TEDxValletta – Alex Grech – We Are Everywhere

Here is one of my co-learners from Howard Rheingold’s “Mindamp” course. Our group was the lucky first ones to take these classes for a low rate — thanks twitter. Now we have started an alumni group and continue to learn from one another.

Kids and Virtual Worlds

When I bring someone new into Second Life or OpenSim, I first explain why. One of the things I show people is how many virtual worlds there are for kids, especially young kids. Kzero has statistics on this. Virtual Worlds is the future for these kids — so instead of Facebook, your kids or grandkids will be in one or more Virtual Worlds. They already are….

Mashable has a great article about Club Penguin.

“Club Penguin is all about creating a digital space where kids can play, participate in events and socialize. The site hosts regular contests, online meetups, “concerts,” digital events (like a site-wide sports tournament), and an official newspaper called “The Club Penguin Times” which is read by more than 1.1 million kids.”

Club Penguin like most virtual worlds is also educational. The game is in 5 languages so kids can actually learn another language and talk to other kids in another language. It is reported by Lane Merrifield that kids improve their typing, reading and writing skills. They can take care of pets (Puffles) that make them responsible and of course it improvestheir social skills. Plus the site donates $1 million to charity.

The site has a wiki, real products and several sites for cheats and hacks.

Visit Club Penguins Youtube channel or one of their multiple twitter sites.

Another online virtual game “Lego Universe” is apparently closing down. So the kids have started an Occupy Lego Universe site. They are calling for a day of action on New Years Eve.

Visit Occupy Lego Universe on Twitter.

Letter to “The Chronicle of Higher Education”

The Chronicle of Higher Education just ask a question to their readers — “Who Are the Top Technology Innovators in Higher Education? And this is my response.

It is not just one person or one great teacher I am learning from nowadays. It is many. Through the Internet I have created my own personal learning network, I am creating, curating and collaborating with many though out the world. These skills should be taught to all students from middle school on. It should be a requirement in the first month of any university.

Learning to search properly is one of the most important things I have learned. Curation though following using RSS and even Yahoo Pipes others blogs and having their titles dumped into Netvibes so I can quickly find articles that interest me. I find so many interesting people and links to articles (some in scientific journals) though Twitter. But went use an article in my own blog, I also know who to cite it properly and give that person create for their works. It takes time to learn who to follow and who to believe. Howard Rheingold calls this “crap detection“.

I have been to conferences and watched them streamed live. Last week it was a SWSX like technology conference in France and another conference on Virtual Worlds. I have also watch live streaming of Occupy Wall Street. I have taking several MOOCs – Massive Open Online Courses with thousands from all over the world lead by George Seimens and Stephen Downes. I just tried to take Artificial Intelligences course from Stanford with 120,00 others. I did not study as much math on Khan Academy YouTube videos that I need to and got lost. But I can take this again in the future or go back to YouTube and watch the lectures.

In Second Life, I have heard Clay Shirkey and Sir Ken Robinson talk. I have meet with libraries and other educators connected to real world organizations such as American Library Association and ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education). I have see how IBM and Cisco uses Virtual Worlds and to train their employees and get them to collaborate with each other. Tony O’Driscoll (from Duke) has a great book on this “Learning in 3D”.

I belong to an Alumi group of past Howard Rheingold’s students that is growing with people all over the world. We are co-learners — teaching each other. We reading books such Cathy Davidson’s “Now You See It” (from Duke) and Douglas Rushkoff’s “Program or Be Programmed” — together and comment in a forum our thoughts and opinions. My co-learner and I meet twice weekly in either Adobe Connect or Google+ — not only learning from each other but also talking with a high school class, their teacher along with Roy Christopher about how they feel about classrooms and learning today. We even got Douglas Rushkoff to speak to our little group and Cathy Davidson is on our list.

And every Saturday afternoon I spend with TED, not a person, but short talks from some of the most inspirational and interesting people around the world. Just last week, I learned about the Knowmad’s movement. I am learning more than I have ever learned in my life. Learning is not just restricted to the classroom anymore. Anyone can create, curate and collaborate.

(Several Weeks later)
The Chronicle of Higher Education has picked their nominations, but at least did mention my post. I still think we need to find many people to learn from, whether on the web or in person. This is old fashions. We need to learn collaboration, we need to learn how to communicate with other in this new world, and to curate the web.

Cathy Davidson and Howard Rheingold

Think different – TEACH different

Think Different from gchavezpooley on Vimeo.

More on Knowmads

Marcel Kampman talks about “The Dream School”

http://cdn.livestream.com/grid/LSPlayer.swf?channel=liftconference&clip=pla_20bf86e1-1ea1-45ab-afcd-2756bcc1a325&color=0xe7e7e7&autoPlay=false&mute=false&iconColorOver=0x888888&iconColor=0x777777

Watch live streaming video from liftconference at livestream.com

Knowmadic Learning Lab

The Learning Lab – 40 minutes from Lightstorm Productions on Vimeo.

Buck UP…. And Keep On Walking!!! A blog that has separate pages for Design, Social Marketing and Education.

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