Recently in Course Stuff Category

Please leave a comment to this post related to the food and drink you'll contribute to the final class.

Hard to believe, but it is time to share the final assignment for the semester.  This is a two part assignment ... the first is to be completed on an individual basis while the second will be completed in your teams.  This week we'll give you over half the class to work with your teams, so come prepared with any questions you may have.  Also, it is important that you get close to completing the first part prior to class Thursday.

Drop them as a comment here.

• Discover and share podcasts within specific areas of interest
• Formal or informal interviews with students, faculty, professionals
• Focus group related to a specific topics
• Brainstorming and capturing group thinking
• Guiding people through tasks (audio only, screen cast, video cast)

laggard = peripheral participant?

“An obvious principle of human communication is that the transfer of ideas occurs most frequently between two individuals who are similar.”

"learning takes place not so much through the reification of a curriculum as through modified forms of participation that are structured to open the practice to nonmembers" (p100).

Diffusion of Innovation and the Tipping Point - Who is Paul Revere?

When does a teaching environment become a learning community? 

What does it mean to engage in meaningful activity that is focused on a goal in the context of school (k-12 or higher ed)?

Is there a real life identity that is separate or more real than the multiple online identities?  Does this depend on the person?  Is RL identity monolithic, and if not, what parts are the real parts?

What does a community of practice approach mean for collaboration in schools?  How do you do assessment?

What is the impact of all this multitasking on students and their connection to communities?  What about their identity?

How is it different to respond to these questions directly in the course blog versus posting into the Pligg environment?

For those of you that don't know, Cole was recently in San Antonio, TX for the Educause Learning Initiative (ELI 2008).  Sounds like an amazing conference, maybe I will be able to go someday.  Anyway, one of the speakers was Michael Wesch, the creator of the Web 2.0 video you watched the first week.  I thought you might be interested in seeing him talk about his ideas and what he sees as the implications of a Web 2.0 world for his teaching.  Here is the link.  There are other good talks for you to take a peek at, in particular, Henry Jenkins is a well known media scholar from MIT, and there is a talk about the Horizon Report.

I have to admit as a person that was a classroom teacher K-12 and then spends a lot of time thinking about teaching and learning I am always a little frustrated by folks from other disciplines (i.e not education) that come to the "revelation" that lecture halls filled with students is not a good model.  It also makes me sad that faculty without prior teaching experience end up reinventing the wheel in the name of innovative practice without ever considering that they are likely on the same campus with people that can help them think about what they are doing in interesting new ways. 

As we work to make the Pligg space more powerful and flexible, we'll be looking for your feedback.  The first one we have is to create a tag / category that will allow for sorting via week.  Leave comments to this post with your ideas for making this space work better for how the class is using it.  It will only get better if you participate.

I just wanted to let you all know that the Blogs at Penn State toolset is now working with visitor comments.  If you want to turn on commenting, you can follow the directions here: