Weekly Reflection 022609

After some initial technical difficulties, we had the pleasure of listening to the interesting lecture via satellite feed from Dr. Curt Bonk, who needed to hurry through his presentation due to the fact he needed to go edit one of his current books. 

The main point of his discussion was how technological developments and the Internet have opened up learning to the point where anyone ca learn pretty much anything from anyone at any time. He further discussed Web 2.0 Technology including Media Sharing and Social Bookmarking. The main theme of the evening was “We All Learn”

Where is Learning? All over the world! 

Mentioned David Thomas’s dissertation on significant archaeological site in Afghanistan. As his wife didn’t want him to be in harm’s way, he decided to blog about his adventures/discoveries, including 450 possible significant archaeological sites alone in Southern Afghanistan using Google Earth. Despite having been to various dangerous countries throughout the world, Thomas says the most danger he encountered were biting dogs in Britain!

As another example of how learning has changed, Dr. Bonk mentioned his grandfather and various family members who worked in a tractor factory for more than forty-five years. The philosophy at the time was “walk in the front door and out the back door.” Had his grandfather had the technology we have today, he might have been able to learn more about various topics rather than being stuck in a mindless job building tractors. Dr. Bonk also mentioned useful tools today include podcasts, RSS feeds, etc. Get people motivated and excited! 

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0klgLsSxGsU]

We All Learn (10 Openers)

1) Web searching in the World of eBooks

  • Open access articles
  • Free online books (theory or access learning)
  • Global Text Project
  • Read, listen, etc. to online books
  • Problem(s): author royalties may be an issue or someone putting their finger in a photo for everyone to see

2) E-Learning and Blended Learning

  • Example of Capella Tower in Minneapolis given to show how e-learning skyline now more familiar as e-learning companies are used more and more often
  • 20 hours of online learning required by many high schools for students to graduate
  • Adora’s Blog: 7-year-old girl has her own blog and is already teaching others…amazing!
  • In China, more than 30 million people are learning through online learning
  • Free and open courses at various universities online
  • Free Rice donated for learning vocabulary words. Recently expanded to include geography and more!

3) Availability of Open Source and Free Software

  • Moodle: 620,000 registered users in 204 countries, speaking 78 languages
  • The Sakai Project

4) Leverage Resources and Open Courseware (OCW)

  • Free Courses from MIT, Utah State, CORE, etc.
  • Indian Institutes of Technology (ITT)
  • NROC Commons: online resources
  • Peer-to-peer community

5) Online Learning Object Repositories & Portals (shared content)

6) Learner Participation and Open Information Communities

7) Electronic Collaboration

  • Chinwing (now Voxopoop) is a place for better language skills

8) Alternate Reality Learning 

  • Second Life

9) Real Time Mobility and Portability (Mobile Learning)

  • Learn through your iPhone is one example
  • Livescribe pen
  • Low cost wireless devices

10) Netoworks of Personalized Learning 

 

Predictions: 

  • Five billion “have nots” will be able to have at it!
  • Emergence of lifelong super e-mentors/coaches
  • Alexandrian Aristotles
  • Self-determined humans

Other Resources: 

For our group discussion after Dr. Bonk’s chat, we reviewed delicious.com and flock.com, two very useful Web 2.0 technologies relating to bookmarks and having one place to have all your blogs, websites, etc. in one easy to access site. Personally, I think they’re quite useful, it’s just taking the time out of our busy lives to download, upload, etc. everything!

And now, drumroll please, here’s my 1-minute video of an overview of Dr. Bonk’s discussion, which I created using Voicethread:

Published in: on March 1, 2009 at 12:04 am  Comments (2)  
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