Thomas Ryberg

For the past few days I have had the chances to play around with Google+. I haven’t had much time, as I am on parental leave at the moment and at home with my daughter. However, I must say, that I really like Google+. The whole ideas of circles really speaks to me and also the privacy settings and the like are much more manageable than Facebook’s. It has been some time since I was on Facebook, but I do remember that I felt it was too cluttered and that too many people were mixed together in the bowl-of-updates. I really enjoy that I can create a circle of people I follow (like on Twitter), have a circle of people/family who actually want to see pictures of my daughter (as I also prefer to keep them within a small group of people), a circle for colleagues or peers - or I can choose to go public.

Also, the mobile app is really smooth, and I have set it up so I automatically uploads the pictures I take with my Desire HD, so I can share them later on (or not) and have a backup of course…

Would be cool if Google+ could actually integrate with other services, I could pull in RSS from other services on my profile, it integrated with Diigo etc. etc. but I think these things will be coming.

Not much of a critical review - I just wanted to share my satisfaction with the Google+ service and I hope it will catch on (I for one can recommend it :-))

Oh, and no need to ask for invites in comments - I don’t have any…

In a very interesting session with Renate Fruchter who is presenting her work with the P5BL model and a cross-disciplinary, distance/distributed, 5 months learning experience - amazingly interesting!

P5BL is (5P: problem, project, product, process and people)

Below is a call for papers for the Networked Learning Conference 2012 - (image also available here). The 2012 conference website will be available on the 11th April - please feel free to circulate the call :-)

There has been considerable criticism of notions such as the Net Generation and Digital Natives (see for instance this issue in JCAL) and the assumptions that a generation growing up in technology saturated environments will automatically develop advanced skills in using and designing technologies for domain X/Y or Z. I have previously published some critical notes on this (Ryberg, Dirckinck-Holmfeld & Jones, 2010 & Ryberg, 2010) and I think it is an important issue. While the assumed Net Generation certainly come to universities with different experiences and preferences in using technology, and indeed have some valuable competences, I also find it problematic that it is sometimes assumed that these will just automatically transfer into e.g. the pedagogical domain ie. that Net Generation students are able to adopt, use and design technologies creatively for own (or others) learning. A recent article by (Valtonen et al, 2011) also seems to question this assumption and might provide an interesting read for those working with education of new teachers.

References
Ryberg, T., Dirckinck-Holmfeld, L., & Jones, C. (2010). Catering to the Needs of the “Digital Natives” or Educating the “Net Generation”? In M. J.W Lee & C. McLoughlin (Eds.), Web 2.0-Based E-Learning: Applying Social Informatics for Tertiary Teaching (pp. 301-318). Hershey, PA: IGI Global.

Ryberg, T. (2010). Digitale indfødte - Hvis teknologien er i blodet, hvad så med skolen? Ungdomsforskning, 8(3&4), 9–18.

Valtonen, T., Pontinen, S., Kukkonen, J., Dillon, P., Väisänen, P., & Hacklin, S. (2011). Confronting the technological pedagogical knowledge of Finnish Net Generation student teachers. Technology, Pedagogy and Education, 20(1), 3.

teach.us – Learning community for Web 2.0 teaching

What is teach.us? teach.us is a web community for teachers interested in integrating Web 2.0 in classes at school. teach.us wants to support Web 2.0 projects at schools and motivate teachers to use modern internet technologies in classes. Why teach.us? Basic knowledge, motivation and inspiration of the teacher are key factors when starting innovative educational approaches in classes. Other web communities on Web 2.0 teaching are often dominated by experienced members. teach.us is a learning community that focuses on beginners connecting them to advanced learners and experts. teach.us is a starting point in the world of teaching with Web 2.0.

(Source: teachus.eu)

An interesting blog in Digital Scholarship in the Humanities - created and maintained by Lisa Spiro

Digital Scholarship in the Humanities | Exploring the digital humanities

Ahh looks very interesting

“HETL: a portal for teaching and learning knowledge Posted on September 20, 2010 by Patrick Blessinger Welcome to the Higher Education Teaching and Learning (HETL) Portal. The official launch of this portal will be in the first quarter of 2011. The main text area of this home page is where all new articles will be posted. Articles published on The HETL Portal site will first appear on this home page (a new article about every two weeks) for all to read, and then at the end of the calendar year, a subset of those articles will be assembled into an e-journal – The HETL Review. As such, we have created a unique model of how we publish and disseminate journal articles and other information on teaching and learning to the global higher education community – a model that utilizes Web 2.0 technologies to involve the global higher education community in the process and provides a convenient way to disseminate information to that community. For more information about our group, see the About Us page.”

(Source: hetl.org)

Yesterday I was supposed to be in Berlin at Online Educa to give a presentation titled “Social Media Practices and Assessment - Irreconcilable Differences or True Romance?”. This was supposed to be part of the session “Assessing Learning in a Digital World” organised by the European Commission and its Executive Agency. The session was chaired by Ralf Rahders and the other presenters were Kiran Trehan and Brian Holmes (his presentation is online here)

Unfortunately, due to bad weather conditions, my flight was cancelled and there were no alternative routes, which could get me there in time to participate in the workshop. I think, however, Brian Holmes presented the slides on my behalf (for which I am very grateful) and he must have been doing a great job as @arongas asked me for the slides via twitter. They are, by the way, available here.

Sad that I could not go myself and instead had to spend four hours in Copenhagen Airport (although it is nice) before I could go back to Aalborg.