Too long for twitter, too short for my blog

Experience U invitation... workshopping it

I'm about to send this out to everyone I know, pls give me some
feedback... does this explain the project?

********************
The experience U Open Course (XPU11) will introduce you to the
University experience. It is a free, five week course offered by UPEI
that will answer some of the questions we hear most often. What
exactly does a student do at university anyway? What does a professor
do? How do i organize my work? How do I succeed?

If you are planning to start school in the fall of 2012, now is the
time to start thinking about it. That's true for students currently in
high school and for mature students returning to school. This course
will give you a chance to get a sense of how we do things at
university, and how you can best prepare to join us.

There will be an introductory video for each week, giving an overview
of the topics we will cover. You can choose to work with us in our
online space if you like, or you can put your work in your own space.
No grades. No 'teacher.' Just a chance to work with some professionals
and some of your peers to get a chance to experience university.
You'll be responsible for your own work... maybe the most important
thing to get used to when starting your university career.

Week 1 – What's a student?
Week 2 – What's a professor?
Week 3 – What's a syllabus?
Week 4 – What's research?
Week 5 – How do I succeed at university?

If these are questions you need answered, sign up. Everyone is
invited. Just click on this link and we'll set you up an account.

Are you an educator interested in this project? Come and join us. We'd
love your participation.

cheers.

dave.

This was a comment I made on a blog post pointed to by @courosa. http://www.chailife.com/2011/03/my-2¢-on-nprs-supposed-liberal-bias/

I'm a big fan of NPR as much as i am of our own CBC... also accused of a liberal bias. I would like to comment, however, that acknowledging the existence of an opposing viewpoint is not the same thing as not having a bias. That kind of thinking is the same that got us the circus that was 'crossfire' and any number of other he said/she said perversions of public debate. Here's one point of view! here's another! meh. 

This is probably an unfair oversimplification, but the republican value chain seems directly connected to things like 'tradition' or 'virtue'. However much you may disagree with their interpretation of this... this is, in their mind, a kind of intelligence. It is not the unrealistic dreaming (again, their words) of a portion of the population unwilling to live up to the more difficult morals of the right and unable to see the economic and social realities of (pardon the sarcasm) old things good new things bad.

There are a number of cynical people on the right (and a few very, very crazy people) who are capitalizing on a weakness of the right to overpower with their own personal agendas of power. It is possible, if you can send a message broadly enough, to make it sound like it is tradition. Simply repeat. repeat. repeat. and it becomes something we have always believed.

For one side it is a debate to establish what is the proper dogma, where tradition and authority are the arbiters. For the other, the enlightenment and, lets say, philosophy are the arbiters. IMHO the idea that anyone who is not actively participating (in a closed door way) in the political process can have ANY opinion is kinda silly, regardless of 'wingness'. 

Believing that you can have an opinion, based on NPR or cnn or msnbc or FOX or any other media we have is, i think, where the mistake lies. I wont say that NPR is 'pandering' to your intelligence, because i believe that they are probably not being cynical in their approach (though i have no proof of this) but really... after all that listening... what do you actually know? This is the weakness of the left. If you are treated to what you think of as an intelligent discussion, you can think of yourself as informed.

It's the closed-ness of our system that makes it broken. (in your country and in mine) Broken for the right. Broken for the left.

Interview with Tracy Lightfoot about facebook, collaboration and safety on cbc radio

(download)

Had a great phone chat a few weeks ago with Tracy Lightfoot of CBC
about facebook, people trying to trick you on the internet and how, if
we just work together, we can figure all this stuff out. She edited it
to make me sound kinda smart. I'm not sure how... but she did.

My new 'open' clause for reviewing academic articles.

Hi there,

Thank you for considering me as a reviewer for your journal. I must
first report that I do not hold a doctorate, nor do I currently work
in a faculty position. There are some who have chosen to overlook that
and see my as sufficiently 'expert' to review papers, but i feel it
only right to mention.

As academic education work is something I do outside of my
communications positions at UPEI, I have to be very careful about what
work I take on. I only work on articles that are in open journals, or
are 'free to republish' for the author (with proper citation).
http://davecormier.com/edblog/2009/04/15/bjet-article-muve-eventedness-an-exp...
Here is an example of this from a recent publication in the British
Journal of Educational Technology.

If this is possible, I would love to review the article, if not, I
hope you are able to find someone else.

Either way, thanks for considering me.

Dave Cormier.

Bon and Dave co-present 10am September 25th

3 :03 Life in the Open: 21st Century Teaching & Learning

Bonnie Stewart, Dave Cormier, University of Prince Edward Island

We live in a time of change. We hear a great deal about technology and social media and the next big thing that will make us more connected, but there is also anxiety and discomfort about issues of privacy in all this open connectedness, and concern about whether our increasingly mobile technologies are making us more distracted and less able to think. Nicholas Carr and Larry Sanger tell us Google is making us stupid. From Mark Prensky, we hear discourse about how today's university students are “digital natives”, foreign beings that those of us born before 1980 or so will never ever truly understand.

This is the context in which we all teach today. We hear kids are not as engaged as they used to be, and in the increasingly instrumental and job-focused view of the academy and its societal role, we wring our hands for the future of the humanities and for our lost heritage of the common good.

What does it mean to live in the open, in this digitized, connected world? How can we, as adults and representatives of the university tradition, participate in or even shape this sphere presented as our opposite, our Other? Is there a role for us, no matter our generation or our literacies? We say yes, and argue that the shift required is one of literacies and networks: that thriving in the open is a matter mostly of engagement. This session will model social media practices and examine their far-reaching implications for higher education.

Where's the Bava - friends thinking about friends at conferences

(download)

For those of you who don't know Jim Groom... you may not understand
why he figures so prominently in the edutechospheropunkosaurus... (see
http://bavatuesdays.com) The opening keynote at northern voice (Bryan
Alexander) reminded us to bring the mystery, and i would add... magic.
It's a role that Jim fills... even when he can't make it to the
conference.

where's the bava... artist unknown.

reply to @timbuckteeth

everything is more about connections than content. or. if you wanna get kooky. all content is really just connections. or. Twitter is knowledge. the trick is knowing how to access decipher and make use of it.

Twitter makes what content and knowledge is more manifest. it doesn't destabilize but rather exposes the destabilization

cribbed in airport

Dave cormier
Mobile - 1902-314-3987

A reply to the NB dept of Education re: 21 century skills

This is my email reply to the dept of ed's request that i blog about their new initiative. Great that New Brunswick is looking ahead... I'm a little concerned about what they are looking ahead to.

Hello,

First, thank you for including me in your mailout. I had not seen the video, and while i had heard of your initiative, I'm now much better acquainted. I note from a quick look at your email, however, that you have not included any personal information about me or my blog, I'm left wondering if you've read it. My blog is not a public instrument, nor is it something that is payed for in anything but my time. I am very interested in public education and have worked extensively with educators from around the world and here on PEI (assuming you know I'm on PEI and was actually born in New Brunswick) and I am more than willing to engage in a discussion Mr. Kierstead, but this is a press release, not an invitation to discussion. If you are interested in being on my blog or any of the other ways in which i communicate about education ( I manage edtechtalk.com, do a monthly seminar series for AACE, and am currently starting an open course on the future of education http://edfutures.com among other community memberships) please engage with me in a way that does not make me feel like a news organization. I don't mean to be picky about that... it's just that you seem to be requesting the kind of response you would get from a news organization... which isn't really the way that I blog. I might be wrong... I'd be interested to hear what you expected.

If you would like my personal viewpoint on the subject, I would agree that there are 21st century competencies that we need to change our education system to support, but think that they are less 'technological' and more about understanding the new ways in which people communicate. The same way that 'driving a car' is a 20th century literacy we've needed to do little to support in a technical sense (people learn to press the gas because it makes the car move and they want to move) but we have to constantly enforce the 'most socially supportive' way to drive - to not hit other cars, not speed, not drink and drive, stay calm, drive defensively, new phone laws. 

Your video is very cool and someone clearly put alot of work into it. I addresses a number of future issues that are very important to the education of students. (i'm not only an educational researcher, but have two young kids about to hit the school system) It is, however, going to be inaccessible to a number of people (i started getting dizzy after 4 min and had to stop the video (i'm 35 y/o and live online) and people with any number of disorders will find it difficult to watch, and listen to) I may have missed the parts about being safe, being responsible citizens, understanding the new audience,  etc that may have been at the end, but the social side of the 21st century was not foregrounded. Our kids are still just going to be kids, they will just be communicating on what will what they have always know. It will not be 'new'. That platform, like a downtown street, is complex and requires a number of skills; seeing through advertising, understanding dangerous locations, dealing with bullies, expressing yourself, understanding your identity etc... It is not a street that they need to learn to 'walk' in. 

Which brings me back to spam. Do you consider your email spam? It is possible, I suppose, that you sent out a single email to a single blogger and did not include a single reference to that person's work or their blog. That distinction... between spam and an invitation to participate in a dialogue is very important to me and to my vision of professional communications in the 21st century. It is critical that students understand this (among many other social skills that happen to be leveraged by technology) coming out of school.. 

Perhaps most interestingly, you've sent me an email full of content that your own confidentiality clause claims i can't post anywhere. I'm assuming that you never thought about it... but it is just this kind of institutional thinking that can be difficult when, as you say, you make changes from within. I'm not convinced of the legality of your confidentiality clause, but my own ethical standards are to abide by the requests of the sender (i could add your email to this post if you like). As your youtube link is public, I will take the risk of including it here.

This reply has been posted to my discussion blog at http://davecormier.net 

dave.

An introduction to our thinkings about the future

I stand corrected! The due date should be March 29th.

cheers all

dave.

On Mon, Mar 22, 2010 at 11:25 PM, dave cormier <coarsesalt@gmail.com> wrote:
Hello everyone,

I will be your instructor over the next two weeks virtually and for four days onsite at your polytechnic in Singapore. We'll probably get to know each other fairly well over the next three weeks, so I'll leave the 'who am i' conversation to those of you interested enough to do a google search for my name (use dave cormier not david cormier).

I must say that I'm tremendously excited by the opportunity presented by this course. It is material that I am very interested in and I consider it a privilege to be working through it with you. We have a very short period of time in order to get a fair amount of work done, hence my desire to get started as soon as possible. I've written a couple of blog posts mulling over my intentions regarding the course but I very much hope that this will change over the next too weeks of getting to know each other... changing as I get a better sense of your context and your interests. http://davecormier.com/edblog/2010/03/09/the-future-of-education-a-course-in-futures-thinking/

Our first assignment is very much intended to help start that conversation. I need to know what your technical competencies are, what your interests are, what your context looks like and what futures may look like to you at the moment. In the interests of this, I'd like you to take a look at this blog post that I wrote last week after an interview with Stephen Downes. http://davecormier.com/edblog/2010/03/19/the-pad-trends-drivers-and-a-scenario-from-1998/

Pay specific attention to the audio link available at the end of the post. In it, stephen describes his context at the college he worked at in 1998, why he felt the need to look to the future, what kinds of changes he saw coming and how that might affect the life of the educational worker. I'd like you to read through some of the piece (The Pad section in particular) and I'd like you to create a DIGITAL story of your own context, what one thing you think may be coming ten years in the future and how that might change your life as an educational worker.

It's a big first job... but by the time it is done, we'll all know alot more about each other. You can use youtube or slideshare or any other tool you would like. I'm thinking that your story should be somewhere in the 3-7 minute range.

1. create a digital story
2. due date - monday March 22nd.

Feel free to contact me with any questions. Private submissions will be accepted accompanied by valid reason.

 

An introduction to our thinkings about the future

Hello everyone,

I will be your instructor over the next two weeks virtually and for four days onsite at your polytechnic in Singapore. We'll probably get to know each other fairly well over the next three weeks, so I'll leave the 'who am i' conversation to those of you interested enough to do a google search for my name (use dave cormier not david cormier).

I must say that I'm tremendously excited by the opportunity presented by this course. It is material that I am very interested in and I consider it a privilege to be working through it with you. We have a very short period of time in order to get a fair amount of work done, hence my desire to get started as soon as possible. I've written a couple of blog posts mulling over my intentions regarding the course but I very much hope that this will change over the next too weeks of getting to know each other... changing as I get a better sense of your context and your interests. http://davecormier.com/edblog/2010/03/09/the-future-of-education-a-course-in-futures-thinking/

Our first assignment is very much intended to help start that conversation. I need to know what your technical competencies are, what your interests are, what your context looks like and what futures may look like to you at the moment. In the interests of this, I'd like you to take a look at this blog post that I wrote last week after an interview with Stephen Downes. http://davecormier.com/edblog/2010/03/19/the-pad-trends-drivers-and-a-scenario-from-1998/

Pay specific attention to the audio link available at the end of the post. In it, stephen describes his context at the college he worked at in 1998, why he felt the need to look to the future, what kinds of changes he saw coming and how that might affect the life of the educational worker. I'd like you to read through some of the piece (The Pad section in particular) and I'd like you to create a DIGITAL story of your own context, what one thing you think may be coming ten years in the future and how that might change your life as an educational worker.

It's a big first job... but by the time it is done, we'll all know alot more about each other. You can use youtube or slideshare or any other tool you would like. I'm thinking that your story should be somewhere in the 3-7 minute range.

1. create a digital story
2. due date - monday March 22nd.

Feel free to contact me with any questions. Private submissions will be accepted accompanied by valid reason.