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Envisioning an Online Community for CMLTD Students & Alumni

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I Don’t Want to Belong to Any Club That Will Accept Me as a Member  -Groucho Marx Perhaps it’s me getting sentimental already as I approach the end of the semester and am just a few days away from registering for my last class, but the OC I wish to create is a CMLTD gathering spot for current students, alumni and faculty. As such, there is a ready audience for this, I believe …  Why create this platform? And why would anyone want to any join???? What would one actually DO there? There are lots of reasons! Something for everyone here... 1. Helps facilitate a stronger community--beyond the classroom.  There is a palpable energy in the CMLTD program, lots of curiosity, design thinking , original research happening. There are lots of ideas shared, group projects within classes one chooses to attend, but what about the others? As one example, this platform could have a “What I Am Working On?” section for students ... or a “Here is my IP topic!” section. As it happens, I ...
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The ghosts of educational past and future are calling ...

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  "The best way to predict the future is to invent it." --Alan Kay ... or was it Abraham Lincoln?     From Facer & Sandford's 2010 article, the scenario that seems most viable to me is:  World 1: Trust Yourself  A highly individualized world of contingent and shifting allegiances in which there is no support for collective responses to social problems, and in which individuals are free/required to take high levels of personal responsibility for their actions. In this environment, we see two education systems emerging:  1 ‘Informed Choice’ – a highly personalized education system structured around the individual collaborating lifelong with paid mentors and structuring education provision from diverse sources around their needs.  2 ‘Independent Consumer’ – a highly atomized education system in which individuals are able to choose from a complex menu of standardized provision from private, public and not for profit sectors.  Now why do...
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Responses to Student Questions Regarding Social Presence

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  What were some of the social features that were added to the online video platforms in the study? What are the aspects of video-centric program that participants reporting engaging? What does "quality of social features" mean? Are you saying that this article does not show the diversity of social features well? Or does it mean that it cannot be applied to other areas of social features?   These are all great questions! There were two studies in this article, but for the purposes of answering these questions, I will focus on the first study, in which the researchers aimed to determine whether (or not) social features had a positive impact among students. The idea was that greater social presence--as per Garrison's Community of Inquiry Framework, would lead to greater cognitive presence, as well.   All participants asynchronously viewed a cooking video on a platform that had the functionality of adding either comments or emojis while watching--...
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Critical Review Assignment: Do Social Features Help ... Andel et al

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OK, so I quit my Facebook account (again) ... ... and I believe this time it's for good. As per my last post, watching Hacking Your Mind , and even more so, The Social Dilemma on Netflix just reminded me of all the (very good) reasons I quit it in the first place ... but here I go again.   Ultimately, Facebook became the behemoth that it is today because of its a) business model, b) because someone designed it that way and c) most all of us embraced that design and agreed to that business model, knowingly or not. I personally did twice. And Facebook as an "institution" now seems unchangeable and locked in , on a path that no one seems to be able to control. This is not to say that I don't appreciate the connectivity that Facebook provides among friends and family, near or far. It's fun to stay in contact and hear about what's new and happening with folks. And yeah, I will miss that part.  This week's readings really seem to take you back into a time capsu...
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Reading reflections, week two. I found the topic of technological determinism extremely nuanced and fascinating, as these are interesting times we are living through (for lack of a better word).  In particular, Technology As a Social Practice (Bruce, 1996) raised some really great questions about our symbiotic sociocultural relationship with technology and all its tools. Some of the key items that stood out for me: The Technology Independence Assumption (hereafter, TTIA) asserts that technology is a tool that in and of itself will improve education, and problems today are concerned with training and access. TTIA also implies that technological tools have "fixed meanings" and are pre-defined--independent of social use and contexts TTIA is widespread and pervasive (I so agree with this!), but unfortunately promotes a subpar relationship with technology and its tools Use of technology is never without a social context, that "even the basic computer interface becomes a site...
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Hello from Montclair, New Jersey! Looking forward to meeting all of you in this course. Oh, and say hello to Katie, my crazy dog. Katie likes to bark a lot during my Zoom meetings. .
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