What to Write
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 01/15/2015 - 22:00With the start of the New Year, I’ve gotten back some of my writing mojo and am back in the habit of putting up at least one blog post a day. Coming up with writing material has been somewhat easy since I’m participating in two MOOCs right now, yet there always is that struggle of what to write. If I don’t have something compelling, or enough energy, should I skip the blog post? Keeping the discipline of daily writing, perhaps, brings the most benefit on those days when it is hardest to write.
This week has been very busy, and there are many topics I would love to explore in depth, when I have more time, but for this evening, I want to reflect on a post a friend put on Facebook:
I keep trying to blog, but now, with a heightened sense of everything being public all the time, it's not as easy as it was before.
After Charlie Hebdo and Raif Badawi, after Ferguson and Eric Garner, we see speech becoming more and more divisive and for some, more and more dangerous. No, it isn’t as easy any more, but perhaps it is more and more important.
The question becomes, are you saying something new, insightful, important, or are you just echoing talking points of your political orientation?
Sometimes, it is neither. Sometimes, it is just the discipline of daily writing, and there’s value to that as well.
This Moment in Time
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Wed, 01/14/2015 - 20:26This evening, my attention returns to the Walk Whitman course. The video I listened to, today, talks about Whitman’s place in the burgeoning cities of the nineteenth century. I pause to think about the places we live in today; from the cities of the industrial revolution to the global villages of the information age, transcending time and place.
I glance at Open Culture, bringing me videos from the sixties and seventies. I glance at Global Voices, bringing me stories from around the world. I glance at the daily office, connecting me to ancient stories.
What does it all mean, this moment in time in the twenty-first century? How do I process all of this without burning out, without future shock, without becoming numb, just another consumer of content?
Ideas continue to percolate, but I don’t have the time or energy right now to bring them together into a more complete collection of thoughts.
I return to the class and read Whitman's "To a Stranger" and then respond in the forum with my reaction to the poem when asked about the urban context and why Whitman addresses a stranger:
Not to foreshadow a coming poem, but here we are, over a hundred years hence. The urban context is being replaced with a global village context that transcends time and place. Camus wrote of the stranger. I am the stranger. You are the stranger. There are so many people in this class that are strangers to me, whose gender I do not know.
Yet when I think of the stranger, I think of the child muse, still undiscovered. Giving us hints of what is to come, but not full fledged inspiration. More like the fairy child that visited Babbitt in his dreams.
And as we walk the city streets, we catch a fleeting glimpse of the stranger. Pink Floyd caught that glimpse as well, but turned to look at it was gone.
May none of us lose that hope of inspiration.
#learnmoodle Reflections
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 01/13/2015 - 22:51When we learn something new, it is useful to spend some time thinking about our experiences and analysing our progress.
About half way through the first week of the Teaching with Moodle course, we are being encouraged to reflect on our learning.
Being an old guard geek, most of the stuff we are learning are things that I’ve already picked up, or probably would have picked up pretty quickly just by playing with Moodle. It is fairly easy to use. What is more interesting to me are the discussions about how it is, or can be, used.
I now have a better idea about how to organize topics for a class. I’ve also been more directed in playing with it, learning more about blocks, enrollment and tracking completion of course tasks.
This last part has brought about one of the more interesting discussions. Should you set up Forums so that they automatically complete a section of the course based on what the student has posted, or do you leave a manual completion check box for the student to check off? How does this relate to badges, and how important are badges and gamification? What other ways can you encourage participation in the Moodle?
These are issues I spend a lot of time thinking about in terms of social media, how to encourage participation, badges and gamification.
This leads to some other interesting discussions, such as the role of lurkers in a class, or in social media. As one possible longer term todo, it seems like a literature review of the use of badges and gamification in education is called for. I may tackle that when I have more time.
Another interesting discussion has been about the age of students in Moodle. Do younger students, digital natives, find it easier to use a Moodle? How does this relate to ideas of education around Constructivism, Constructionism, Connectivism, and other learning theories?
It has also brought up an interest in exploring the conditional activities in Moodle.
Hopefully, I’ll spend more time reflecting on this later, when I’m not so busy and tired. I look forward to reading some of the other learners experiences.
Creativity and Smartphones
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 01/12/2015 - 21:49On the way home from work today, I listened to an article on NPR, Bored ... And Brilliant? A Challenge To Disconnect From Your Phone. It asked the question
Are we packing our minds too full? What might we be losing out on by texting, tweeting and email-checking those moments away?
The article talks about a study which found
the participants came up with their most novel ideas when they did the most boring task of all — which was reading the phone book
Yet they seem to conflate daydreaming with boredom. Being busy reading the phone book is very different from daydreaming. Indeed, playing casual games on a cellphone may be closer to reading the phone book than being disconnected. I find most casual smartphone games pretty boring.
They are suggesting a project which will “will collect stories and provide tips for keeping your phone at bay”.
It seems particularly ill conceived to me. I spend a lot of time on my cellphone and on top of that I spend even more time on my laptop. I would suggest that my use of time is, perhaps, a more beneficial approach towards fostering creativity.
I spend time connecting with people via social media. Listening to what others are talking about, searching for new ideas. I visit sites like Open Culture. Today, I watch a video they share of Patti Smith and David Lynch Talking About the Source of Their Ideas & Creative Inspiration. It seems much more interesting than trying to keep access to other ideas at bay.
From MOOCs to Badges
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sun, 01/11/2015 - 21:38With the snow and cold, I decided to take it fairly easy this weekend, resting and reading. Mostly what I’ve been reading has been material from an EdX MOOC about Walt Whitman and a Moodle course about Teaching with Moodle.
Interspersed with this has been Dadaist films on OpenCulture and A look inside Charlie Hebdo. I’ve been having some additional discussions about DeanSpace which I plan on returning to later.
For this evening, however, there are a few things that caught my attention from the Moodle course. The Moodle uses Badges as part of the system; particularly Mozilla OpenBadges>. I earned my first badge in the course which I’ve placed in my Open Badges Backpack. So, one of my todos is to learn more about Mozilla’s Badges and Backpack.
One of the first issues I ran into was that the badge I received from Moodle was for my work email address and the backpack was set up for my private email address. In exploring this, I managed to get my work email address added and come across Mozilla’s Persona.
Each of these are things that I need to explore in more depth.
