28. The MOOC model Orient Declare Network Cluster Focus http://www.flickr.com/photos/raforrest/77596703/sizes/o/in/photostream/
29. Orient what's going on? What are the rules? How do i win? http://www.flickr.com/photos/joebehr/4883901718/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/tillwe/38356289/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/hardluck-hotel/4568273841/
30. Declare – i am here! declare! http://farm1.static.flickr.com/27/40440117_4521374442_b.jpg
37. So here we are at a conference – on partnerships It's an open event.
38. Conference Orientation Tag Giving permission - What's ok? How oriented are you? http://www.flickr.com/photos/mikecogh/4668732865/sizes/l/in/photostream/
Making Ideas Collide: openness for creativity, innovation and sustainability. Broadly speaking it's an attempt to make a practical argument for transparency and to share some of the ways in which I've found openness helpful.
Grew up in a small town. Never seen an operatic performance of any kind. Walked into Don Giovanni in Bratislava. It was terrible. Didn't know how to evaluate... didn't know what i was going for.
Maybe just the lobster?
The scenery?
A wordle (sorry) of the schedule at the conference. Hoping to make the crowd interact and talk about why they came and what they are interested in.
Although, truth be told, sometimes for all the work we do, and all the planning, the things we do on the side are the most important.
For me, it's been trying to find the curriculum in the community. How do i replicate my own experiences on purpose? How do you map out the possibilities for others... You could take two trips around Europe at 20, find great people, or find rotten people. Huge impact on your experience.
That's the problem with emergence. It serves people who are lucky, for one, but especially those who are already engaged. A well known person is going to find it far easier to find people to work with. See Alec Couros and his work with open googledocs and having people visit his class.
Three use cases for how being open can drive the kind of creativity and innovation that can make those dreams come true :)
A... the internet. Late night diner of knowledge locations. Is it open? Will the people their be weird? How's the food... who's to know. Sometimes you don't care. Sometimes what's in the food really matters. Without a house of your own... you're always just another customer in the diner.
And having a place to speak from is not so hard... and has lots of advantages. No more can you give me the 'technology changes all the time' stuff. It doesn't. The bevy of options is pretty much the same it's been. Besides, it doesn't matter where you put it. As long as you have some way to find it and you make sure you don't lose it :)
And there's a huge difference between spending hours and days creating pieces that are perfect and reusable and awesome. The reuse rates of those have not been fanstastic... and it's reuse doesn't really help you all that much anyway. Better to be transparent, to share as practice. This allows people to engage in your work early and often, to become part of the change that you are making. To maybe, if you're lucky, even join in on the change. This is emergence as its most chancy... but maybe its most pure.
This is the story of the ed366 courses i've taught for UPEI. They've been a journey in trying to construct learning as an open PLE project. In some cases it's worked, in others, students have deleted their accounts. I occasionally find students re-awakening their blogs. But the connections that they make remain. This is key.
So lets say we do want to encourage that kind of emergence... the kind of connection that doesn't require huge wads of cash, an established body of fame, or massive institutional backing? How can i create projects and have them keep going. Not alone.
Things to remember from PRACTICE
Edtechtalk... it's been almost 6 years. There are lessons here... about what can happen when people commit to community, about how people come and go, and about how learning is different when you care about the people that are involved.
In a community, ideas come together, crash, and you get something new. Ideas come together... but really only from people who are already committed. It's a great incubator for early wavers.
Neat thing about that though... in learning guitar I've discovered that the rhythm guitar is really, really handy to those people doing solos. There's a symbiosis there that matches the kind of thing that I see as being valuable in community.
There are also lessons about how things get managed. There is all the world of difference between the necessary sharing that is part of community and the need for leadership. I haven't been a particularly fantastic leader for edtechtalk, but we've got some good tools in place for leadership. Blob management. http://edtechtalk.com/node/1492
This model was specifically designed for moocs... but really applies to any kind of open/networked space, from a coffee shop to a conference.
Orientation is key. Find the lay of the land... it's the part that I often forget, and continue to forget the more i do the same thing over and over again. Many of the things that seem obvious are just very familiar.
You need to shout. or... well... there is no conversation.
You also need to respond to other people's shouts. And not with a pat on the back. With engagement.
Clustering is one of those hidden steps... in the wide internet world it becomes more important. You need to find people with whom you share a language... maybe different groups and different languages for different projects.
This is step that brings home the tofu bacon. Making practical project management like steps that will actually contribute to actually getting something done. Commitments are good, public ones are better. The more a project is discussed in the open in its formative stages, the more useful feedback (not that it all is) and the more likely you'll feel committed.
How can we apply the ideas of openness presented here to make those connections while we're at the conference?
Find the tags. Find the gathering places. Meet with people who's ideas match yours... find out how you can approach them. Ask an organizer if you need an introduction (or if that's ok) Find the online spaces that people are using to match their ideas.
Share ur stuff. Although that's one of the things that conferences are designed to do anyway. But share anything relevant... including your responses.
This goes without saying.
Find person or persons that match your work, remembering that getting together online is not hard.