Tag Archives: Web 2.0

Beyond the Edgeless University

  By netcrit | April 21, 2011 - 17:41 | Speak
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An extended introduction to the workshop I will be running soon on the Edgeless University, focusing on the question: what exactly should a modern comprehensive university do that will unleash the creativity of students and staff and maximise the potential of distributed, edgeless learning while, at the same time, also making the most of the physical spaces which will remain critical markers of ‘a university’?. In other words, how can we utilise digital technologies and networks to fashion ‘new’ edges — temporary boundaries, if you like — that assist us in making education a collaborative, collective experience? Click to read more →

Examples of authentic learning in Internet Communications III: NET204

  By netcrit | December 4, 2010 - 12:08 | Think
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See also other posts including the first one, on Web Communications 101, which explains more of the context. Internet Communities and Social Networks 204 (basic unit description) One of the most authentic learning experiences we try to offer students in the BA (Internet Communications) is the network conference, the focal point and driving force for the unit NET204. In this unit, the whole learning journey is designed around a 3-week online asynchronous conference in the latter stages of the study period: the first part of the unit involves writing the conference paper, improving it after feedback, and also designing and discussing how to run the conference and promote it. Because every element of the unit is designed ‘around’ the conference, this unit is more than just an authentic assessment task: rather, it is an authentic learning experience, with the assessment almost ‘blending’ in with that experience. For example – the ‘conference paper’ is submitted, assistance given and then students can improve it, rather than in traditional approaches simply being done and marked. Very few activities in the real world involve submission of intellectual work that can’t be improved once completed. The conference ran first in 2010 and can be viewed … Click to read more →

Should you use a wiki for teaching (and which one?)

  By netcrit | June 2, 2010 - 11:47 | Think
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I recently answered an email from a colleague asking for advice about wikis, especially in the face of his university’s (inevitable) suspicion about anything that is not authorised, locked-down, served from the campus and generally (IMO) unusable for agile teaching and learning. I thought I would share an edited version of my views, since it neatly captures some of what I’ve been thinking about as part of my ALTC project on Web 2.0 and online learning. Agile teaching: responding to needs and concerns in the learning design of students’ experiences, activities and tasks which takes account of current events, new technologies in ways that institutionalised curriculum design and enterprise technology practices can’t cope with because they are too structured, clumsy and slow-moving. Agile teaching implies agility of mind as well as design and technology – it’s being playful, picking up and putting down, making limited and short-term commitments to particular ways of teaching and content, on the basis that it’s more fun, more engaging and ultimately more realistic as an educator and thinker to be moving forward, not circling the bureaucratic wagons   Yes, we use wikis in our teaching, in two ways. First, some of the students naturally set … Click to read more →

Google vs Facebook (the department store vs marketplace)

  By netcrit | May 3, 2010 - 14:33 | Think
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Update: as evidenced by this report, on unique visitors to FB and Google, industry commentators still don’t get the difference between these two giant net companies. Equally, FB putting realtime search into its environment (acquiring FriendFeed) also doesn’t in any way demonstrate equivalence between the two. Both reflect a relatively simplistic understanding of the net as a place for searching and for getting lots of visitors. (Think, for example, of google search is embedded inside many applications and services – Google doesn’t need people to go to its hompage!) Ultimately, reflecting on some twitter comments (thanks @baym and @amuir_netecol) from my last post , I am drawn to the comparison between Facebook as the massive department store within which all wants and desires are collected, strucutured and offered: some of the ‘departments’ are franchises, essentially leased from the main store, others are owned by the store. Just like department stores are designed to lure customers in, and make it hard to leave, with astute physical environments that prevent ‘walk through’, so too Facebook acquires as much of a user’s attention as possible and then distributes it across several applications, engagements and the like. While much of what is there is … Click to read more →

Google vs Facebook vs the Internet

  By netcrit | May 2, 2010 - 20:27 | Think
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I commented recently on Twitter that Facebook = the new AOL and, not surprisingly, then discovered that many others (e.g. Kottke.org had already had my apparently novel insight! (This effect can either deflate one’s confidence or increase it – I am not the first, but I am as wise as the crowd – some examples from the crowd thanks to googlesearch). And, clearly, Facebook is trying to create an experience of online life / augmented reality / social and cognitive networking that stands apart from, or is potentially isolated from the ‘web’ within which Facebook exists – though it claims to be embedding itself into the web, of becoming a sort of underlying social networking of people, data and places throughout the web, I actually see the plan as one to enable its users to never leave the facebook environment except when prompted to do so by something in facebook, and then be returned to facebook. So, in this model of online behaviour, Facebook users would look out over the low walls of the garden and observe interesting things elsewhere in the jungle of the net; would at times scurry out into that jungle, but otherwise would remain safely inside … Click to read more →

Authentic Assessment in the era of Social Media: ideas and applications from Internet Communications

  By netcrit | May 2, 2010 - 12:19 | Speak
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While visting the UK, I will present a detailed account of the way social media, Web 2.0 and the read/write web cab be understood for higher education in terms of authentic assessment. Crucially, I am trying to show, by examples from the Internet Communications course at Curtin, how the use of Web 2.0 in blended and online learning can more generally be based on real-world knowledge production, in knowledge networks, that bridge the growing gap between formal and informal learning via the Internet. Slides with notes available. Click to read more →

Modelling the Knowledge Networking Dynamics of the Contemporary Web

  By netcrit | April 24, 2010 - 15:44 | Think
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Brief outline of my emerging model of knowledge networking in the web: identifies four elements (NOT website categories!) – information pumps; cognition engines; social environments; and publication outlets. Any effective knowledge network creates itself through the interaction of humans and machines across all four dynamic elements. Click to read more →

Using Web 2.0 in your teaching: ideas, applications and affordances for enhanced educational outcomes

  By netcrit | April 5, 2010 - 12:11 | LINK project, Speak
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In 2010 I will be travelling to many Australian universities presenting the outcomes from my ALTC-funded project on Learning in Networks of Knowledge. This presentation focuses heavily on the way that a wide array of Web 2.0 / social media applications can be used in higher education, whether in distance or on-campus learning. The presentation will demonstrate a ‘top 10’ innovative services as examples of what can be done. Designed to provide practical, usable ideas, the presentation emphasises how the technologies which might be chosen must be understood in terms of their relationship to the content, assessment, outcomes of learning, and the particular context provided by students and the subjects they are studying. Handouts and slides are available. Click to read more →