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)

• Complete Works of Charles Darwin and Shakespeare
• Diary of Samuel Pepys
• Merlot.org: Learning references

6) Learner Participation and Open Information Communities

• Skype, Google Talk, Voicethread, Wikis etc. 
• Ustream.tv
• Global Nomads Group
• .sub: subtitles in different languages
• scribd: youtube for text!
• Library Thing: the worlds’ largest book club

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 

• Myspace.com
• Facebook.com
• LinkedIn
• Ning: create your own social network

 

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: 

• Slides: trainingshare.com
• Papers: publicationshare.com
• Book: http://worldisopen.com

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:

Weekly Reflection 021909

Well, it’s a chilly Saturday afternoon, and now is as good a time as any to post my weekly reflection from our last class. Side note: Has anyone noticed if iLearn is down? I’ve tried to access it for a couple of days from various computers, and no such luck!

This past week was really interesting, with lots of great information and group presentations and discussions about wikis (including useful sites to get your own wiki…pbwiki, wetpaint, and socialtext.) Kim discussed emerging technologies in e-learning including the following types of individuals: 

• Pioneers: take risks!
   
• Middle Group: will use technology after others are using, even if they may be reluctant when they first know/encounter the new technology
   
• Resistors: These are the folks who say, “I’ll never use blogs, etc.” They’re happy with the status quo!

Nature of Blogs: People read but may not comment on. Sometimes you may not know how many people are looking at your blog, unless you check its stats.

Pattern of blogs: 

• Used as learning tools, getting comments from other people, and you leaving comments on other people’s blogs
   
• Give creative power to all and ensure that people create/communicate/collaborate

Class Presentation

Blogs are short for web logs. Originally used collaboratively for educational purposes

Twitter

• Free micro-blogging
   
• Updates or tweets
   
• 3rd party opportunities (Twitter Mobile)
   
• Educational Use: Notes of caution, remind students about homework, communication tool, create a classroom community, gives instant feedback for homework/classwork, etc. Can also be used for following a famous person, a professional, a public notepad, track words, track a conference, get a sense of the world, and rule-based writing
   
• As a professional tool, Twitter can be used for marketing purposes, direct web traffic, live coverage of seminars or conferences

Wikis

As used in education: 

• Part website, part white board, part “junk” drawer
   
• Tracks edit history
   
• Able to be “rolled back”
   
• Wiki is Hawaiian for “quick” although Jeff mentioned he wasn’t sure of its origin or context from
   
• We’ve all heard of Wikipedia, which began in 2001
   
• Setup for a wiki is as easy as setting up a blog
   
• First used as a collaborative educational tool, helping designers learn new techniques
   
• Can embed other media
   
• Secure
   
• “24×7″ engagement
   
• Easy access record of a learner’s work
   
• Can be used as a tool to engage parents and guardians of young students
   
• Examples: Wiki search/Wikiversity/Ruby on Rails/Wikipedia On Education/Wikimapia (very cool tools), check them out!

Finally, Ethan’s discussion about RSS feeds was interesting at the end of class, but we’ll talk about more next week. There are so many technologies out there, it can be a bit intimidating, so just use the ones that you’re comfortable with.

Emerging Technologies in E-Learning (thoughts about)

I’m fascinated by Web 2.0 as well as the social networking which is enabled through (that I mentioned above) Wikis, blogs, RSS feeds, etc. This article really helped to clarify several terms I was unfamiliar with as well as discussing emerging technologies in E-Learning. Teachers are no longer wanting to just stand in front of a classroom and lecture. Rather, they want to have their students be a more integral part of their own learning, through the use of E-Learning, which the article mentions is just beginning to be used. 

The use of digital storytelling was intriguing, as well as the discussion of online meetings. This past semester, I started using Elluminate for the first time, and must say it was very nice sitting at home in my pjs while attending class online. Frankly, it was really great to be able to attend school rather than having to wait 20 minutes for the M Muni line which is about as fast as watching paint dry.

Most of my friends share information through social networking sites Facebook and MySpace, which is useful for keeping in touch, but has diminished the “face time” my friends and I have with each other. The only use I’ve had up to this point with Wikis is using Wikipedia, but I suppose that will change this semester in ITEC 830, when we’ll be contributing to a wiki. Of course, the aspect of E-Learning will be the content we add in class, which Kim says is perfect, as the real learning doesn’t occur in class, rather on our own time. Too true. 

One term which caught my attention was “mashup“. I thought this was relating to a party of some kind, but instead it’s “a website or web application that seamlessly combines content from more than one source into an integrated experience.” Very nice! 

Other thoughts that come to mind after reading this article include the idea that more and more people are using various technologies is an effort to both learn and help others learn. Sharing ideas has gone from person-to-person in person to person on their computer to another person on their computer, or in a different locale altogether. For example, this week Arl was in class via Elluminate in Georgia. How cool is that? 

I’m a bit overwhelmed by all of the various tools one can use, but from this article have a better understanding how they may be used in a more effective manner, especially in E-Learning. The examples from Jules Verne and mentions of “The Matrix” (learning through computer input directly into our brains (not very successful)) make it clearer that ideas and technologies which once were seen as futuristic are now every day occurrences.

Weekly Reflection and A Couple of Wikis for Education!

Our guest speaker was Eugene Lee, the CEO of Socialtext.com, an Enterprise Social Software Vendor. During this lecture with our group, we discussed: 

1) How Business is Using Wikis: Inter-user connectivity, which is better that just adding content

2) Discussed our own activity streams through sites including twitter.com, Facebook.com, delicious.com, igoogle, RSS feeds, etc.
These sites are great because they help you avoid having to scrounge around looking for a particular bookmark, page etc. which saves you time, effort, etc. 

3) Social content has radically changed our attitudes about what we need to know as well as need to share. The term “work in public” comes to mind.

4) Blogs (Socialtext, networking, signals, Dashboard, etc.) are all integrated into one environment. One has the opportunity to tag signals and show how they work together. 

5) Reputation by association. Using these tools and websites will possibly improve your brand

6) “Connectidness” = having conversations all the time. At work, privacy and security may be a concern. Focus on certain subjects, eg. just for work rather than personal use. Content enables more social behavior

While I understand the use of SocialText.com, the group did have concerns which it discussed about what’s the use for all of these sites. To me, these were legitimate questions as I am not sure I’d be interested in twittering all the time or letting everyone know what I’m up to. Sometimes it’s just nice to get off the computer and have a real, live, 1-on-1 interaction with someone, either via the phone or in person. 

Finally, here are a couple of Wikis which may be used in education:

wikiblogedu.org

Examples+of+educational+wikis

And just in case you’d like to see a video on Wikis with that guy humming a catchy tune:

Weekly Reflection: February 5, 2009

In our continuing discussion about Connectivism, we discussed, briefly, some of the other learning theories including: 

• Knowledge that is out there: Behaviorism
   
• Knowledge is out there that is interpreted: Cognitivism

• Knowledge that is out there that is constructive: Constructivism 

Breaking into groups was really fun, as it enabled us to get to know one another a bit more as well as share our personal thoughts and ideas about what we felt about the various learning theories we had discussed, as well as delve more deeply into Constructivism.

Kim asked us to list what were 5-10 things which stood out from our group discussions (from all group). Mine included, which I’ve posted elsewhere in my blog as well:

• Is it the truth? What’s posted online…do we believe it?   

• The issue isn’t if it’s right or wrong, rather, it’s about having access to all of that information   

• Connect with others that enables learning through networking/hubs, etc.   

• Choosing “what” to learn is as important as the learning itself   

• This process can be endless, positive or negative, it’s all inter-supportive, interconnected links worldwide which can be time/energy consuming!    

• Best Practices: Do they exist? 

 

Overall, a good lecture and class. 

Behaviorism

BF Skinner and Behaviorism 

Cognitivism
Cognitivism Overview 

Constructivism
Constructivism in Learning 

Connectivism
Connectivism Theory Presentation Overview 

Conflict of Learning Theories with Human Nature (George Siemens)

Thoughts about Connectivism

It’s late on Monday evening, and I’m pooped. Long day at work, you see. But I do have enough energy left before I dive into the bathtub for a soak to mention a few thoughts about George Siemens and his learning theory known as Connectivism.

I’ll probably be adding more to this post in a few days, but for now, my basic feeling from all the online readings I’ve been doing is that this learning theory is all about us connecting with each other and bringing together our experiences. Everybody has their own experiences, and by coming together and sharing those experiences, ie. with a Wiki, were creating a powerful and effective learning environment. This environment may be used in a variety of ways, which is also useful as it would be rather boring to have every person things the exact same way!

From the link I’ve included below, below find the main principles of connectivisim:

• Learning and knowledge rests in diversity of opinions. You, me, Uncle Larry, the man down the street, Cousin Nancy…everyone and their opinions!
• Learning is a process of connecting specialized nodes or information sources
• Learning may reside in non-human appliances. It’s not all just in your head!
• Capacity to know more is more critical than what is currently known
• Nurturing and maintaining connections is needed to facilitate continual learning
• Ability to see connections between fields, ideas, and concepts is a core skill
• Currency (accurate, up-to-date knowledge) is the intent of all connectivist learning activities
• Decision-making is itself a learning process. Choosing what to learn and the meaning of incoming information is seen through the lens of a shifting reality. While there is a right answer now, it may be wrong tomorrow due to alterations in the information climate affecting the decision.

More thoughts (I’ve had some sleep and read more of the online articles)…

Connectivism is all about today, the now, the network of the millions of people connected to each other through various networking capabilities: Facebook, Wikis, email, talking to each other, etc. etc. It seems the possibility is endless on this rapid transmission of ideas, thoughts, and ideals. To put it in perspective, I used to talk with my friends via the phone or in person. We used to play Scrabble at each other’s homes and at parties would have really interesting conversations about what we’d been up to. These days, we text each other rather than email, find out what’s going on in our lives via Facebook.com, myspace.com, or other social networking sites. I’m surprised we haven’t been texting each other at parties from across the room. Scrabble and other board games are played online, while we’re happily sitting in our own homes. 

I suppose technology is a good thing, and this learning theory does a nice job of describing how we’re more than just our own network, but it seems when looking at all the details, we lose something of the human connection which we used to get in person and now only seem to get online. 

After class this past Thursday, here are a few things which stood out from our class discussion about this topic: 

1) Is it the truth? What’s posted online…do we believe it?
2) The issue isn’t if it’s right or wrong, rather, it’s about having access to all of that information
3) Connect with others that enables learning through networking/hubs, etc.
4) Choosing “what” to learn is as important as the learning itself
5) This process can be endless, positive or negative, it’s all inter-supportive, interconnected links worldwide which can be time/energy consuming! 
6) Best Practices: Do they exist? 

Connectivism (Learning Theory) on Wikipedia

George Siemens Talks about Connectivism (2005)

January 29, 2008: First Day of Class

What a fun group for what I hope will be a fun semester!

Our discussion focused on expectations for the semester as well as what we’re going to learn for the first several classes. For now, it seems as if we’re going to be spending a lot of our time setting up various blogs and investigating various Web 2.0 technologies. Here’s an overview from my notes about what we discussed: 

This course is really about everyone connecting with everyone else. Everybody has their own experience, and when they come together, that can make learning and communication that much more powerful and rich. Dr. Foreman pointed out we should join MyITEC.ning.com, so that we can share our ideas as well as our newly created blogs. Throughout the semester, we’ll be posting meaningful comments about each other’s online journals. 

1) What is Web 2.0?

According to our group discussion in separate groups, below are some thoughts about what comes to mind when discussing Web 2.0: 

• Blogging
• Social sites
• Interactive/online
• Sleek
• Organizational
• Convenience
• User-friendly
• Applications on the Web
• Free! (Love things that are free!)
• Accessible for the masses
• It’s a learning tool
• Net Generation!  

More fun about Web 2.0 was shown in class (most amusing):

2) What is Blogging? 

3) What is Wiki?

During class, we viewed, briefly, a 40-slide PowerPoint presentation which Kim said she would review in more detail during our next class. I did catch the 6 C’s which were context, content, create, collaborate, communicate, and contribute. We also briefly chatted about Other aspects of this session were tougher to follow, specifically what we were supposed to do for class next time. Here’s a summary as best I can tell from my notes and the information provided by the online syllabus: 

1. Create a weekly learning journal blog for this course (Done!) You’ve just been reading it!
2. Post the first week reflection on your blog and post a comment on your classmate’s blog (Done!)
3. Join ITEC 830 community in Myitec social networking site, and post your profile with your picture. Introduce yourself to the class in ITEC 830 Ning community. (Done!)
4. Create iGoogle Personalized Home — Show and Tell next week (Okay…and…drum roll, please….done!)
5. Read about Connectivism: Learning Theory for Digital Age by Siemens, George 2005 
6. Skim over Connectivism wiki site (articles and presentations), to get an idea about connectivsm.
7. Post a brief summary and reflective thoughts on articles on Connectivism theory by Siemens on your blog
8. Read classmates blog entries and make one meaningful comment as well as create a Google Reader and subscribe classmates’ blogs to it)
   

Now I really must sign off, as it’s Friday night, and there is a glass of merlot awaiting my arrival. More to come later this weekend! Cheers!