Blogging in a time of AI

I am renewing my frequency in blog posting. This will come after an almost 5 year break from blogging. I am returning because I am back to working on open-source software, educational projects, and the digitization of oceans. And I know I have a learning and success journey to share. 

Some Background

I started blogging twenty years back. Yes, 20 years. I was an early adopter and I was involved with technology startups and how the internet was influencing education. At this time I was a big believer that blogging was about content creation. Adding to the collective of the internet by adding meaningful and descriptive content rather than only being a consumer of content. To date, I have published over 500 posts to my assorted blogs. Most of this work was in the first 10 years of my blogging. I essentially posted once a month for the first 10 years. I did have a year where I posted over 100 times. As a summary this is how I posted over the last 20 years.

2004 to 2014 - I published 420 blog posts with good readership. I had a year where I posted more than 100 times. I set this as a goal / experiment to see if I could post twice a week. I did this while holding full-time work, which meant many early mornings and late evenings writing. I learned a whole bunch and my writing skills improved. 

The themes for these first ten years was mostly; 

• technology leadership for startups, 
• hard-core technology and approaches, 
• innovative and emerging education, 
• and the intersection of these three.

2015 to 2024 - I published only 41 blog posts during this 10 years, and nothing in the past three years. Honestly, I was distracted by raising my family of three and doing a whole bunch of life living. Not so focused on work and career advancement. 

The themes for the last ten years have mostly been; 

• integrating with technology community in St. John's NL (I moved), 
• continue my work on digital badges and micro-credentials,
• development of an ocean data startup (still a work in progress),
• and working the idea of a reference architecture for the digitization of oceans.

Most exciting of all this is more than 1/2 million views during the 20 years and at some points having over 2500 weekly views. What have I learned from all this blogging? Mostly, that having to write and publish openly to the internet helps the overall community knowledge and it helps me learn more deeply in these chosen subjects.

Next Steps

Again, I will use blogging as my cognitive gymnasium. My subjects themes haven't changed and I will focus upon two main subject areas and continue with updates to this critical technology blog;

1. Education technology, Heutagogy, and the self-directed learner.
• The Happy Heutagogue - https://heutagogue.blogspot.com/
2. Many things related to, and in support of, the authoring a reference architecture for the digitization of oceans.
• The Ocean Set CTO - https://oceanset.blogspot.com/
3. And my continued musings about technology through my gen X view of the world.
• Critical Technology - https://criticaltechnology.blogspot.com/

With all my work and R&D efforts I will learn a bunch of stuff and apply this to the real world through the successful projects I am a part of. I will reflect upon these successes and all that I have learned I will create content that can provide further learning for those around me. And hopefully they will also be entertaining reads.

Collaborating with your AI partner

Blogging has changed for me. There has been a lot of technical and social change since I did most of my blog posting over a decade ago. I had a few focused subjects I was very passionate about, and I wrote about them often. I wrote unincumbered for I would consider myself an early adopter and there was less people publishing to the internet in my chosen subjects. Today there is much more content covering these subjects. And all this content comes in photos, videos, audio, and written articles. Artificial Intelligence is doing a great job of creating and summarizing the content which addresses the complex audience needs and their questions and prompts. Content creation has changed. For a human content creator I believe our work needs to be more intelligent, critical, and creative. Content creators in a time of AI need to do what the AI cannot; daydream, reflect on unrelated subjects, see unlikely connections, be critical, add meaning, create new content that falls between the generated content, fact check and confirm, and add more human intelligence.

How will my blog writing process change? Um, it already has...

I must reflect and draw upon my mastery and do my best to add the new content that AI cannot... AI needs our creativity because it has already parsed the published body of human knowledge. For more insight on my approach, use your favorite large language model chatbot (ChatGPT, Gemini) with the prompt 'limitations of generative AI' followed by the prompt 'How would you suggest a human writer overcome these AI limitations'.

Step by Step my blogging will partner with AI and follow this basic approach;

1. Capture ideas for new posts, be verbose, be imaginative, think about context
2. Put these ideas to incomplete blog posts, work ideas for days, for weeks...
3. Read extensively, add to the understanding of any specific idea
4. Keep references, cut and paste to the bottom of the related incomplete posts
5. Prompt AI with phrases from the idea generation
6. Take blocks of text from written ideas and push them into generative AI, be critical, harvest what you can.
7. Take the written blog post and ask AI for a rewrite. Change your audience. be critical, harvest what you can.
8. Try and see, try and write, what AI cannot... add to the body of human knowledge.
9. Add story telling to improve the overall post
10. Find pictures to support the writing, format for engagement. Use AI to generate images from passages of text taken from the blog post.
11. Format, edit, improve, repeat. Be bold... Publish.
12. Use AI to improve the quality of the writing... Publish again.
13. Rest, reflect, improve... Publish again.
14. Yes, I am an advocate to publish before writing is perfect. Publish and then make improvements over the days and weeks that follow. Once the post is considered finished finished... promote it on social media.
15. Identify what is most important about the post and rewrite for the LinkedIn business audience. Publish to LinkedIn.
16. Repeat...

Suggested reading: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2023/02/ai-can-catalyze-and-inhibit-your-creativity-here-is-how/

Seeking New Opportunities

TLDR;
Veteran technology professional seeking new opportunities. If you are requiring 35 years of career success in the software technology realm that spans startups through to large enterprise environments, then I'm your guy!

I have tonnes of experience and I can hit the ground running. I can work as a senior project manager, an enterprise solution architect, as a scrum master and build a team focused with agile approaches, I can design databases and related structures for your business analytic projects, and I can own your Business Intelligence initiative. I can provide strong, and proven, leadership. And if need be I can occupy the technical director level. You will find I provide great business benefit and good value, my experience provides the ability to save you more than I would cost.

A history of project success
I'm back to consulting in the technology realm. Being a technology consultant has provided my clients, and myself, many project successes. These successes have been both with technology startups and with medium to large business environments. For more details describing some of my project successes please read these two posts describing projects I have managed and provided technical leadership over the last decade;

Increasing Access to Education - this collection of eight projects helped CLEBC become one of the globes premier legal educators.

Career success in three year cycles - These four major corporate initiatives leveraged all my abilities to help PAL into their next level of technology capability and realized business value.

Where I can help the most

I can have an immediate positive impact to any technology initiative within large and small organizations. This success can come with startups and enterprise environments, or something new that can leverage my skills, knowledge, and experience.

There are five roles to where I can bring the greatest immediate business value;

1. Enterprise and Solution Architecture - The solution side of designing technical architecture has most often been my preferred role within a software development initiative. I've done this for small startups and large enterprises. Good solution architecture creates a better technical solution that saves development costs, improves quality, and ensures alignment with business needs and the other technologies within the business ecosystem.
2. Senior Project Management and/or Managing a Software Development Teams - Through time I have managed many projects with software development teams varying in size from 3 to 30. I have proven track record of bringing projects to completion on-time and on-budget. I seriously enjoy assisting a team of technical people to ship software.
3. Data Analytics Project (Architecture and Team Management) - The B.Tech undergrad degree I completed in the 80's was focused on database management. And since that time my career has had data as its foundation. I do very well with data management [including the design of data structures and related communications (read API's)]. I can also work well within big data projects as my experience with big data goes back to the 1980's. Read one of my big data posts from a few years back to get a sense of this capability; Big Data; Similarities and Differences.
4. Technical Mentorship - I'm an educator and have experienced many startups during my time in Vancouver. If you want to discuss the technical side, the team management side, and/or the development methodology to an innovation project (startup or otherwise) I can help here.
5. Innovation - Many times in my career I have taken business strategy and made it happen. If you have a business strategy that requires software innovation I can make it tactical and implement. 

I'm willing to travel

A single flight from St. John's Newfoundland is my preference. I would also be very interested in consulting work in Vancouver (my home town). I have family there and could easily have all the amenities I require for extended working stays. In a previous blog post I describe how I consider the size of the St. John's marketplace to be 40 million people. I also need to consider the St. John's market to be a single flight away as I seek out new challenges and opportunities. My list of cities I will immediately consider consulting opportunities, include;

1. Halifax: it's a morning flight away, and can be there and back including a full days work. I'd also stay for a few days if required.
2. Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal: single 3 hour flight, couple of days then return home for remote working
3. Vancouver: longer stays and longer aways... I have family in Vancouver, so it would be a very nice approach to working.
4. London, England: An outlier, but... It would be nice to work in the EU and I have a British passport so it would ease my travel and work permitting.

One personal constraint
To be succinct, I require work-life balance... mostly it is about having time to care for middle-school age children and aging parents. This means I am available part-time or full-time with loads of schedule flexibility.

Computer science taught as an art

I've been involved with learning, teaching and creating for all my life. During my formative years (in-utero to shortly after high-school graduation) I was focused on getting what I needed to finish. I was also involved in a lot of art (music, graphic design, crafts, dance, theatre) but my socially encouraged (my parenting) focus was on math and science. Needless to say, I have had my feet firmly planted in both art and science my whole life. I guess most people are this way, with different ratios of art to science. I really feel I continue to straddle both these areas as I pass my 1/2 century mark. What this has given me is a deep appreciation and engagement in both art and science. This is why I am more broad than I am deep. And this is why I have learned art as much as I have learned math and science.

Now I am an enterprise architect, educational technologist, computer scientist, teacher, visual arts performer and all around nice guy (well I hope). I still draw and paint, play music (the best I can) and dance in the open. I encourage my kids to engage in art more than science. Surprisingly, my kids math and science skills are good. I do think there is a connection.

I also think computer science can be taught very well as an art. Particularly, in the early stages of learning computer science. Why? Because, it needs to be done with reckless abandon and with the freedom to make a mess. You need to be able to stop half-way and throw it away. You need to be able to change it into something never planned. You need to be able to break something, and then fix it. You also need restraints through assignments (or learning themes), focused subjects, a palette, skills and abilities, uncertainty and little preparation, it all needs to be inspired and interpretive. I also see taking risks and "feeling stupid" is safer with art than science. Doing a scientific experiment seems more serious than dancing like no-one is watching or painting for yourself. Art seems more reckless than science. It is this recklessness that makes art more accessible to learn than science. I also think there is a lower barrier to entry for art than science, though I don't think it needs to be this way.

How I perceive creating and learning art.
My participation in the arts comes in two themes; the visual make things (graphics, painting, architecture, woodworking, and building) and in folk music and dance. How do I learn new things within these realms; by doing, with a whole lot of reading, research and seeking out those who have done it before. How do I believe it best assist to others learn; by involving them, and pointing them toward understanding how they themselves learn and encouraging their own research practices. Together we do things, I've built and created many things with others and the conversation and collaboration is a beautiful thing. Bringing together music and dance is an amazing collaborative effort. Best done with a willingness to fail, and the patience to persist. One of our best dances is tri-martal-o (it took two years to develop), is hauntingly beautiful, the music is inspired and the piece is way fun to dance. The important aspect of learning art is to dive in, create and participate as soon as you can. And remember, make a mess.

How I perceive creating and learning computer science.
Immediate feedback is the way! Being able to get something working by using the tools and techniques immediately is paramount to learning computer science. Programming something and then seeing it run, render, compute... is preferred for learner engagement. Once this immediate feedback has been experienced, the opportunity to create has been fulfilled, and a good number of computing science tasks have been completed then the deepening and complexity can begin. And this deepening and complexity needs to grow iteratively with continued immediate feedback and fulfillment. It should almost be like playing an instrument or creating art; repetition, creation and fun.

I believe it is also important to understand computing science as a creative and where it fits within the big scheme of things (historically, culturally, epistemogically, and algorithmically). This helps to put computing science into life context. Where it fits with being a human being, and this is where it gets interesting. The ability to take working ideas out of your brain and use them (in other ways and experiments) within a device outside of your head. This is computing science, and it is unique in history. For thousands of years we have taken ideas out of our heads and created things; first, wall paintings, then tools and writing, then machines and engines... but now, we can re-incarnate a working idea in another device that can process the idea, and use it with other peoples ideas, or more of our own ideas. And we can process these ideas as experiments and run a collection of ideas for days with different inputs which influence further ideas.

How do I see teaching computer science as an art? 
Create, make a mess, work with others, make... this is why I see the maker movement so positive. And why the webmaking initiatives currently underway as the right way toward teaching computer science. It creates a low barrier to entry and encourages learning with reckless abandon while on a journey of skills and knowledge development. Webmaking also takes learning computer science into the realm of social learning, which I consider more closely aligned with learning the arts than the sciences.

But how would this work for the more complicated computer science topics? The solution is in how more complicated art projects are created. They are more collaborative efforts, where the more experienced are given the complicated tasks and have to be sure their direct collaborators are also engaged. And there is a whole bunch of healthy collaborative critique going on. Look at how a performance art piece is created, learned and performed. What can be taken from this process and applied to teaching the more complicated aspects of computer science.

In my opinion one of the best books when considering the creation of computer software is written by Russell Shackelford and titled "Computing and Algorithms", I've used this book a number of times when teaching entry level computer science. What I fond strongest in this book is how it connects the creation of computer algorithms (software) with art from the scientific perspective. Or at least that is how I read it...

So in the end when teaching computer science as an art it also comes down to practice, practice, practice... if you want to be a good artist, that includes a lot of practice. If you want to be a good computer scientist, that also takes a lot of practice. The key is to find fun, creative and collaborative ways to stay engaged, and treating the learning of computer science as an art will keep it more engaging. Regardless of age. And as the projects and learning become more complicated, increasingly engage others who are peers and mentors. Find the fun individually and as a group.

Virtual Community of Practice Conundrum

-- T L D R ----------------

What do you need to consider when building a Community of Practice (CoP) that spans organizational boundaries where client confidentiality needs to be honored. There are a plethora of things to be considered when building an online (virtual) community of practice, these include; the team and the contexts' relationship with openness, the memberships ability to be self-determined, how online communication will be broadened and followed, and how the internet is the platform.

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How does a Community of Practice (CoP) steward itself across organizational boundaries? What are the requirements and restraints to successfully build a CoP when openness and confidentiality are in conflict with one another? What technology platforms support a closed virtual learning community but can integrate with a busy and confidential work-schedule? Can you leverage all the innovative social media technologies, which can be very well applied to learning (CoP), from a closed virtual community? This series of blog posts sets out to answer many of the questions... but first,

Some background
I've been building Communities of Practice (CoP) for over 10 years. It started during my M.Ed where I was bringing together 15 years of professional technology experience with 10 years of college level teaching and online learning. I now see my skills and knowledge being well applied with building large complex information technology systems and being a seasoned educational technologist. I also believe it is important to provide some of my personal background, beliefs, and experience on the subject of CoP. What I believe is particularly relevant to this post is my time spent with both open projects and corporate enterprise projects. These projects include; Mozilla, Mediawiki, WikiEducator, Wikiversity, P2Pu, Bowen eGovernment, UNESCO, Open Data, CLEBC, ICBC, Commonwealth of Learning, and other smaller projects. This experience has exposed me to open democracies, open spaces, open communities, open boards of directors, open, open, open. Where the sharing of information is crazy transparent and all meetings are open to everyone. This experience has also exposed me to large enterprises; closed, locked-down, proprietary, and obfuscated information exchanges. Having other people filter information is the standard practice in many of these other closed type organizations. My work has occurred at the extremes of both of these types of organizations, but also, much of my work has happened in the middle ground. From all this it is my belief that open communication is better than the alternative; particularly, when wanting to encourage learning or when building a community of practice. It is best to let employees be their own filters of information, and exchanging information helps everyone learn. The current and emerging pedagogical approaches also supports openness vs. closed. I believe it is important for learners working within a CoP to be able to reach out to the larger community and draw in resources from these other external communities.

Some history (or key technologies)
What do I consider the key information technologies and attributes of learning communities that have emerged over the last 20 years and have the biggest impact on virtual and online learning communities of practice?

• Communities of Practice - obviously the work of Étienne Wenger is big here. The idea that "most learning does not take place with the master, it takes place among the apprentices" IMO is important to building a virtual learning community.
• Open Approaches - Open Space, Open Leadership, Open Data, Open Etc... In my opinion, and experience, openness is very important to learning and in successfully building a community of practice. New people, new opinions, ongoing mentorship and peer learning needs to be refreshed. Without openness it becomes closed and stagnant. I have yet to experience a CoP that remains active beyond a year without having new people involved and ideas coming in from outside the group. Openness is key.
• Autodidactism / Heutogogy - Participants in CoP need to be self-determined learners. This means you can just lurk in a community, at some point you need to participate. It is the internal commitment to learning in the subject domain that must come first. Then participation in the community becomes part of the self-determined learning. In my opinion this is one of the keys to a valuable CoP. The commitment level of the members.
• Visual Communication - People need to share through a variety of mediums, this should not be restrained within the CoP. Often the results of a visual meeting (or otherwise) can be shared for record keeping, review and to prompt further discussion, etc...
• Social Media - social media is not social learning, but it is important in building community and allowing people to participate online where they want and when they want.
• Tagging - social tagging can be an excellent way to draw a community together by allowing members to share there learning and related reference materials across different social media platforms.
• Platforms - having an online place to host the community is essential. But given a solid tagging approach this doesn't have to be a traditional platform, it could be the internet as a whole. What is important is that it is accessible by everyone - from everywhere, on any device. In the end, you need to consider the whole internet as the platform.

Some assumptions
Most learning occurs outside of traditional approaches, it occurs 24 hours a day, and is a continuous activity that includes (and should not be limited too) the use of open social media tools. A community of practice is social learning and is further enhanced with access to online and virtual communities. Blended learning is important, as face-to-face time (when available) should be encouraged. Even if the face time is among a sub-set of the community members.
Being a self-determined learner is important as it provides the intrinsic motivation to deepen the engagement within the CoP. It is a valid amount of participation to only lurk within the CoP, but there does come a point where members need to dive in and participate. Learning will be deeper and broader, but the motivation needs to be there. And most often for long term commitment to participate comes from an intrinsic motivation.

The conundrum
How do you build a Community of Practice in a closed environment where you can't reach out due to client confidentiality?

In the next post on this theme we will discuss the requirements of a community of practice where client confidentiality is key. The thinking being if we can correctly identify the requirements, we will then be able to identify a platform best suited to cross organizational boundaries.

A deliberate book review

I'm now an autodidact, and one of the ways I learn is to review books with a deliberate practice. The steps of my approach are as follows;

1. kick-start the brain - this means I read the table of contents, skim each chapter (very quickly), and examine each image in detail. I believe constructivism is how many of us learn, I am no exception. So when I undertake a learning task (like reviewing a book) I need to allow my brain to retrieve as much related information it can conjure to assist in my learning and relate it back to my previous learnings and knowledge.
2. read to seek understanding - every passage of text I read I develop an understanding of it. If this requires me to research the themes and topics in the passage of text, I do. I make notes, draw pictures, create concept maps to deepen my understanding...
3. write and reflect - when I have covered a reasonable amount of content I will write about my understanding with the intention of publishing to my blog. I will reflect upon my learning and my writing, and then review it for completeness and understandability.
4. edit then publish - I will usually leave the related blog post(s) unedited for a few days as I continue to reflect upon its content. I will the return to the post and make edits in preparation for its publishing. 
5. review - I will read most new blog posts a few times after their publishing. I will often make further edits where appropriate. During this review I will think about how its content relates to other reading I have since completed.
6. iterate - I will continue to read with purpose and continue with similar practices until the book is finished. Often I will have multiple blog posts underway as I read a book for the purpose of review.

For me this approach allows me to develop a deep understanding of a books content while contributing to the collective publishing platform known as the internet.

2. Begin a creative project or concept map about the subject domain

This where the work of learning within a new subject domain becomes increasingly fun. Begin a creative project centered around the word or concept that you have chosen as your domain of study. The project should be as fun and creative as you can imagine, or the project could be completely pragmatic and capture details of the learning journey. The main purpose is to fire-up the mind from many different perspectives in relation to the domain of study. The project should be able to grow and change through the full duration of your researching your subject domain. Essentially, the creative project becomes a personal learning portfolio that ties the project together. As you learn more about your chosen subject through your research, reading, creativity, play and discussion it is important that you add to your creative project. A few ideas for creative or pragmatic projects includes (but not limited to);

Build on your idea

• a daily or weekly diary about your subject
• an ever expanding concept map dedicated to your subject
• a learning portfolio with weekly updates
• a wall size collage with images, articles, writings
• the authoring poetry and songs
• a blog reflecting about your learning (include images, photos, references, etc.)
• create your own maker project with an accompanying video blog
• write a play of short story including your subject as a theme or character

The inclusion of the creative project is about play and creating rituals around your study. It really is about the play, about the broadness, and about the engagement. Learning should be about play, with an amount of discipline built in. Why play? Why broadness? Why engagement? Why discipline? Each of these attributes of your self-determined study has a rationale;

The play - is about enjoying what you are doing so you return to do it again and again. It is also about not allowing yourself to be restrained to follow up on related themes or threads within your chosen subject domain. It allows one to learn with reckless abandon, and to be at play.
The broadness - is about exploring the subject in its entirety and allowing yourself to follow-up with related, or seemingly unconnected, ideas and subjects you stumble upon as you deepen your understanding of the subject domain. It's important to remember that learning a subject domain is also about learning how the subject domain relates to others. When constructing knowledge review the learning in different contexts and against other subjects is an important part of learning. It deepens your understanding.
The engagement - is about reaching out to others with similar interests who can provide insight into your subject domain, or you could provide insight into their subject domain. This is about engaging the community or communities in and around your subject domain. It is about adding content, resources, opinions, value, energy, good-faith... its becoming a member of, and engaging, the community of experts who are all attracted to the same subject domain as yourself.

Where to engage? engagement can happen in many places, both online and off. It is strongly encouraged that you find a variety of places to meet with people who are also interested in your chosen domain of study. A list of places includes, and is not limited to;

• everywhere - seek out your peers and mentors, you will be surprised where you find them. Tell people what you are doing ask for assistance.
• online collaborative spaces - different subject communities hang out in different online spaces... find them!
• conferences - attend conferences on your chosen subject.
• the library - go to the library and hang out in the section related to your subject.
• at colleges and universities - yes, you can still learn by taking courses and hanging out with like minded people.
• social media - follow hashtags, join groups, engage in online discussions, find related RSS feeds.

The discipline - is about committing the time to exploring and playing within your chosen subject domain. It is about follow-through and completing tasks related to your understanding. Learning something in-depth takes effort, time and a deliberate practice. And don't think learning is any different because the subjects you have chosen are self-determined, mastery takes time and commitment. Some say mastery of any subject takes over 10000 hours, so be disciplined and enjoy yourself.

Creativity, fun and discipline will get you to finished when choosing to pursue self-determined learning. It will be the amount of personal commitment you make, and how much fun you find the subject and activities. What will it take for you to be attracted, on a regular basis, to study and spend time with your chosen subject domain. A creative project will assist greatly in being attracted to your subject, and it will open your approach to learning to being outside the traditional.

Related searches and references
Learning in depth
Learning portfolio
Maker faire
Learning through play

1. Identify and commit to learning a subject domain

Identifying and committing to learning a subject domain can begin in many ways. One way to start is with a single word or picture drawn in the middle of a page, the back of a napkin or in a blog or social media site. Once the learning has been initiated by the small event of writing a word or drawing a picture, it can grow and deepen by continuing your reading, researching, drawing, painting, playing with, and discussing the word or drawing as a concept. The fun begins as you continue your commitment and move into the next step of learning, which will deepen and provide insight into your approach to learning your chosen subject domain.

Begin it now!

Identifying and committing to your subject domain is not always an easy task. There are so many things to learn and filtering the choices to a focused subject which you are willing to commit a period of time learning can be difficult. This commitment is often influenced by your motivations behind wanting to learn the subject. And why people want to learn a subject often varies as much as there are different people learning subjects. Fortunately, there is no shortage of exceptional resources and people that can assist in focusing your domain of study. How, and why, you focus is a part of your committing to learning the subject. The focus may be due to a financial need, or the desire for change, or wanting to complete a level of study, to become familiar with a genre of music, or to learn a new cooking style, or commit to a graduate level of knowledge is a subject domain. Self- reflection and engaging others can assist greatly in the activities in identifying and committing to your domain of study. As you increase your self-determined learning you will find it is your self-reflection and personal network of people and learning objects than help in deepening your knowledge.

Do not hesitate to jump into any approach or method when developing your commitment to and finding the subject of your study. Do keep in mind, in the end, it is this level of commitment that will get you to completing your learning. And in most situations, this needs to be an internal commitment. It is more difficult for external motivations to help you get to completion of self-directed studies. 

On occasion  I remember a significant conversation when I was developing my ideas around completing an Open and Networked PhD and in being a self-determined learner. In particular, the idea of getting to finished takes a lot of effort and doing it without mentorship is near to impossible. This discussion was mostly about the importance of doing graduate level work at a traditional institution being the only way to complete graduate studies. I disagreed, but what became important is that I needed to be very committed to my chosen subject domain without any external motivation. I need to be committed to completion through mostly internal motivators.

This gets into thinking about intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Where Intrinsic motivation refers to motivation that is driven by an interest or enjoyment in the task itself. Where Extrinsic motivation refers to the performance of an activity in order to attain an outcome, whether or not that activity is also intrinsically motivated. Focusing on the knowledge domains that you would be intrinsically motivated will go a long way to deepening your learning of most subjects. So it would make the most sense to choose subjects that you are intrinsically motivated.

When choosing a domain of study allow yourself to consider both large and small subject domains. The self-determined learner can pursue learning activities and journey's that are both large and small. The approach may differ due to amount of learning and length of of the commitment, but the amount of learning does not dictate the success a learner can achieve. Throughout this chapter we discuss approaches to self-determined learning and they should be considered a part of your learning toolkit and they can be used for both small and large learning endeavours.

When beginning a self-determined learning journey the concept of schedule changes from the traditional models of learning. Self-determined learning isn't about a schedule, other than a self-imposed schedule. Having to get things done within a semester, term or school year does not apply. It is about life-long learning and if it takes a lifetime to achieve your life learning goals that's the point. It may assist greatly in developing a schedule that would self-motivate, but it only has the follow what works best for the learner themselves. This self-determined schedule only adds to the importance of following your own learning schedule, path and motivation.

Related searches;
Autodidactism
Heutaogogy
Transformative Learning
What colour is your parachute?
Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation

Assignments, Assessment and Badges

I was asked to quickly put some video resources together to provide an overview of my work with assignments, assessment and open badges. There is a day-long conference happening at La Trobe University in Bundoora and given I enjoy putting together resources for the work I am doing toward open education I was happy to take the time.

Deep apology for the quality of these resources. The moving trucks come tomorrow and I'm down to working off my five year old netbook. All these resources are issued with a CC-BY so feel free to use them as you will; edit them, mash them up. I believe these three videos cover the why, what and how of assignments, peer assessment and open badges.

Open Badges and Peer Assessment
Quick discussion of open badges, their meta-data and how they can be utilised within courses where peer assessment is a part of overall assessment.

Flipped Assessment
Flipped assessment has people earlier in a learning journey assess the work of someone further down the learning journey. This creates an environment where people currently involved with a subject reach-out to assist others who are also involved. This encourages peer involvement and adds to assessment.

Flipped Assessment Implemented
So this is what we did to implement flipped assessment and how the assessment criteria was grounded in the rubric that the course was based upon.

Relevant References

• Flipped assessment explained
• Flipped assessment implemented
• Badge system design course
• Badge system design rubric
• Progressive video assessment
• Progressive video; platform and pedagogy

This post is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Canada License.

OnPhD: Skill and Knowledge Development

What areas do I want, and need, to deepen my skills and knowledge in relation to my identified areas of study? These areas fall into three domains; Heutagogy, Educational Technology, and Solution Architecture.  With each identified item I will include a brief description of how skills and knowledge will be developed. The completion of this activity is to fulfill the requirements of the related OnPhD candidacy task.

Heutagogy

• Deepen my involvement with the Heutagogy community
  This will involve my engaging the communities of practice in and around heutagogy and autodidactism.
• Read extensively about heutagogy and autodidactism (readings list)
• Write about my approaches to self-determined learning (publish in the open)

Educational Technology

• Continue development of School of Badges and focus my efforts on Badge System Design and the technical courses on integrating Open Badges with open source learning platforms (Drupal, Moodle, Wordpress, MediaWiki, etc)
• Deepen my technical understanding (from a solutions architecture perspective) of available open source learning platforms and approaches.
• Keep learning about Open Badges technology including alternative methods of assessment an accreditation.
• Investigate and develop mobile learning applications with particular focus on video.

Solution Architecture

• Complete PhP / MySql online coursework
• Continue to deepen understanding of node.js, Github, and OpenBadges API's
• Pursue TOGAF certification
• Deepen understanding of IASA

Context works within the badge system design rubric

I continue to solicit feedback for the badge system design rubric I have created for the P2Pu course under the same name. Last week I had a great (and too short) talk with the P2Pu team during their regular community call. One important idea that came from the discussion was how the rubric applies to different learning (and badging) situations? I.e. does it apply to individuals, communities and institutions equally? Short answer; Yes. After a review, and few changes the rubric could apply equally well to different groups or learning contexts.

• Individual - people or small groups, friendships, self-directed learners, autodidacts, heutagogues.
  Design Impact: Design the system for themselves with reference to existing badges systems or themes within subject domain. Individual or small group has to be responsible for all aspects of badge system.
• Community - community organizations, festivals, conferences, communities of practice, distributed groups.
  Design Impact: Consideration of how badge systems differ for a community of practice or conference. Badges awarded for informal tasks, participation or alternative approaches to learning. System may be considered more celebratory in nature or branding for event or community.
• Institution - traditional educational institutions, large businesses, international organizations.
  Design Impact: Alignment and or extension of existing and traditional (or product based) curriculum. Organizational brand needs to be considered in design. Look for opportunities for badging co-curricular activities or informal learning related to institution / organization,

I believe adding these three contexts as different views into the rubric will make it stronger and more comprehensive.

Leveling of OnPhD badges

I have developed the OnPhD candidacy challenge on P2Pu. The purpose of this challenge is to guide people through the tasks of declaring their candidacy as an Open and Networked PhD.  A part of my work towards an OnPhD is to research alternative methods of assessment and accreditation for the self-directed life-long learner... I have the belief that digital and open badges will provide very well for the accreditation part. Therefore, I keep a concious eye toward the open badges movement and have been helping out in building the school of badges on P2Pu. I've taken on the creation of a couple of courses within this school, I am also doing some review of Leah MacVie's outstanding work within the school. One of the courses she has developed is 102 Quick Issuing, and I am working through the course to debug and give feedback. One of the tasks within the 102 Quick Issuing challenge is to describe a badge system you would be issuing badges. The badge system I am developing is to support the OnPhD. This badge system would recognize the accomplishments as a person meets or exceeds the milestones found within a traditional PhD while also allowing a person to be self-directed in defining their own OnPhD.

I have a deep appreciation of the colour themes within martial arts belt system to denote levels of accomplishment. I will use these within the development of the badge system for my OnPhD. Essentially, I will use the respective colours as part of the badge as I progress toward mastery in my chosen subject domain. Completing the OnPhD Candidacy challenge awards the earner a yellow candidate badge, and other tasks or accomplishments within this level would also be awarded a badge with a yellow colour. As the progression toward mastery progresses, so would the colour of the badge, closely matching the belt colours within the martial arts. Given the self-directed (or heutagogical) nature of the OnPhD much of the badge system design should be responsibility of the OnPhD candidate, allowing them to set their own learning directions(s). This would deepen learning and is strongly supported by current research around heutagogy.