Google Books

Google has made available some books which can be read entirely online. Some are also downloadable such as the one below by Edward Gibbons.

Reflecting on Collaboration

Reading Organizing Higher Education for Collaboration, I could not agree more with the authors when they mentioned that one of the most prominent and desired result from collaborations is innovation. Thinking over the research on my own collaborative works with the academics, I struggled for some time to pinpoint why I perceived some cases to be less collaborative in nature than others. It wasn't until just now, as I was driving home and caught in traffic that I came up with an answer that satisfied my inquiry. The reason some works with the academics were deemed more collaborative is due to the degree of joint-ownership sensed by each collaborator in the collaborative effort. The ones I considered as less collaborative are those where my collaborators seem to show a lack of ownership in the process and outcomes of the collaboration. They were merely satisfied to passively cooperate and carry out the plans or designs without making much effort or giving priority to contribute deeper thoughts to its development. Although interests was shown in the ideas of innovation, it seldom accompanied with a greater commitment to pursue its development beyond mere implementation. Quite often, the interest shown towards the novelty of the innovation slowly fades away after an initial implementation in practice. What can be done to sustain the interest and develop a higher level of joint-ownership amongst the collaborators? I believe this is where Wenger's concept of communities of practice will provide insights into my research. I believe that the dimensions of a community of practice are the building blocks of a healthy collaborative effort.

Free by Chris Anderson

FREE (full book) by Chris Anderson

Opera Unite vs Google Wave?

Google Wave

ascilite 2009

I hope to present this small piece of my dissertation at ascilite 2009 if I finish writing it.

Complete a coherent write-up

As I struggle for months over the writing of my last few chapters of my dissertation, I begin to realize that I am actually missing the point. I am overly focus on delivering a perfect final product whereas what is actually required is learning from the process. Because what I am writing now will never be final, it will never be perfect. So, all I need to do at the moment is to focus on completing the task for obvious and various practical and down-to-earth reasons. I got to focus on the goal of writing a 'coherent, logical and hopefully interesting' dissertation and enjoy the process of tying it up. That is and will be my goal until June 2009.

Seth Godin on Tribes

Anecdote

I find plentiful of resources relevant to my studies on collaborations in communities of practice such as the video below.

Building a collaborative workplace using stories from Shawn Callahan on Vimeo.

LMS is dead?

I am not so certain of the hype that is currently being generated by those who are championing the demise of learning management systems (LMS) because of the advent of Web 2.0 technologies. It is said that the use of Web 2.0 will create a more open and democratic personal learning environments (PLE) which will transfer the power of control back to the individual learners.

This may be true for adult learners working in the marketplace where learning largely occurs in informal settings and at the workplace. These adults would have the motivation and discipline to take up the responsibility to learn because it affects their work performance. Learning is not an option for them, but a necessity for personal development and professional advancement.

But for students who have just come out of their high schools, asking them to take up such responsibilities is almost like throwing them into the pool when they do not know how to swim. Some will make it, but many will not. Pushing them too hard may in the end lead to a revolt. 

We also need to think about the teachers. Are they ready for PLE? How are they to function in such environment? What skills do they need? Are they given the chance and time to develop such skills that would allow them to facilitate the PLEs? Barely have they gotten use to the idea of the LMS, now they have to learn how to share, tag, twitter, follow, blog, embed, subscribe  etc. Will they revolt too?

A proper transition is needed. LMSes are catching up too. Blogs, tags, subscription, journals are now making its way into the LMS environment. Perhaps, we could start off on this and allow the students and the teachers the time to be comfortable before moving them on to the next level. Give them time to change. Play too much the hype and the bubble may burst in the end. 

Blink and Reflective Practitoner - an initial comment

As I quickly read through the first few chapters of Blink and its story about the not-so-right statue, and how months of technical analyses could not detect the fraud that a few experts felt the moment they set their eyes on the artifact, I saw the similarities between what Gladwell is writing about the unconscious adaptive and Donald Schon's notion of reflection-in-action. It makes me wonder why we are relearning something that has been said, mentioned, debated and researched by the academic world 20 years ago. It is like this notion is totally new. But it is not. Perhaps it is the failure of academics to write best sellers of theoretical concepts which gives the impression that it is something novel. Perhaps we need more Gladwells and Godins in academic writings to turn important theoretical contructs that might have huge practical implications to education. 

Community and its Analogy

Reading Block's book on community, when he mentioned the need to understand the fabric of community, I started to relate this to the fabric of the universe and how the gravitational pull of large cosmic objects will pull and affect other smaller objects much like how the our sun pulls together the 8 planets to orbit around it. This is because the gravity of the sun shapes the fabric of space into a curvature that forms the orbits that the planets travel on. The sun also nourishes the planets around it and most successfully on earth. So a community of practice is somewhat similar to the solar system where its members interact with each other peripherally from a safe distance, pulling and pushing each other through ones gravity of influence while all the time orbiting in a predictable manner around the core interest of the sun which undoubtedly provide the strongest gravitational pull. Thus, nurturing the 'nuclear force of the sun' is vital for the health and the continuous existence of the 'solar' community of practice. What is this force in terms of a community of practice or a collaborative practice?