Category Archives: Web 2.0 Tools

Por qué un blog?

Melina Masnatta me invitó hace unas semanas a una conversación muy informal, para compartir mi experiencia usando blogs con los participantes en el Diploma Superior en Currículum y prácticas escolares en contexto ofrecido por FLACSO en Argentina.

La conversación, que hicimos a través de un Hangout, terminó siendo muy poco conceptual y más cercana a mi experiencia personal. Si de algo me he convencido en este tiempo (aunque parezca evidente) es de que no hay una única manera de usar estas herramientas, así que la conversación terminó estando muy marcada por la utilidad que un blog personal ha tenido para mi.  En otras palabras, puede que para otros no tenga el mismo sentido (ni valor).  Su kilometraje puede variar. :)

Aquí está la entrevista:

De todo lo dicho, destacaría nuevamente el papel que el blog juega como herramienta de escritura reflexiva y como soporte metacognitivo.  La posibilidad de observar el propio pensamiento (así sea de manera parcial) ha significado, para mi, la apertura de múltiples puertas que me han llevado a exploraciones que hace algunos años eran inimaginables.  Mi blog, como espacio para encontrar mi propia voz y documentar mi proceso personal de aprendizaje, es uno de esos lugares en los que siento que estoy construyendo mi autonomía. Lo cual no es un asunto menor.

Por eso, que exista una audiencia (si existe) es una grata sorpresa. Significa que las reflexiones y dudas que cualquiera de nosotros tiene son compartidas por otros. Significa que lo que compartimos permite a otros encontrar significados que están fuera de nuestro control, pero que nos enriquecen a todos.  Significa que, de algún modo, lo que hacemos importa. De nuevo, no es un asunto menor.

La entrevista coincidió (felizmente) con el inicio de actividades de la nueva cohorte de TRAL, así que cae de perlas para una pregunta que más de un participante se hace cuando llega a este tipo de experiencia en línea: ¿por qué un blog? ¿cuál es el punto? ¿No basta con las ‘redes sociales’?

En mi caso personal, puedo ver un antes y un después reflejado en el momento en el que empecé a escribir en público. Sigo convencido de que esta herramienta tienen un potencial fabuloso para resignificar nuestra relación con el aprendizaje.  Pero, en cualquier caso, se trata sólo de herramientas. Depende de cada uno permitirse explorarlas y encontrar (o no) en ellas un sentido que nos convierta en mejores aprendices.  Aunque no sea el uso más popular, lo cierto es que está al alcance de todos.

Basta con intentarlo. :)

Gracias a Melina por un rato de conversación muy agradable!

Radio reAprender: Episodio 0

Desde que experimenté ds106radio, me ronda (es decir, me persigue) la experimentación con el audio.  ArTIC fue una excusa adicional para hacer algunas cosas sencillas y, de repente, en menos de una semana, una posibilidad que había tratado de poner en marcha hace tiempo se cristalizó.

Andrés Chiappe, quien fue una de las personas que hizo posible la primera oferta de ELRN por allá en 2009 (ELRN sería el primer curso abierto en línea realizado en Colombia y, hasta donde sabemos, en América Latina), se animó a llevar a cabo una serie de conversaciones en línea, dedicadas a explorar diversos aspectos de las prácticas educativas abiertas, que con algo de suerte serán el punto de partida para un ejercicio de podcasting/radio en línea de mayor alcance (2012 va a ser un año importante para ello!).

En conjunto con Andrés (y con otros invitados que nos acompañarán a lo largo de las semanas) tendremos una posibilidad de  poner en blanco y negro muchos de los aprendizajes que se han consolidado en estos dos años, desde cuando ELRN empezó.  Al mirar hacia atrás, es mucho lo que se ha hecho (ya he realizado ocho cohortes distintas de cinco cursos diferentes con instituciones de distintos países) y el caso de ArTIC ha abierto un área enorme de posibilidades, al combinar los cursos abiertos con los talleres EduCamp.  La evolución ha sido no sólo amplia, sino muy acelerada.

Las distintas experiencias han implicado la experimentación con otras formas de evaluación, seguimiento, facilitación y análisis y agregación de la información generada.  Cada caso ha sido una enorme experiencia de aprendizaje en TODO sentido.  Y lamentablemente el registro de ese aprendizaje no ha sido, de mi parte, tan efectivo como podría serlo.   Así que estas conversaciones son una excelente oportunidad de empezar a visibilizar (coagular, diría alguien más) lo aprendido, sobre todo ahora que muchas personas están subiendo (finalmente) al vagón de estos cursos.

Como de costumbre, trato de aprovechar cada oportunidad para ‘cacharrear’ con cosas que no he hecho antes, así que para estas conversaciones usaremos una mezcla que Puentes al Mundo (hola, José!) ya ha hecho popular: retransmisión en vivo a Ustream de una conversación de Skype, y redistribución desde allí a otras plataformas y formatos.

Para justificar todas las pruebas que tuve que hacer :) , decidí crear un ‘Episodio 0′ en Radio reAprender:  Seleccioné una entrevista grabada en Octubre de 2009, en la que conversé con Miguel Angel García respecto a los cursos abiertos en línea.  Sorpresivamente, los temas que en esa época eran intuitivos se han ido confirmando a lo largo del tiempo, y la charla (de poco más de media hora) sigue siendo un muy buen punto de partida para los retos y alcance de este tema.  Como Miguel Angel indica, se trata efectivamente de repensar la experiencia educativa, lo cual no ocurre de manera automática.

Por eso resulta interesante el interés reciente por el tema, tanto en el mundo anglosajón como en el de habla hispana: porque (como de costumbre) es probable que más de uno empiece a promocionar su “apertura” cuando en realidad está subutilizando las posibilidades de un formato como este.  Pienso que el camino que David Wiley, Alec Couros y Leigh Blackall empezaron a abrir antes de CCK08 tiene muchas lecciones que pueden perderse en la obsesión con lo masivo, y que pueden aportar ideas muy interesantes para repensar a mayor escala nuestros espacios de aprendizaje.  ¿El mensaje de fondo? Esto no empezó en 2011.

En parte por eso, siento algo de responsabilidad por compartir más de lo que he aprendido en los últimos dos años.  Si bien he estado muy activo en conferencias, presentaciones y publicaciones, tratando de comunicar de manera formal lo que ha sido la experiencia, estas conversaciones son un espacio importante para generar nuevas comprensiones al respecto.

Con todo eso dicho :) aquí está el Episodio 0 de Radio reAprender, en conversación con Miguel Angel Guerra:

  | Descargar

Más información sobre nuevos episodios y eventos en http://radio.reaprender.org

No está de más decir que producir este Episodio 0 fue una experiencia muy divertida. Y aprendí un montón. :)

Están todos invitados!

 

EduCamp: a workshop to make visible what social networked learning is all about

A few months ago, and taking as a starting point the presentation I did in OpenEd'09, I started to write an account of the work I did from 2007 to 2009 with the EduCamp workshops.  It took longer than expected, but finally I have a full draft (release candidate, let's say) in English, which complements the chapter I wrote last year for this book edited by Alejandro Piscitelli and published by Espacio Fundación Telefónica of Argentina.

I'm deeply grateful to Stephen Downes, Scott Leslie and Linda Ashworth, who were extremely kind and took (a lot of) time to read the initial draft.  I learned a lot from their suggestions, which definitely improved this version. It's important to say, though, that any error lingering in the document is my responsibility, not theirs. :D

So far, the document doesn't include any info about the workshop I did with secondary school students a few months ago, so it's an account of things that happened in 2007-2009.  I'll have to find an opportunity to talk a bit more about it.

If you distribute this draft, please keep in mind that it is exactly that, a draft, and that there's a lot of room for improvement.  Of course, if you have suggestions and comments, I'll be quite happy to hear them.

UPDATE (2010/10/13):  I uploaded a second draft of this document, which includes additional information and reads a little better.  The title was changed to better reflect the content.

If you want a PDF version without login to Scribd, (first draft, second draft).

EduCamp Colombia: Social networked learning for teacher training










Creative Commons License: Attribution, Share-AlikeA excepción de que se indique lo contrario, este contenido está publicado bajo una licencia Creative Commons.


EduCamp Colombia 2007: Bogotá

On November 20 we'll begin a new series of EduCamps in several cities in Colombia. That's more than enough reason to try and finish the report of what happened in last year's workshops , as a starting point for thinking about how to improve them this year. This is the second in a series of four posts on this subject.

Starting an idea

The workshop in Bogota was the first one we did. With logistical support from CINTEL (the most important telecommunication research center in our country), we found a space designed for mass gatherings (called Logyk, if I remember correctly), where we arranged things to carry out the experiment.

After conducting several meetings with the entire CINTEL and MoE (Ministry of Education) teams, explaining in detail what we wanted to do, and showing how part of the challenge was to achieve a very open and informal (which, incidentally, was so uncommon as stimulating for all of us), we got to the day before the event (Tuesday, December 4 2007). While the staff members were putting on place tables, chairs and computers (all these hired by MoE with support from CINTEL), my previous work was to meet with Stephen and a group of students who would help us to coordinate the workshop the next day (all of them selected by CINTEL).

These students were supposed to be "catalysts" for the activity of over-the-shoulder learning. In the first meetings, we wondered what would happen if among the participants, we could not find users of any of the proposed tools. This made us consider the importance of having some knowledgeable users to start the activity. And here began the surprises. My initial assumption was that these students would have knowledge of the tools selected (by completing a total of 10) because, after all, they are "digital natives". The fact was that most of these tools were unknown to them too, although they had much experience in handling some of them (the most "social" ones).

Educamp, by Stephen Downes
Photo: Stephen Downes
 

The meeting was little more than a short description of what was supposed to happen the next day, in an atmosphere much more formal that I would have liked (a roundtable). I think this was caused, in part, by our own ignorance about what would happen. Meanwhile, staff were setting up the room where we would have the initial conference, placing tables and chairs in neat rows, in a traditional lecture format.

Putting on the t-shirt

Next morning, the registration started very early, and one of the big surprises for the participant were the white t-shirts we were giving them. Stephen and MoE staff (myself included) would have black t-shirts. The support students were dressed in red ones. The other participants would receive a white one. The t-shirt fulfilled two functions: first, to make easy for participants to tag themselves (in a previous meeting, someone suggested that people dressed with special clothing would be completely unwilling to stick adhesives to it); second, this simple garment helped to generate a sense of identity.

After many greetings and reunions with old acquaintances, and a reasonably informal atmosphere, we started the workshop.

First, a short presentation by me, talking about the structure of the National Program on Media and ICT Use (named that way at that time) and sharing with the audience what was going to happen throughout the day (IMPORTANT: This presentation is about one year old. Many things changed on the structure of the program on these months):

For those who do not want to watch the presentation, I want to highlight some "Game Rules" we defined at the beginning:

     * Upon arrival, be prepared to share with other participants.
     * When you leave, be prepared to share with the world.
     * We are all learners.
     * No one is a tourist.
     * Whatever happens is the only thing that could have happened.

For me, the last one is perhaps the most important of all, and I think it speaks of something that also appeared in CCK08: It is not possible for one person to learn everything, or consume all the information produced by a large group of people . That is the world we live in. So we need to understand that we can only do what is within our reach, and that whatever that is, it is fine. Very philosophical.

Then came Stephen's talk, which was intended to provide a conceptual framework for the activities of the day:

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: educamp colombia)

Educamp, by Stephen Downes
Foto: Stephen Downes
 

As usual, Stephen caught the attention of the audience (not just of those who understood English, but everyone, thanks to the excellent work of the interpreters who supported the event). An interesting aspect of each person having his own computer, was discovering how many of them sought ways to record their ideas on the conference,whether by taking notes online, or using text processors and then emailing the files the themselves. (Tip: It is important to identify ways in which all participants can benefit from these notes, which we did not this first time).

After this talk, we started our work. The first thing we proposed to the participants was to draw their personal learning environment (PLE), and then start a process of peer learning (because everyone had a laptop), where everyone was expected to be both learner and teacher at the same time. The first part might not have had the impact we wanted, because I realized too late the need to expand a bit more what Stephen had mentioned on the PLE concept, and the only example I had at hand was a very raw diagram I made by hand before the workshop. (Tip: For this year, the ideas on PLE have matured a lot more. We have new elements to help participants make sense of their PLEs).

Once they made explicit which tools they used in their PLE, they would have to write down each tool in an adhesive label (that is, a tag) and put it on their t-shirt. Those labels would represent those things they knew about, those things they could teach about. They were asked to identify the tools they would like to know more about (we gave them a "tool sheet" including descriptions and URL of several tools, in 13 categories), and their mission was to find someone tagged with the tool they wanted to learn about, and ask that person to teach them about it.

With some initial diagrams, and the excuse of a coffee break in the middle of the morning, participants addressed the second part of the job, now with a much more informal atmosphere (tables and chairs were unorganized, and many people were on the space outside the auditorium, where more comfortable couches and sofas could be found). The only real requirement for this activity was a working Internet connection, for it was here where would be the greatest burden for the network. That was the only thing that was not supposed to fail.

Murphy's law

I think I heard the statement "If something can go wrong, it will" about 15 years ago, and since then (and with the multitude of paragraphs and corollaries added to it) I keep it in mind as a reminder of how those things we don't want to happen are the ones set to occur more frequently. In the case of the workshop, the only thing that shouldn't have failed, connectivity, failed. The wireless routers that were in place could not endure the burden of all users and collapsed one after another, leaving only a very small group of people online. The flaw was visible only when usage of the access points became intense (because initially, because we were in lecture mode, there were not many people using the network services). This left us in a situation quite difficult during the rest of the morning. The only solution to the problem was getting new routers, which only would come around noon.

Something that comes back to my mind, is that this incident created some tension between the organizers (including myself), because even though the response I received was "the network is not down" (which was absolutely correct from a technical point of view), the experience for everyone else was of a lousy network connection (which was unfair, given that we hired 20Mb for the day).

 Educamp
Photo: elearningcolombia

This situation reminds me of past situations in which engineers, ignoring completely the experience being lived by those who do not know about technical issues (and are not interested, also), try to explain that the experience they are living is not correct, and that almost everything is "running". I suppose it is a matter of empathy, and maybe it is learned best over the years ...

Anyway, participants were engaged against all odds and tried to perform the proposed tasks. All I could do was to say everyone that what we were living was something that could happen all the time, and that it was one of the challenges that we had to confront as teachers. However, it was clear to everyone that this affected the achievement of our objectives (this was expressed in the survey done after the workshop), as some of them said via Ustream:

We all tried and did our best to compensate for the situation. The students sat close to those with connectivity to support the participants. Me, I ended up sitting on the floor trying to explain the workings of a wiki using sheets of paper, taking ideas from the videos of CommonCraft. Some of them who managed to complete the mission, left traces of it on YouTube:

So, it was noon, and we went to lunch. Just before we left, the connectivity problem was solved, which led us to alter the schedule we had planned.

Plan B

Despite of everything that happened, the balance was positive at noon. Participants were very engaged and just the messy environment was for many of them a remarkable thing. But we were faced with a real problem: very few people had the opportunity to experience throughout the morning with the tools we had anticipated. There were a lot of conversations, but there wasn't that much exploration. That left us in a difficult situation for the first activity of the afternoon (which intended to collect ideas on possible ways to use the tools). For this reason, we decided to change our plan on the fly, and use the work tables in the afternoon as "demonstration stations", in which students were asked to talk about the functionality and ways to use some of the tools.

This was a case in which the idea of "Whatever happens is the only thing that could have happened" became true, even for us as organizers. And we faced the need to relax and accept that we would not achieve what we had initially imagined, but something different. Not better or worse, just different.

But this unexpected change, made on the fly, was also appreciated by some of the participants:

(This teacher talks about how recursive we were to change things and try to get them to see what they couldn't see in the morning. He's nice enough as to say that this was a "dynamic solution created on the fly")

However, not everything was perfect. We never thought the students would have to be in charge of "demonstration stations", so some of them (without liability on their part) did not have an adequate mastery of the tool they had to face. This meant that, for example, those who showed Facebook were able to show the participants what could be done with the tool, whereas there were cases (like Twitter, for example) in which for obvious reasons this activity was not so helpful. However, the situation was a great lesson who would use two days later, in Medellin.

While all this was happening, we were streaming (and recording) using Ustream. We had a video feed showed in one of the two plasma TVs we had in the room, while the other (which was outside the auditorium) was frankly underused.

The change in the dynamics meant that the activity that was planned for the beginning of the afternoon disappeared completely from the schedule. And instead of delaying everything, we continued with the rest of the agenda as we planned initially.

Our unconference

We prepared a large "board" with two half-hour slots and five tables for each slot, to complete a total of 10 possible discussions. We invite attendees to propose their topics of discussion and to sit down on the tables according to the number assigned to the discussion, and according to their own interests. The game rule here was: "If you are not learning or taking part in a discussion, please move to another one", to remind everyone that it was not required to stay in a place where they did not feel they should be.

Discussions proceeded without any problem, and then came the moment for every discussion leader to share their conclusions with the whole group. Curiously, this activity started to become kind of boring, not only because of the time (it was already 5p.m.), but because of the extent to which some participants took their points. Adding up the fact that we had 10 discussions, the discussion became longer than we would have liked it to be.

With this activity, we ended the first workshop. Due to accumulated fatigue throughout the day, we did not held a long meeting after that, but hardly discussed the critical aspects to be taken into account in Medellin, which became important lessons.

Lessons learned

  • Perhaps the first one is the importance of connectivity, and the need of having a plan B to make activities possible.
  • The flexibility in design and objectives is crucial. The building of enough confidence as to propose a change on the road is essential, and in fact constitutes a message about the use of technology: We need to change our actions depending on the context that we have around us.
  • The people of CINTEL proposed to play a little more with the room layout in Medellin, because we would have some space constraints. In Bogota, people left the auditorium after Stephen's conference (as there was a sort of lobby outside), which allowed us to reorganize tables and alter the space. We would not be able to do this in Medellín, so their proposal was to have a more informal atmosphere since the beginning. This messy space was, curiously, rather well received by many of the participants.
  • We could not make assumptions about the ability of the support students in handling the tools. We would have to do something about this situation, before the second workshop.
  • It was neccesary to limit the time for the final group discussion.

To finish, some opinions of the participants:

Two days later, we would have our second "trail": Medellin.

NOTE: Please let me know about mistakes and possible improvements in this writing. I tried to do a close translation of an Spanish post, so it may seem a little "funny" every now and then.

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