Are our attention spans becoming longer again?

There has been an eerie silence on this blog for the past weeks. I was immersed in various learning projects. I had to focus for longer times, and this made me switch my attention away from social media streams, unless I could focus on certain topics via Twitter lists for… Continue reading

Teaching journalists to become entrepreneurs…

Student journalists, financing their projects through the French crowdsourcing platform KissKissBankBank, that’s what I encountered last Saturday in the offices of the Belgian startup accelerator NestUp at Louvain-la-Neuve (Belgium). The journalist/teacher/entrepreneur/blogger Damain Van Achter facilitates the project. He is a guy who teaches his students to first learn the rules, then… Continue reading

ds106 for digital storytelling

Let’s try another MOOC. A real one, along connectivist principles: ds106 for digital storytelling. This is what it’s about, and also why I like it – because it’s free, it’s adaptable to my needs, and I’m sure there will be serendipitous encounters along the way: Digital Storytelling (also affectionately known… Continue reading

Learning about evolution, cooperation and our future

What is the role of cooperation in evolution and how does cooperation itself evolve? That’s the topic of our discussions during the course Literacies of Cooperation, facilitated by Howard Rheingold. The report about the first session can be found here (exploring the biology of cooperation). We had a second live… Continue reading

What’s the difference between collaboration and cooperation?

In our course Toward a Literacy of Cooperation we are now somewhere between the first synchronous session about the biology of cooperation and the second about the Evolution of Cooperation. The group of co-learners is extremely active in our forums (we use the socialmediaclassroom, the “place” in which our esteemed… Continue reading

Exploring the biology of cooperation

Is there something like a biological underpinning of cooperation? We’re used to the idea that there is competition for scarce resources, but what about cooperation? Biology was very much the topic of the first session of our course Toward a Literacy of Cooperation: Introduction to Cooperation Theory, facilitated by Howard… Continue reading

Ask Jamais Cascio about the future of the world

At The WELL we’re having a discussion these days with Jamais Cascio. This is how Jon Lebkowsky presented this thinker: In a followup to our State of the World discussion for 2013, we’ve invited Jamais Cascio to join us for a couple of weeks for more of a “future of… Continue reading

Three courses, three experiences of education and digital cultures

Three courses, three different formats. The first two courses are about education and digital media. It seems the first one is a MOOC along the connectivist ‘tradition’: distributed on various web media, putting the learners in charge of their own experience, facilitated by what is called in this case ‘conspirators’…. Continue reading