One of the issues with use of blogs in the classroom, which I’m still trying to resolve, is how best to orientate the course structure, organise the resulting student blog feeds, develop a portal to all the distributed discussions that are taking place, and establish a sense of cohort cohesion while affording individuals as much freedom as possible. Because, for all of their inherent value to the individual, blogs are a tricky medium to implement in a large group or cohort of students.
Existing Models
Having said this, there are …

The stars seem to all be aligning on Connectivism at the moment. A month or so ago I was approached about presenting my experiences with CCK08 to the local group of Educational Developers at UNSW, which I happily agreed to. The presentation isn’t until next week, however given I’ve more or less finished the slides today I thought I might release them for feedback, critique and suggestions.
NOTE: Due to the fine detail of the screenshots, this presentation is best viewed full screen.
CCK08 Presentation for UNFED
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This morning I caught wind of the news that George Siemens and Stephen Downes will be facilitating a second Connectivism and Connective Knowledge course beginning this September through the LTC at the University of Manitoba.  Initially I hadn’t planned on taking the course, however in light of the fact several CCK08 alums have decided to enroll in the fun again I just couldn’t pass up the chance to join in.
In order to do the experience justice, though, I think I need to spend some time reflecting on the experiences and …

Following on my last post I’ve just had another epiphany I want to explore, beginning first with a bit of new media history…
Identity Crisis

A few years back the blogosphere underwent a fairly significant identity crisis.  In a relatively short period of time several services emerged, including Friendfeed, that began to facilitate the discussions of groups of people regarding content that was located elsewhere.  Other sites went even farther, harnessing the aggregative power of RSS to reproduce whole posts, and effectively circumvent the original authors of the content.
Certain bloggers – especially …

FOREWORD
Late last week, through a wild series of connections I learned through Jim Groom at University Mary Washington in Virginia that there is an instance of WordPress Multi-User (WPMU) being run locally out of EMPA at UNSW, called New South Blogs. After initially wallowing in a sense of unimportance about not being aware of this fact beforehand I’ve begun to realise the significance of all this.
It is my hope that the seeds of our preliminary discussions represent an opportunity to nurture and grow a participatory culture that spans faculties …