I saw this description for a course offered by U of T and thought is was a brilliant observation of what skills are needed today. http://www.plc.ischool.utoronto.ca/coursedescription.asp?courseid=260#

Are you tired of dealing with information overload in your work? Perhaps you’re looking at it from the wrong perspective. Clay Shirky, professor and author, says, “It’s Not Information Overload. It’s Filter Failure.”

The task now is to create your own information filters.

“In the period ahead of us, more important than advances in computer design will be the advances we can make in our understanding of human information processing – of thinking, problem solving, and decision making…”
Herbert Simon, Economics Nobel-prize winner (1968)

Personal Learning Networks are individual, disciplined process by which we make sense of information, observations and ideas. In the past it may have been keeping a journal, writing letters or having conversations. These are still valid, but with digital media we can add context by categorizing, commenting or even remixing it. We can also store digital media for easy retrieval.

The Web has given us more ways to connect with others in our learning but many people only see the information overload aspect of our digital society. Engaging others can actually make it easier to learn and not become overwhelmed. Effective networked learning is the difference between surfing the waves or being drowned by them. It also helps us to work smarter.

I use this blog as one of the tools to collect my personal learning “ah ha” moments and it doesn’t matter to me if people read my blog.It becomes a place where I come back to to rethink and revisit videos, quotes, and ideas that I think go together.

I found a blog post by Harold Jarche where he goes into his idea of Network Learning even deeper: http://www.jarche.com/key-posts/personal-knowledge-management/

When I say “I found it” what actually happened was Ihering Alcoforado bookmarked/shared the link on the Diigo group, e-learning2.0. Diggo emails me daily a list of links from the groups I subscribe to. I quickly skim the email and click on anything that sounds interesting to me. If I need to include it in my Personal Learning network, then I bookmark it or if I want to reflect then I post it to this blog.

Now that is, as Jarche puts it, using:

• Seeking – using my network to find knowledge
• Sensing – making sense/evaluating of the concepts
• Sharing – posting it to my blog, twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn

“In any moment of decision the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.”

–Theodore Roosevelt,
26th president of the U.S

Why haven’t we got there yet? This video was done in 2007

What are the barriers teachers are facing to move towards Educational Technology in the classroom.
Please see http://t4.jordandistrict.org/payattention to learn how you can become a better teacher.

“good ideas are more likely to emerge in environments that contain a certain amount of noise and error.”
Stephen Johnson, Where Good Ideas Come From

I was on LinkedIn today and saw this comment by Kerry Boyle

“I don’t think we’re doing our young people justice by making them proficient users of only one brand. The future of the internet and the success of it depends on peoples ability to use a variety of different programmes, operating systems, applications and mobile devices. Technology in education therefore needs to be about developing confidence with a variety of systems and building on 21st century skills to maximise the potential of the ubiquitous nature of the internet”

I totally agree. Things are changing fast and proprietary software is no longer the only way to do things. Free software, whether open source or online or mobile apps, is readily available. Google has a vast variety of online software that creates spreadsheets, documents, forms and presentations. We have choices.

After watching this video , I realized that sometimes you just have to get out of their way.
Education scientist Sugata Mitra: The child-driven education

I like the idea of setting up learning pods with technology that links to a subject expert (near end of video). Letting group members switch or stay together or look over each other shoulders is a concept I am going to try as well.

“As teachers, we have to remind ourselves sometimes that our way of thinking is not the way of thinking. We have to remind ourselves that the point of education is not to go through the motions of teaching, but to go through the hard scrabble process of helping someone else learn.”
Shelly Blake-Plock (2011), I Love Lectures (that’s why I rarely give them), TeachPaperless Blog

I am terrible at remembering the name of things or using the wrong name.
That doesn’t mean I don’t know the thing?
It just means I suffer from the occasional “brain fart.” Is there a name for that…. some say ‘old age’ .. LOL

So why are we so hard on our students when they can’t remember the name of something. Multiple choice test/exams are killers for us you suffer from this condition. It doesn’t mean we don’t know it.

RP Feynman – The difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something

During a recent company password audit, it was found that a secretary was using the following password:

“MickeyMinniePlutoHueyLouieDeweyDonaldGoofyOttawa”

When asked why he had such a long password, he said he was told his password had to be at least 8 characters long and include at least one capital. . .