New lenses

creative commons licensed ( BY-SA ) flickr photo shared by lucasoldaini

Back from a visit to the optometrist--
Where an order was placed for new lenses--
Computer glasses -- "these will help you see more clearly at your computer"
Leaving the progressives for seeing at other times.

In front of my computer
Scanning #ccourses in Feedly,
Progressive Lenses -- wait-- what a coincidence

As Simon Ensor was optimistically and eloquently looking to the future through his progressive lenses

I am of the opinion that as new networked culture emerges we will inevitably need to reflect on the lenses which are appropriate. ...

I am optimistic that new emerging conditions will enable new lenses which will allow us to reconsider issues of dominance, of transactions between us.

My new lenses offer greater clarity on what's to come enabling, through #ccourses reading, a novice understanding of possibilities for growing a truly authentic digital identity. When Bill Benzon suggested

The message is quite clear: build your own. No, not necessarily from scratch – whatever that means. But at least install your own Word Press instance, and even have your students do it – much as participants in this workshop had to set up their own blogs.
And that has, in fact, been a running theme throughout the workshop. Whatever course you are teaching or will be teaching, it is important to engage with the technology in an active way. If we treat the web as a big media server and passively consume text, videos, and music, we will become slaves of the web. We have to actively engage with the web, and setting up a blog is a good way to begin.

and referenced

Simon Thomson’s vision of establishing an online identity in kindergarten, maintaining it into and through primary and secondary school, on into higher ed, and out through final graduation into life in general.

with a link and description of Known

I began to think of pieces of my identity sprinkled around the web, much not readily available today --
And the import of the potential for me even now and  especially today's learners --

These new lenses enabling an exciting perspective that compels more thinking and exploration--

Trust--

source of quote

"Learning is always a risk. It means, quite literally, opening ourselves to new ideas, new ways of thinking."

Vulnerability
Trust as a foundation for learning

I've attempted to create an environment based on that in the eCourse I facilitate around coaching in online spaces.  We wonder together, we co-create together, and we play together. And I've written about the importance of that trust and relationship building, especially in online spaces, for learning.

And my focus has been on relationships--

With Jesse Stommel's post, Trust, Agency, and Connected Learning, my thinking has been stretched with his thoughts on agency and honesty about the learning environment -- their contribution to trust and connected learning.

As I'm sitting here thinking on agency, I think I may have approached it through a different lens with a request for each co-learner to develop a learning pledge and with additional requests to reflect in online spaces of their own choosing. I am going to have to spend more time clarifying this for myself.

I do have to say that one of Jesse's statements about trust in the environment truly jumped out for me.

(And yes, I do love Painting with Words!)

That syllabus I had to create for the university in order for co-learners to earn graduate credit--  sigh---     As I rethink that "trajectory map", there will be a sticky with the quote always visible.

"Trust literacies"-- I want to latch onto that thought "trust literacies". I may be stretching the author's intent --

yet it seems to me that this may be an important trust literacy--

"none of us can teach or learn freely in an environment without first getting our bearings — without first looking around and thinking about where we are and why we’re there."

That--
And others--
Honesty, agency, relationships--

Am I onto something here that will strengthen, enrich, and set a foundation for even deeper connected learning?   I'm feeling so--

From the periphery--

creative commons licensed ( BY-NC-SA ) flickr photo shared by potomo

As much as I encourage sharing and contributing in the online communities in which I coach and lead-- understanding the potential of connected learning

As many times as I've shared this video from the Co-Learning Unit -- Obvious to You Amazing to Others

You'd think I'd be walking my talk
Especially with the unit on co-learning which I find compelling
And yet--- I've been on periphery-- reading--
Curating great nuggets of insight from the posts of others.

Knowing at this point that I'll never compose the epic post that has played out in my mind daily--

I'm opting for and committing to a number of shorter posts on co-learning to clarify my thinking so I'll have them to come back to.

With Howard Rheingold's definition of co learning,

In my definition, co-learning involves a re-orientation of each learner from purely individual acquisition of knowledge toward a process of sharing learning and sense-making with each other learner — peer-learning and peer-teaching at the same time. Co-learning also means that the teachers learn along with and from other learners in the same course.  

my mind went back to 2001 when I had the privilege of a year's planning for a new career pathway program for high schoolers wanting to become teachers.  A piece from Thomas Carroll profoundly influenced my thinking and was key in my designing (Carroll, T. G. (2000). If we didn't have the schools we have today, would we create the schools we have today? Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education [Online serial], 1 (1). Available: http://www.citejournal.org/vol1/iss1/currentissues/general/article1.htm ), particularly the images and excerpts quoted below.

Once we move the teacher—as an expert learner—into the learning activity we begin modeling the learning process with the students. They are all learning together. And as I have said, once we reach this point, it’s not useful to distinguish between students and teachers, because they are all learning. Who is teaching and who is learning? They are all learning.     Figure 4 helps us start thinking about everyone in this dynamic field as a learner.   I represent each individual with an “L” to indicate that they are learners, and that the role of each individual in this activity is learning.  We need to get rid of the circle and enable them to be learners in an open learning environment (see Figure 5).  One of the large “L’s” in the diagram is the expert learner, the more senior, experienced learner, the person we pay to continue to structure these learning activities, but the person who is also constantly learning more and modeling the learning process, as opposed to the teaching process.Once we have defined these individuals as learners, and once we have taken those boundaries away, we can actually add more learners to the equation.

I'm wondering how Carroll may have influenced the vision of #ccourses  -- if indeed others sense the connection. 

It's been an important one for me as I dig more deeply into the thinking of  #ccourses co-learners in the posts to follow.