Livin' and Learnin'

Now that I’ve started breathing again I can start to think about the iBooks experience and what I’ve learnt from it. (Here it is .... my little baby: Digital Language Learning Ecology)

I found out today that there are no iBooks in Singapore where I’m living and where I wrote / produced / cobbled together my first iBook. Nope, none. Something I didn’t really actually realise. I mean I’d tried to buy Dave Caleb’s excellent photography iBook and couldn’t do it here, but I didn’t twig that I couldn’t buy ANY iBook here…   read more ....

Mad Rush to the finish line

Well it’s done! Well it’s kind of done. The digital essay part is done and I’ve got all the little interactive bits and pieces and I hope they work in real life and not just in preview.

Thanks to Sharon who has also been experimenting with iBooks author and was the crucial hour or so ahead of me to warn me of the pitfalls (only published within 24 hours of submission – YIKES) and the work-arounds – export to pdf.

Of course I was overly ambitious – this is not just a digital essay but I want it to be so much more. I want to expand it as a guide to the implementation of a digital language learning ecology at a school. So I do have blank chapters and LOTS of ideas. Of course this can be added to over time.

INF530 Digital Essay

This is the pdf which will have to do for now, because the iBooks file is WAY to big for what thinkspace will allow me …Read more ....

Transformation and Autonomy with a twist: from information to learning - Critical Reflection INF530

It's been quite a ride this INF530, and as they say "it ain't over until it's over", I have yet to complete my digital essay and enter that huge time warp black hole of combining words with media and images in such a way that it enhances rather than distracts, compels rather than confuses.

Looking back on the topic headings I decided to make a wordle, to see things with a little visual perspective. What jumped out was “information” and “learning” and I had to think back to previous courses where the nuances of data, information, knowledge, wisdom were picked over in meticulous detail (Barrett, Cappleman, Shoib, & Walsham, 2004; Hecker, 2012; Pantzar, 2000; UNESCO, 2005) or the role of the teacher or school or librarian is discussed, particularly in the light of information literacy (Eisenberg, 2008; Mihailidis, 2012; O’Connell, 2008; Sheng & Sun, 2007; Wallis, 2003). Yes these are all part of the picture, but the words that I’d like to contribute and focus on are not there, because they are implicit and essential rather than explicit. Integral to information and learning are transformation and autonomy.

Firstly transformation, it’s synonyms (conversion, metamorphosis, renewal, revolution, shift, alteration) and its’ derivatives:

• the doing – to transform,
• the process – transformation,
• the subject and the state – transformed, and
• the agent - transformer.

And the twist, because in education we are simultaneously the agent and the subject, the initiator, the process and the end state. We cannot “do” without “being”. And that is the value of plunging into a distance-learning course that takes one beyond the mundane and everyday into personally being transformed and feeling the simultaneous discomfort and thrill of not always being in control of the process or the outcome. Sometimes the truth is found in the antonym – stagnation and sameness. The resistance to change that saps energy rather than re-energises as transformation does.

Conole (2013, p. 61) stated “We have to accept that it is impossible to keep up with all the changes, so we need to develop coping strategies which enable individuals to create their own personal digital environment of supporting tools and networks to facilitate access to and use of relevant information for their needs.” That is part of the solution, the other is finding one’s place in digital and physical learning ecologies (O’Connell, 2014; Vasiliou, Ioannou, & Zaphiris, 2014; Wang, Guo, Yang, Chen, & Zhang, 2015). Yes ecologies, because we are, and our students and children will be “shape shifting portfolio people” (Gee & Hayes, 2011) whether we want to acknowledge and embrace the fact or not.

Which brings me to the second of “my” take-away words. Autonomy. It is autonomy with a difference - autonomy within communities and networks of our own and others' making. As Downes (2012, bk. Connectivism and Connective Knowledge) puts it “knowledge is distributed across a network of connections, … learning consists of the ability to construct and traverse those networks”.

However without the aforementioned transformation we can’t have the autonomy. It is an autonomy hard won, through dint of our own efforts, the pushing and pulling and attraction of our teachers, mentors, peers and heroes. Autonomy feeds off motivation and self-regulatory control (Kormos & Csizér, 2014). The latter including commitment, meta-cognitive, satiation, emotion and environmental control (Tseng, Dörnyei, & Schmitt, 2006). Ironically we need others to attain autonomy. Autonomy is not independence but interdependence, not being on your own, but being part of a larger community of learners all together on individual journeys. It’s the forums, blogs, comments, feedback and Facebook posts. The emojis, irrelevant and irreverent tweets; words of encouragement and critique, ideas and suggestions that propel us forward and backward and around in circles - but ever expanding circles and cycles of improvement and transformation.

Thank-you to my peers, my course co-ordinator Judy, those who went before us and those who will come after us may we transform and be transformed, gain autonomy and enable others do so too in this journey of life-long learning.

What you are speaks so loud I can not hear what you say - Original Quote by Emerson

References

• Barrett, M., Cappleman, S., Shoib, G., & Walsham, G. (2004). Learning in knowledge communities. European Management Journal, 22(1), 1–11. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.emj.2003.11.019
• Conole, G. (2013). Open, social and participatory media. In Designing for learning in an open world (pp. 47–63). New York ; Heidelberg: Springer.
• Downes, S. (2012). My eBooks [Web Log]. Retrieved April 19, 2015, from http://www.downes.ca/me/mybooks.htm
• Eisenberg, M. B. (2008). Information literacy: Essential skills for the information age. DESIDOC Journal of Library & Information Technology, 28(2), 39–47. Retrieved from http://ezproxy.csu.edu.au/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=lih&AN=51198131&site=ehost-live
• Gee, J. P., & Hayes, E. (2011). Language and learning in the digital age (1st ed). New York, NY: Routledge.
• Hecker, A. (2012). Knowledge beyond the individual? Making sense of a notion of collective knowledge in organization theory. Organization Studies, 33(3), 423–445. http://doi.org/10.1177/0170840611433995
• Kormos, J., & Csizér, K. (2014). The interaction of motivation, self-regulatory strategies, and autonomous learning behavior in different learner groups. TESOL Quarterly, 48(2), 275–299. http://doi.org/10.1002/tesq.129
• Mihailidis, P. (2012). Media literacy and learning commons in the digital age: Toward a knowledge model for successful integration into the 21st century school library. The Journal of Research on Libraries and Young Adults, 2. Retrieved from http://www.yalsa.ala.org/jrlya/2012/04/media-literacy-and-learning-commons-in-the-digital-age-toward-a-knowledge-model-for-successful-integration-into-the-21st-century-school-library/
• O’Connell, J. (2008). School library 2.0 : new skills, new knowledge, new futures. In P. Godwin & J. Parker (Eds.), Information literacy meets Library 2.0 (pp. 51–62). London: Facet.
• O’Connell, J. (2014, July 19). Information ecology at the heart of knowledge [Web Log]. Retrieved March 28, 2015, from http://judyoconnell.com/2014/07/19/information-ecology-at-the-heart-of-knowledge/
• Pantzar, E. (2000). Knowledge and wisdom in the information society. Foresight, 2(2), 230–236.
• Sheng, X., & Sun, L. (2007). Developing knowledge innovation culture of libraries. Library Management, 28(1/2), 36–52. http://doi.org/10.1108/01435120710723536
• Tseng, W.-T., Dörnyei, Z., & Schmitt, N. (2006). A new approach to assessing strategic learning: The case of self-regulation in vocabulary acquisition. Applied Linguistics, 27(1), 78–102. http://doi.org/10.1093/applin/ami046
• UNESCO. (2005). Towards knowledge societies. Retrieved from http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0014/001418/141843e.pdf
• Vasiliou, C., Ioannou, A., & Zaphiris, P. (2014). Understanding collaborative learning activities in an information ecology: A distributed cognition account. Computers in Human Behavior, 41(0), 544–553. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2014.09.057
• Wallis, J. (2003). Information-saturated yet ignorant: information mediation as social empowerment in the knowledge economy. Library Review, 52(8), 369–372. http://doi.org/10.1108/00242530310493770
• Wang, X., Guo, Y., Yang, M., Chen, Y., & Zhang, W. (2015). Information ecology research: past, present, and future. Information Technology and Management, 1–13. http://doi.org/10.1007/s10799-015-0219-3

Activity and paralysis

Reading, reading, reading. I know I should start trying to write, but I'm in a kind of simultaneous paralysis and activity. Each new reading I do, I discover a whole field of knowledge and information that I know way too little about. Today I discovered the LEA (language experience approach) to teaching reading and writing. And the relevant (for me) "cousin" D-LEA (i.e. with digital). I'm sure every single teacher in the world is totally familiar with this and today was the first time I'd encountered it - academically at least. I'm pretty sure it's what they do at school and that my kids experienced it, I just didn't know the name. Duh. So this has kicked off a new round of activity - frantically learning more about it and how it relates to my topic; and paralysis - not being able to start writing my assignment yet. 

Slow Progress is still Progress

I guess that will have to be my mantra for now. I spent from  Friday to Sunday at the UWCSEA Multilingual Conference (#mlconf2015 if you want to follow the tweets – although not many people tweeting besides yours truly and a few others). Besides the fact that I was giving two sharing sessions, as you know it’s both a topic close to my heart and close to my digital essay theme! .... see more

Does academic equity even exist?

I've just finished reading through Yvette Slaughter's PhD thesis: The study of Asian languages in two Australian states: considerations for language-in-education policy and planning and what an eye-opener it was. And not for the reasons I thought it would be.

I'm really interested in language-learning ecology/(ies) and since hers mentioned this, I decided to take the plunge and wade through the 372 pages. And what I found was rather interesting. Aside from all the detailed analysis, the most interesting chapter was on  "Is Asian Language Study Equitable" - she has written a paper on it, which unfortunately doesn't seem to be easily accessible (i). (Just tried to find her on twitter to see where I can get a copy...).

And that's where I met my enthusiastic educational idealism face to face.  I am so naive. Yes I know all about the digital divide. I know that having a higher socio-economic status (or at least your parents) give all kinds of benefits such as extra-curricular, extra tutoring etc. But never would I have expected the vitriol around the supposed benefits Asian students have in studying Asian Languages. Even though I've experienced it first hand... does that sound absurd? In our HKU Chinese class we were separated between heritage and non-heritage learners (with Korean & Japanese bundled in with heritage due to their writing advantage), in fact, I switched to their class because I'd had a few years of stop start chinese classes and the mono-lingual anglo-saxon class was going a bit too slowly for me. And yes it was easier for them, but never once did I think it was not equitable. It just was. And I had to cope with it. And I just had to work a bit harder. A lot harder. But they were a nice bunch of people, and I'm still good friends with a few of them 7 years later.

There is so much background noise in the learning ecology that a rational person just would love to discount - however, it can seriously derail higher ideals. Looking at the example of our school. I really am a passionate champion for mother tongue. I'm a passionate champion for learning of languages in general, for everyone. But there are a lot of structural, emotional, financial and particularly attitudinal variables getting in the way of this ideal.

I have two children learning language at a native level, and they're two different languages, one we speak at home (Dutch) and the other was acquired in a dual language immersion program (Chinese). The attitude of my daughter when 2 native speakers joined her class this year? "At last! They've made the standard go up considerably, and they're showing up the laziness of the heritage kids and the weaknesses in the curriculum".  My response - nothing. If that's the way she felt, then I was fine with it. If she'd moaned and said it was unfair, I guess my response would have been that those kids were probably struggling in the rest of the subjects, so it was just as well they had a little respite from academic stress all week.
Maybe I've just been living in Asia for too long and have become one of those tiger mums. Or maybe language is important enough for me that I make sure the necessary time and effort goes into it.

Or maybe I don't care that much about grades. Ok, we're only in middle school in this household, and I'm not feeling the stress of university acceptance and IB results. I know for myself I do want to do well in my courses. But more importantly is how interesting, how relevant and how stimulating they are. Getting a good grade for largely arbitrary assignments (except the ones where I can choose the topic and have some lee-way to localise them - which so far at CSU has been most of them), is a side issue.   Ok, maybe I don't so much not care about grades as I'm ambivalent about the whole academic competition thing and putting a number on learning.  Except to indicate where you are in the learning / knowledge continuum for a particular subject.  I totally get homeschooling, and personalised learning, and entrepreneurial learning (except for the small but significant detail that I'm likely to commit infanticide should i ever have to educate my own brood). I hate putting kids of the same age in the same class - I love Seely Brown's Global one classroom thing -

For me the point of learning a language is to learn the language. Not to pass an exam. Not to get a diploma or certificate. To learn the language. To communicate. To access the culture. To pay homage to your own culture. To understand yourself and others. Anything else are pleasant externalities. I fear I may be in a small minority in this view.

I need to go and read some more. Leo van Lier's "Semiotics and ecology of language learning" awaits. Language is political. Who would have thought.

References:

Slaughter, Y. (2007). The study of Asian languages in two Australian states: considerations for language-in-education policy and planning. PhD thesis, School of Languages and Linguistics, The University of Melbourne.

Van Lier, L. (2004). The semiotics and ecology of language learning. Utbildning & demokrati, 13(3), 79-103.



(i) Slaughter, Y. (2005). Public perceptions of Asian languages in Australia. In May, S., Franken, M., & Barnard, R. (eds.), LED2003: Refereed Conference Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Language, Education and Diversity. Hamilton: Wilf Malcolm Institute of Educational Research, University of Waikato.

Deep research diving

I'm going to either become very quiet or very noisy in the next few weeks as I dive into my next research topic for my last (yikes, how fast did that go) assignment for INF530.

This is my research proposal:

===============================================

1. Proposal Topic

Language learning and the new digital information ecology

2. Proposed digital tools and/or spaces to be used

iBooks

This is a tool I've wanted to experiment with for a while, and I think it can be used to encompass all the multi-media affordances required for this essay. Eventually I'd like to expand on it and turn it into a resource for our students, educators and families.

3. Rationale

Previous research has indicated that successful language acquisition is the result of the combination of optimising factors relating to the child (student), family, school and community. These can be considered to operate in inter-relationships in a knowledge ecology. 

The affordances of digital technology in education combined with global connectedness allow unprecendented opportunities to leverage the connected learning principles of 

• production centered
• openly networked 
• shared purpose

within language learning, however the current structures of education may ignore or limit these opportunities due to institutional (or familial) fear, ignorance or perceived loss of control. 

This essay will look at the work of Seely, Hatie, Bawden, Ng, Siemans, Downes, Ford, Perrault etal. to examine learning design and the information environment and discuss how the learning systems and constituents allow for zones of intervention within the language learning ecology to leverage learning - sychronous and asynchronous, local and global and allow students and their families a greater locus of control over language learning. 

A particular focus will be mother tongue learning, an area often neglected by schools, who state they unable to justify supporting a large number of minority languages formally. I will argue this may be the result a failure of imagination and the application of digital technology and collaborative learning rather than a lack of resources.

===================================

So far I've been collecting some research and readings into (search terms - yes I do start with google scholar and then the university federated search and then the bibliography/citations of the articles I read that are worth while). My quest right now is to find the expert(s):

• "language learning ecology"
• "digital learning ecology"
• "digital language learning"
• "online language learning"

to mention a few, and I've come up with a wealth of articles and research studies. Seems I'm not the first to join the party here! (duh, as if). 

My ultimate goal is to create an iBook (of which this digital essay will be but a small 1,800 word part) geared to all the stakeholders in the language learning ecology of an international school (specifically the one I'm working at). 

So, a call out to everyone and anyone with useful leads for me to follow up (besides the 30 odd articles and one book - "Social networking for language education" I'll be digging into in the next week)

Unfair Advantage

Following the release of the results of our first assignment, there has been some soul searching and discussion on how better results can be attained and what went wrong etc. I’ve seen this on various Facebook groups I’m a member of too. I’ve referred earlier to the whole privilege thing, and I’ll say it again.  No one mentioned it, but of course some of us (myself included) had an unfair advantage. When I write “the whole privilege thing” and then so easily reference the exact article, it’s because I’ve read it, and stored it on Evernote, and can easily access it.... read more

Last night's Sichuan dinner in Chengdu - picking through the peppers!

Open, Social and Participatory? Who's driving the bus?

In this week’s module we were posed the following questions:

• How would curriculum change if our priority approach was on critical, creative, and collaborative thinking?

• What does the reality of the modern age of information– this age of Google –suggest that we “teach”?

• Can we simply “update” things as we go, or is it time for rethinking of our collective practice?

I was forwarded this very provocative article from the Atlantic by my boss this week = “The deconstruction of the K-12 teacher” It ties in quite nicely with the theme of this module, but it also turns the questions on their heads... 

Who is driving this bus? I get the feeling that many educators are feeling like passengers, some willingly paid for the ride, some were forced to embark, some think they’re the conductor or the ticket collector,  But who has set the itinerary, and is there a driver or is it a unmanned ground or cloud vehicle?

(Read more)

Chalk talk? inquiry? technology? what really matters?

In our #INF530 course we are exposed to a wide range of thoughts and ideas. Some Facebook groups, twitter feeds, paperli, google alerts yadayada throw even more at me.  One that is currently doing the rounds is whether chalk and talk is better than all this new fangled (from the 70's no less) participatory and inquiry learning stuff.  After all, look at the Chinese! Look at the Pisa results.

One of the most significant videos I have watched in the last few years was "The classroom experiment" I don't like learning through watching videos generally, as I can read way faster than I can watch and listen, so I get bored and distracted, so it's quite something when I say it really is worth two hours of your time.

In the last 7 years, my children and I have gone through various extremes of educations. They've had liberal PYP type inquiry learning, and chalk and talk rigorous structured learning with continuous high stakes assessment in the Chinese system.  I've spent 2 years full time studying Chinese at university and I've spent nearly 3 years doing two masters degrees by distance learning. 

I spend a lot of time talking to teachers and students and my own children, and reflecting on my own learning.

On Friday one of my teacher friends was telling me about the debriefing she'd had with her Grade 12 students on their final day of school before study weeks and exams.  She'd asked them what was really important in a teacher, in the classroom setting. What really mattered.  Was it inquiry, was it content, was it technology, was it the way the space was organised. Was it giving everyone a voice, was it content or thought or frequent testing or never testing or something inbetween?

Without fail she said, every single student said none of that really mattered. The only thing that really mattered was whether the teacher really cared about you and your learning or not.  Knowledge and passion for the subject came next.  And they then went to name teachers with widely different teaching philosophies and personalities that embodied that caring they were talking about.  And the fact that they really really wanted to work hard and succeed to show the teacher that the caring was mutual.

We were then talking about how to make sure you reach each and every student in your classes, particularly if they classes are big and some students are naturally more dominant than others. She was saying she teaches nearly 80 students directly and more than 100 indirectly, and she keeps a list of each and every one, and each week goest through the list and makes notes on conversations she's had with each and if she's not had a personal conversation with one of them, makes sure she does so the next week.  She said how easy it was for students to slip through the cracks. Especially if they were shy or unassuming or didn't participate easily due to language or cultural barriers.

When I was studying Chinese I had a lot of struggles.  It was difficult.  It was really really really hard. I had a lot of smart alecks in my class (watch those videos above!), I became quieter and quieter and lost my voice. And because I wasn't speaking, I couldn't speak and it became more and more difficult to speak. Then in my second year I got a really old teacher.  He was well into his 70's. He'd been doing this for years.  He lined us up into the traditional classroom, all facing forward.  And we went through the material methodically.  If we had to read, it wasn't on a voluntary basis. He started in the front and each and everyone had to read one sentence and then we'd move on to the next student. If our pronunciation was not up to scratch he's say "ting bu dong" (I hear but I don't understand" and gently but relentlessly correct us until we got it right. Same would happen with working through questions and assignments. If someone tried to jump in or interject or interrupt or mock or any of the other crap that had been going on up to then he'd look up fiercely and out stare them and we'd go on. 

I passed chinese. It was never easy for me no matter how easy studying had been to me before. I learnt first hand what it was to struggle as a student. I learnt how shame and fear could negatively impact on learning.  And it changed my views completely on who deserved to be heard and to participate in a classroom.  You know that cartoon about privilege?  It's not just about class or race or financial privilege.  Is also about learning and knowing how to learn. About whether you as a child were cultivated or left to nature (see JP Gee).  

I think about it often.  The right of every child to learn content and learn to think. About how are assessments, or teaching, our scaffolding our assumptions shape how far they will go. The explicit and the implicit things that stand in their way and our way of making the way clear. And how we don't even know sometimes that or what we are doing wrong. 

INF530 Assignment Book Review: Language and Learning in the Digital Age

Language and Learning in the Digital Age by James Paul Gee and Elisabeth R. Hayes, Routledge, New York, USA, 2011, 168 pp., US $29.95, ISBN: 978-0-203-83091-8 (ebk)

The idea that language has a profound effect on learning is gaining traction in the world of education – particularly as schools and tertiary institutions grapple with literacy, learning and related socio-psychological issues in an increasingly diverse cultural and linguistic student population. The contribution of James Paul Gee in this field is substantial, particularly through his work in literacy, socio- and psycho- linguistics and discourse analysis. In this book he partners up with fellow Arizona State University professor, educator Elisabeth Hayes in a grand tour de force around the themes of language, linguistics, learning and literacy and their related institutions and power structures condensing the history and understanding of millennia, culminating at the digital age, into a volume that makes conceptual and intuitive sense to both the professional and lay reader. The emphasis is on how language and learning are transformed by literacy in all its manifestations, and how they in turn transform the societies in which they are embedded.... read more

Cockroaches, beetles and ants

Through my CSU INF530 course I was recently exposed to the ideas of (digital) information ecology. And fascinating indeed they were.  As I wrote in my blog:

"In information ecology, an information system is compared to a natural organism or ecological system whereby internal and external knowledge is integrated in a balanced manner, and information objects, services and products are managed using organisational and digital tools, and sense making “cleaning filters” which adapt and change in response to changes in the environment or the constituents (Candela et al., 2007; Steinerová, 2011; Wang, Guo, Yang, Chen, & Zhang, 2015).

I've been thinking a lot more about this idea of an information ecology and how that pertains to the rate of absorption of new tools and ideas, particularly as I'm reading "Language and Learning in the Digital Age" for my forthcoming scholarly book review, and as I watch the interactions of teachers and students and my fellow classmates.  Taking the ecological idea further, I'm wondering how robust the various ecologies are and how they perceive and react to change as it occurs. There is this urban myth about cockroaches and their ability to withstand anything including a nuclear blast and just carry on with their scavenging activities as survivors.  Then I must think of beetles, (excuse the analogy - borne of a child with an obsession with creepy crawlies a while back, we experienced passionate affinity spaces before I knew of their existence) who, through intervention or accident land on their backs and are unable to right themselves without further intervention. And then the ants - encountering a change or obstacle or intervention, just forge a different path and carry on determined as ever with an unyielding idea of a meta-goal greater than themselves or the temporary inconvenience (another aside - if you've not read "The Soul of the White Ant" I would encourage you to do so).

Something else had me pondering this further. The recent media frenzy around the ultimatum set by Zappo's CEO Tony Hsieh to his employees concerning adopting Holacracy. Once I overcame a certain scepticism on the veracity of the reports, it became fascinating. Adapt, accept or die. I had to wonder what the 'natural' rate of absorption of change is for an organisation or system.  Naturally there must be some tipping point at which the resistance towards change becomes dangerous to the system itself and change has to be enforced, but on the counter-balance, perhaps change that is too swift and not scaffolded sufficiently also kills the system as it hollows out the ecology without any compensatory survival mechanisms.

What does this all have to do with education and educators?  Well, it's something we have to think about. For ourselves and our peers and students. Particularly if we're in leadership positions.

What stance do we take to change? How vigorously do we accept and absorb or reject it and at what cost either way?

In the International School environment, the ecology is continually being disturbed and prodded and poked at as students, families, teachers come and go at the whim of international assignments and global forces outside of individual control. Admissions and human resources officers put obstacles in the way of certain elements while giving a leg up to others and that maintains or changes the balance.

And the information. The institutional knowledge, the parental knowhow, the street smart survival noes of students who thrive or the anguish of those who give up. Where is it situated?  The private or secret Facebook groups, the Instagram chatter, vine, Snapseed, dinner parties, coffee mornings, corridor chatter. Where do we find the live beating heart?

The school as an ecology (see Perrault, 2007, 2010, 2011,  on this).  As parents, within each of us we carry the seed of the ecology of our own educational experience and context. It is then interrupted for a period of years and lies dormant until our children enter a schooling system. And then we fear for the germination and thriving or otherwise of this tender shoot. For the ecology probably differs from what we "know" to be suitable and fertile ground. We hanker for the familiar and fear the changes and point to our survival as evidence of the suitability or lack thereof of the current ecology.

I must admit a partiality to Gee's (2011) concept of "shape-shifting portfolio people" and would like to see myself as such. I think it is the perfect complement to the concept of Information ecology and that they meet in a type of "meta"-ecology that transcends individual systems or nations or environments.

Comments? Considerations?

Candela, L., Castelli, D., Pagano, P., Thanos, C., Ioannidis, Y., Koutrika, G., … Schuldt, H. (2007). Setting the Foundations of Digital Libraries - The DELOS Manifesto. D-Lib Magazine, 13(3/4).

Gee, J. P. (2012). The Old and the New in the New Digital Literacies. The Educational Forum, 76(4), 418–420. http://doi.org/10.1080/00131725.2012.708622

Gee, J. P., & Hayes, E. (2011). Language and learning in the digital age (1st ed). New York, NY: Routledge.

Greenfield, R. (2015, March 30). Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh: Adopt Holacracy Or Leave. Retrieved April 14, 2015, from http://www.fastcompany.com/3044417/zappos-ceo-tony-hsieh-adopt-holacracy-or-leave

Perrault, A. M. (2007). The School as an Information Ecology: A Framework for Studying Changes in Information Use. School Libraries Worldwide, 13(2), 49–62. Retrieved from http://ezproxy.csu.edu.au/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ehh&AN=28746579&site=ehost-live

Perrault, A. M. (2010). Reaching All Learners: Understanding and Leveraging Points of Intersection for School Librarians and Special Education Teachers. School Library Media Research, 13, 1–10. Retrieved from http://ezproxy.csu.edu.au/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ehh&AN=67740987&site=ehost-live

Perrault, A. M. (2011). Rethinking School Libraries: Beyond Access to Empowerment. Knowledge Quest, 39(3), 6–7. Retrieved from http://ezproxy.csu.edu.au/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ehh&AN=58621336&site=ehost-live

Steinerová, J. (2011). Slovak Republic: Information Ecology of Digital Libraries. Uncommon Culture, 2(1), 150–157. Retrieved from http://pear.accc.uic.edu/ojs/index.php/UC/article/view/4081

Wang, X., Guo, Y., Yang, M., Chen, Y., & Zhang, W. (2015). Information ecology research: past, present, and future. Information Technology and Management, 1–13. http://doi.org/10.1007/s10799-015-0219-3