Open, Connected & Social With EC&I 831

The next online, open education course I am involved with this semester is EC&I 831: Social Media & Open Education from the University of Regina with Dr. Alec Couros that meets only every Tuesday evening (8-10pm CST). I first learned about this course through a few online networks in the ed tech arena, and I thought it may be an interesting lens to review curriculum and content development for learning. Here’s the 5 minute elevator pitch for the course:

The Tuesday evening elluminate session provided the basic introduction to the course schedule and outline. I am looking forward to connecting to other students to further explore the role of the educator/learner in terms of media literacy, knowledge and social networks.

It was great to hear the parallels between my personal philosophy of education, and how it ties into the learning objectives of this course.  Dr. Couros’ believes that there are great strengths in learning relationships and connectiveness amongst students, rather than just the specific content or knowledge.  It will be interesting to see how this sentiment is interpretted by the various weekly session speakers and participants throughout the course of the semester.

Although this course is similar to CCK09, I think that EC&I 831 will challenge me to:

• get perspectives of social media education – history, ideas & development
• expand my social learning theories & applications
• experiment & play with NEW social learning & open educational tools/resources
• provide a critical lens for curriculum development with social media & open education
• build up my learning network – connect & enage with new online peers

Open Learning Courses: EC&I 831 and CCK09

Summer always leads to much needed time outdoors and away from the computer. It’s nice to be off the grid, but also good to plug in and reconnect with friends and learning ideas online.

To kick off the new academic year, online education, and career development I have signed up for a couple of online, open education courses to compliment the grad program I start this fall.

Here are the two courses that I am connecting with mid-September:

1. Connectivism & Connective Knowledge 2009 (CCK09)

This course is led by Stephen Downes and George Siemens. The CCK08 Syllabus and supporting content can be found on the CCK09 Wiki.

You can register to receive course information here. Learners can also get formal credit as part of the Certificate in Emerging Technologies for Learning can enroll through University of Manitoba’s Extended Education Faculty. The course will begin on September 14, 2009.

2. EC & I 831: Social Media & Open Education

This is an open access graduate course from the Faculty of Education, University of Regina by Dr. Alec Couros. Although this courses is for credit, there is also an opportunity for participation from non-credit students. All lectures in this course, from September 15/09 to December 8/09 will be publicly available. To access the lectures, look for the appropriate date under “Synchronous Sessions“, then look for the weekly Elluminate link. I will also offer the appropriate Elluminate link via tweet via @courosa.

If you’re looking to learn from interesting and experienced educators, while connecting to peers and resources online, than one or both of these courses may be of interest to you. Sign up & join in the fun. Although I’ll be busy with work & school, I’ll be sure to continue to share my thoughts, ideas and resources that I learn here.

If you are currently interacting and learning from another open course… please share. Happy open learning!

AACE Global U – Social Media Seminars

AACE Global U will be hosting a series of seminars around “Social Media: Trends and Implications for Learning.” I was able to listen to the archived seminar for July, however I hope to participate in a future monthly online seminar:

August 10, 2009, 9:00 PM Eastern USA
September 8, 2009: 3:00 PM Eastern USA
October 13, 2009: 9:00 PM Eastern USA
November 10, 2009: 3:00 PM Eastern USA
December 8, 2009: 9:00 PM Eastern USA

The seminar series, led by George Siemens and David Cormier, is without fee and will include live interactive sessions, in addition to discussions with guest speakers and participants. All sessions are co-sponsored by and will be archived in the Education & Information Technology Library (EdITLib). And you can join in the discussion on AACE Connect.

During these Elluminate sessions, the conversations will be active in the webinar and recorded for those who cannot participate at these specific times.  By using the #SMTI hash tag you can find conversations on Twitter, archives in blogs and resources in Delicious.

Here were a few key discussion pieces I found useful from the first social media seminar:

• Networking in Everyday Life by Bernard Hogan
• Examples of learning outcomes for social media & digital technology use in learning
• The Digital Melting Pot by Sharon Stoerger
• Open Educational Resources: Opportunities and Challenges in Higher Education paper
• Cover It Live
• Educating the Net Generation – EDUCAUSE
• wikiEducator
• FREE by Chris Anderson
• Does Technology Really Enhance the Quality of Teaching & Learning? by Tony Bates

Social Media Bullying Awareness

Great poster-making activity from the BullyingUK website. Excellent tools & resources here to share a positive message against cyber bullying with your students.

Social Networks Are for the Kids.

Silly adults. Social networks are for kids (too)!

Although my interests lie in technology use in higher education, I stumbled upon an interesting article, Child-friendly social networking tools, in the eSchool News.

Many child-friendly applications have been created for students in the K-12 realm, which include various security and privacy features to keep educators at ease.  These arenas allow schools to develop online learning communities within their classroom, schools and/or school districts.

The article describes more specifics about the following tools:

• ConnectYard
• eChalk
• ePals
• SayWire

I think an introduction to these types of technologies in school at an early age is excellent. This provides  a great classroom model and hands-on experience for the instruction with various tools, i.e. wikis, blogs, and more! Students learn to design, create, share and interact with their peers online for learning.

Most students in higher education are VERY aware of social networking tools.  The only issue is that many college students would not think to utilize these online technologies to support learning and academic success (unless their current faculty is ‘hip’ to the technology jive).   To best support academic learning in the later years, instructors need to use these online resources during formative, educational years.

10 High(er Ed) Fliers on Twitter

Check out 10 frequent fliers that are active on Twitter in Higher Ed c/o the Chronicle article from late last week. (Sorry for the delay.)

Most of these micro-bloggers study new media & the impact of Twitter on higher education.  Follow on, friends.

@PRSAjobcenter

@jayrosen_nyu

@hrheingold

@amandafrench

@academicdave

@dancohen

@paullev

@mcleod

@mwesch

@presidentgee

Happy Birthday ACE!

For those of you thinking about implementing a new online, web 2.0 project for student learning… I say: GO FOR IT!

This is the 1 year anniversary of the ACE pilot project that was initiated at The Academic Advising & Career Centre, University of Toronto Scarborough.  Happy Birthday, ACE!

ACE (Academic & Career Explorer) is an online, peer buddy who connects with students at UTSC to share information & resources about job search, academic questions, career options and study skills support.  You can connect to ACE various ways online:

• Website
• Facebook
• Blogger
• Flickr

The ACE project was a fun project to work on with staff and students.  Kudos must go out to E-Lin, Suzanne, Esther & the great team of student staff at the Centre for all their creative work and on-going support.

Here’s a shot of E-Lin celebrating ACE’s birthday today with some cake (office tradition), of course:

Successful Virtual Communities

Here’s the latest video post from Howard Rheingold who writes about cultural, social and political implications of modern communication media such as the Internet, mobile telephony and virtual communities (term he coined).

Here is the full video: http://unescochair.blogs.uoc.edu/18022009/rheingoldlargevideo/

It’s pretty straight-forward and summarizes a great deal of what is being discussed and shared by adminstrators & educators within higher education. He presents his thoughts about social media and facilitating online collaborative communities in this clip, which I find very interesting.

Other learning pieces and items by Rheingold that you should check out include:

• Social Media Classroom: http://socialmediaclassroom.com/
• Electric Minds archives: http://www.rheingold.com/electricminds/html/
• Digital Jounalism (Berkley): http://socialmediaclassroom.com/digitaljournalism09/
• Community/Social Media (Berkley): http://socialmediaclassroom.com/vircom09/