Sign-Up

Anyone can follow a study group on P2PU. Participating is the next level of engagement. The sign-up is a space where interested individuals can express their interest and background in the topic and commit to working with the rest of the participants. Please answer the following set(s) of questions if you want to become a participant or organizer.

Standard Set

This set of signup questions is common to all study groups, courses, ... in P2PU. The answers to these questions will be public once you get accepted.

Answers

• 
  Nada   April 29, 2011, 5:15 p.m.

  Bio:

  I'm currently a graduate cs student . I have a big passion to learn all new stuff regarding computer &software.

  Technology is a mystery for me ,I would like to discover and learn more . 

  This commuinty is a perfect place to learn and share experiance with others.

   

  Location: Yemen

  Standard Set Answer:

  -I'm interested in web 2.0 technology and e-learning .There are many tools used to faciltate our study and work, we need only to know the best way to invest it.

   

  -Hope to learn new techniques of using computer to help people to learn how to involve computer in all sections of our lives.

• 
  Caroline Ruff   April 27, 2011, 10 p.m.

  Bio:

  public school educator who is a mix of idealist and realist. I love eco-education, open ed, and all things for and by the people!

  Location: Eugene, Oregon

  Standard Set Answer:

  I am interested in the topic (computer supported collaborative learning) because I see how effective it could and should be on a daily basis as a seventh-grade public school teacher. I'm sick and tired of old, sick, and tired methods of collaborative learning!

  I hope to achieve some ideas to help guide my lesson and curriculum planning and to inspire my path in the future as I am about to be laid off! I am also thrilled for the opportunity to be able to collaborate with other thinkers...

• 
  Rob Letcher   April 26, 2011, 4:28 p.m.

  Bio:

  By day I am the Director of Instruction for a large online curriculum provider and EMO.  By night I am an online instruction maverick, instructional technology geek, father of two crazy alpha-male toddlers and husband to a beautiful (if not exasperated) wife.  

  Location: North Wales, PA

  Standard Set Answer:

  I'm very interested in how we can leverage technology to support students to meet their goals - not just the goals of a state or school system.  I'm hoping to learn from others in the course current developments in the field.

• 
  Martin Aa   April 25, 2011, 11:33 a.m.

  Bio:

  MD from University of Oslo 2008, currently specializing in internal medicine. Two kids aged 2 and 4.

  I have taught medicine, physiology, pharmacology and microbiology the last 5 years, mostly for nurse students, including many part-time classes.

  Location: Tynset, Norway

  Standard Set Answer:

  I think learning assisted by the internet is a very interesting topic, and want to discuss that field with varied groups. I have limited knowledge of pedagogical theory, but experience as a teacher in many different part-time models from the last 5 years.

  I hope that some of my standard views on these topics will be challenged the next two months.

  I look forward to read the material and look forward to read and take part in great discussions. My schedule with daily work in the hospital, on call two nights a week unfortunately leaves little time for more planned activities, however the asynchronous nature of this course makes it ideal.

• 
  Joshua Gay   April 25, 2011, 11:31 a.m.

  Bio:

  I am a programmer, activist, and community organizer. My interests revolve around technology, government, education, and user-freedom.

  Location: Cambridge, MA USA

  Standard Set Answer:

  I am interested in participating both because it is Stian's course as well as because I am interested in the general subject area.

• 
  Jennifer Claro   April 22, 2011, 4:40 p.m.

  Bio:

  I'm an English lecturer at the Kitami Institute of Technology in Kitami, Hokkaido, Japan. I'm also doing a Ph.D. in Education at OISE/University of Toronto. 

  Location: Kitami, Japan

  Standard Set Answer:

   

  • What made you interested in this topic?

   

  I’m interested in CSCL because cooperation has been such a huge part of human history and I find it fascinating as a topic. Now with ICT, we have the chance to change education and make it more motivating, more active, with a more egalitarian distribution of control, and we’ll learn more too!

   

  • What do you hope to achieve by participating?

   

  I hope to read some seminal articles on CSCL and discuss them with my classmates/peers and do some very productive knowledge building together. I hope to deepen my own understanding of the CSCL field and what has been done and what can be done. I’m especially interested in OSOSS (Online Self-Organizing Social Systems).

   

• 
  Nate Otto   April 22, 2011, 1:56 a.m.

  Bio:

  I love culture shared with everybody, learning open to all, and delicious local food informed by world culture. I'm trying to write my first novel, planning my wedding for this summer, and learning everything I can, especially about learning. Ideas I'm fond of include Connectivism, Cognitive Metaphor Theory, and Democracy.

  I wrote my undergrad thesis on encouraging content creators to use minimal copyright protection to enable a cultural commons of ideas and artifacts for future generations to remix and repurpose.

  http://ottonomy.net/

  @ottonomy on Twitter
   

  Location: Oregon, USA

  Standard Set Answer:

  I wrote my thesis on encouraging content creators to release what they make freely to the world. I'm continuing to push my life in this direction by writing my first novel, which will be distributed under a CC license. I am also passionate about applying openness and sharing to education.As somebody who wishes to participate in non-institutional learning throughout my life, this course will give me a stronger foundation for how to apply my efforts. I fell in love with the idea of open education from the first day I heard about it. People who believe in opening education put themselves out there because they believe learning will be better when people can collaborate on and share material.

  The beauty for me in the online open education style is the depth of collaboration that is possible, even across great distances and time zones. In my classes at a traditional university, I was frequently struck by the thought that cooperation between students could be so much deeper, and that the lecture and take notes format was inefficient but hard to overcome. Let's try to think through the difficulties and opportunities involved in replacing that model with one that is online-collaborative.

  In my own thinking about online collaborative learning, I have  set up a preliminary wiki that I will use to post materal related to courses I want to organize when I'm done with writing my book (though I am also tempted to offer my first explorations through p2pu -- I want to explore how differing electoral rules affect the democratic nature of political systems, among other topics).

• 
  Rebecca Hedreen   April 19, 2011, 9:25 p.m.

  Bio:

  Techie librarian & open access advocate at a CT, USA, state university. http://libguides.southernct.edu/openaccess

  Location: CT, USA

  Standard Set Answer:

  As a distance learning librarian I work with students and faculty in online and other technology enhanced courses. As well as my Masters in Library Science, I have a Masters in Adult Education and Distance Learning, taken online. I'm convinced that collaborative learning will make online learning more accessible, more friendly, less painful, less isolating, in other words, better.

  I hope to get some ideas for online learning to bring back to my online students and faculty and ideas for making library materials and information organization more accessible to use myself.

• 
  Marcy Murninghan   April 19, 2011, 6:33 p.m.

  Bio:

   

  Marcy has worked as a scholar-practitioner, writer, educator, public speaker, and entrepreneur for more than 30 years, concentrating on complex organizations, politics, and the integration of civic moral values into corporate, investor, and philanthropic governance and accountability.  She currently co-founder and editor of The Murninghan Post, a gathering place for sharing information, ideas, deliberation, and strategic action for reforming our corporate structures and capital markets.  The goal of the MurnPost is to provide people with tools and knowledge that will assist in the transition to a prosperous, sustainable, and just world, in keeping with human and ecological well-being.  Its method is to use digital tools so that citizens can become smarter and more effective change-agents at a time when market values trump civic moral values.

  She also is a Senior Research Fellow at AccountAbility, a global organization committed to advancing corporate responsibility and sustainable development.  In 2009-2010 she served as a Research Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School Corporate Social Responsibility Initiative.  While there she researched and co-wrote The Accountability Web, a report on the intersection of Web 2.0 and corporate accountability that is being republished in two parts in The Journal of Corporate Citizenship. 

  Within academe, Marcy teaching and research appointments involved “money, media, and morality”, philanthropy, responsible ownership and governance, and CSR and disaster response at Harvard, Babson, University of New Hampshire, UMass Boston, and Tufts University.  In the 1990s, in addition to teaching at Harvard Divinity School, she also ran projects on values in public life, including a major project on the spiritual values of CEOs on Wall Street, in Hollywood, and in journalism that examined individual challenges to public leadership and civic moral obligations.  In the past few years at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, she has explored how interactive digital technology can advance professional learning, civic engagement, institutional accountability, and social change.

  LinkedIn: Marcy Murninghan

  Twitter: MurnPost, MarcyMurninghan

  Location: Watertown, MA

  Standard Set Answer:

  I'm interested in this topic because I want to apply the concepts and skills to the work I do--that is, help cultivate a series of communities of inquiry and practice involving very busy professionals and citizens that address social and market inequities and what they can do about it.  Having audited a couple of similar classes on cultivating online learning environments at Harvard's Ed School, I've a feel for the area but very much would like to have an outlet for ongoing learning and application.

   

  I hope to achieve deeper understanding and improved performance as I seek to build an online platform that deliberately integrates these ideas and applications.

• 
  Marcy Murninghan   April 19, 2011, 6:33 p.m.

  Bio:

   

  Marcy has worked as a scholar-practitioner, writer, educator, public speaker, and entrepreneur for more than 30 years, concentrating on complex organizations, politics, and the integration of civic moral values into corporate, investor, and philanthropic governance and accountability.  She currently co-founder and editor of The Murninghan Post, a gathering place for sharing information, ideas, deliberation, and strategic action for reforming our corporate structures and capital markets.  The goal of the MurnPost is to provide people with tools and knowledge that will assist in the transition to a prosperous, sustainable, and just world, in keeping with human and ecological well-being.  Its method is to use digital tools so that citizens can become smarter and more effective change-agents at a time when market values trump civic moral values.

  She also is a Senior Research Fellow at AccountAbility, a global organization committed to advancing corporate responsibility and sustainable development.  In 2009-2010 she served as a Research Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School Corporate Social Responsibility Initiative.  While there she researched and co-wrote The Accountability Web, a report on the intersection of Web 2.0 and corporate accountability that is being republished in two parts in The Journal of Corporate Citizenship. 

  Within academe, Marcy teaching and research appointments involved “money, media, and morality”, philanthropy, responsible ownership and governance, and CSR and disaster response at Harvard, Babson, University of New Hampshire, UMass Boston, and Tufts University.  In the 1990s, in addition to teaching at Harvard Divinity School, she also ran projects on values in public life, including a major project on the spiritual values of CEOs on Wall Street, in Hollywood, and in journalism that examined individual challenges to public leadership and civic moral obligations.  In the past few years at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, she has explored how interactive digital technology can advance professional learning, civic engagement, institutional accountability, and social change.

  LinkedIn: Marcy Murninghan

  Twitter: MurnPost, MarcyMurninghan

  Location: Watertown, MA

  Standard Set Answer:

  I'm interested in this topic because I want to apply the concepts and skills to the work I do--that is, help cultivate a series of communities of inquiry and practice involving very busy professionals and citizens that address social and market inequities and what they can do about it.  Having audited a couple of similar classes on cultivating online learning environments at Harvard's Ed School, I've a feel for the area but very much would like to have an outlet for ongoing learning and application.

   

  I hope to achieve deeper understanding and improved performance as I seek to build an online platform and deliberately integrates these ideas and applications.

• 
  Joe Corneli   April 19, 2011, 4:48 p.m.

  Bio:

  
  Ph. D. student at the Knowledge Media Institute, The Open University.

  Location: Milton Keynes, UK

  Standard Set Answer:

  • What made you interested in this topic?

  I'm studying computer (and peer) supported collaborative learning for mathematics in my Ph. D. research.  I'm interested in this topic because I think mathematics is "artificially" hard to learn and I think computers can help.

  • What do you hope to achieve by participating?

  I'm always looking for peers to talk to about these topics.  Hopefully we can identify and work towards some shared goals.  Apart from that, the syllabus as planned looks like it will cover some very useful readings!

• 
  Rebecca Cober   April 18, 2011, 11:33 a.m.

  Bio:

  Hello World!

  I am an PhD student at OISE - the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. My academic interests include educational technologies - specifically smart classrooms - and computer supported collaborative learning.

  Previously, I was an elementary school teacher of grade six students - and before that I taught visual arts to high school students. My undergrad studies included a fine arts degree and a computer graphics diploma.

  My interests are wrapped up in "design" - whether it be educational, knowledge media, or graphics.

  Location: Toronto, ON

  Standard Set Answer:

  What made you interested in this topic?

  "CSCL" is an acronym that I've heard used from time to time at OISE, the Ontario Institute, where I am a student and just-starting researcher. I am interested in the topic because I want to have a sense of the theory behind the work I will be doing there. 

  What do you hope to achieve by participating?

  The general concept of using computers to support collaboration in an environment where learning is taking place, has always made total sense to me. I have used this approach in structuring my own classrooms, but did not have a theoretical basis for doing so.

  My understanding of the CSCL environment is fairly rudimentary at this point. I understand that CSCL grew out of a constructivist framework. Some of the key players of constructivism are Piaget, Vygotsky, and Lave and Wenger. Scardemlia and Bereiter, who are from the institution where I work, are also key players in the field. I want to gain a much deeper understanding of how knowledge building and also the pedagogical model of "knowledge community inquiry" fit within the field.

  My graduate studies program does not offer a CSCL course, at present, and I'd really like to be able to situate these names that I am familiar with within the CSCL field. I want to have a sense of the ideas that they share, and what the differences are.

  I am looking forward to taking this course on the P2PU platform - using computers to support collaborative learning, and I am committed to supporting and working with other learners who are also interested in this area.

• 
  Beth Davies-Stofka   April 16, 2011, 8:48 p.m.

  Bio:

  Location:

  Standard Set Answer:

  What made you interested in this topic?

  I began working with grassroots organizers in 1983.  At the time, the issue was apartheid.  While the issues have changed, the profound need for people to connect and work together for a better life has not lessened in any way.  Networked computers are an astonishing tool for anyone interested in direct participation in the construction of the terms and conditions of their lives.  I've spent my entire life involved in academia in some way.  I'm excited by the ways students are using networked devices to take action.  I appreciate this class offering because it creates a few weeks of leisure time to consult resources and really think about the events we see unfolding right before our eyes.  Maybe we can even think of ways to facilitate access for a greater number of people, from the south Bronx to Benghazi.

  What do you hope to achieve by participating?

  A complete set of badges!

• 
  Theodore Case Newcomb   April 16, 2011, 10:50 a.m.

  Bio:

  Happy retired grandpa just trying to keep up with the digital age...30 years in hotel/resort management; 10 years in youth,college, singles and then divorce/widowed ministry. Presently retired, according to Social Security and have started my own company, AhwatukeeBuzz-It Takes a Village - a website dedicated to hooking up the 85.000 residents in my community, both digitally and face to face, so that we might use all the tools available to foster and nurture community in the best possible ways.

  Love golf, tennis, hiking and backpacking, dancing, bridge, NYT crossword puzzles

  Interested in Digital Culture, collaboration, curation, cooperation and game theories, the global village(s), PLN's and VC's...

  http://about.me/tcnewcomb/bio

  Location: Ahwatukee, Phoenix, Arizona, USA

  Standard Set Answer:

  Recent graduate of HowardRheingoldUniversity Mindamp course online....Director of Alumni for HRU...and administrator of the HRU site....can use all the help I can get.

  Practical working knowledge and extension  of my Personal Learning Network.

• 
  Monica Resendes   April 14, 2011, 11:06 p.m.

  Bio:
  I'm a PhD student at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) at the University of Toronto. My current focus combines work in educational technology for history, knowledge building environments and new technologies for formative assessment. I've also grown very interested in open ed designs and platforms and hope to learn more about this exciting new world both as student and a facilitator at P2PU :)
  

  Location: Toronto

  Standard Set Answer:

  -

• 
  Monica Resendes   April 14, 2011, 11:05 p.m.

  Bio:
  I'm a PhD student at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) at the University of Toronto. My current focus combines work in educational technology for history, knowledge building environments and new technologies for formative assessment. I've also grown very interested in open ed designs and platforms and hope to learn more about this exciting new world both as student and a facilitator at P2PU :)
  

  Location: Toronto

  Standard Set Answer: