Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Social Collaboration: What words come to mind?

Although I have begun to gain a better understanding of what I believe Social Collaboration is I know I have a great deal more thinking and questioning to do before I finalize my definition of Social Collaboration.  Below is a VoiceThread, which I invite you to add your thoughts and ideas.  I will asking the question, "What is Social Collaboration?" in many venues to further develop my definition.  Thank you for taking part.


Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Changing Your Brain & Personal Knowledge Management

As I continue to "Make Sense" of my model and further define what it fully means I have been reading a great deal more on knowledge management and how we share that knowledge.  One blog post I have found of interest is Reading This Post Will Change Your Brain!  It brought to the forefront for me as stated in the post that everything we do changes our brain - from making tea to using social media to learn.  To build connections in a social network we will need to change and think about how those changes are impacting  our technology use, the way we communicate and how we allow those change to impact our learning.

Two common arguments I often hear about social media in education is students do not want us in their personal/non-academic spaces and the issue of privacy. Yes these arguments could be valid.  However,  they can be overcome with thoughtful implementation of social media.  If educators share experiences of successful use of social media for their own professional development, it can prompt students to further expand their use of social media.  As they see a value earned in sharing, they in turn may begin to understand new uses for the knowledge gained.

I am still wading through the huge breadth of materials available on knowledge management.  These are just a few beginning thoughts.  My paper touches on the importance of this topic, but does not even begin to go to the depths needed to fully collaborate in the new social world, which is expanding everyday.

How do you manage and/or share your knowledge?

Monday, February 4, 2013

How and where do tools fit in my framework?

This weekend I had a question from my friend and colleague, Beth Dailey, about where VoiceThread fits in my model, which gave me the idea for this post.  My response to her was

"In my paper I put it in the creating stage as I used digital storytelling example with students creating the VoiceThread; however, if the instructor was creating the VoiceThread for students to respond to it would fit in the engaging stage.  You will find many tools will fit in multiple stages dependent upon how the tool is implemented."

As I further explain my model you will notice that many tools fit into more than one stage.  The tool is just that - a tool.  How you integrate the tool into your instruction and pedagogical practices will impact the stage it falls into.  At the outset of my writing my paper I had planned on placing tools next to each stage; however, the deeper I went into understanding how you can build connections through social collaboration I came to realize I could not place most tools in a single stage.

Thursday, January 31, 2013

Building Connections Through Social Collaboration

As I finish up my CrossPaper Fellowship on Building Connections Through Social Collaboration I need to continue making sense of new research, tools, and resources. This will be my place of ramblings, ideas and suggestions how to connect and engage students through social collaboration.  In my upcoming posts I will layout the framework I developed (pictured below) so my rambling make sense to you.