RESEARCH INNOVATIONS (APRIL 7, 2006)
The Next Generation Web and the Community College

I'm wondering now about the title: maybe Learning, Tools, and Technologies - Community Colleges Strive To Find the Tools to Make Learning Happen (Sue!  What are you doing up at midnight?!?)

 

I'll be doing some major pruning over the weekend.  I'll send the paper to Colin & Pam Reid on Monday.

 

How did this paper get written?  Different model.  Collaboration.  Created completely online. 

 

 

(My husband Chris used to have a sign above his desk that read "Tools do not equal talent".  I like that.  I think a good tool is one that you don't notice.  It's transparent.  You don't notice you're using it . . . like a steering wheel.  If I could get away with not using the word "tool" at all, I'd be happier.  The key message here is the idea of Web 2.0 and how it will impact us, but nobody knows what Web 2.0 means - except Janet :-).  It'd be nice to have something poetic like Dave Weinberger's "Small Pieces Loosely Joined".  I think that captures the spirit more but . . . well . . . that title is taken.  Suggestions?  Something a bit more poetic?  Big picture?)

I definitely see what you mean here - I found the word "web" in the title to be limiting and wanted oit to be broader than that...yet tools is not right either....

Some other title options:

Finding Ways to Make Sure That Learning Happens

Creating Spaces for Learning (LOVE this one!  Maybe Creating Online Spaces for Learning?  Web Spaces?  Connected Spaces?)

Creating Spaces to Make Sure that Learning Happens

Creating the Time and Space for Learning

Collaborating to Create the Space and Time for Learning

A Collaborative Approach to Create the Space to Make Sure Learning Happens..

Getting closer (maybe)....

Creating a New Community Online?

The Community College Online?

Connect to NSCC?

Connecting the College?

Hi Jane! :-)

Karen, could you add the Michigan story?  That's a good one.

Here is the Michigan story ... Online Education is law in Michigan!

Mich. First to Mandate Online Learning

Students will need online 'experience' before they can graduate

From eSchool News staff and wire service reports

http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/showStoryts.cfm?ArticleID=6223&page=2

“April 3, 2006 -- Looking to improve the level of rigor in high school classrooms and better prepare students for the realities of the modern workforce, Michigan lawmakers have approved a bill that requires every student in the state to take part in some form of online instruction before they graduate.  Believed to be the first of its kind in the country, the requirement--part of a larger proposal designed to hold high schools across the state to a higher standard of learning--clears the way for other states to consider online competency as a prerequisite to graduation.”  . . .

"When we hold our kids to high standards, they will do great things," said Granholm in response to the legislature's approval of the bill March 30. "This new curriculum will help give Michigan the best-educated workforce in the nation and bring new jobs and new investment to our state." Buttressed by a national push for widespread high-school reform, Michigan lawmakers had been considering proposals that would make earning a diploma more difficult. The state's students now will be required to take four credits of math and English; three credits of science and social studies; two credits of a foreign language; one credit of physical education and health; one credit of visual or performing arts; and one online learning "experience." “

“Though there remains some room for debate over what constitutes an online "experience," as opposed to a full credit or actual course, advocates of educational technology say the bill likely will pave the way for other states to consider the impact of online learning in schools more seriously.” . . .

K:)

 

Awesome!! Thanks!  (Don't forget to sign your name at the bottom.)

 

The strategic planning process implores us to think about what "gets us excited about coming to work each day...."  Depending on the day, that can be a challenging question to answer.  For me, what gets me excited about coming to work each day is the idea of making a difference.  Some days, that idea of making a difference is only a theoretical reality.  What I am doing seems very far removed from making a difference in anyone else's world.  Other days, there might be an implied connection.  You have to strain hard to be able to perceive it, but it can be there, you just may have to work a little harder at being able to see it.  Every once in a while, there may be moments when the connection is experienced as explicitly real.  Explicitly there, no induction, deduction, inference or extrapolation required.  These moments can be rare, but it is their existence that keeps many of us going.  In a learning organization, the idea of making a difference is often inextricably tied to playing a part in helping to make learning happen.  How that hopefulness of being able to play a part in make learning happen can be attained, maintained and retained is a key part of being able to get excited to come to work each day.   

  

 

Community colleges play a dynamic role in the development of a skilled worksforce.  How Community Colleges have risen to this challenge in the past is all about a focus on the learner and learning.  This has not changed.  Today we have new tools and technologies available to use, the ways we can achieve learning and meet outcomes has changed, but the focus on learning has and will remain a constant.  It must. 

People have been striving to use different tools to help them do what needs to be done since the beginning of time.  Whether you are talking about the wheel or the printing press, all innovations emerge from some sort of need.   The Internet, or the web as it is now commonly known, is a tool that has provided new possibilities for exchanging information, communicating and collaborating. 

In its early days, the web was a publishing medium.  It was a "place to put your stuff", as the old George Carlin routine goes.  The standard for educational institutions was to create a web presence and offer distance education courses online.  It's interesting to note that the Council for Adult and Experiential Learning (CAEL) simply sees "providing information through technology" as the hallmark of effective practice.  It sees technology as a way to transmit even though theorists like Michael Moore have noted that using technology as a one-way transmission medium is as "distant" for learners as listening to a lecture in an auditorium.  The web today offers so much more.   

 

 

  

The web is no longer a place.  It's become something you do, a global and distributed platform for people to share ideas, reflections, photos, videos and their own unique creations.  The web is a buzz of conversation and collaboration.  It has become a read/write medium where people are creating as much content as much as they consume it.  It's an extension of our physical communities, a place that extends and enriches our offline connections.  A new set of free and easy-to-learn tools have nurtured a different kind of culture, one marked by openness, sharing and building on the work of others.  Using the web for learning is as much about leveraging that culture as it is about using the technology.   

  

Marc Prensky has popularized the notion of the digital native (pdf).  According to Prensky, digital natives are the next generation of learners, those who see technology as a kind of oxygen feeding their identity and learning.  Although Prensky attaches the idea to a generation of learners, anyone can be a digital native.  It's a matter of how you see technology, how much you integrate it with your life.  Do you write online or offline?  According to an article from the BBC , digital natives only write about 5% of their communications by hand.  Do you turn over your "remembering" to technology?  Is your use of technology pervasive enough that you can't name which technologies you used if I asked you?  If that's the case, you may be a digital native.   

  

Digital natives take a different approach to learning.  If you look at learning "in the wild" online, it's rarely about taking a course.  It's about connecting to a community.  To illustrate, at the end of a presentation at this year's eTech conference, digital native Tantek Celik gave his audience some suggestions about how they could learn more about his topic, microformats.  His advice is fairly typical of a digital native.  If you want to learn more, he says, join the community.  Lurk on the microformats message board.  Browse through some of the archives from the microformats mailing list.  Join the conversation.  Post on your blog and add the tag "microformats" so that people can find you and comment on what you have to say.  Visit the microformats wiki.  Read it.  Create an account.  Look for errors and fix them.  Add examples.  Create a microformat and publish it on your web site.  Join a local community meetup.  Come introduce yourself to others.  Talk.  Share.  (Eat.)  Connect. 

  

The dividing line between those who produce information and those who consume it is breaking down.  Collaborative tools are taking over the web: collaborative calendars, word processors and spreadsheets.  The tools work.  In many cases, they're free.  They are easy to learn.  They don't need support from an IT department.   It's a place increasingly defined and shaped by the people who use it.  This is a whole new web, and a whole new environment to support learning and working.  These trends are spilling over into education. 

What does this mean for us as a community college?   

The web shows that sustainable solutions develop organically, when people are given the freedom to choose the tools that are the most useful to them, opportunities to share with colleagues, and develop their practices with technology over time in ways that meet their particular needs.  There's no one-size-fits-all solution.   However, what many institutions have done is to foster these distributed conversations among faculty, staff and learners, bring these small pieces together and feed it out to their communities.  Faculty blog their course outlines, handouts, resources and reflections.  Here at NSCC, students in one course at the IT campus blog their assignments.  One of our Public Relations students has connected with the wider professional community through her blog.  Other colleges are publishing content as well.  Maricopa faculty are blogging conference notes and feeding them out to internal and external communities.  Students at the University of British Columbia blog when they're looking for an apartment or a parking space.  The president of Red River College blogs his thoughts about the provincial budget.  

  

We already have rich offline communities as part of our work.  We are part of classroom communities, departmental communities, professional communities, communities of interest based on our interest in portfolio learning, for example.  In some cases, these are formal relationships that we've established.  We may even have a SharePoint site to support our community.  In some cases, those communities are invisible or informal.  They're "staff room" communities.  In other cases there are communities of interest where people aren't even aware that there are others in the community college who are interested in creating the same resources or working on the same problems.  What opportunities does technology afford us that we don't have already?  The internet offers the potential to make those communities more visible and valuable, but what else?  How are institutions using the web to extend learning? 

  

  

INNOVATIONS IN NEXT GENERATION LEARNING 

 

"The era when quality elearning courses can only be produced, distributed and supported by an army of professionals is rapidly ending." ~ Terry Anderson

 

WE STARTED WITH SIX PROJECTS.  ADD THINGS THAT YOU FIND INSPIRING -- write a paragraph describing the innovation and tell us where we can learn more (i.e. links).

 Hi - it's Janet here - I finally 'found' eveyone  - I was feeling left out ...knowing that there was something 'happening' w/o me!

 

Innovations and NGL - wow - I believe that we cannot define this; it's a happening, a morphation, sort of like the weather; I lack eloquence, but I mean something is going on, we can watch and wait to see what will be a milestone, but I'm not holding my breath. Interests peak, they go, it happens and evolves over time such that the strong survive (naturally); it moves forward but can we put a name on it? Is it describable with the current words in our vocabulary. I think not! This informal mechanism of a journey down the road holding hands with people who can be unknown, creates a rich community (wow!) that can't be tied down. Total integration at it peak - integration into the very soul of life - it seems that this is a very natural process - just like teaching a baby how to walk. We have the structure, the knowledge and the desire to communicate - so natural. It's not mysterious or is it?  That's what it's all about.  Talking to each other.  Learning from each other.  We shouldn't need a password to do that.

 

The innovation of discovery in using tools (that word keeps coming up -- is there a better word?), flows from a 4 dimensional global village, to enrich and nuture, the simplest of concepts that of learning. Isn't it simple? Bottom up - or turning the workd upside down - I guess that depends on your perspective.

Terry Anderson is so prophetic. ~ janet  It's a bit scary, though, don't you think?  Our role is changing.

Educators are using the web to . . . ??

 

Weblogs@HollandCollege

Charlottetown, PEI, is a hotspot in Canada for the educational use of social software.  Holland College and the University of PEI have joined together to create the Campus Commons, an online community that spans two institutions and extends into the broader community.  Supported by an interdisplinary team of students, the project allows anyone with a campus email to establish a personal web presence by creating a blog.  The system nurtures an open environment where any student, administrator or faculty can take up membership in the community on their own terms.  It's not a top-down approach.  There was no pilot.  The campuses simply provided the service and allowed the community to emerge by attracting those people who "got" the web.  They, in turn, tested and became advocates for the system.  The community grew as members posted and established overlapping groups related to their interests or roles on campus.  For example, the UPEI campus radio station established an audio exchange and used the Commons to get the service off the ground.  Faculty have set up course spaces and topic spaces.  A Gay & Lesbian interest group has established a presence.  People contribute to the conversation in these groups by posting in their blogs, whether it's contributing to a class discussion or a complaint about the NHL strike or a post about this week's specials in the cafeteria.   The blog posts are aggregated based on the categories that their authors apply.  There are currently over 300 users on the system.   

  

weblogs @ hollandcollege 

http://weblogs.hollandcollege.com/ 

  

Embracing Emergence (Project Coordinator Mark Hemphill talks about the project and its role in fostering community) 

http://exonous.typepad.com/beatblog/2005/05/embracing_emerg.html 

 

And a few other interesting uses of social software . . .

Dartmouth College encourages anyone who wants to share pictures with the campus community to post their photos on Flickr and tag them with the word "Dartmouth"

 http://www.flickr.com/groups/dartmouthcollege/pool/

Paradise Valley Community College's Student LIfe Centre blogs about campus events

http://www.pvc.maricopa.edu/studentlife/blog/

SUNY professor Alex Halavais keeps office hours by Skype (internet "phone"), chat and instant messaging

http://alex.halavais.net/?page_id=1339

 

The National Curriculum of South Africa is collaboratively edited on a wiki

 

To address the high cost of textbooks, the California Open Source Textbook project brings together people to build shared resources .  Once completed, the State government will see the texts to earn revenue.

 

http://www.bocanews.com/index.php?src=news&prid=14445&category=Schools

Two students at Oklahoma Christian University use a video blog that's hosted by the university to talk about their lives as students

http://blogs.oc.edu/ee/index.php?/chases/index

Students at Carleton College in Minnesota blog, podcast and video podcast their assignments

Course Blog: http://www.ratchetup.com/from_me_to_you/

 

Berkley maintains a feed directory for its School of Journalism -- there are feeds for stories written by students and faculty, an events feed and news feeds

http://journalism.berkeley.edu/resources/syndicate/

 

Blogs are used by Admissions at Harvard Law, Oregon State, Case Western, and Wharton -- this list is growing fast!

 

Janet, add stuff!!  I KNOW you've got good examples.

 

No, I don't - you are my source :) ~ janet

ePortfolio

There are as many ideas about what an ePortfolio is as there are about the concept of portfolio itself.  In its Digital Strategy released last year, the British government set the goal of establishing an ePortfolio for every British citizen by 2010.  The Digtial Strategy defines an ePortfolio as a personalized space where learners can store transcripts and other learning artefacts, connect with institutions and plan learning experiences.  Their primary purpose is for accreditation. 

However, as we know, portfolios (digital or otherwise) are great tools for learning. 

Chandler-Gilbert Community College has established ePortfolios for that reason.  Though its ePort system, anyone can create an ePortfolio simply by making a request, an invitation that’s been extended to local high school students.  There are a number of tools that learners and faculty can use including blogs for reflections, wikis to allow people to collaborate on documents, as well as tools such as calendars, slide shows and testing engines.  Learners can also choose to make their portfolio public or private.  The system is used throughout the college.  Departments use ePortfolio to develop strategies or provide information about upcoming professional development opportunities.  Faculty use the system to post resources for students or blog while attending conferences.  Many faculty have created teaching portfolios.  Committees use ePortfolio sites to collaborate on shared resources.  Some students use ePortfolio to submit assignments.  One student has posted pictures of all the different rocks that she’s tole-painted.  A high school student uses ePortfolio to blog reviews of all the books about Carlos Santana that he’s read.   Although the system has the look of a Soviet-era army barrack, it’s flexible and barebones enough to be adaptable for whatever purpose its users see fit.

Connecting the UK: the Digital Strategy 

http://www.strategy.gov.uk/downloads/work_areas/digital_strategy/report/pdf/digital_strategy.pdf

Chandler-Gilbert Community College’s eport.com 

http://myeport.com/published/t/es/test/home/1/ 

Personal Learning Environments

The most ubiquitous piece of software in online learning is the learning management system (LMS).  An LMS is software that’s used to administer courses. Here at the NSCC, we use the Learning Manager.  Some institutions use WebCT or Blackboard (now one company).  There are open source LMS like Moodle.  One of the largest provider of distance learning, the Open University in the UK, recently made news by deciding to switch to Moodle for its online delivery.  Because it's open source, Moodle is free.  There is even a web-based LMS called Nuvvo that allows anyone to create a course, enroll students and accept tuition.     

A LMS is a predictable piece of software.  It structures learning according to modules.  In some causes, it automates tests.  There are usually a suite of tools including discussion boards, etc. to help facilitate learning.  They're private and secure.  Access is protected by password.  This is significant since many of the materials we use are protected by copyright.  They are highly structured environments and tend to offer a “one-size-fits-all” approach where the learning path is established before the learners reach the course.  A professor once told me that it’s impossible to “wing it” when you teach online.  Yet, many of us know that “winging it” sometimes creates rich learning experiences since flexibility and responsiveness are so important to learning.  

A Personal Learning Environment (PLE) is a different approach.   A PLE is like a little network inside the big network.  A PLE is a web site that brings together all the person’s information in one place, whether it’s resources from a course, the daily specials at the cafeteria or news from Stats Canada.  A PLE is also a place to put all documents (which is why some people see PLEs as a kind of cousin to the ePortfolio), whether those documents are worked on alone or with a group of people.   People control their own PLE so everyone’s space reflects their own tastes and interests.  PLEs are alive.  They change constantly.  Every time a faculty sends out information or a document is updated, the PLE adds that information into the site.  All the information comes into the PLE through RSS feeds that the student subscribes to.  Feeds are generated automatically through blogs, wikis, and many other online tools so that if a faculty member blogged their course outline, it could show up automatically in the student’s web space.  Likewise, when an institution like Stanford University delivers lectures through podcasts, students receive them automatically when they subscribe to the podcast’s feed.  Those in the community can also subscribe to an institution’s feed.  Palm Beach Community College podcasts interviews with guest speakers and community leaders, for example.

Currently, the concept of the PLE is evolving.  Many institutions have already begun developing feed directories so that students can subscribe to the information they want.  As a result, the basis for the PLE is already in place at many institutions.  In addition, Athabasca University is experimenting with the idea of PLEs through its adoption of ELGG, an open source system developed at the University of Edinburgh.  While promising, the concept of a PLE is still evolving.

 A space on the web that we control, a Guardian article by Stephen O’Hear 

http://education.guardian.co.uk/elearning/story/0,,1724614,00.html

A diagram of the future VLE (from Scott Wilson, who’s working on a CETIS-funded PLE project in the UK)
http://www.cetis.ac.uk/members/scott/entries/20050125170206  

Athabasca's Terry Anderson compares PLEs and LMSs
http://terrya.edublogs.org/2006/01/09/ples-versus-lms-are-ples-ready-for-prime-time/    

  

 

 

MIT’s OpenCourseWare Intiative

What NSCC keeps in the "walled garden" of a learning management system, MIT gives away for free online through its OpenCourseWare Initiative.  Launched in 2001, OpenCourseWare is a project to offer open access to the core teaching materials for over 1000 MIT courses -- curriculum, syllabi, lecture notes, course calendars, problem sets and solutions, exams, reading lists and the occasional video lecture. Why is one institution giving away what others keep under lock and key?  It's a question of an institution's values.  MIT believes that education is more than a box of books, and that learning happens when information is shared.   The impact of this decision is profound.  Students at other institutions use the materials for another perspective -- different problems & solutions.  Silicon Valley programmers are using OCW to upgrade their skills.  A University in Ghana is using the materials to revise and benchmark their curriculum.  70% of MIT students make heavy use of the materials to review information and explore other areas of study.  People aren't using the materials wholesale.  They're building on the information and molding it to their own use.  Resources can be used  in their entirety, in part, at any pace, can be added to and modified to fit a teachers’ or learners’ purpose and context.  MIT does not dictate its use.  It merely offers access.  OCW has inspired a number of open access projects including the Sofia Project, an opencourseware initiative from the Foothill-de Anza Community College in California.  

MIT OpenCourseWare 

http://ocw.mit.edu/index.html

The Sofia Project 

http://sofia.fhda.edu/ 

  

Former MIT President Charles Vest talks about the OCW Initiative and its impact 

http://connect.educause.edu/node/1227

 

WikiFish, a “Third Place” for students online 

  

When author Ray Oldenburg talked about a “third place”, he pointed to the neighbourhood café, a place between home and work where people could just hang out and socialize.  While many NSCC students can take advantage of the “third places” on their campuses – the sofas in the hallways, the cafeteria, etc. – students rarely have online spaces where they have the opportunities to make connections on their own terms outside their courses.  Students at the Design School at the University of Auburn has created a very interesting “third place” online.  It’s a collaborative web site called WikiFish.  WikiFish is owned by the students.  They use the site to share reading lists, look for apartments, organize Kick Ball and Beer tournaments or talk about the school itself.  WikiFish is a bit anarchic.  New users are told to “edit, erase, enhance, beautify, dullify, nullify, derange, arrange, or simply change" the wiki space or "accept the fact that [they] will always be complacent, and easily controlled."  The result is a dynamic site where students talk, argue, share and connect.

WikiFish 

http://seedwiki.com/wiki/wikifish/wikifish.cfm

What is a “Third Place” and Why are They Important? 

http://user.gru.net/domz/third.htm

Wide Open Spaces: Wikis, Ready or Not, an Educause article by UBC’s Brian Lamb 

http://www.educause.edu/pub/er/erm04/erm0452.asp

 

Learning Molecules: an approach to elearning at eCornell

While research shows that people learn best online when they’re working together to solve real problems, most courses are still based on a “transmission” approach to learning that’s closer to a correspondence course than a classroom experience.  eCornell (Cornell University’s online executive program) has developed an innovative and flexible approach.  Courses are made up of learning “molecules”.  For each molecule, learners are given a problem to solve or a question to answer, the resources to understand and solve the problem, tools to help them apply what they learn, a place to collaborate and share with other learners, and an assessment tool that measures how well they mastered the learning.  Learners and facilitators pull together molecules to form courses and programs.  How much or how little depends on the particular learner and the path they want to take.  While the learning is self-paced, each learner is connected to a community that ties their experience together.  The approach makes sense for many learners who choose to learn online because of its flexibility and convenience.

Learning Molecules: eCornell’s Approach to Designing Learning Systems 

http://www.ecornell.com/about/approach/whitepaperV2_1.pdf 

  

MOST NOTEWORTHY FOR NSCC

"Technology doesn't make learning happen.  People do." ~ Ulises Mejias 

  

What's most compelling about each of these approaches is that they are fundamentally about people.  Institutions merely plant the seeds and allow communities to grow.   What drives these projects isn't a resource but a vision.   

  

Needed:

support for learning (perhaps through Organizational Learning)

a way to share our stories and best practices (two-way conversation, not SharePoint stories)

policies (i.e. blogging policies & policies around ownership, copyright -- are people free to post course materials openly online?)

 

The most inspiring examples of technology are driven from the bottom, not the top.  Open course ware (OCW) was the brain child of a few MIT faculty.  In fact, many people are not aware that NSCC has its own examples of OCW, NSCC offers online WHMIS and Occupational Health and Safety Courses free for anyone who wants to pursue the course materials.  Course payment is required only for those people who wish to complete the course examination and and receive proof of having successfully completed the course. (Right!  Forgot about this one.  We talked about this, didn't we.)

Holland College and UPEI's Campus Commons continues to be driven and shaped by those who use the space.  eCornell turns over much of the decision-making for learning to faculty and learners.  

  

In some cases,  projects are built on open source software that was acquired for free.  Holland College and UPEI use Drupal, a free content management system.  In some cases, the institution offers no resources whatever.  WikiFish, for example, isn't even hosted by the University of Auburn.  Brian Lamb, an educational technologist and wiki afficionado, notes that students will sometimes skirt software provided by an institution simply because they don't want to be subject to institutional control.   

The most successful projects leverage the strengths of the internet.  They're collaborative.  They're open.  They're easy to use.  They support the creativity and innovation of those who participate.  They allow people to become authors and creators.  They connect the college community to a larger community.  

What actions can we take to ensure that the college and the communities it serves maintain a leadership role in the development of a skilled workforce?  We play a role in our communities.  We impact the development of the province where we live.  We can deepen a digital divide or bridge it.  The American writer Alice Walker talks about the importance of having spaces where we can grow.  These are the places where we are seen and appreciated, the places we design for ourselves.  Bruce Tawse talks about the importance of managers providing a framework within which individuals can be creative, innovative and make a positive contribution to their field. Each of the projects mentioned above provides a framework, a "canvas" within which people have a measure of freedom to paint their own picture. 

NSCC has been, and continues to be, a leader in integrating the use of educational technologies into its learning framework.  NSCC was an original partner in the Apprenticeship Virtual Campus - an innovative pilot project that worked to find an accessible and flexible means of offering apprenticeship training through the use of educational technologies.   Today, NSCC Online Learning has course offerings across all academic schools and extends the organization's ability to meet the needs of today's learners.  Supporting and integrating the learning has been and must continue to be a key component to this success.  The learning experience needs to be a  a seamless service delivery model that bridges the time-space continuum.  NSCC needs to strive towards a service delivery model that allows negotiated flexibility of learning, structure, delivery and format.  The approach will need to be both flexible and dynamic - able to engage and accomodate different learning styles, different situations, different tools, different needs, different learners. FANTASTIC!  Maybe this is the intro?!

What actions can each of us take personally to ensure that all learners have spaces where they can grow?  There's no one right answer, one-size-fits-all response.  The answers are as unique as each person working and learning at the NSCC.  However, we are Canada's Portfolio College.  We're a learning organization.  Portfolio provides a useful framework as we look back, look forward and look within.  When we connect and begin to share, we're provided with an incredible gift.  Let's start the conversation.

I'd love to find an example of a college or university that uses technology to bridge rural communities.  There's got to be one.  What's being done that's innovative in this area?  Anyone know?

"Town Mouse, Country Mouse" is a time honoured tale.  I was fortunate to have tha book passed along to me by a colleague.  I read it to my daughter and my Grandmother, and both she and my parents relate that they can remember hearing the story, in some form, as youngsters.  NSCC as an organization is all about finding a way to meet the needs of ALL learners.  This includes rural and urban but also universal access - open doors to everyone.  Accessibility, after all, is one of our values.  In years gone by, town mouse and country mouse may have needed to necessarily have different ways of connecting with being a part of the NSCC community - in today's world with today's tools and technologies - possibilities abound.

In a world where town mouse and country mouse might never have met, now they have options for engaging, collaborating and sharing.  IN a world where town mouse and country mouse may have been limited by the offerings at their nearest geographical campus location, now there is a different level of opportunities available.  The supports that we build to ensure that learning happens, to ensure that town mouse and country mouse are supported and encouraged on their learning journey is what NSCC is all about.  It is why we are now engaging in a strategic planning process - to help us all figure out how we can do that best. 

 

 

I have been thinking about the seed idea. 

NSCC: The organization that planted seeds. 

When you loook at the definition of the word seed, there is quite a continuum.  The word's definition starts out as a noun - the possibility of new growth - giving rise to new through a variety of means. 

It then progresses to a verb, dealing with the action of planting and/or sowing seeds. 

It then transisions to an adjective - where the implication of going to seed comes into play.  Going to seed has a very different connotation than sowing seeds.  Going to seed implies becoming shabby or unhealthy from lack of proper care or reaching the stage of producing seeds and becomming unusable. 

From noun to verb to adjective, the life cycle of the word seed is spun, grammatically, but also contextually.  

Seeds do need to be planted at the right time - timing is important

Seeds do need to be planted in an appropriate environment - soil type, temperature, rainfall, are all important factors that impact what can thrive where

Seeds do need to be nurtured - not all seeds require the same level of care, but supports are important

 

More seeds for thought...

“In search of my mother's garden I found my own.” 

~ Alice Walker 

“A hundred objective measurements didn't sum the worth of a garden; only the delight of its users did that. Only the use made it mean something.“ 

~ Lois McMaster Bujold 

“No seed shall perish which the soul hath sown.” 

~ John Addington Symonds 

 

 

"Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant."
-Robert Louis Stevenson

 

"And so our mothers and grandmothers have, more often than not anonymously, handed on the creative spark, the seed of the flower they themselves never hoped to see: or like a sealed letter they could not plainly read."
-Alice Walker, In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens (p. 240) 

"Light tomorrow with today" - Elizabeth Barrett Browning  (That is just weepy beautiful)

 

I can't believe what I just read! It's natural isn't it? I love what you have all written. I will try to pop in on the weekend, but I have to go now....~ janet (Thanks!!)

Contributors: (add your name!)

 

 

maybe we sign it as the NSCC Online Learning Team - community context modelled in everything we do...?  (Maybe some people don't want their name signed to it???  Maybe this doesn't represent everyone's opinion?  I don't feel comfortable saying that I speak for the group.)

I like the OLL Team - but I don't mind my name attached to that one. ~ Janet

(Maybe we should ask.  Especially Mike.)

Carolyn Campbell

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

  

 

This is a photo taken at NetSquared, a conference on how non-profits can use the web to effect social change.  See how people answered by looking at the photos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/billybicket/tags/net2/.