I’m not sure whether the Cloudworks concept and article in this week’s readings are more gimmick than serious training tool. But the article did bring up several interesting points for me.

Cloudworks addresses the issue that

…one of the key challenges in encouraging more innovative uses of technologies is getting teachers to share designs…design – Cloudworks – which is built on the notion of ‘social objects’ associated with design and is applying web 2.0 principles to encourage widespread use and sustainability…are using the concept of ‘object-orientated social networking’ to underpin the creation of a social networking tool, Cloudworks, for sharing learning ideas and designs.

The Cloudworks methodology:

consists of four interconnected facets:

• understanding design – through gathering empirical evidence about design,

• visualising design – as a means of articulating and representing,

• guiding design – with appropriate scaffolds and support,

• sharing design – to inspire and encourage uptake and reuse.

…The focus was on the pedagogies used to achieve specific learning outcomes and the use of tools (blogs, wikis, e-assessment, etc.) to support learning activities.

The first point that came to mind for me was that Cloudworks seemed like the next step after the New Schemas for Mapping Pedagogies and Technologies article in terms of putting theory into action. I was glad to see that it addressed the issue I had with the Mapping article, at least recognizing the challenges involved in preparing “teachers” before the student is even addressed.

…teachers lack the necessary skills to assess the value of different technologies and then incorporating them into their teaching practice.

I found it ironic, though, that while the whole point of this approach seemed to be to use the Web 2.0 the masses are most familiar with for learning design in order to get learners to form critical mass by creating their own material using the Web 2.0, there aws also an elitist air to only aiming the system at educators and designers:

principles in an educational context. The key distinction between the failures of the web 1.0 attempts to encourage uptake and reuse and what’s possible now, is that web 2.0 allows us to bring in the social dimension, the power of the network. However to make this work it will be important to find the right relationship between the objects (in our case learning ideas and designs) and the people (educators and developers).

Why limit it to educators and developers? If open to potential students connections and learnings might be made that are unexpected and not within the traditional paradigm. WHen testing toys, the toys aren’t given to adults but to the children who would actually use them and are therefore having a vested interest and a context others might overlook.

Another point that resonated with me was that the emphasis on the existence and use of “Social Objects” is the idea behind communities of interest which lead into communities of practice.  Communities of interest may start with some object as simple as love of football.  This leads into willingness to share which leads into interest/abilities for projects and communities of practice which tackle specific projects (subjects, etc.) 

I was just having the content discussion mentioned here in the article in a meeting yesterday.  The article quotes Weller as saying:

…in education the primary social object is content and that the educational value is not in the content itself but the social interaction, which occurs around the content.

This is a debate going on in the Knowledge Management arena as well. Is the Content on a level with People, Processes and Technology or is it something other/lesser such as a byproduct of the above? I tend to concur with the article which I think is more in line with the idea of Connectivism as well. If the knowledge is in the networks, then the content is that spark between people socializing around a social object, not in the social object itself which can be thought of as content.

Finally, I agree heartily with two other premises stated in the article. One is about sharing being a fundamental human activity. As I’ve said from the outset of the course, I believe Connectivism (and its components, such as sharing) are inherent in the human condition and are, de facto, the way human beings operate.

And the other is the helpfulness of familiar metaphors that mimic reality. A great example of this is the CHILBO community where the Second Life cohort for CCK08 meets. Thanks to the efforts of Fleep Tuque, the reading room metaphor with clickable books, video TVs, light bulbs, etc. is a great asset (to me at least) 9n helping to organize the great amount of resources of the course. I am usually opposed to duplicating real world in a virtual world. It seems to defeat the purpose and I’d rather see abstracts visualized in a different way rather than forcing avatars to sit in chairs in a virtual room and look at virtual powerpoint presentations. But in the case of the reading room, it is very helpful. Especially when joined with the nearby field where abstractions can be visualized as well.