Evolve

Last weeks Emerging Mondays seminar was on the topic of MOOCs and Open Course Models. The speaker was Dave Cormier from the University of Prince Edward Island.

Dave spoke about his experiences, so far, of the CCK MOOC on Connectivism and Connected Knowledge, the technological platforms being used to support participants, the tensions that exist within the course design and the peer support models that are being embraced. Dave’s introduction led to a wide ranging discussion including the nature and furture of courses and communities, issues of scale, how to support learners, open accreditation and the future of open education - and …Humpty Dumpty and Alice in Wonderland!

If you missed the session - or would like to hear it again - we are providing you with three different versions. You can watch a replay of the event in Elluminate. This provides you with access to the sidebar chat discussion as well as to the audio.

Or - if you are short of time you can listen to an MP3 podcast of Dave’s introduction.

Or you can listen to the full session inline or on your MP3 player.

This is the link to the Elluminate version.

For posdcast versions click here.

Great Evolve seminar on Personal Learning Environments last night (you can see the recording here - if this link fails click here and go to Monday 22). What came through clearly was that PLEs are primariy a social and political issue. As I write this Scott Wilson who presented at the seminar has just twittered “scottbw PLE - Its quite tricky keeping the social and technical interventions both in focus at the same time.” But that is exactly what we have to do. A focus on the technical without taking up the social and politcial will fail. I would go even further to say it is the social and polictical fcus of what we wish to achieve in modelling a new vision of our education and learning systems which should be driving technicl development. I see so many technical presentations which leave me wondering - ’so what’. And as Francis Bell rightly said last night we need to evaluate and understand the impact of previous generations of technology implementation on education and learning. But I also think many of us are hiding behind technology and failing to express our true wishes which are to reshape the way we learn in our societies.

Now may be the time to open such a debate. The PLE discussions have been instrumental in revealing many of the systemic tensions in education and traning provision. Now we need to start to articulate a new agenda and to consider how we can shape techncial development to support such a vision.

Last week I was at a conference in Switzerland. They were preparing the hotel in which I was staying for its official opening. And at the last minute there was lots of to-ing and fro-ing as they prepared the building for its official guests. That is a bit like this site. We launch the Evolve Community tomorrow with a guset presentation by Barbara Dieu. And as I speak we are tweaking the site - changing the colours, adding bits of functionality, taking out superfluous pages.

Of course we shouldn’t leave it to the last moment. But it always seems ot happen that way. There is no point in fighting nature.