W2 Highlights

[Joshua Underwood]

Somewhere for you to report anything you think is particularly interesting, remarkable, etc for possible inclusion in the summary letters.

[Carolina Kuhn H]

About telling a story to find out the context. I find this a great idea and it is totally new for me. Telling a story makes you imagine in more detail the context where that story is happening. 

There is an interesting idea I found reading: 
At the heart of a design scenario are a sequence of actions the protagonists may take to achieve their objectives, events which they may encounter and their reactions to these, and finally – the ensuing results of this sequence. These actions, event, and consequent results are afforded or driven by the qualities of new artefacts introduced into the context. New artefacts, that is what will make our design different, the quality of those artifacts. 

Differences between orchestration and learning design: 

Initial thoughts (after all the readings thought are refined): 

Yes I think there are 2 different things. orchestration is the harmonic combination of all the elements (Artifacts) of the teaching event, but you as the director of this orchestra are not necessarily the designer of those artifacts. In the learning design you are the designer of the artifacts that the director has to get together carefully to get the best out of each artifact so the music (educational event) sounds at its best level possible. An example: the text book is a product of a learning design and the teacher integrates this resource (artifact) among others in a intelligent way. But he did not design the artifact but yes he designed or at least thought of how to integrate its use in class so the students get the best out of it. 

Need some refining

[Joshua Underwood]

Some useful reflections on week 1 leading to the challenge of design contexts for emergent learning, which relates to early thoughts on blogs about the compatibility or otherwise of learning design/curriculum design and designing for emergence (emergent curriculum).

[Joshua Underwood]

The emergence of a OLDSMOOC facebook group.

[Joshua Underwood]

Cloudbusting - or how to work round the limitations of cloudworks and succeed through use of own PLE and hard work! Great post and useful for re-design of cloudworks/of this MOOC

[John Couperthwaite]

Hi Joshua, I would like to draw your attention to two compelling narratives written by Jeff Waistell in http://cloudworks.ac.uk/cloud/view/7298,

 

eg: "...Clouds relate to each other in different ways - sometimes disconnected in fluffy cumulii across the blue sky, sometimes as a continuous stratus of grey sky (as I can see outside of my window in the UK right now!). Thus the clouds benefit from each other - but they are also affected by events - thermals rising, buffeting winds...the learner is shaped by context...but also shapes the context (covering the landscape with its shadow). Sometimes there is clarity - with clearly defined cloudscapes outlined by a blue sky. Sometimes understanding feels limited - inside the cloud, it feels like a fog... " 

[Joshua Underwood]

Many thanks John - this is great:-)

[Ida Brandão]

This post raises many questions - what really is Learning Design about. I suppose that the fact that it's a recent research area doesn't present yet a consolidated approach. A simple definition, at the practice level,  can resume it to lesson/learning planning. And every teacher does it already! But you can plan learning sequences in different ways, you can focus on context and scenarios, you can plan according to certain templates, like the LAM's Sequences - http://www.lamscommunity.org/lamscentral/, you can contextualize in narratives/stories etc. Learning Design seems to have a broad scope, avoiding frontiers, since so much is happening in the learning technological environment. I've been exploring the Learning Design Grid - http://www.ld-grid.org/home.

As for free tools and open resources, I think there are already so many available that it's a matter of selecting and experimenting. I don't find Cloudworks particularly interesting, I've been using many media to produce learning artifacts. One of the most extensive repositories of tools I started using - http://cooltoolsforschools.wikispaces.com/, managed by a lady from New Zealand. At present, I subscribe many newsletters, blogs and scoop.it, and I get updated information on new tools almost every day.