Comment on #Openlearning17 — Ted Nelson by A. Nelson

I understand the skepticism! And students coming from our K-12 system have not typically been encouraged or allowed to do much in the way of free range learning.
But I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how much motivation increases when students have more responsibility for their learning and more flexibility about which topics and interests they pursue. I do give them some guidance — the rough parameters of the topic, or some suggested readings, and I point them at high value material they might not find on their own. But I try to leave the rest of it pretty open.
I use blogging in most of my courses these days, and have found that a bit of encouragement and genuine interest on my part, combined with feedback from peers makes for posts and F2F interactions that are richer and more interesting than what I used to experience with more traditional formats.

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Comment on #Openlearning17 — Ted Nelson by A. Nelson

I understand the skepticism! And students coming from our K-12 system have not typically been encouraged or allowed to do much in the way of free range learning.
But I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how much motivation increases when students have more responsibility for their learning and more flexibility about which topics and interests they pursue. I do give them some guidance — the rough parameters of the topic, or some suggested readings, and I point them at high value material they might not find on their own. But I try to leave the rest of it pretty open.
I use blogging in most of my courses these days, and have found that a bit of encouragement and genuine interest on my part, combined with feedback from peers makes for posts and F2F interactions that are richer and more interesting than what I used to experience with more traditional formats.

Posted in Uncategorized

Comment on “….it really gets hard when you start believing in your dreams….” — Doug Engelbart by A. Nelson

Good question! (And I’m sorry to be so slow responding to your comment — it was stuck in the spam queue, of all places). Anyway — I think the answer might be “sometimes.” Yes, change is incremental and the process of transformation often proceeds at a moderate pace. But at times the shift is really dramatic — even if you can’t quite see what the future holds, there’s a sense that much is in the balance, that big changes are underway, and that things are moving quickly. I remember having that sense in 1989, which I experienced as a graduate student doing research in Moscow. Every day I emerged from the archive to find the world perceptibly changed, and by fall it was clear that there would be no going back. Things had shifted dramatically and in short order. I do wonder if that’ s what happening now — I’m worried about that in the political sphere, and more intrigued (but also a bit concerned) about the rise of the internet of things.

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Comment on “….it really gets hard when you start believing in your dreams….” — Doug Engelbart by A. Nelson

Good question! (And I’m sorry to be so slow responding to your comment — it was stuck in the spam queue, of all places). Anyway — I think the answer might be “sometimes.” Yes, change is incremental and the process of transformation often proceeds at a moderate pace. But at times the shift is really dramatic — even if you can’t quite see what the future holds, there’s a sense that much is in the balance, that big changes are underway, and that things are moving quickly. I remember having that sense in 1989, which I experienced as a graduate student doing research in Moscow. Every day I emerged from the archive to find the world perceptibly changed, and by fall it was clear that there would be no going back. Things had shifted dramatically and in short order. I do wonder if that’ s what happening now — I’m worried about that in the political sphere, and more intrigued (but also a bit concerned) about the rise of the internet of things.

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Comment on “Help Me Grok it and I’ll Help You Make it Real” / Filtering Forward the High Value Trails by A. Nelson

Oh, I really was not thinking about something akin to Reddit. I think I’m imagining something that hasn’t been invented yet much less groked. You would need to intuit the contours as well as the essence of those trail markers / blazes first. I’m still working on the latter. By “context sensitive” I mean specific to the user’s (let’s say my) interests and previous annotating habits (so, algorithms) AND something like the “expert writer” designation on Wikipedia for certain trails. But there would also be something still ineffable that would make locating the networked annotations one wanted more natural and intuitive.
Maybe this will come with the next “paradigm shifting wave of innovation” that will help us solve the world’s increasingly complicated problems? (Where are you Doug Engelbart?)

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Comment on “Help Me Grok it and I’ll Help You Make it Real” / Filtering Forward the High Value Trails by A. Nelson

Oh, I really was not thinking about something akin to Reddit. I think I’m imagining something that hasn’t been invented yet much less groked. You would need to intuit the contours as well as the essence of those trail markers / blazes first. I’m still working on the latter. By “context sensitive” I mean specific to the user’s (let’s say my) interests and previous annotating habits (so, algorithms) AND something like the “expert writer” designation on Wikipedia for certain trails. But there would also be something still ineffable that would make locating the networked annotations one wanted more natural and intuitive.
Maybe this will come with the next “paradigm shifting wave of innovation” that will help us solve the world’s increasingly complicated problems? (Where are you Doug Engelbart?)