Week 1 of the TESOL PPOT 107 Multiliteracies course

[Vance Stevens]

Hi everyone,

Today, Sept 6, 2010, we start the latest rendition of Multiliteracies for Social Networking and Collaborative Learning Environments: This course is part of TESOL's Principles and Practices of Online Teaching Certificate Program; see http://www.tesol.org/s_tesol/sec_document.asp?CID=664&DID=2642. The course has fee paying participants but in such cases I focus on them while inviting the network of past participants who have taken previous TESOL or EVO Multiliteracies courses to join us if they wish.  In networked learning, it takes a network! (a PLN). So if you are reading this message you are welcome to participate.

I have revised the portal http://goodbyegutenberg.pbworks.com/ to act as a content manager for the course.  If you worked on this course with me in 2009 or earlier this year, don't worry, ALL our content is intact and archived.  Check the links to the archived materials at the bottom of the sidebar.

To get started on the course, read this: http://goodbyegutenberg.pbworks.com/GettingStarted_Sept2010

We have a calendar of events that is being added to.  It has some events we have arranged for this course, especially our noon Sunday GMT sessions at http://tappedin.org. You can come here to find us online ready to answer questions.  We are also arranging events for 13:00 GMT in various presentation venues each Sunday.  You can find the calendar at our Ning http://multiliteracies.ning.com/ and note that it includes events from this Calendar, http://live.classroom20.com/calendar.html, which is in turn a mashup of calendars from other communities actively producing webcasts and podcasts keeping conversations going around topics of interest to 21st century educators.

One important thing about the Ning, it can accommodate only 150 members.  We have 139 now.  I am accepting all requests to join now and inevitably we will let in some spammers.  It's ok as we'll be monitoring closely, but soon I'll need to eliminate any profiles that have no picture or details filled in. So please update your profile if you wish to remain in the course.

Ok, let the F.U.N. begin.  Respond here or start a new discussion topic if you have any concerns, comments, or questions. Hope you enjoy the course.

[Roxana Sordo]

Hi, Vance! I find this course very innovative but I have to admit that it took me some time to understand they way it is going to work. lol I was used to working at D2L and I felt safe. Now I see this course is very challenging and given the content of this course it makes sense! Thanks!

[Vance Stevens]

GOOD! That's the idea. We don't learn without a challenge! I myself and challenged putting on this course. Patrick came online with me today and challenged me on a number of points, causing me to have to go back to the drawing boards and do some experiments. For example, neither of us can get Spezify to recognize our tags, nor TagGalaxy, and it's very frustrating, and obviously we need to learn a bit more. Also Grouply has been driving me up the wall. I did what Patrick did and denied it the right to 'automatically' link Grouply to all my YahooGroups and it was only when I contacted the help desk and got Rich to personally intervene that I finally figured that one out, http://groups.yahoo.com/group/evonline2002_webheads/message/26456. The learning never ends.

OK, glad you're ok with it and hang on, we're going for a little ride ... :-)

Roxana Sordo said:

Hi, Vance! I find this course very innovative but I have to admit that it took me some time to understand they way it is going to work. lol I was used to working at D2L and I felt safe. Now I see this course is very challenging and given the content of this course it makes sense! Thanks!

[sarah sahr]

if i add this RSS to my Google reader will I get all the threads in your Ning? I'm wondering how to make that happen...

[Vance Stevens]

That's a good question, how do you add forum feeds to your feed reader. The answer a few minutes ago was, "I don't know" but that's changed to, "aha, I just found out!".

Scroll to the bottom of this discussion. You'll find a blue RSS button there. Right click on that and copy shortcut or link location (IE and Mozilla, respectively). The URL for the RSS feed is now in your clipboard (RAM, waiting to be pasted). Go to your Reader and Add Subscription. Paste the URL there and you'll see that Week 1 forum comes up in your reader. You are now following replies to this discussion.

You might want to get a feed for ALL the discussions. To do that you have to work backwards in the discussion URL to the main page for forums for this Ning, http://multiliteracies.ning.com/forum/. You'll find a blue RSS button at the bottom of that page. To put any feed in your Reader, you right click on it to copy its URL, manually Add Subscription in your Reader, and then don't forget to file the feed in a folder for this course in your reader so you'll be organized.

When I click on the RSS feed in Ning, I am taken to a page that shows contents of that URL. Sometimes Google intervenes and prompts me to file the data in my Google page or in my Google Reader.

Is this what you want to know?

Vance

sarah sahr said:

if i add this RSS to my Google reader will I get all the threads in your Ning? I'm wondering how to make that happen...

[Vanessa Vaile]

Hi ~ EVO lurker here, yet more proof how addictive multiliteracies can be.

FYI ~ another handy Google rss reader feature: you can send links from reader to delicious. Look for "Share" on menu at the bottom of the reader item. For all I know (Vance probably does), you can sync to share with more than just delicious.

Vanessa Vaile

Vance Stevens said:

That's a good question, how do you add forum feeds to your feed reader. The answer a few minutes ago was, "I don't know" but that's changed to, "aha, I just found out!".

[sarah sahr]

I think so... just trying to sort it all out.
peace-

Vance Stevens said:

That's a good question, how do you add forum feeds to your feed reader. The answer a few minutes ago was, "I don't know" but that's changed to, "aha, I just found out!".

Scroll to the bottom of this discussion. You'll find a blue RSS button there. Right click on that and copy shortcut or link location (IE and Mozilla, respectively). The URL for the RSS feed is now in your clipboard (RAM, waiting to be pasted). Go to your Reader and Add Subscription. Paste the URL there and you'll see that Week 1 forum comes up in your reader. You are now following replies to this discussion.

You might want to get a feed for ALL the discussions. To do that you have to work backwards in the discussion URL to the main page for forums for this Ning, http://multiliteracies.ning.com/forum/. You'll find a blue RSS button at the bottom of that page. To put any feed in your Reader, you right click on it to copy its URL, manually Add Subscription in your Reader, and then don't forget to file the feed in a folder for this course in your reader so you'll be organized.

When I click on the RSS feed in Ning, I am taken to a page that shows contents of that URL. Sometimes Google intervenes and prompts me to file the data in my Google page or in my Google Reader.

Is this what you want to know?

Vance

sarah sahr said:

if i add this RSS to my Google reader will I get all the threads in your Ning? I'm wondering how to make that happen...

[Vance Stevens]

Just to let you know, I didn't know you could share links from Google Reader with Delicious before Vanessa mentioned it in her post, and I don't know what else you can share there, but I'm looking forward to learning what you find out :-)

Meanwhile, from one addict to another, welcome back to the course, Vanessa,

Vance


Vanessa Vaile said:

Hi ~ EVO lurker here, yet more proof how addictive multiliteracies can be.

FYI ~ another handy Google rss reader feature: you can send links from reader to delicious. Look for "Share" on menu at the bottom of the reader item. For all I know (Vance probably does), you can sync to share with more than just delicious.

Vanessa Vaile

Vance Stevens said:

That's a good question, how do you add forum feeds to your feed reader. The answer a few minutes ago was, "I don't know" but that's changed to, "aha, I just found out!".

[Vanessa Vaile]

Vance ~ Glad to be back. I am reminded of Oscar Wilde's advice about temptation: succumbing as the best way to deal with.

The pull down menu suggests the possibility of more than one option. I'll set finding out more as one of my course goals. Bundling reader tags sounds interesting too, so I'll put that (and how I can use it) on the list too.

Vanessa

Vance Stevens said:

Just to let you know, I didn't know you could share links from Google Reader with Delicious before Vanessa mentioned it in her post, and I don't know what else you can share there, but I'm looking forward to learning what you find out :-)

Meanwhile, from one addict to another, welcome back to the course, Vanessa,

Vance

[Vance Stevens]

Go for it ... report back ...

Vanessa Vaile said:

Vance ~ Glad to be back. I am reminded of Oscar Wilde's advice about temptation: succumbing as the best way to deal with.

The pull down menu suggests the possibility of more than one option. I'll set finding out more as one of my course goals. Bundling reader tags sounds interesting too, so I'll put that (and how I can use it) on the list too.

Vanessa

Vance Stevens said:

Just to let you know, I didn't know you could share links from Google Reader with Delicious before Vanessa mentioned it in her post, and I don't know what else you can share there, but I'm looking forward to learning what you find out :-)

Meanwhile, from one addict to another, welcome back to the course, Vanessa,

Vance

[Maria Laura Damelli]

Hi Vance
It was not until I watched your video on "Applying multiliteracies in collaborative learning environments" that I understood why you set this course in this way, instead of putting all the information together in D2L. I must admit that it's not been easy for me to find my way through all this amount of information.But I truly believe it caters for all our needs.
see you
M.Laura

[Vance Stevens]

Hi Maria Laura,

Thanks for your encouragement. I think that LMS's like D2L can be somewhat flat and limited. I'm sure that Dafne and Teresa are getting optimal performance from the way they are using it, but I like having a number of platforms to work from. In the first place, it MODELS what you yourself can do with simple, free, easily available Web 2.0 tools, whereas not everyone can have access to an LMS like D2L. Secondly, even I can't get access to D2L between the time I teach my courses, so I tend to develop them in open spaces over time and spontaneously. It would be a huge and redundant effort to re-create the course year after year, or every other year, in D2L, and the quality of what I could put in place given the brief window they release the course to me beforehand would fall far short of what I can keep online year round.

Finally, I can't bring a network into D2L, and the PLN or personal learning network is one of the key elements of this course. D2L is closed to all but paid participants. This course is open, both in content and participation. But you do get value for what you pay for. Only duly registered participants can get credit for taking this course. This is a common business model on the Internet, for example http://w3schools.com/ puts all its materials, tutorials, and sandboxes online so you can teach yourself almost any programming language, but if you want a certificate that you've done the work, that will cost you, which I feel is both 'open' and fair!

There is a Methodology section at the bottom of http://goodbyegutenberg.pbworks.com/GettingStarted_Sept2010 that explains that the course is modeled on the MOOC concept (massively open online course). In brief, the idea is that the course is open, everything is online as with the curriculum at MIT, and participants are responsible for their own learning. The instructor is responsible for cohesion, as George Siemens said when we interviewed him in the 2009 version of this course (see http://vance_stevens.podomatic.com/entry/eg/2009-01-28T03_19_19-08_00). So the course works through a combination of cohesion, content, learner autonomy, and networking.

Stephen Downes and others are mounting a course like this starting like right now! You can register for the course at http://connect.downes.ca/. You can read how you are expected to interact with the other 1000 participants in the Sept 13, 2010 "Daily" here http://connect.downes.ca/thedaily.htm. You'll find here an articulation of what I am trying to emulate in this course. So the idea is neither new nor originally mine, but I've carried it into pp107, and gently nudged D2L aside.

Stephen's course is on PLEs or personal learning environments. It was Stephen who provided the mantra of 'to teach is to model and demonstrate, to learn is to practice and reflect' (in his WiAOC 2007 keynote). I have often reflected on the brilliant simplicity of that mantra, and it segues with my idea that there is no such thing as a teacher, only master learners (from David Warlick) who have learned better than most people how to learn. So learning and master-learning is a single percolative process of modeling, demonstrating, practicing, and reflecting. The purpose of this course is to instigate all 4 of these things, and to help us all master the learning process.

Stephen was asked in an interview as his 2008 cck (connected and connectivist knowledge) MOOC what he expected to gain from subjecting himself to what was at the time over 2000 students, and he said he hoped to learn from it.

Downes, S. (2007) Personal Learning the Web 2.0 Way. Presentation given at WiAOC 2007. Retrieved September 25, 2009 from the World Wide Web: Slides, http://www.slideshare.net/Downes/personal-learning-the-web-20-way, Audio Part 1: http://streamarchives.net/node/84, and Audio Part 2: http://streamarchives.net/node/83.

Maria Laura Damelli said:

Hi Vance
It was not until I watched your video on "Applying multiliteracies in collaborative learning environments" that I understood why you set this course in this way, instead of putting all the information together in D2L. I must admit that it's not been easy for me to find my way through all this amount of information.But I truly believe it caters for all our needs. see you M.Laura