, which largely measures L-Directed Thinking is the type of intellectual value that schools seem to support.  Daniel Goleman found that IQ accounted for only 4-10% of career success.  We need to look at other ways in which kids are smart. . .like Professor Robert Sternberg's Rainbow Project, which measures more R-Directed Thinking.  It's not that we throw out one for the other, but that we look at the entire child when assessing for intelligence.

It is no wonder that we produce unmotivated, uncreative students who just don't care about school or see its relevance in their lives. . .it is only addressing 1/2 of their brain

Cultural Creatives-meaning and transcendence gaining in important; 'seeing the big picture'. . .
In Part II, Pink will discuss the aptitudes necessary to thrive in the Conceptual Age: Design. Story. Symphony. Empathy. Play. Meaning.

I have a few articles that discuss Finland's education system, which ironically scores extremely high in the PISA (Program for International Student Assessment) tests, but they do no take standardized tests until the end of high school.

Question:  What is your biggest "takeaway" from the first part of Pink's book?

Week 4: Cultivating Your PLN

I really enjoyed class on Monday.  From my perspective, it really felt like you were all starting to become one with your passion and the ways to use your PLN and other web 2.0 tools to curate your ideas.  I am really excited to see you all progress as the semester continues.  Please feel free to blog about any questions you still have or support that you need.  It was great to see Christina A., Annie and Melissa post some thoughts. . .I also think there was a Christina F. and Annie sighting during yesterdays #edchat.  If I am not mistaken, Christina was actually retweeted by none other than Cybraryman.  Woot! There has also been a lot of resources shared to the Diigo group and some awesome tweeting!  Thank you.

I really want you to continue to do what you are doing:  Write, Tweet, Bookmark, Comment, Share, and build our small community by giving feedback to your peers.  The hardest part of this process is probably commenting on other blogs. . .give it a shot and just blog about the experience.  Sherilyn, feel free to revisit your first comment and the emotions that followed in a blog post. As I mentioned in class, I really don't want to give you a defined amount of writing/tweeting/reading to do. . .I want you to cultivate your PLN every days and participate in at least one educational chat per week.

I would like you to watch the following video:  Visitors and Residents and write a post reflecting on where you are in this continuum and how you see your future on the Internet.  Leave a thoughtful comment on all of your peers' blogs on this topic.

Also, we all committed to reading Part I of A Whole New Mind by Pink. In a blog post I would like you to explain two things:  What is the Conceptual Age, and why does Pink believe that the Conceptual Age requires what he calls, "a whole new mind?"  Think about how this applies to you and to education. Leave a thoughtful comment on all of your peer' blogs.

This week's Question:   What is your current favorite teacher movie and why?

Your Passion in Wordle

I took all of your posts about finding your passion and pasted the content into Wordle.net. Below are the Wordles of your quest to find your passions. . .pretty interesting outcomes!

your finding passion posts as Wordles. . .can you guess who is who?