Apcala now available!

The team from ELGG have opened up Apcala, a shared blogging environment.

You can register for free and you have many features to play with, a personal blog, links to friends blogs, group blogs, you can also make up your own templates! The user-side features are many - you have control of your 'space'!

I've just signed up - I hope to make some use of this to trial a group of student teachers to develop a reflective professional development 'space' both individually and collectively!

If anyone else is using this for educational purposes, particularly in developing an e-Portfolio 'environment', I'd be most interested to hear!

Action learning, action research and performance management

I've registered at PARnet, a 'knowledge gateway' for action researchers around the world. It's part of the Cornell Participatory Action Research Network (CPARN).

It would be great if the site had a blog and/or RSS! I think their guestbook is getting spammed majorly!

Anyway, I'm always on the lookout for others who are doing research and undertaking action learning practices in educational settings, if this rings bells for you! I'm planning out my thesis and looking at relevant and manageable approaches, including a balance between well researched methodologies and new ways of research too!

One project I'm currently a part of, Global Knowledge, Local Learning is aiming to bring forward some new ways of doing research especially when we focus on learning and teaching experience, cultural aspects of learning and teaching and international education and what it means for one's learning and life experience. A phenomenological approach coupled with action reserach and reflective practice (in many forms including drama, imagery and music for example), can prove to be highly effective in research where we seek to uncover cultural nuances, personal experience and perceptions of learning and teaching.

I've also just popped my memebership form to ALARPM in the post! I've been meaning to do it for such a while now (sheesh!). I'd love to get to their conference this year among the mountains of other stuff going on!

Connectivism Portal

So here I am, c r a w l i n g to the end of a Friday!

I have just signed up to George Siemens' Connectivism Portal!

Tagline: "This site has been created to foster discussion on how our thinking, learning, and organizational activities are impacted through technology and societal changes."

Can't wait to play around there and there's lots of good ideas floating around from George and his counterparts. Thanks George for creating such a space - it's a sign of things to come in learning!

Connecting with others of intelligence!

Updated: 24th Feb, 2005 - addition from Headrush

Ken at Weblogs in Higher Education talks about a posting he read by a blogger, Dhar, on hiding the moves. Check it out here.

This relates to my earlier postings about Connected Intelligence and The Design Process. See, what goes around comes around! Reusing information! ;o)

I'm buoyed by the fact that there are others out there in the world who are thinking of the way we do-the way we be-the way we think! It's a nice connection...

Good timing from this post at Headrush - Creating Passionate People. Again, this applies to Dhar's thoughts about making things look simple - I am a visual person and really make lasting linkages when working with graphics or diagrams. I begin to see relationships between concepts, structures, theories, etc in this format. Not only that I seem to be able to recall things more easily where I possibly didn't before!

I still think it's important though that we also create a space in which people are able to experience things, not just be told or shown things. We learn much better by doing! The E-Learning Queen has much to say on this topic too!

From the balcony of the privileged...

I am in wonderment of our relative freedom of speech in 'the West' in light of this article in The Age about the plight of journalists in Zimbabwe:

Three reporters for major international news organisations have fled Zimbabwe and a fourth is apparently in hiding after police and intelligence agents searched their offices and threatened to arrest them for espionage and slandering the state.

The actions appear to be part of a campaign to suppress international coverage of events in Zimbabwe before crucial national elections on March 31....

Even this fairly short news story does not fully capture the gravity of the situation in which these journalists find themselves! We are so removed from this! News stories are being told with much more involvement of the journalist (remember Hunter S Thompson?). This example from a site called InteractiveNarrative shows how journalists are developing stories and breakiong down the line between objective journalism (if there is such a thing anyway) and participatory journalism!

What really captures me in this is that my senses get involved -- I am a sensing, experiential person, over being logical and rational per se. That is, I am more comfortable following my intuition than I am following logic and rules! Not that I totally disregard thopse of course, but it is my preference to rely on intuition and 'sensing' in order for me to feel comfortable in hanlding situations on a daily basis.

Online journalism asks a lot of us these days but is also quickly responding to viewers preferences in accepting news in various forms. I used to open my email program first thing when logging into my computer, now I first click my Bloglines to check for updates on my subscribed blogs!! Things change with your needs as they become better faciltiated by technologies I think...

...again, a rather privileged position don't you think? I'll leave with something by reporter John Donnelly.

Ciao from the balcony -- for now!