I came from a workplace background where every few years I would learn a new piece of desktop software, use it for awhile, and then it became outdated or I changed jobs. I thought that this was going to be more of the same. I couldn’t have been more wrong. This course was a template for implementing technology into an
educational program, workplace training situation, or even project management. All you
need is some basic computer skills and an ability to use the internet. If you are; a person who is new to IT, someone who is riding along in an outdated IT bubble, or a tech-savvy
whiz, you will enjoy this course.

I am in my first year of teaching a trade program at a community college and enrolled in a CAE (certificate in adult education) program which is designed to integrate people of diverse backgrounds, with a lot of workplace experience, into teaching roles. This is my 4th course in the program, and the best so far. I can immediately apply what I’ve learned.

That very description, the blog/netvibes one is one we discussed in class yesterday. I far prefer the decentralization and student centredness of a feedbook style classroom, where students and experts get mixed up inside a ‘course textbook’ that can be aggregated from many sources. The really nice benefit of this is that students get to keep working their blogs during and after the course.

This really resonated with me, and an idea I’ve been playing around with in the context of drafting distance education materials – a blogged uncourse (cf. unconference).

http://digitalworlds.wordpress.com started out with a sketched hierarchical mindmap of topics to be covered that informed the order of posts but did not fix it.

By using blog categories appropriately, and the RSS feeds provided ‘for free’ by the wordpress platform for each category (and each tag), the uncourse is self disaggregating into separate topic based strands (an emergent, or reverse, curriculum topic list?).

An informal learner can follow the main blog on a daily basis, or just subscribe to a particular category strand.

The separate feeds can also be used to reassemble the mixed/evolving topic main blog strand in a topic based way, using a “web desktop” presentation surface such as Netvibes or Pageflakes (e.g. (http://ouseful.open.ac.uk/blogarchive/013966.html )

By referring back to earlier posts from later posts, the Wordpress Trackback mechanism also automatically annotates earlier posts with forward links to posts that refer to them.

This link structure may or may not map onto the category/tag structure, and provides yet another way of navigating through the content.

By harvesting the internal uncourse blog trackback links, it is possible to create a visual ‘link graph’ that depicts the emerged (reverse curriculum agian?) structure as described by posts that refer to each other (e.g. http://ouseful.open.ac.uk/blogarchive/014848.html )

@Kent
I agree with you Kent… certainly on all those things related to specific, find them in a manual, or learn the ‘right’ way from experience kind of lessons. We don’t want to be ‘experimenting’ with a 60 ton crane or a saw mill or with Barry’s students (they drive large commercial ships).
The community curriculum model is designed to allow for the fact that you don’t know what you are going to get from a classroom. There was room in the syllabus, even as it was written down (let alone what was in my head) for a far more structured environment. It became clear, however, on day 3 that this was a group that needed the empowerment of the self-directed learning… the community of learners in any discipline as ephemeral as this one (media studies, marketing, business, physics might be some others) should control the curriculum as their is no ‘canon’ to teach them anyway.

One of the differences between the class we are attending and many of the core programs at Holland College is that core programs are competency based. In ED366h there is no required level of competency in anything to achieve a passing grade. Not true for core programs. Most typically there are course outlines with specific outcomes and some still have Dacum charts with 100 or more “skills” that need to have a minimum demonstrated competency. Getting everyone to the same endpoint requires a different approach.

Another difference is the profile of learner. This class is certainly more mature, motivated, and self directed, on average, than the typical Holland College student body. This has to be taken into account for delivery.

How about risk? In my program areas we have saws that rip at 1000s of inches per minute, mills that will cut stainless steel like butter, car hoists that lift vehicles weighing tons, gas turbine aircraft engines that spin at 30,000rpm, 600V electrical circuits that we don’t even want to think about. What is the risk in playing in our ED366h class? If we got really lost we might trip over some porn (if Marcel will give me his log in maybe I’ll try .

What is the same? Just as in our ED366h classroom we have in our core programs students of different skill levels, aptitude and interests. Certainly the jump in and play with the instructor giving mentored assistance works well for these differences. Also, the learning as a community can help knit different students with different starting points and aptitudes together to arrive at the same end point. One of the most important elements to learning is confidence. The structured approach of this afternoons presentations was a known, comfortable path that gave me confidence I would arrive at the desired end point. All of the presentations had a clear end point, Dave’s often don’t because with technology there never is an end point. Different objectives, different approaches.

We are learning a different delivery style and also different technology tools to be used in delivery. They don’t necessarily need to be used in parallel. We need to consider each separately for their potential application. What the presentations do offer is the chance to try the different delivery style and different technologies in a benign setting.

Each student is going to come away with a suitcase of information that was tailored and developed as a communal document. As students, we were able to learn so much material because the information was interlinked and interwoven within each piece of it. This strengthened out foundation and created a base, where our knowledge was easily accumulated.

Reading the page, was a common phrase used in our reflections. We recognize that we did not have to raise our hand and question what was presented, but if we took the time and navigated throughout the page, we usually were able to find the answers to our questions. Too often we throw in the towel, requesting help, even before we take the time to see if we can figure it out for ourselves.

In the last week of class, each student presented an application, tool, or software that before the week they were unfamiliar with. It is difficult to present material when the presenter has no previous knowledge in the subject. Nevertheless, if you approached the presentation as a learning experience, then it did not have to do with your presentation skill, but it had to do with how well you were actually able to understand the application. So the skill that you learned was the actual learning of the material.

Now, for all those people out there that read Dave’s Blog, I want you to know that he is a phenomenal teacher and if you were to know who I was, you would recognize that I wouldn’t say it unless I meant it. Likewise, I am not looking for extra points, that just isn’t me. All the same, I would like to say, thank you Dave. I have learned an amazing amount from you.

Kim Mason