Activity: 10 mins A simple Cloudquest challenge

Steven Hutchinson
12:11pm 10 October 2009

I think the cloud where participants talk about using twitter with students http://cloudworks.ac.uk/cloud/view/2398 is really interesting - both because of the strategies that are discussed and because of the way that this cloud has seeded and enabled interesting discussion. I think the cloudscape that this belongs to, is also a fascinating way of approaching broad ranging evaluation. S

Gráinne Conole
12:16pm 10 October 2009

Thanks Steve! I agree - that's one of my current favourites. From an evaluation of patterns of behaviour in social networking spaces these flash debates are also interesting because cloudworks appears to be working well alongside other tools like Twitter and personal blogs. It provides a conduit from short, snippets of conversation in Twitter, enabling the debate to develop and become enriched through additional links and academic references. In the sister cloud "Is twitter killing blogging?" we saw interesting patterns in terms of users going off and writing personal blog posts stimulated by the debate occurring in cloudworks. For me all of this is very exciting as it suggests cloudworks is occupying a new niche in the ecosystem of web 2.0 tools, providing something distinct and complementary.

Sylvia Currie
3:08pm 15 October 2009

The VLE is Dead is my choice for an interesting cloud. I attended the ALT-C conference in Manchester in September and wasn't able to attend this session. It's quite amazing just how much you can get out of a session you DIDN'T attend just by bouncing around this cloud. I like this cloud for several reasons:

1. Nice example of how f2f events can be enhanced and more inclusive.
2. The focus isn't entirely on the presenters, and artefacts are richer than the typical ppt slides
3. It's an interesting example of how we can benefit from the contributions of session participants as well as those attending from afar. 
4. And the VLE topic itself is interesting, of course! I've yet to see a compelling argument for not using a VLE. Everyone seems to make the mistake of suggesting we can't use tools in new and different ways.

Gina Bennett
8:28pm 15 October 2009

I enjoyed reading the Communities of Practice cloud. Among other things, I studied communities of practice & border pedagogy for my Masters degree but these 2 concepts have had the strongest impact on my work ever since. I appreciated reading Grainne's notes from the latest CoP conference.

Rob Peregoodoff
12:13am 16 October 2009

Always love homework prior to a workshop !!

Complete and utter self-promotion here but hey, link-love starts at home :)  Arriving here at cloudworks inspired me to start my own cloud so here is the link.  The reason I chose it should be self-explanatory.

Sarah Wareing
5:10pm 16 October 2009

So many choices! I'm going to go with the cloud on using wikis for collaborative writing assignments? Why? Because I'm about to start designing a first year academic writing course and I'm looking for good ways to facilitate collaborative work.

Cindy Underhill
5:27pm 16 October 2009

I chose the cloud on Learning Design for OERs because I believe that learning design is often overlooked and rarely transparent but can open up possibilities for thinking creatively about implementation across a wide range of content if made visible and tied to general goals or principles for learning.

Just wish there had been more discussion on the cloud.

Anthony Flavell
9:30pm 16 October 2009

Self and peer assessment in a team

Creating an interdisciplinary collaborative teamwork environment online is essential for the College of Health Disciplines at UBC, mainly due to the insuperable problem of coordinating face-to-face scheduling across fifteen different Health and Human Service programs. Therefore any online tools that are available, which enable students to practise teamwork, or assess that practice, are very interesting for us to explore. Rationalised self-assessment and peer-assessment methods are particularly powerful, as the students are the ones most “present” in the collaborative process.

Meg Goodine
11:44pm 16 October 2009

Using Twitter with Students

Some interesting perspectives on using Twitter. And learned a new word "tweflections".

Gráinne Conole
8:24am 19 October 2009

Wow - you guys are good! Gold stars all round for doing the homework in advance! Very interested by the range of clouds you have chosen - all sound great!

Gráinne Conole
9:03am 19 October 2009

I've created an area in the OpenLearn's labspace which we can use if we want for sharing CompendiumLD maps and have added a link here. It not essential to use this area alternatively you can share maps by emailing the zip files or just putting them on a usb stick. If you want to use this area you will need to create an account for openlearn.

Afsaneh Sharif
6:41pm 19 October 2009

A mock professional journal

An interesting course! I like the way students are involved in bringing new resources to the course. Want to know/see more.

Esther Hsu
10:48pm 19 October 2009

My favourite is the Collaborative Learning Cloudspace because there are lots of interesting discussions going, various links and resources regarding Collaborative Learning. I found the discussion on this cloud, "Is learning just intrinsically hard and therefore you can't make it easy?" very stimulating and quite challening.

Paul Stacey
4:13am 20 October 2009

I started out looking for clouds that generated a lot of comments. The potential with a cloud of this type is that the conversation is richer if there are a lot of comments compared to if there are only a few. I also started at Z in the alphabet, partly because I like the way its pronounced in Canadian and well, sometimes I start reading magazines from the back too.

The Using twitter with students cloud had 39 comments so I checked it out first. Some intriguing ideas being expressed and nice dialouge happening - great to see Grainne responding to posts but would have liked to see more interchange among the postees (is that a word?)

The Trends in OER cloud is actually a topic I have considerable interest and experience in and it had 23 comments so looked at it too. A very different kind of cloud as virtually all comments were posted by the same person. Sense this cloud was developed by someone posting real time summaries of a f2f presentation/Q&A session at a conference. I liken this to sports announcers and colour commentary.

mike minions
6:55am 20 October 2009

The cloud on Transforming a Music Course 'struck a chord' with me. I have watched kids get turned off by a high school music program that has no relation to the music they listen to and care about. 'Band' as it is taught in middle and high school seems to be a relic from the late 1940s with clarinets, saxophones and trombones. I followed the link to a carnegie foundation website that started with a quote: "The music I was trained to teach was not the music my students wanted to learn". That's a question worth asking yourself each time you sit down to build a course. Is what I'm preparing to teach what students want to learn?

Gráinne Conole
9:01am 20 October 2009 (Edited 9:02am 20 October 2009)

I'm really enjoying reading these posts - amazing the variety in terms of what everyone likes and why and aslo the strategies you are using to search. Like the idea of starting with Z! Looking for what is already 'popular' - such as clouds with lots of comments is a common and natural strategy and is part of the reason for us having 'active clouds' on the home page. We have also tried to ensure that there are lots of different ways of finding things - listing clouds or cloudscapes, searching using the search box, browsing the latest activity via the activity streams or following what the system is flagging up - features cloudscapes or active clouds. We want users to find their own preferred way of navigating around AND to encourage accidental discovering.

Jacqueline Bradshaw
6:26pm 20 October 2009 (Edited 6:44pm 20 October 2009)

I'm interested in two clouds...

Web 2.0 tools for teachers - because I am always interested in how people are incorporating social media applications into their teaching & learning

and Mobile Learning Practices .  Right now we are looking at Mobile Learning separately from "normal" learning.  I am wondering how long before the "m" environment is the "norm".

John Morrison
10:23pm 20 October 2009

I found the pedagogical patterns cloud most useful (http://cloudworks.ac.uk/cloud/view/2526). If anyone has the 7 patterns in the appendix as CompendiumLD files, that would be very useful.