Week 24: A Summary
May 1, 2012
Introduced myself in this first post and my reasons for taking the class. I also expressed what I had hoped to get from the course. I experienced no problems or issues with Diigo and commented on other post.
This was a bland post. Just beginning my journey into the world of blog post.
Week 2: Teaching and Learning Online
I reviewed chapter one and expressed how much I enjoyed our textbook. After viewing Alec Couros video, I discussed the ideas of establishing a “web presence” and creating an “academic life online”. With this post, I realized I needed to added links when appropriate.
This was a little better. But still I am a little tentative in my posting.
Week 3: Pedagogy and Course Design
This week, I reflected on three sections from our text that I found most helpful in the area of Pedagogy and Course Design. These were: Course Goals and Learn Objectives, Design, Rubrics and Guidelines for Online Course Design. I included links in this post that I thought my class mates would find of interest.
Finally began to feel comfortable with posting. Started including links where appropriate.
Reviewed Getting started with HTML, but mostly focused on the shape and direction I would like my blended course to take. This was the first post in which I included something from outside our course that I thought was relevant to the material we were covering. It was a program called Don’t Lecture Me and it was produced by American RadioWorks.
In this post I was making use of the reading to shape the post and learning to share relevant outside resources.
I first presented the main points, as I saw them, from week 5. I then commented on points and ideas generated from the Elluminate recording. This was contrasted with the points and ideas I found in the text reading. I concluded with a plan for implementation into a blended course.
This post’s structure was more in an outline form based around the main points of week 5′s material.
Week 6: Creating Presentations
The post topic this week was to embed Slideshare or Jing into the post. I made a Jing tutorial on adding students to a class and filling in the attendance sheet in CampusCruiser, our college LMS. All-in-all the process was relatively easy once I worked out the embedding.
This was the first time I made use of a screencast in a post. Learned a new use for a familiar tool.
My post for this week was titled: Lost In The Forest. The theme was on getting lost in the forest of new tools, concepts, ideas and principles that we were being exposed to. I offered some ideas on dealing with this maze of tools and information and suggested a Web 2.0 tool SymbalooEDU that might help manage the overload. I also asked others to added their suggestions for dealing with this flood of information. I then commented on six other post to help support our two-week community-style discussion.
The new aspect of this post was the use of an image that somehow expresses the theme of the post.
The focus of my post this week was the research article Envisioning the post-LMS Era: The Open Learning Network. I had to agree with the overall idea that the LMS, as it now stands, limits what is possible. This then lead to a short discussion of the PLN, Personal Learning Network. I concluded with the statement: The Open Learning Network is an attempt to move beyond the static LMS, and is likely not the final iteration of what started as the LMS.
My lesson from doing this post was my becoming familiar with PLN and OLN.
This week’s post was titled “Lost in Wonderland” or my experiences in Second Life. I was lost exploring SL and on a whim I decided to dropped by the Island of Koru, an NZ theme, and to my surprise, I met Clare Atkins there. I now had a guide through wonderland. We met again the following week and I got a very extensive tour of SL and its educational possibilities. After posting, I realized that this was the second time I found myself “lost” in the course.
New in this post was my stating that the post would be short and why so. I was becoming relaxed about being familiar in a post.
Week 10: Open Platforms for Teaching and Learning
This week was a good exposure to the of the use of blogs in the online and on-ground classroom. The post covered the necessity of establishing of a sense of community among students and faculty in the virtual environment. It then addressed the different roles the blog can play in this capacity. Also covered was the use of a Google Site or web page as an effective adjunct to an LMS.
Here, I learned the different ways blogs could be used in an educational setting. In our new Spring term, I am making use of what I learned from Jim Sullivan’s Elluminate session.
Week 11: Class Resources and Intellectual Property
This post focused on Lawrence Lessig TED talk which stressed two points, that of new technology and the resistance to the change it brings, and how that technology can so change the present as to make the laws of the past obsolete. The post also emphasized the necessity of being aware and informed about Intellectual Property, Fair Use, the TEACH Act, and Accessibility Issues.
Different in this post was the introduction of images of the personalities mentioned in our lesson (TED Talks).
Finally have some space to do extra reading. The result is this Faculty Focus post which reviews a Special Report on Teaching with Technology: Tools and Strategies to Improve Student Learning put out by Faculty Focus. Faculty Focus is a great source for information and reports on distance education and teaching in general. The purpose here was to share what I got out of the reading and the places it lead me to. This post reflects more of what I have learned from our course about the structure and function of a good post. I still have a lot to learn.
The bases of this post was a publication called Faculty Focus. The result lead to sharing what I had found with the class.
Week 12: Mid-year Post: Reflections
Reflecting back over the past 12 weeks, and in reviewing my post, I am struck by how much I have actually gained from this course. Gained in the sense of usable information and knowledge, which I am able to implement by virtue of my position at our college. I have established a Facebook group, Blog and a YouTube Channel for our online program. We are planning webinars and on-site workshops for faculty development in the area of Distance Education. My hope is to transfers my enthusiasm for this area of education, and especially what I have learned from our course, to our online faculty and the other faculty at all three of our campuses.
It has been a whirlwind of information and, at times, a stress-point, but the course has been everything I hoped it would be. Looking ahead, I realize how much I have yet to learn. The second semester should help to fill in some the gaps. I am looking forward to seeing you all at that time.
Happy Holidays to All!
Walter
This was a last minute thought. I wanted to share this book I am reading: The World is Open. It is a timely read and is filled with facts, information, and resources that are relevant to our class. The companion web site is filled with links to all the references and tools in the book. This book would make a great holiday gift for someone taking a class like Pedagogy First. Hope you enjoy the book.
An example of a post sharing information with the Pedagogy First community.
Week 13: Screenshots, Annotations & Images
I liked the following guideline from Ko & Rossen Chapter 9:
Low-threshold, low-barrier means those technologies that are easily learned by you (and perhaps by your students) and that can be used to easily accomplish your instructional objectives. When considering what constitutes the category of Web 2.0 tools, our definition includes “easy to learn and easy to apply” tools that have built-in sharing and collaboration features. pg 247
Also, I learned to make use of Flickr not only for this week’s work. But, I now use it regularly as a source of images. I also found a great tool Skitch to do all my screen-shots.
Expressed what I learned and shared a new tool.
This week I made use of Audacity as an audio tool for the first time. Normally I use GarageBand and Quicktime for making audio recoding and podcast. I have used Eyejot for emails before, but never as a blog post. That was something that I will have to try again.
Used a new tool and made use of an old tool, Eyejot, in a new way.
Week 15: Multimedia and Web 2.0
Two new items for me from this weeks assignment. MindMeister and SurveyMonkey. Jing, on the other-hand, I have used Jing many times for short screencasts. Combining the mind-map as part of a Jing recording followed by a survey was a different approach for me. But, this is something that I will make use of in our current Spring Term.
Learned two new tools. Also learned to combine a new and old tool in a unique way. Something I will do again.
Week 16: Aiding New Students Online
I created a FAQ for students for our LMS. I posted it as part of my blog and used an image I found in Flickr. As for the reading, I found myself in agreement with much of what Jakob Nielsen had to say about the results of the research in College Students on the Web. Two points of agreement were that “students are strongly search dominant” and that “Student like a simple and straight forward user interface with clean menus and easy navigation.”
Just a simple post. Posted FAQ and commented on the reading.
Week 17: Online Classroom Management
After reading Ko & Rossen text pages: 301 to 310, I noticed a similarity between what they had to say about Classroom Management and what Dr. Curt Bonk, Professor in Instructional Systems Technology at Indiana University had to say in his series of lectures on Distance Education. I included a number of links on Classroom Management that I thought would be of use to the rest of the class.
Here I am pulling together our reading from Ko & Rossen and supporting it with material from another source. Also shared links from the source with the class.
Week 18: CMS – A Changing Perspective
For this weeks assignment I discussed the LMS used at our college. It called CampusCruiser and it is both an LMS and a Campus-wide Portal. Compared to other colleges we are a relative newcomer. I briefly covered the pros & cons of the system and our efforts to adapt to it. I also inserted a concluding quote from Insidious Pedagogy.
Covered briefly the pros & cons of our college LMS and included a quote from our reading.
Week 19: It Comes in Three Flavors; Enhanced, Blended and Online
This post was part one of a two part post. In this post I introduced the range of online formats and the fact that they each have a different set of requirements and challenges. This included the Enhanced, Blended and Online formats. The post ended with a look at the unique challenges of the Online class.
Just my ideas on online formats.
Week 19: Continuing Thoughts on Three Flavors
This post was part two of It Comes in Three Flavors; Enhanced, Blended and Online. Here I compared the different challenges posed by the Web-Enhanced and Blended class. The focus was mainly on how to overcome the challenge of achieving continuity and build community in the Blended class. I offered suggestions on how the f-2-f and the online sections could be overlapped to establish continuity and to use the key elements of communication and interaction to build community.
Part two of my ideas on online formats.
Week 20: Longitudinal Intelligence
I started this post with a look at the concept of longitudinal intelligence expressed by Jaron Lanier and the concern of how we pass on knowledge and learning to future generations. Lanier concern is future of education in a digital age. I then looked at of Educational Technology and the positive results it can bring about in education. Ending with the caution that “technology is not the end goal of education”.
Commented on Longitudinal Intelligence. Added an other source on LI. Commented on Educational Technology.
Here I looked at the complexity of what seemed a simple idea of teaching and learning and the maze of ideas, techniques and theories, all spread across the Internet on how to accomplish this. We saw an Emerging Pedagogy driven by digital technology and its creative use in education. I ended the post with a look at the “Hole-in-the-Wall“experiment conducted by Dr. Sugata Mitra and a new way of learning Minimally Invasive Education.
Comment on and followed the flow of the reading until links lead me to an educational experiment.
Week 22: Sharing in a Cyberinfrastructure
In this post I focused on Sharing: The Moral Imperative and on viewing No Digital Facelifts: Thinking the Unthinkable About Open Educational Experiences. Dean Shareski’s video gave me a good model and ideas of how to Share Best Practices. The next part of the post focused on Dr Gardner Campbell’s concept of a personal Cyberinfrastructure. I got a lot of food for thought from his idea of looking at existing school curriculum as old technology that may need to be removed and replaced with the new technology.
Post is based on the viewing of two videos and our reading. Followed links from the reading and ended the post with a quote from one of the links.
This was the week of our presentations. I decided to construct my presentation on a new iPad and to use a new piece of software exclusively for the iPad. It is called Explain Everything. This is a screen casting app with a lot of potential. I was not completely happy with my first post, so I redid-it showing a little more of the app’s potential.
Took a chance here, but it was worth it. Will be making further use of the App. Did not like the first result so reposted by building on the first post.
My thoughts on this program.
First of all I wanted to thank Lisa, Jim and all for putting this program together. I appreciate all your hard work and creativity in making this program a journey of exploration into the realm of Pedagogy and Distance Education. For my part, I have gained much. Some of which I will not realize until later. The act of reviewing each week of the entire course, and then commenting on what one learned, only brought to light the amount of material we covered.
The amount of, and rate at which, we were exposed to Web 2.0 tools in the fist half seemed at the times to be completely over whelming. But we all figured a why to keep our heads above water. Some of us by using the tools – to manage the tools. In some ways it was reflective of the rapid evolution that educational technology is going through.
But it was more than tools that we were exposed to. There was the flood of information, ideas, research, the dreaming/speculating of what could or might be the future of online education and education in general. And because the approach was an open one, it gave us the chance to explore the possibilities.
One of the things I really loved about this group was the free wheeling google + sessions. Where go anywhere, try anything was the rule of the day. I especially remember the time we were trying out Hoot and the guys who came up with it – came online with us.
It’s was freedom and openness, couched in a dedicated commitment to furthering the best that is possible in online education and education in general, that I rally appreciated about this course.
Again, thanks to all of you for your effects, and my to fellow classmates, for making this such an enjoyable learning experience.
Walter
What Have I Learned?
April 17, 2012
Week 23: Presentation
Sharing in a Cyberinfrastructure
April 10, 2012
“…..the prime pedagogical directive of education: to create situations that stimulate curiosity and self-directed, intrinsically-motivated learning.”
Two things in this weeks assignments stimulated my interest. One was Sharing: The Moral Imperative. The other was A Personal Cyberinfrastructure. I thought both were appropriate as we approach the end of our course.
The Moral Imperative
Sharing: Josh Harper
Dean Shareski’s video on Sharing: The Moral Imperative can best be summarized by his statement: if there is no sharing – there is no learning. His video is a great demonstration on sharing. Not only in the content of his narrative but also in the method and style of the presentation. He uses the setting up of the presentation as the background for the narrative to help bring his point across. He lest us see how he placed the two cameras and himself to get the recording. The last thing he show us is the use of an iPad as a TelePrompter.
He is giving us a lesson and an example of how to Share Best Practices. He makes his case for the sharing best practices by introducing us to the Graphic Story and presenting examples of it. This gave me ideas on how I might prepare my own 5 to 10 minute summery presentation of what I gained from our course.
Personal Cyberinfrastructure
I was fascinated by Gardner Campbell’s presentation of A Personal Cyberinfrastructure and No Digital Facelifts: Thinking the Unthinkable About Open Educational Experiences. Here he presents us with the notion of giving students “their own web servers — not 1GB folders in the institution’s web space but honest-to-goodness virtualized web servers of the kind available for $7.99 a month from a variety of hosting services“. In the video he shares with us what might be possible by taking us through the cPanel of a hosting service. He explains how the different tools could be used by a student. When he gets to the large variety of applications available, he simply states that they “amplify the possibilities”. This server approach would act as the “physical” bases of the cyberinfrastructure.
“Any technology gradually creates a totally new human environment. Environments are not passive wrappings but active processes. . . . The ‘message’ of any medium or technology is the change of scale or pace or pattern that it introduces into human affairs.”
He looks at the existing school curriculum as old technology that may need to be removed and replaced with the new technology.
…..if what the professor truly wants is for students to discover and craft their own desires and dreams, a personal cyberinfrastructure provides the opportunity. To get there, students must be effective architects, narrators, curators, and inhabitants of their own digital lives. Students with this kind of digital fluency will be well-prepared for creative and responsible leadership in the post-Gutenberg age. Without such fluency, students cannot compete economically or intellectually, and the astonishing promise of the digital medium will never be fully realized.
The cyberinfrastructure breaks out of the confines of the LMS and is something more than just a network. Gardner sees it in a more general perspective. He likens it to an alphabet – the alphabet for tomorrow’s educational environment.
The conclusion at which I arrive is that the present problem is not to assess the role of today’s digital computer in today’s university. It is to get to work on tomorrow’s computer and tomorrow’s university.
Gardner quoting J. C. R. Licklider in “Computers In The University”
An Emerging Pedagogy
April 3, 2012
Complexity
How did it all get so complicated - Instructivism, Constructivism, Connectivism, Networked Learning and the question of Individual Knowledge in the Internet Age. Some place we started with what seemed a simple idea of teaching and learning. We now have a maze of ideas, techniques and theories, spread across something we call the Internet, on how to teach and how we learn. This has even moved us to the point of questioning the necessity of memorization, books and individual learning.
The idea of teaching may seem simple, but effective teaching in a face-2-face class is not so simple. Add to this the impersonal environment of the Internet and we can begin to understand the changing complexity of teaching in the Internet Age.
Not only is the Internet environment impersonal, but one now needs to learn how to use a computer to access the teaching. This all on a background of an emerging and changing technology.
An Emerging Pedagogy
We are in the middle of, and part of, an emerging pedagogy that is driven, in part by the digital technology, and in part by the inventive and creative use of this technology in the field of education. George Siemens article on Networks, Ecologies, and Curatorial Teaching attempts to describe the new online teacher as a combination of a “network administrator and curator”.
An expert (the curator) exists in the artifacts displayed, resources reviewed in class, concepts being discussed. But she’s behind the scenes providing interpretation, direction, provocation, and yes, even guiding.
George Siemens’s teacher “ creates spaces in which knowledge can be created, explored, and connected.”
A New Way of Learning
In the “Hole-in-the-Wall“experiment conducted by Dr. Sugata Mitra were “With no prior experience, the children learnt to use the computer on their own.” As a result, Dr. Mitra defines this as a new way of learning – Minimally Invasive Education.
Minimally Invasive Education is defined as a pedagogic method that uses the learning environment to generate an adequate level of motivation to induce learning in groups of children, with minimal, or no, intervention by a teacher.
The range of pedagogical models has just begun to widen.
Longitudinal Intelligence
March 27, 2012
“Education — in the broadest sense — does what genes can’t do. It forever filters and bequeaths memories, ideas, identities, cultures and technologies. Humans compute and transfer nongenetic information between generations, creating a longitudinal intelligence that is unlike anything else on Earth. The data links that hold the structure together in time swell rhythmically to the frequency of human regeneration. This is education.”
Jaron Lanier
The above quote is from “Does the Digital Classroom Enfeeble the Mind?” by J. Lanier points to the acquired human knowledge and intelligence starting with the first human down to today. This longitudinal intelligence continues to grow with every passing day (For another view of longitudinal intelligence go to:David Christian: Big History) . He follows this with a warning: “The future of education in the digital age will be determined by our judgment of which aspects of the information we pass between generations can be represented in computers at all.”
How we use the digital educational tools that we have available to us is no small consideration. We cannot lose sight of the primary goal. That is to pass-on knowledge and information in its pristine form, not altered by the means of its transmission. Do we let the technology dictate how we teach and transmit knowledge and information to the next generation? Do we force it into the shape of the technology? Jaron is concerned that:
“The problem is that students could come to conceive of themselves as relays in a transpersonal digital structure….What is really lost when this happens is the self-invention of a human brain. If students don’t learn to think, then no amount of access to information will do them any good.”
Educational Technology
In a more positive look at Educational Technology from Wikipedia under Benefits we find: “Educational technology is intended to improve education over what it would be without technology.” Some areas of benefit are listed as: Easy-to-access course materials, Student motivation, Wide participation, Improved student writing and Subjects made easier to learn. Along with all this comes a caution:
“Since technology is not the end goal of education, but rather a means by which it can be accomplished, educators must have a good grasp of the technology being used and its advantages over more traditional methods. If there is a lack in either of these areas, technology will be seen as a hindrance and not a benefit to the goals of teaching.”
We are at the very beginning of the Digital Age and I thought that I would include this video on digital technology and glass. As you watch the video think of the possible applications to education.
