Curatr Launches: Social Learning SW Connects content and person objects

Using an object oriented approach to viewing people and the content created in various media as connectible objects, Curatr's features and metaphor for social learning holds promise to support collaborative networked learning for self organizing learners and for other guided learners as well as the collaborative networked learning-worker in the larger organization. Curators organize information into Collections, Exhibitions with Guides in a Museum Gallery space metaphor. Participants have the opportunity to bring together information objects to improve the understanding of a subject area. These objects can be commented on and improved to further refine what would otherwise be unrelated information into a structured area of understanding on a particular subject.
Curatr uses colored nodes to represent Learning Objects. Learning Objects can be anything from a document to an interactive animation. Every piece within Curatr is given a specific Reliability Rating, which is then used to position the node on the Gallery. It will be important to understand and track the factors used for the Reliability Ratings as the objects grow in the system.
Learning Objects with a higher Reliability Rating are shown closer to the middle of the Gallery, with less important objects gradually floating to the outer regions of the visual space.
People objects are also part of the learning system.
Using the 'Peer View', you can get a picture of the group you are operating within; see who the big contributors are, locate friends and highlight Subject Matter Experts.
Curatr is one of the new web based visual approaches to engagement, connection and collaboration around people "objects" as holder of ideas and expertise and dynamically growing content objects as nodes which one can connected guided by the desired purpose of the learner.
Ben Betts, creative director for Curatr, explained the underlying philosophy and operation.

I am hopeful that some of us can use this for a real collaborative learning-work project. Any candidates?

Creating Artifacts in Real Time with New Google Doc's

New and improved Google Doc's provides features to help those creating a text based artifact of their learning through collaboration. Using Google Doc's collaborators can now see what others are typing character-by-character. Small or large teams can work together; up to 50 people can now collaborate on one document. The company has also added a chat feature that allows collaborators to discuss a document in a popup that appears on the right-hand side. Check out the short video introducing the new Google Doc's

Conversation to Knowledge Flowdock for CLW

Teams engaged in Collaborative Learning Work are often engaged in "conversations" with one another. The conversations using different social media take on value as part of the ongoing, expanding knowledge base over the life of the team. Flowdock represents a new way for team members to capture by tagging some bits of knowledge from these conversations. The tagged bits can be found later when needed by the group. Flowdock allows a participant to tag in any of the different communication tools used by the team. One accesses Flowdock tagged knowledge bits in a cloud for the particular group , so it is accessability anywhere. Mobile access is underdevelopment. Interesting beginning on ways to capture and use conversations.

Pew--Future of Network-structured communities

Most surveyed believe that innovative forms of online cooperation could result in more efficient and responsive for-profit firms, non-profit organizations, and government agencies by the year 2020. Pew Internet & American Life Project: "The respondents who addressed the issue of “innovative forms of online cooperation” sometimes referred to activities between people and institutions that were post-bureaucratic. They argued that people could use the internet and cell phones to create alternative, un-bureaucratic structures to solve problems through network-structured communities."

Aardvark--new learning tool using your network

Collaborative networked learning can be real-time. New opportunities for finding and forming CNL's are taking shape in the real-time Web of people, not content repositories. One such application which shows promise is Aardvark. Aardvark provides a preview of tools in the making.

Working on a learning task, missing critical information to formulate a hypothesis or test out your hunch, you can connect in real-time with Aardvark. You can post any question, and Aardvark will attempt to find a person in your extended network who knows about the topic and is available to answer at the moment.


"Aardvark facilitates these conversations through a very polite IM bot, an iPhone app with push notifications, the company's website, Twitter or email. Instead of broadcasting your question to every one's stream of information, Aardvark delivers the question only to people who are relevant and available."
The Aardvark mission is to get you current answers, not previously published text from repositories, from persons in your own network. Expanding one's network of course increases the possibility of locating someone with knowledge who is available. CNL today is not limited to asynchronous conversation as groups emerge into the real-time conversational web.

Web of identies and forming collaborative learning networks

Social Web of identities and collaborative networked learning
As we move more and more into the world of emerging and rapidly changing information availability and knowledge creation we turn more and more to collaborative networked learning and networking. When we engaging in the creation of networks for learning we want to make sure that we network with others who can help us learn or who might be a vessel for knowledge to facilitate our particular learning.
As social networking in its many forms becomes more accessible and transparent so do the identities and social graphs of the participants. With interchangeable, open social web identity data to accompany the more static stored knowledge data available today we have the identify data necessary to form networks for learning which include the right mix of persons contributing dynamic knowledge along with supporting repositories of more static, stored knowledge. For a brief overview of recent trends in making web identities machine-accessible see the recent entry by Alexander Korth from Read, Write Web.

Preserving Diversity and Avoiding Group Think

If all members of the group have the same shareable Group Learning Environment of authority rated, aggregated content, we run the risk of creating “group think” where all members jump on the bandwagon of the shared meme. When this occurs then the authority ratings will perhaps increase giving “juice” to ideas that the group is accepting without little diversity of opinion. It is equality important, however, for the members to pursue that own specialized P.L.E.’s of interest in order to avoid what has often been called “group think,” when all members agree with each other without expressing alternative opinions and views. Here is an interesting expression of this idea from William Gibson’s blog regarding the Amateur.

“Then send Pamela,” she said. “She understands all that. You have an army of people who understand all that. You must.”

“But that’s exactly it. Because they ‘understand all that’, they won’t find the edge. They won’t find the new. And worse, they’ll trample on it, inadvertently crush it, beneath the mediocrity inherent in professional competence. I need a virtual amateur for this. A freelancer.”

Perhaps we all become Amateurs learning from one another as we preserve diversity toward out goal of collective learning.