User:Vtaylor/Yours to Discover

.. some comments about interests and ongoing activities looking for something tangible to do with this personal learning network aka massive collection of annotated and categorized links and ideas mostly related to engineering for kids and/or teaching and learning and technologies to support them ~vt 2020.3.26

Play is important - for flow. The 4 Ps of play - passion; peers; projects; play.

User:Vtaylor/Curiosity * User:Vtaylor/K-8_lectric_library_book * e4k blog wiki * wikieducator iLearning Active learning Technology supported learning Learning literacies * byxbee blog wiki

Curiosity / Curator

• 2017.5.4 * What I do - a curator acquires or accesses, filters and shares - the confessions of a digital packrat

• Curiosity, exploration, discovery, curation and sharing. Friends and colleagues are busy teaching and facilitating learning day in and day out. On top of that, they have to keep up with all the administration and bureaucratic matters that come with being part of the public education system. These are professionals who are always reflecting and imagining ways to improve their learning environments. Some are working toward graduate degrees in education. That doesn't leave much time for browsing and researching what's new and interesting in educational practice worldwide.

• So many ideas and resources. So little time. I am an oyster. Oysters each filter 50+ gallons of water everyday. That is a huge throughput. And what a difference it makes! Bays and estuaries with healthy oyster populations are clean and clear. The oysters happily co-exist with boaters and swimmers as well as marine life.
• For educators, there is a continual stream of unfiltered information - new products, curriculum requirements, research, classroom practice, teacher networks, communities of practice, lesson plans - both for sale and shared freely. (170)

• Yours to discover was the tag line for Ontario tourism. This is an invitation for all self-directed learning. Great open resources have always been available. Storytellers and travelers share what they know. Books, drawings and pictures preserve the stories and information when the storyteller or teacher isn't available. Although blended learning is getting lots of attention, this format has been around as long as there has been written and drawn accounts of events when these artifacts are combined with aural presentation. More recently audio, video, television and the internet have provided access to the repositories of information.

• Curiosity is a gift. Yes, you can take that away from someone, though not easily. The decline of curiosity is the subject of many academic studies, opinion pieces and TED Talks. Certainly there is evidence that strict curriculum coverage demands, standardized testing and compliance with the one right answer drivers have reduced the opportunities for kids to be curious within the walls of formal education. To what extent that is responsible for dulling the innate curiosity in kids is an open question. Curiosity and self-directed are hallmarks highlighted by all the proponents of xBL (something -Based Learning, where x is one or more of problem, project, inquiry, discovery, ...). Assuming that is is all true and good, then what? How does this transfer into educational practice?

• Formal and informal learning are often seen as the two major mechanism for teaching and learning. Where one stops and the other begins is not important. Both work and have their place. For a curator, it is useful to have two relatively distinct categories. Audience or direct user / consumer of the resources is one broad distinction. Is this of interest or use to the learner (usually self-directed learners who can read this for themselves) or more appropriate for a teacher, facilitator, coach, guide on the side. Some of the resources may actually be a sage on a stage presenting something as a 1-to-many format suitable for either group.

• Curation - the collection and sorting of information, has become increasingly important with the advent of 24/7 always-on information creation. There are a number of specializations within this broad category that are applicable to this project. These include but are not limited to: * Content curation, the collection and sorting of information * Data curation, management activities required to maintain research data * Digital curation, the preservation and maintenance of digital assets * Evidence management, the indexing and cataloguing of evidence related to an event * Cultural heritage management, conservation of cultural sites and resources * So that makes us curators as we manage or oversee, tangible assets of a library or museum. That's how we like to think of out work and our assets. Although they aren't physical artifacts as would be the case in the traditional sense, the responsibility to manage and oversee remains.

• Curation entails a lot of exploration and discovery along with questioning the significance of each asset to determine its appropriateness for inclusion in the collection. Although not limited by the traditional constraints of budget or physical storage space, digital curation takes a very different set of selection criteria. Relevance, contribution to the current and emerging world view of teaching and learning as but a few of the tests that are used to determine if an asset should be included for further investigation and evaluation.

• Just managing and overseeing is a limited view, however. Most curators, regardless of asset type, see an interpretation and presentation component to their work. Otherwise, this effort would be hording. The satisfaction and enjoyment comes from sharing with others who can learn from and appreciate the assets in the collection.

• Learn more... why, who cares, what's next, then what * Being systematic about saving a trail of things read, reviewed, and associated reflections is curation. It is also active, self-directed learning. I hate to find some great information only to loose track of it when there is an opportunity to share it. Social booking marking is one way to address this. I currently use Diigo although I have used other tools in the past. Diigo has a ? plug-in for my browser of choice - Firefox. When I find some important or interesting information, I create a bookmark for the link with a short quote from the information and some tags. With the plug-in, just highlighting the text and clicking the plug-n icon on the menu bar opens a new window with the link, the page title and the highlighted lest pre-filled into the bookmark dialog box. I have some standard tags that I usually use, but new ones can be generated just by typing. Diigo also displays existing tags - both mine and others by typing in the tag box. Click Save and the entry is added to the collection.

• Try this... * Browse the Diigo bookmarks for any topics of interest. * Create a Diigo account. View some of your favorite resources and create Diigo bookmark entries with tags for them. * Explore the Diigo functions - view your bookmarks, retrieve your bookmarks by tags. * If you prefer pictures, Pinterest or Flipboard are just two of dozens of other options.