Publishing for Kindle Amazon early lessons learned

To be honest, I never anticipated the anxiousness I would feel pressing a publish button. I consider myself fairly knowledgeable and experienced in trying out new technologies or new digital options but … having my own words out there for everyone to see, read and critique is a tough realization. Nevertheless, one has to go out there and explore options, for gathering new experiences is part of life.

These lessons listed were learned after publishing my MOOC eBook via Kindle Direct Publishing, which does not demand a Kindle, you can use free kindle apps to read the book.

First some realizations I got after publishing:

Have a distribution/dissemination strategy. There are A LOT of authors out there! When I looked at new releases from the kindle store only three days after publishing my book, I realized that there were over 200 new titles … in the non-fiction education section alone already!!!! This made me realize that publishing an eBook is just the same as eLearning: you cannot offer it and expect people to buy it… you need to think of a strategy for dissemination, and understand that every one book sold is already fabulous!

Provide access guidelines for readers with different technologies. Another thing I realized was that choosing Kindle led to some disappointment for those people not having a Kindle reader. Understandably for in technology, making a specific choice means you exclude other choices from access. Luckily I found out that Amazon actually offers free Kindle apps, which allow anyone with a computer (Windows XP, 8; Mac; iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, Android smartphones, Android tablets and Windows 8 tablets) to be able to actually read the book (also later on).

Understand the “look inside” option. The “look inside” feature that you can see on some of the books, needs to be activated by becoming a member of that Amazon service. I did not realize this until a few days later. So I registered for the service. After reading the guidelines I noticed that Kindle books do not need to be uploaded again, they will automatically be transformed into the “look inside” feature, but only after one week. This made me wonder whether next time I might upload the book, but wait for a week before promoting it, as this would immediately enable possible readers to get a feel of what the book is like. Waiting for the feature to activate till date, so not sure which pages are selected and such.

Why did I choose for Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/signin ) option?

Simple. Because it seemed easy enough to do, they provide very helpful documents on how to get your book published for both Mac and non-Mac (https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/help?topicId=A2MB3WT2D0PTNK )

No cost. It does not cost anything to actually get your book published (or it does not have to cost anything, a nice cover, some layout, pictures … all of these might cost money, but you can do it yourself as well)

Quickly updateable. You can easily update a version of your book. Nice, certainly in fields of interest that evolve rapidly (like technology based learning)

Interesting royalty scheme. The Kindle Direct Publishing option also offers a 70% royalty option. Which I found of interest, because it combines low-cost for the buyer with more of a return for the author.

It also allows you to publish in multiple languages.

And it gets distributed globally.

So what I have learned so far:

Ask people to review your draft manuscript. It is amazing how blind one becomes after rereading one’s own manuscript over and over again. And although reviewers can pick up a lot of mistakes or doubles… you are still in for many surprises (or at least I was). But then again, I could have asked a reviewing company to have a look, but that would probably take away any earnings I might hope to acquire (if any). 

Write a manuscript without any formatting. This includes rewriting stuff you already wrote in draft documents, as these might bring along fonts or paragraph spacing that might interfere with the final formatted version. If you do copy paste from other documents, you can copy all to notepad (no wrapping!) and get rid of any formatting that way.

Follow the Kindle Self Publishing guidelines to get your manuscript ready. Once your manuscript is finalized and cleaned from any formatting, you can put in the suggested options provided by the Kindle publishing options from Amazon (put in bookmark toc at the table of contents so kindle users can use the ‘go to’ option, put in headings so you can integrate a table of contents, put in your pictures straight from a designated book folder, get your bullet lists straightened out,  …).

Be meticulous at all stages of the process. Next thing (but this is definitely due to my own eagerness): checking the book for spelling and grammar is one thing, but remember to double check the details you put into the Kindle publishing site (I for example managed to put the title of my book in twice! Argh).

Use the preview option and look at possible errors (with me again I saw that a table was completely warped – took it out, and I saw paragraph spacing that was not visible in the original word document => which led me to the notepad option guideline above)

Get your rates straight. What I did was indicate that prices for my book should all be linked to the US price of the book (so using exchange rates). And although there is a clear indication that Amazon will adjust the prices to the required KDP minima or maxima, it just does not feel that comfortable. Luckily I could change them within 24 hours which felt nice.  

Take the VAT into account. Another thing I did not realize was that once I put in a price for the book, the actual selling price was higher as VAT was added to the initial sales prize.

Be online. The publishing goes quickly if your manuscript meets the technical guidelines provided by Amazon. But make sure you publish at a moment that you can check your ‘your manuscript is published’ mail, as this will offer you links to alter some details and/or add an author profile page which is always nice to be able to edit as soon as your manuscript is published (I published at a moment I would not be online for 18 hours, which resulted in some errors in details that could only be rectified after people had already bought the book, which inevitably leads to possible reviews affected with the mistakes that are in at that time). But then again, as a first time eBook author, people will most likely not go wild buying the book.

Author bonus. Once I got feedback from Amazon that my book was published, I was redirected to an author field, where I could upload a picture, add my blog, put in my twitter id … this made me feel like an actual author (I know, I am not, but … it just felt that way which makes it a nice mental bonus)

Accept and learn. And last but not least, I expect to be in a potential uncomfortable place: people will write reviews and I need to be prepared for that: unknown people writing about something you put your heart and soul in for weeks, if not months.

Looking at the numbers

As a newbie author I was obsessed to find out if my book was selling at least one copy … so I was surfing to get an idea of which analytics were out there.

First of all you can keep some kind of track of how you book is doing using the Kindle Rank Calculator (http://kdpcalculator.com/ ). You go to your author page, you copy the Kindle rank of your ebook and you fill it in the Kindle Rank Calculator and … you get some idea of how your book is doing currently.

Then you have the Kindle eBook reports (but they take 15 days to get data, so be patient … I was not at first, so was anxious until I finally saw them), which give you an overview of how many book you have sold and how this relates to the royalties you might get (admitting here that my math skills are so basic nowadays that I just look at the basic numbers). The reports for the Kindle eBooks can be viewed https://kdp.amazon.com/mn/reports (make sure you are logged in with your Amazon account.

… what can I say, it is clearly an adventure, but it is fun. And at this point, I am already thinking about my next eBook. Interested in whether establishing some frequency in book publishing might affect sales. 

Join the #MOOC on #gamebased #learning

For all of you interested in game-based learning, here is a 5 week MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) that will put you up to speed. It starts on the 9 of July so, pretty close to starting date. And they are still working hard to get the course locations finished, but in the meanwhile you can register for the free course here. Got the information via the wonderful MOOC-supporter John Mak.

The Games-based Learning MOOC begins on July 9, 2012 and will run for 5 weeks with an optional proposal/project week in mid-September.

This MOOC is organized by Center4Edupunx (love the name!) and below is a tentative outline of the topics for each week:

Game-based Learning
Week 1 Games Based Learning/Game Principles
Week 2 Gamification or Behavior Motivation Elements for the Classroom
Week 3 Overview of Commercial Off the Shelf Games
Week 4 Epistemic Games
Week 5 Introduction to Alternate Reality Games (ARG)
Week 6 Assessing Student Learning and Data Collection
Additional Course Activities
ARG Prime July 23 – August 5
Machinima  August 4 – 19

Sure rooting for the organizers that they get all their locations up and running (it is a tough cookie to crack, I know :-)

Free #Edupunk DIY #book on #learning and how to get credentials while exploring the internet

For all of us wanting to increase our knowledge and get certified along the way, Anya Kamenetz has made it a bit simpler to build our own learning path. There is a free downloadable EduPunk guide to get cracking with your own learning and increase your knowledge. The guide has some really great pointers on how to design your learning path step-by-step and following your own interests.

Anya Kamenetz is known as the author of DIY U:Edupunks, Edupreneurs and the Coming Transformation of Higher Education and Generation Debt: How our future was sold out for student loans, bad jobs, noBenefits, and tax cuts for rich geezers - and how to Fight Back.
In the free EduPunks' guide to obtain DIY credentials, you will find great online resources to really dive into certification, job information, and jargon that comes with academic or professional certification by using the internet quite excessively.

I like that idea of getting your shoulders behind your own education and moving towards your own interests (even if it demands for you to get a degree - oh dear!). No rest for the wicked!

Join the open and free course on mobile learning: #MobiMOOC

Mobile learning (mLearning) is all the rage at the moment, but how do you get started and how do you maximize the mLearning plans you have? Simple, follow this free online course facilitated by 7 mobile experts and turn your mLearning knowledge into a practical project. Interested? Join the online google group, the course wiki and enter the mLearning conversation with other peers.

Grab your mobile and optimize its use
The MobiMOOC course will run for 6 weeks (2 April – 14 May). The target group for this course is … anyone interested in mLearning. Although the course is open to all, it is useful if you have some experience with social media. If you have a mobile phone or device, than grab it or go and buy one, it will make your learning much more authentic.

The MobiMOOC course will start with an introduction to mLearning, getting everyone comfortable with some of its key features, and gradually moving into the more complex technical, project planning and philosophical topics. The course will feature mLearning examples from the academic, corporate and non-profit world, and look at both simple and on the edge projects from both the North and South, as the South has been an inspiration for mLearning.

The MOOC format
MobiMOOC is a fully online course, which follows the MOOC (Massive, Open, Online Course) format. This format uses a lot of social media to enable all the participants and the facilitators to stay connected, build a network, exchange experiences. As the course is focusing on mobile learning, it is called MobiMOOC. As much of a MOOC is about exchanging notes with peers, and constructing knowledge collaboratively, so responsibility of the learning is with you, the participants and as such you need to self-regulate your learning. To optimize your learning it is important to plan your learning actions. However, we are all in this together! You can be sure that with the mLearning expert facilitators of the course and your peers, you will get your hands on great resources, inspiring discussions and all of our minds will be challenged and inspired.
If you do not like e-mails, you can also add the discussion threads to a RSS feed.

The main course sites are accessible for a lot of mobile devices (e.g. google groups for discussing which uses e-mails, twitter, facebook…).

Interested? The when and where
The course will be running: from 2nd April 2011 until 14 May 2011. Every week focuses on a new topic.

Join the MobiMOOC google group (this will be the primary site for discussions) in order to get into the course and be kept up-to-date. You need to sign in with a google account. Important: once you have joined the MobiMOOC google-group, make sure you choose how you want to be kept up to date: recommended choices either an abridged e-mail (= you get a summary of the new activities each day) or digest e-mail (you get all the new messages bundled into one single mail per day). Google groups works like a listserv, so you can reply to a message send from the group via your e-mail, the google group mail: mobimooc (at) googlegroups (dot) com . After joining the group, please add a bit of information about yourself via the profile of your google group account, that way we all get to know one another a bit better.
Check out the course wiki (still a work in process, but already loaded with information)
http://mobimooc.wikispaces.com/

Get connected to the MobiMOOC twitter and Facebook account.
Facebook account: some informal learning or chatting
http://facebook.com/mobimooc
Twitter: mobiMOOC: tweetering thoughts and ideas and for speedy connections (hashtag #mobiMOOC)
http://twitter.com/mobiMOOC

Topics and facilitators?
Week 1: Saturday 2 April – 8 April 2011: Introduction to mLearning;
Facilitator: Inge ‘Ignatia’ de Waard

Week 2: Saturday 9 April – 15 April 2011: Planning an mLearning project;
Facilitator: Judy Brown

Week 3: Saturday 16 April – 22 April 2011: Mobile for development (m4D);
Facilitators: Niall Winters and Yishay Mor

Week 4: Saturday 23 – 29 April 2011: Leading edge innovations in mLearning;
Facilitator: David Metcalf

Week 5: Saturday 30 – 6 May 2011: Interaction between mobile learning and a mobile connected society;
Facilitator: John Traxler

Week 6: Saturday 7 – 13 May 2011: mLearning in k12;
Facilitator: Andy Black

So if you are interested, keep your agenda (a bit) free from 2 April - 14 May 2011 and join us.

Prodigies do not wait for educational change, they live it

Most of us eLearners and knowledge managers know that change is here to stay. In fact although social media has started a social revolution, the change was not that revolutionary in its core for as humans we have always wanted to connect with others. Networking and being known by our peers is what drives us since the beginning of time. Monkeys know it, flocks of any kind know it, we know it.

Big names, small actions
A lot of discussions have been started on the fact that education as it is now, does not cover what is needed for the adult workers of the future (or contemporary workers, for it is happening). Seth Godin (renowned author, famous marketer and visionair) said that traditional education is heading for a meltdown, simply because it does not teach learners what they need to know to get started in professional live in this blogpost of his. The renowned author, and educationalist Ken Robinson focuses on the economical and cultural changes that effect education and which we – throughout the world – need to take into account. Look at this great 11 minute animation on one of his educational reform speeches.

Small names, big actions
In the meanwhile the learners themselves are just paving their way, some of them even put together their own master and phd. You do not need to tell prodigies where they need to go and they do not wait for our educational institutes to change, they just go for it and learn/teach.

My favorite young teacher is a musician called Stromae . He is a Belgian/Rwandan artist who makes fabulous music that is picked-up worldwide AND who gives free music classes which he publishes on the Net so everyone can learn. When he started out, he posted all his music for free. Yes, he is a believer in openness. No big stories there, just big actions. Here is one of his lessons on how he made a song (which later turned out to be the hit song that got him a great record deal), the lesson is in French, but the beats are universal, by the way this musical lesson got over 400.000 hits, so how is that for a free online learning module and even if you do not understand French, have a quick look he really gets his audience enthusiastic about the lesson as well:

Join PLENK: the massive online course on Personal Learning Environments, Networks and Knowledge

Today PLENK2010 (hashtag: #PLENK2010) will start. The PLENK2010 is an open, massive online course, but with an extra, for PLENK2010 is also linked to to the Canadian National Research Council. For anyone interested in PLE's (Personal Learning Environments) this will be a massive learning opportunity, for I know that whatever Stephen Downes and George Siemens come up with, learning is assured and eye-opening on many eLearning subjects will happen. So if you have the time, sign in, sign the form for the research consent (see a bit further) and start learning with over 1000 other learners located around the globe.

For those of you who have heard of the CCK2008 or CCK2009, this is a new open course delivered in part by Stephen Downes and George Siemens, but... the group of facilitators has grown and added Dave Cormier (who was already joining in CCK for some parts).

Although the course will focus entirely on Personal Learning Environments (PLE), Networking and Knowledge, there is a very interesting track added to the course, as this course and the dynamics occurring in it will be used for research on the topic of online learning. As such it brings along the administrative parts of research. I find this very thrilling, as it will be 'live research'.

PLENK 2010 Research (copied from the course info)
Before the course starts, we would like to provide you with advance notice of research being conducted in this course.

Research Consent Document

Research in Personal Learning Environments
The Personal Learning Environments Networks and Knowledge course is part of the National Research Council of Canada's PLE research. The project will examine the learning that occurs as a result of interaction and participation in the distributed community. The goal of the research is to follow and document what communities of learners do when they are learning in a sizeable open online course.

Why are you being given this information as a learner?
Upon registering for the online PLENK course, you are being asked to take part in a study designed to examine various aspects of learning in a network, based on the model of the personal learning environment, in which each learner aggregates and works with a unique set of resources, and interacts and participates in a distributed online community.

The information in this page is intended to help you understand exactly what we are asking of you so that you can decide whether or not you want to register for the PLENK course and participate in the research. Please read this consent document carefully and ask all the questions you might have before deciding whether or not to participate or not in this study. Your participation in the course and research project is entirely voluntary and you can opt out of the course and the research at any time.

If you do not consent to this research, please unsubscribe.

Research Projects
There are four separate research projects being conducted in this course.

1. The NRC PLE Project research, conducted by Helene Fournier and Rita Kop.

2. Wendy Drexler and Chris Sessums will also invite you to participate in research on Personal Learning Environments and Personal Learning Networks and you will find an invitation to participate in their surveys in the Daily.

3. Dave Cormier and George Siemens carry out research in Massive Open Online courses but will not ask you to fill out surveys, as they will be observers on the learning environment.

4. Sui Fai John Mak will invite you to participate in his own research program.

Special Interest Group in PLE and PLN research
People engaged or interested in research in Personal Learning Environments and Personal Learning Networks will be invited to participate in a Special Interest Group on the subject by Hélène Fournier during the course. If you would like to participate in this development, watch the Daily for announcements on the S.I.G and the Moodle forum and wiki for developments!

open academic education: people with an open PhD and master? Yes, they do it!

Luckily for me the combination of procrastination and serendipity resulted in a wonderful, unexpected answer to a question that has been on my mind lately. Currently I am dabbling with the idea of a PhD. Although my mind keeps telling me to go for it, it also tells me to keep in mind to make a difference and not to accept 'a regular one'.

So I procrastinated by surfing through cloudscapes that were focusing on mobile learning. As I went through them I found Faridah Abdul Rashid, who teaches chemical pathology at the Universiti Sains in Malaysia and she mentioned she was into problem-based learning, using Moodle ... but what captured my eyes was her mentioning 'open PhD'. It certainly sounds very contemporary and attractive as a term.

After Google'ing 'open phd', I got directed to Lisa Chamberlin's blog. She is building a DIY PhD track, which really got me thinking. The concept of an open PhD is simple (well, simple on paper that is). What Lisa did was construct a course plan with credits, but combining courses from different educational institutions.

Lisa's blog got me to Leigh Blackall's blog on his open PhD, which is also in education focused on open education using popular media for networked learning. Leigh is a renowned open academic education advocate and yes, he is worth following (if you did not do so already, he is quite famous for his open thoughts it seems). Here are the posts referring to his open PhD and if you have the time, read up on his philosophy posts (great, really lovely mind food!).

Another link that was useful was the open Master that Parag Shah has built for himself and that will allow him to construct a master with topics that he knows will be useful to him. He published his plan for the DIY master on July 24th and you can follow his progress with the recently started master in the coursewiki he is keeping where he tells us why he takes this open course approach to construct a master in computer science (with a focus on web application development). Just like Lisa and Leigh he build a learning plan. Another incredibly smart thing Parag came up with, was to start an open posterous blog where he keeps his study notes. Why? to allow credits to be given to his knowledge creation (great idea!).

What these pioneers are doing feels much more comfortable and logical in this increasingly networked world, doesn't it! We could all benefit from this approach, also for the more formal learning we would like to follow. Setting up your own learning trajectory, sharing it along the way, discussing it with mentors and peers that have in-depth thoughts about the material, ... Yes, that looks much more in tune with what education can be like and how learning can become fun for everyone (or at least those who belief in DIY learning).

[The balloon picture is a file from the Wikimedia Commons. The description on its description page there. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. The picture was taken by Friedrich Böhringer ]

Beware critics of Connectivism ! Or how I feel connectivism opens up content creation and access

In 2008 I enrolled in the CCK connectivism course. It was the first time I took such a mass course and … I liked it, though I could not really say why I liked it. In 2009 I wanted to follow the second run through of the course, but due to time restraints (buying a house, taking a master, full-time job) I just could not cope and so the intention stayed just that.

Then, as I was meeting people at a time that George Siemens’ and Stephen Downes’ course got more attention from the eLearning group, I heard more critique on the course and specifically on connectivism. What was surprising was that many of the people who critiqued it, actually were experienced researchers, yet they did not actually follow the course itself. On top of the fact that they did not follow it, or only took a very brief glance at the concept, they critiqued the fact that George and Stephen came away with the idea of connectivism, because people were blindly following their concept, as though the people that took the CCK-course were not able to think for themselves.

Another critique I heard was that the CCK-format was contradictory to the concept of connectivism. Other people I met did not like the fact that connectivism was put forward as a new learning theory, telling me that a theory can only be called just that once the scientist is much older and the theory has been critiqued by all peer scientists. Well okay, this might sometimes be the truth, but in this case I tend to argue: Connectivism is a concept that fits contemporary learning; contemporary learning moves forward at an increasing speed, thus a theory can be put forward much quicker and be critiqued by the people following it (not only the ivory tower people, wherever they are). Whether or not it is a ‘lasting’ theory really is of no interest to me. Thanks to the idea that this could be a theory, things started happening, people started learning, networking, and collaborating. At this point in time, with these educational technologies, it works so: voilà.

Why do I like the connectivism and especially CCK-course? If you want to read up on it, lookie here and here.
I have multiple reasons to like the course and its concept:

1. Learners from all around the world (as long as they have an internet connection) can follow the course.
2. The content is not financially elitist.
3. The content is open. Anyone can at any time look at the content and start contemplating it, work on it, discuss it. Even after the official course is closed.
4. Discussions are open. As a learner, if you have strong (anti-)arguments against the course or the content, you can voice them and your arguments will be used to fire up the deeper understanding that is being critically discussed.
5. It is interdisciplinary, as a learner from whatever background or specialty, you can take the content and fit it to your own needs or experiences. So it builds on what we know, and adding to it, this is still a great added learning value.
6. The resulting content from the course surmounts the individual knowledge. The network of learners builds on the content crumbs they pick-up from peer learners. (Hooray for Hegel)
7. It is global, enabling all to take the content and use it in their own settings and contexts, so it is embedded in the global public sphere (hooray for Habermas).
8. Conversation and narration is at the center of it, making room for very human and natural learning to occur.
9. George and Stephen are the content/course facilitators, idea enablers. They are not the center of the action; instead they offer a knowledge playground. They put forward the central ideas which they think will help the learners (them included) to deepen their and each others knowledge.
10. A variety of specialists is heard and participates in the debates taken shape by the learners.
11. It is learner-centered and the learners can mold the content that is suggested or build to their own learning goal.
12. And the course uses contemporary tools + enables learners to add tools, instruments, mash-ups, techy stuff. Yes, everyone grows.

So, am I a blind follower of the George and Stephen train? No.
Do I like what they do with connectivism concept and the CCK-course: yes.
Why? Because learning as they enable it, is the learning that I have been doing for my entire life. This learning, connecting with people who’s voices I like, who’s thoughts add to my deeper understanding, and who’s ideas reach beyond the separation of disciplines, regions and cultures appeals to me.

There is also another extra. Through the connectivism course, I could get into contact with people that have a profound knowledge in a topic, but are not necessarily part of the academic powers. Meaning that although they might have great ideas, the chance that I would encounter them as authors of research papers might be much less possible. In saying this, I belief that the CCK principle also enables people from less connected power regions, to become part of the content narrative. And maybe, this fact of enabling content creation outside the fixed academic power bastions is what pisses off some of the academics that critique Connectivism. In my mind CCK is linked to Critical Social Science, which I wrote a couple of weeks ago.

To me connectivism is very natural organic learning. It brings us back to the open and active baby stage of learning. Within the first 18 months of our childhood our capacity to learn is formed. Nevertheless no one tells us how this learning happens. As a baby and toddler we just pick-up on things from our context, from the people we come in contact with. As a toddler we explore, we feed it back to our peers (parents, people around, other toddlers) and we take into account the reactions we get (“oh, is not she clever” or what I got “she is a strange kid, but okay”). And please do not be fooled, the CCK learners have far more in-depth knowledge to share then babies, they just love active learning as much as any new born and ... they are open to learning!

Learning is all about networking, exchanging ideas, searching for what fits my learning, my goals and as such connectivism helps me what type of learning works for me.

CCK09: does Connectivism want to change the world?

The last couple of months I have been thinking more then I am writing. I am still thinking. In fact the more I think, the dumber I get and I start to see it as fact. So less writing is done. My network is amazing, however and so I keep connecting them if that seems like a good idea. My network consists of people trying to improve the world, meaning reduce conflicts, access to health facilities, access to education, etcetera. A lot of people in my network are scientists with a vision to improve the world and make it a better place to live in, with quality of life for all (in a variety of forms they define it).

Although still a bit reluctant to write, seeing as I feel in a cognitive slow period of life, this post had to be written. Especially after reading Stephen Downes’ article on Group vs Networks: the class struggle continues. Some quotes from the article:

“It's hard to believe that something like freedom of speech is a radical concept, but there it is. In their own ways, a person in a network should be able to send their message any way they want in their own language using their own computer encoding, using their Macintosh computers, using standards that are non-standards.”

“In networks we have communities of practices where a ‘community' is defined as collections of individuals that exchange messages and ideas back and forth without being impeded. Copyright, trademarks, proprietary software, all of these things are barriers for the communication of thought and ideas. If you allow that using content, images, text, video is a way of speaking to each other, then copyright, trademark, all these things are ways of locking down our speech, saying, "I own the word such and such and you can't use it."

“You can't build a society with walls. …In the longer term we have to do something more imaginative than blocking this technology. We need to live and teach and learn where the students live and teach and learn. That means that we have to stop blocking to their spaces and go to their spaces. So we explore their world. But, you know, there's the age-old danger of explorers that when we go to their world, we're going to want to colonize it. And we're going to want to make them like us. And we're going to want to take them from their mountains and put them in rooms and put walls around them and put locks on their doors and say, "This is civilization."

While picking up parts of the CCK08 last year, I found it enlightening and in sync with some of my world beliefs. This year I enrolled, but I was not actively producing anything. However, I love to lurk and I learn a lot from it which suits my current state of mind. To me Connectivism is more related to Critical Social Science (CSS) then Interpretive Social Science (ISS). This idea matters to me, because I had the feeling that Connectivism had or has an activist agenda incorporated as well. But than, maybe a tainted what I learned or I tainted it in order for Connectivism to suite my preferred worldview.

For those not familiar with the distinction between Critical Social Science and Interpretative Social Science, I give a short list of features for each, as cited by Neuman (2006) in the book ‘Social Science Methods: qualitative and quantitative approaches’, for the CSS frame see p. 102, for the ISS see p. 94.

Interpretative Social Science

Critical Social Science

The purpose of social science is to understand social meaning in context. A constructionist view that reality is socially created (a constructionist orientation is an orientation toward social reality that assumes the beliefs and meaning people create and use fundamentally shape what reality is for them). Humans are interacting social beings who create and reinforce shared meaning. A voluntaristic stance is taken regarding human agency (voluntarism is an approach to human agency and causality that assumes human actions are based on the subjective choices and reasons of individuals). . Scientific knowledge is different from but no better than other forms Explanations are idiographic and advance via inductive reasoning (idiographic: a type of explanation used in which the explanation is an in-depth description or picture with specific details but limited abstraction about a social situation or setting). Explanations are verified using the postulate of adequacy (a principle that explanations should be understandable in commonsense terms by the people being studied) with people being studied. Social scientific evidence is contingent, context specific, and often requires bracketing. A practical orientation (pragmatic orientation in which people apply knowledge iin their daily lives. The value of knowledge is ability to be integrated with a person’s practical everyday understandings and choices) is taken toward knowledge that is used from a transcendent perspective (the researcher develops research together with the people being studied, examines people’s inner lives to gain an intimate familiarity with them, and works closely with people being studied to create mutual understandings). Social science should be relativistic regarding value positions.

The purpose of social science is to reveal what is hidden to liberate and empower people. Social reality has multiple layers. People have unrealized potential and are misled by reification (reification = when people become detached from and lose sight of their connection to their own creations and treat them as being alien, external forces); social life is relational. A bounded autonomy (human action is based on subjective choices and reasons but only within identifiable limits) stance is taken toward human agency. Scientific knowledge is imperfect but can fight false consciousness (the idea that people often have false or misleading ideas about empirical conditions and their true interests). Abduction (= an approach to theorizing in which several alternative frameworks are applied to data and theory that are redescribed in each and evaluated) is used to create explanatory critiques (the explanation simultaneously explains (or tells why events occur) and critiques (or points out discrepancies, reveals myths, or identifies contradictions). Explanations are verified through praxis (a way to evaluate explanations in which theoretical explanations are put into real-life practice and the outcome is used to refine explanation). All evidence is theory dependent and some theories reveal deeper kinds of evidence. A reflexive-dialectic orientation (dialectic= a change process in which social relationships contain irresolvable inner contradictions; over time they will trigger a dramatic upset and a total restructuring of the relationship) is adopted toward knowledge that is used from a transformative perspective. Social reality and the study of it necessarily contain a moral-political dimension, and moral-political positions are unequal in advancing human freedom and empowerment.

From all these points, I love this one from CSS the best: Social reality and the study of it necessarily contain a moral-political dimension, and moral-political positions are unequal in advancing human freedom and empowerment. For I feel that fighting to keep communications open and accessible for all is an absolute priority, also in education. But even now, even at the most liberal of educational institutions (university) some of these educational rights are challenged, blocked. So is it not the responsibility of the scientist to actively participate in opening up or keeping the door open to enable all of us interested to use these educational tools?

Why is it important to me to know whether Connectivism is either or, or both? Because it matters to me what a theory does and what its goal is. To me science has a function to serve society, to make all of our lives better.

Sorry for the lengthy post, I should probably do some more thinking.

Do you think Connectivism or its researchers should actively take part in society?

Join the CCK09 course on Connectivism and Connective Knowledge

Straight from George Siemens and Stephen Downes' CCK09 post (sorry for copy paste, but on vacation so a bit relaxed and lazy :-)


George Siemens and Stephen Downes will co-facilitate the course. The support wiki for the course provides additional information in the coming weeks.

"Connectivism and Connective Knowledge 2009

Given the interest in the Connectivism and Connective Knowledge course Stephen and I delivered in 2008, ’re pleased to announce an open version of the same course for fall of this year.

You can register to receive course information here. The course will be delivered in the same method as last year: content and conversations will be open. Learners that would like formal credit as part of the Certificate in Emerging Technologies for Learning can enroll through University of Manitoba’s Extended Education Faculty.

The course will begin on September 14, 2009.

If you were registered for The Daily last year, you will need to register again (the archives from last year are still available, but we are starting with a new subscriber base).

What will we be doing differently this year?

We will again open up the course so participants can take the course in any direction/space/mode that they find useful. Our goal is to provide a starting point for participants to build a distributed infrastructure for innovative conversations.

The content of the course will change somewhat, and we’ll bring in a new group of guest speakers.

Two areas of interest personally:

I would also like to see a greater focus on research. If you are interested in conducting research on the course, please contact us.

Given advancements in “messing with data”, I would love to see the the creative genius of people like Tony Hirst applied to producing innovative constellations of patterns of conversations.

Over the next few weeks, we will update the course site/wiki, schedule, and speakers list. Suggestions, as always, are welcome…"

Blogphilosophy: Ten reasons why sharing what you learn/research will add to your life's quality

A lot has been written on the ups and downs of open source software and movements and building on that philosophy, the topic of open source content in education (not umbiased I linked to 'old' - read March 2003 - comprehensive article on the topic by George Siemens and building on a discussion with Stephen Downes. I believe in open content sharing) . But fear for sharing keeps existing in the hearts of a lot of people.

This topic of sharing content rekindled because I attended a 'writers day' (basically a day in which you could choose to augment your writing skills). During the day many people raised the question "What if I send my manuscript/column/text to a publisher and that publisher gives the idea to another writer?" Many beginning writers seemed to be afraid that their work would be kidnapped. My friend replied to them: “as long as people think their idea is brilliant and they do not want to share it, they are no thread to me”, I can only agree.

So here are ten reasons why I think sharing is winning

Keeping your idea to yourself will kill it
Say you have a world changing idea, you do not know how to mold it into something useful, so you keep it to yourself hoping you will get the means to develop it one time or another. That idea will either be picked-up by someone else (ideas float through space, anyone can pick them up and develop them) or it will die. Nevertheless, it is a sad result.

Going for an idea will make you smarter
No matter if the new idea will work out, you will have learned a lot anyway. Ideas can look fantastic, but trying to develop them can be a painstaking process that has some result at best (ideas are not always useful – unfortunately). How do you know an idea has potential? By either relentlessly going for it because you belief in it (think Edison) or by discussing it to an amazing extend with people who’s views you value (think Plato). Afraid your partners in the discussion will run away with your ideas? Stay cool, just say to yourself “Who is mad enough to belief in it as much as I do?”

No one is brilliant
No one person is brilliant. No one has ever been brilliant, not even the greatest minds (Newton, Marie Currie…). They all build on the knowledge of others. Of course they were great minds, but it was not the idea that was going to make them cross into a new scientific frontier, it was their analytical thinking, there vision. And a vision never just floats in space, it is built on past ideas, simple things your mind is superimposing on.

Great ideas arise all over the world
If an idea comes into your head, you can bet you are not alone with the idea. Both Steven Jobs and Bill Gates saw a niche, but the one with the best (diverse) network won the (economic) race.

Informal learning is on the rise, for this you need to share
Locking content behind doors prevents people from informal learning or increasing their personal learning space. If your network is deprived of knowledge, your network and yourself will loose out.

Let go of your ego for the better good: give your too difficult idea a chance to live
You might have a great idea, but no means to go for it. You either post your idea, send it out into the world or you try and find like-minded people that might be able to help you. Nevertheless sharing will give extra energy to the idea and its development. As Blanche Dubois said in ‘A streetcar named Desire’ “You can always rely on the kindness of strangers” and I like that thought.

Sharing ideas is like sharing peace and energy
Looking at ways to fuel positive brain functions seems to me much more interesting than promoting the idea of improving. Sharing ideas is like building good karma, giving is good.
Even if some of your ideas get taken: let go of that frustration. If you are indeed a creative mind, more ideas will come. No matter what age, where you live, … your time will come.

Sharing knowledge is what brought humanity to where it is today
Networking, discussing, sharing and non-sharing build our history and made scientific evolution possible (or not depending on the era). I wrote on some of the ethical issues of sharing a couple of months ago during the CCK08.

A brain likes to play, so do not stop it
If you keep an idea and protect if from others, your brain will most probably not be that thrilled. A brain likes to think, likes to share. So if you keep your knowledge closed up, why should your brain search for a new thrilling idea? It's like kids, if you stop creativity, they just stop all together and become passive. For me I need to feel the playfullness of my brain, it keeps me happy.

So I share my ideas gladly with anyone and I like to pick-up other ideas as I go along. Feel free to add additional benefits of sharing ideas and knowledge.

And to top it off... the tenth reason: it even gives you an advantage over your competitors says Jason Fried of 37 signals.

CCK08 - what is knowledge, where is the ethics and can it keep humanity together?

This week is the second week of the massive online course CCK08. This week is focusing on ‘What is knowledge’. I must say that the articles I absorbed today really intrigued me and gave me a better understanding (or at least the thought of better understanding).

I will copy parts of both articles, just to enable you to follow my own thoughts a bit if you have not read the articles (yet). Another reason is that if in the future the links to the articles get severed, I will still be able to reconstruct (part) of my thoughts with this copied information. But I if you are interested in the philosophy of knowledge the articles are a delightful read.

My thoughts will be on

• Connective knowledge has gotten humanity to where it is today
• In an increasingly specialized world connective knowledge can keep humanity together
• Freely gathered and promoted connective knowledge risks extreme theories reaching a bigger public

In the article ‘introduction to connective knowledge’ Stephen Downes leads the readers towards three conclusions to give a framework for future discussions on what knowledge is:

There are three types of knowledge:

• Of the senses (empirical)
• Of quantity (rationalist)
• Of connections (connective)

Connective knowledge is both:

• Knowledge OF networks in the world
• Knowledge obtained BY networks

Active participation in the network:

• As a node in the network, by participating in society
• As a whole network, by perceiving with the brain (the neural network)

Reflective participation in the network

• By observing society as a whole
• By reflecting on our mental states and processes

My thoughts invoked by reading this article

First of all this evolution of many brains making knowledge seems very natural to me as the same thing happens in nature already (most quoted species: ants), so I am happy to read a simple framework to get to this point.

Connective knowledge has gotten humanity to where it is today

After reading this (accessible) article I did get visions of connective knowledge building throughout human history. In a way history has always used connective knowledge and has build upon it as soon as enough people were curious enough to take it into consideration and replicating it. It is only because Darwin’s knowledge got out, got discussed, was first accepted by a few and got picked up by a growing number of scientists, that Darwin’s theory on the Origin of Species began to be seen as common ground. So in a way, because of several networks and their dynamics knowledge was picked up, tested through discussions and taken in as ‘solid knowledge’.

But not all knowledge gets appreciated from the beginning and sometimes very valuable knowledge gets overlooked thus stopping further evolution of that knowledge. (example: only a couple of years ago a lost (thought lost) manuscript of Archimedes (the so called Method) was found in Paris. The manuscript was overwritten by religious texts, just because at the time those religious texts seemed more important than Archimedes’s. After deciphering parts of the manuscript scientists found that Archimedes put down essential modern mathematical proves that are now at the basis of big inventions. Because Archimedes’s knowledge was ‘lost’ and history was focusing on different types of knowledge, mathematical (and scientific) knowledge was (temporarily stopped)).

So although I think connective knowledge gathering seems to have been around forever, it does not persé solve the problem of knowledge being lost or not being valued to the potential it has.

If you are interested in the Archimedes documentary regarding this manuscript (but beware there are almost no links to the actual text that Archimedes wrote down in his Method, look here)

In an increasingly specialized world connective knowledge can keep humanity together
As connectivity looks at society as a whole as well as connections between information, it can be holistic. In this capacity it can add to interdisciplinary understanding and find mutual evolutions or parallel discussions. This holistic and connected knowledge ability does speak to my imagination, because it could bring all the specialist domains together again (and I believe that building bridges between disciplines always results in new ideas). But could this result in the need for new professions? Not specialists in the classical sense, but specialists in superficial knowledge gathering. People that only know the basics, but of different disciplines and these people could than be knowledge bridge builders. I would like that type of profession J

Now for the second article by Dave Cormier that can be downloaded for free (you need to register for the journal, but registering is also for free) and talks about the rhizomatic knowledge.

Cormier concludes “The rhizomatic viewpoint (…) suggests that a distributed negotiation of knowledge can allow a community of people to legitimize the work they are doing among themselves and for each member of the group, the rhizomatic model dispenses with the need for external validation of knowledge, either by an expert or by a constructed curriculum. Knowledge can again be judged by the old standards of "I can" and "I recognize." If a given bit of information is recognized as useful to the community or proves itself able to do something, it can be counted as knowledge. The community, then, has the power to create knowledge within a given context and leave that knowledge as a new node connected to the rest of the network.

Indeed, the members themselves will connect the node to the larger network. Most people are members of several communities—acting as core members in some, carrying more weight and engaging more extensively in the discussion, while offering more casual contributions in others, reaping knowledge from more involved members (Cormier 2007). This is the new reality. Knowledge seekers in cutting-edge fields are increasingly finding that ongoing appraisal of new developments is most effectively achieved through the participatory and negotiated experience of rhizomatic community engagement. Through involvement in multiple communities where new information is being assimilated and tested, educators can begin to apprehend the moving target that is knowledge in the modern learning environment.”

Note: This article was originally published in Innovate (http://www.innovateonline.info/) as: Cormier, D. 2008. Rhizomatic education: Community as curriculum. Innovate 4 (5). http://www.innovateonline.info/index.php?view=article&id=550 (accessed September 16, 2008). The article is reprinted here with permission of the publisher, The Fischler School of Education and Human Services at Nova Southeastern University.

The thoughts that came to my mind
Freely gathered and promoted connective knowledge risks extreme theories reaching a bigger public

I like the rhizomatic viewpoint a lot because I have been gathering knowledge in this way on an informal basis, but I have one big questionmark. What if this leads to big parts of the population indulging in extreme theories without ever having to be accounted for these extreme theories? (do not get me wrong, I am for complete freedom of speech, because I believe in discussing with words to come to a better understanding… but).

In the rhizoom viewpoint the conclusion indicates that “if a given bit of information is recognized as useful to the community or proves itself able to do something, it can be counted as knowledge”, that is okay but what about the ethical part of knowledge? If collaboration leads to stronger knowledge, and knowledge exists, than who is to stop knowledge that badly affects people?

I just wonder how to you insert ethics in this rhizomatic viewpoint?

(Look here for my other posts related to CCK08).

‘Cartoon by Nick D Kim, nearingzero.net. Used by permission.'