A Chief Learning Officer for India

I think it is about time we instituted the position of a national CLO. Typically a CLO handles the strategic vision for education and training, implements initiatives for training and development, and is accountable for research. For a typical organization, the CLO is tasked with an internal driven focus. This means a national CLO would...

15. What if teachers and parents formed cooperatives to run schools?

Many models of cooperative structures in education and other fields exist successfully.

11. What if curriculum was mandated for teachers instead of students?

What would happen if children no longer had to follow an explicit curriculum?

#rhizo15 Week 3 – Content is people

There have been many ways of looking at content that have emerged from the discussions in #rhizo15 week three (and some prior cMOOCs). Some of them are: Content as beacon Content as authority Content as conversation Content as message Content as goals Content as object Content as commerce content as network content as people content...

Gamification, Serious Games and Simulations

In this introductory presentation for Amrita University's T4E Conference this month, here are a few thoughts on differentiating between Gamification, Serious Games and Simulations.

The Slumdog Graduate

In the Oscar-winning movie, Slumdog Millionaire, the main protagonist manages to answer very difficult (to the common person) questions to win a jackpot. People are quite unsure how he did it and he becomes the object of an intense investigation. While providing explanations for how he answered each question, it was found he could answer...

Nymi, Glass and Wearable Learning

I just came across a new biometric+ device called Nymi. It is a wearable bracelet that captures your unique heart rhythms and provides a unique identification for you. Obviously, the most powerful feature is the authentication. But by adding an Internet dimension to it, the Nymi can be used not just for authentication but also...

Chaos from Order: Me @TED

Sometime ago, I gave a TED Talk. The extended transcript, by way of blog posts formed a six-part blog series, and the video was upload recently. The theme of the talk was essentially that we have become used to thinking of the educational system as a system to produce the learned rather than a system...

Scale and Educational Systems

Educational systems do not scale well. We see that all around us. At smaller scales, these systems are far more effective than at larger scales. At larger scales, several constraints emerge rapidly - shortage of qualified teachers, lack of infrastructure, equitable access, degradation of learning experiences - that are primarily impacted by vision, capability and level...

3 Idiots: Educational Pedagogy or Fantasy

In case you didn't know, 3 Idiots is now a record-breaking Hindi movie, that explores and exposes the educational system. As of the time of this post, it has been released worldwide and is the highest grosser in Indian cinema history (about US$68mn in 19 days and also made 43 million pounds worldwide to date). The movie...

LMS and SNS

Interesting contribution and ensuing discussion from George Siemens post on the Future of Learning: LMS or SNS. Had this brief discussion not long ago on Wilko's blog. What has Facebook taught us? That "social connections and information sharing" is the model that will be "successful in the long run"? I am sure George is not saying that...

Native Collaboration Techniques – an example

Following up from my earlier post on Native Collaboration Techniques, let me elaborate on the concept using an example situation for collaboration. Let us take a scenario where the technology platform is a Virtual Classroom where learners dial-in using a phone line or VoIP.  They connect to the virtual collaboration platform component which allows things like...

The Open Screen Project

I am a little ambivalent about this one - the Open Screen project. Adobe is leading this initiative along with other majors such as Nokia. Their dream is to unify and defragment our experiences with internet, devices and media by providing a "consistent runtime environment for open web browsing and standalone applications". The runtime enviroment...

UK diaries

In the UK for a few days. Cool and windy on the streets of London right about now and it can get more than a little cold at times! eLearningAge features this early May story from Caspian Learning, Caspian Learning offers Thinking Worlds to business, that offers easy 3D based simulation authoring that blends into...

On communities, processes and technology

A recent set of conversations with customers and colleagues around communities of practice, networked learning, tools and platforms has provoked a lot of thought. One perspective, that was heavily process oriented & steeped in real life experiences, argued that unless processes and workflows (and related metrics) were established, implementing these tools in the enterprise would...

Knowing Knowledge – Review by Landy M

I found this interesting review by Landy M of the book Knowing Knowledge by George Siemens (which I confess I still need to read). I wanted to reproduce some striking comments: If Siemens is correct in asserting that the skills of ‘know where’ and ‘know who’ are now more important than the ‘what’ and ‘how’, we...

The digital life

I came across two ideas today that are part of a stream of developments that continue to amaze and intrigue me immensely. Mostly because of their impact on how we will be, perhaps, 10 years or so from now. The first was when my colleagues at work showed me http://www.visualcomplexity.com and the second, a few minutes later in...

IMINDI – Connected minds

IMINDI Starting with mind maps as a central way of modeling thoughts, the tool is quite like CMap. Allows tagged links and resources from delicious and other tools to be used and attached to each concept or thought node. It also allows "souping" knowledge using a centralized repository on the web that you can host...

Systemic change

I read George's post and reference to CISCO's beliefs with great interest. There are systemic barriers to change almost anywhere change occurs. But John Chambers suggests that changing the structure of the organization is key to making innovation work somewhat like C K Prahalad and M S Krishnan outline in their book, The New Age of...

PLEs – antithetical to the current education system?

I read a series of contributions by Stephen, George, Pontydysgu, Attwell, and reviewed PLE diagrams and Wiki entries. George makes the point that PLEs are antithetical to existing educational systems, which are really  structures of power, accountability and control based in a sociological context, not focussed on learner needs and goals. For this reason, PLEs, which are...

Network based Training (NBTs)

I have written earlier about what I am proposing as the evolution from the CBT and WBT - the NBT or Network based training, for some time now. NBTs provide a framework for organizations who want to adopt Web 2.0 and networked learning (the connectivism way) in their systems. The main components of the NBT...

CCK08: Final Project

This is the final project submission for CCK08. Thanks to George and Stephen for providing an extremely effective ecology for Connectivism and connective knowledge! Thanks also to all the participants who made this an enjoyable and thought provoking experience. Hoping that we will continue this dialogue onwards into the future. YouTube video accompanying this project...

Terror in Mumbai

It is a heartbreaking moment for all of us. Terrorists, coming by the sea route, have wrought havoc on the city of Mumbai, our financial capital. They have killed scores of people and injured many more. Many still remain hostage to them across different locations in the city. An angered community has lashed out at...

CCK08: Barriers to socialization

As part of my ongoing research into personalization, I realized that networked learning depends critically on the process of socialization, as much as perhaps on having the tools for networking. Indeed, the solutions here may be far more difficult to conceptualize or implement than is the case with technology. I am specifically interested in this...

CCK08: Call for Peer Review

This started out as an email, but transformed into a blog post (probably for the better), when I found I had very few email addresses 🙂 It’s been a great experience reading through all your posts and being part of the CCK08 experience. I have benefited greatly from the contributions made by the participants and...

CCK08: Paper 3 – On change

This final paper is less formal and can be seen as a free roaming thought piece. Reflect on the opportunities and resistance found in society and organizations in adopting different approaches to teaching and learning. Why is it so difficult to change the practice of education? What kinds of opportunities can we embrace if we...

Connectivism MOC – Posts

I have been writing over at my other blog, http://learnoscck08.wordpress.com and thought I would reference some posts here as well. It's nearing the end of the Connectivism MOOC and it's been a ride! CCK08 - Paper 1 - Position on Connectivism CCK08 - Learning formations CCK08 - Elluminate - Groups and Networks CCK08 - Passion vs Reason CCK08 -...

CCK08: Level One MindMap

I put together a very abstract 10,000 ft high view of what I have been learning so far in this course. I don't find it very useful to navigate so many inter-relationships in one large map (what a tangled web we weave). (View the full sized image)

CCK08: Paper 2 – Changing Roles

The shifting basis of certainty has been a critical focus during week 5-8. Through readings and discussions, we have focused on complexity, chaos theory, instructional design, power and control, and the changing roles for educators. For your second paper, select your point of emphasis as that of the instructional designer or educator. Explore changing roles...

CCK08: I’ve got the power (Moodle Forum)

This is an interesting discussion for me. The few things that stand out for me are: a. We should be, practically speaking, looking at a continuum between networks and groups, connectives and collectives etc. and situate our applications of connectivism in a range within that continuum. Each point or sub-range in that continuum (represent a...

CCK08 – Network Based and Network Led Training

I would like to propose two new terms - Network Based Training (NBT - an evolution from the WBT which followed from the CBT) and Network Led Training (NLT - an evolution from Instructor Led Training/ILTs). I would like to focus on the network nature of these terms rather than the training connotation in the...

CCK08 – Connectivism Impacts

This post is a summary based on the experiences with and thinking on Connectivism. George Siemen's wonderful presentation provides a coherent introduction to the challenges of learning design for a connective learning environment. This post builds on this presentation's (and in fact the course's) ideas and attempts to draw out impacts on other roles as...

CCK08 – Brain and Learning – Part One

There has been a lot of discussion around neurons and neuronal networks. I thought I should get together some basic information around these. This is part one of the series where I look at basic anatomy of the human nervous system. The human nervous system, comprising of the brain (control center of the nervous system),...

CCK08 – Passion vs Reason

There is a great discussion happening over at the Passion vs. Reason forum. I think it is helpful to acknowledge that, as defined, groups and networks provide two opposing and contrasting definitions of a learning "formation". There could be "pure" groups and "pure" networks, but actual formations would lie somewhere in between these kinds of formations,...

CCK08 – Elluminate – Groups and Networks

A fairly interesting discussion on this week's Elluminate discussion. Dr Terry Anderson from the University of Athabasca presented on groups, networks and collectives. He defined groups as people getting together to achieve educational goals, confined in terms of time, space, pace & relationship, often with a high degree of overt control from teacher/institution, isolated from the world...

CCK08 – Learning formations

There were some posts I wrote on my other blog on groups and networks that I think are relevant to this week's discussion. The links are provided below: Groups and Networks: 2.0 Formal methodologies 2.0 Learning Formations More on Learning Formations Connectives and Collectives Communities of Practice, Learning as a social system (Wenger, 1998) The discussion in these posts is...

CCK08 – Paper 1 – Position on Connectivism

  This is Paper 1 for CCK08. I must confess that I did feel that this was a topic best left until the very end of the course J. I am going to treat it as a place to pose the questions that I have so far, perhaps expose the gaps in my reasoning and...

CCK08: Patterns

Let us assume for a moment that all I really know in the world is the following: The set of integers The operator + The results of addition of two identical numbers, 2 with 2 any number of times Or, 2+2=4. Now I can use this knowledge to recognize and solve certain similar equations: 2+4=2+2+2=6...

CCK08 – Rhizomatic Education

I read through Dave Cormier’s paper on Rhizomatic Education: Community as Curriculum. As I read through it I found I had too many questions and arguments. Enough to make me doubt whether I understood at all what the paper attempts to explain or if I had the slightest sense of adequacy about the strength of...

CCK08 – A global theory?

Even as I struggle with the definition of theory and knowledge, one of the important questions I have is on how generalizable theories around connectivism and connective knowledge really are. I posed a question in our Week 2 elluminate discussion about the role of technology - what if technology was taken out of the picture...

CCK08 – What is theory?

What is Theory? A theory can be thought of consisting of an object (phenomenon/empirical observation/belief/fact or property thereof) that is sought to be described/explained/predicated/predicted, the context within which it is situated and a coherent set of ideas (medium/message). A theory provides insights on interpreting an object in a given context through a set of propositions,...

CCK08 – Connectivism and Connective Knowledge

Well, the first week is coming to an end. It has been an eventful one, leading me to start at the very basics - my conceptions of theory, knowledge, reality, beliefs, meaning, understanding, truth - and the evolution of pholosophical, psychological and educational thought and how it informs any discussion around learning theory. Check out some...

CCK08 – Chat Interaction frequency

I also put together, based on the recording, some participation statistics on the first elluminate session. Shows an interesting distribution. I think there were over 90 participants. Would love to hear back!

CCK08 – Learning formations for this course

In a previous article, I had discussed the juxtaposition of Bruce Tuckman's five stages of group formation and evolution on the characteristics of 2.0 learning formations. I think it is relevant, in Week 1, for me to try and assess how we are as a formation in terms of: the stages (forming, storming, norming, performing and adjourning),...

CCK08 – What is learning theory?

Charles Reigeluth offers a definition of what a learning theory is. He states that learning theories are descriptive, describing how learning occurs. They are descriptive in the sense that they attempt to provide a deeper understanding of the effects that result from phenomena. In contrast, theories that are design oriented are usually prescriptive in nature...

CCK08 – CMap for Paul Anderson’s JISC report

I was trying out CMap and created a map for Paul Anderson's report. You can access it here.

Getting Started

This is a first post, so I am unsure where to begin. I think, since I am a novice in the area of learning theory, the appropriate question for me to ask would be "what is a learning theory?". Also what is its distinction from an Instructional Design theory?