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Keith Hamon

Reflections on open courses « Connectivism - 4 views

  • In education, content can easily be produced (it’s important but has limited economic value). Lectures also have limited value (easy to record and to duplicate). Teaching – as done in most universities – can be duplicated. Learning, on the other hand, can’t be duplicated. Learning is personal, it has to occur one learner at a time. The support needed for learners to learn is a critical value point.
    • Ed Webb
       
      Excellent insight!
    • Keith Hamon
       
      Here's the key: if what we are typically doing in our classrooms can be easily duplicated, then it has lost its value in both the wider economy and in the educational ecosystem. We university professors must redefine the way we add value to our students' personal learning networks.
  • Learning, however, requires a human, social element: both peer-based and through interaction with subject area experts
  • Content is readily duplicated, reducing its value economically. It is still critical for learning – all fields have core elements that learners must master before they can advance (research in expertise supports this notion). - Teaching can be duplicated (lectures can be recorded, Elluminate or similar webconferencing system can bring people from around the world into a class). Assisting learners in the learning process, correcting misconceptions (see Private Universe), and providing social support and brokering introductions to other people and ideas in the discipline is critical. - Accreditation is a value statement – it is required when people don’t know each other. Content was the first area of focus in open education. Teaching (i.e. MOOCs) are the second. Accreditation will be next, but, before progress can be made, profile, identity, and peer-rating systems will need to improve dramatically. The underlying trust mechanism on which accreditation is based cannot yet be duplicated in open spaces (at least, it can’t be duplicated to such a degree that people who do not know each other will trust the mediating agent of open accreditation)
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  • The skills that are privileged and rewarded in a MOOC are similar to those that are needed to be effective in communicating with others and interacting with information online (specifically, social media and information sources like journals, databases, videos, lectures, etc.). Creative skills are the most critical. Facilitators and learners need something to “point to”. When a participant creates an insightful blog post, a video, a concept map, or other resource/artifact it generally gets attention.
  • Intentional diversity – not necessarily a digital skill, but the ability to self-evaluate ones network and ensure diversity of ideologies is critical when information is fragmented and is at risk of being sorted by single perspectives/ideologies.
  • The volume of information is very disorienting in a MOOC. For example, in CCK08, the initial flow of postings in Moodle, three weekly live sessions, Daily newsletter, and weekly readings and assignments proved to be overwhelming for many participants. Stephen and I somewhat intentionally structured the course for this disorienting experience. Deciding who to follow, which course concepts are important, and how to form sub-networks and sub-systems to assist in sensemaking are required to respond to information abundance. The process of coping and wayfinding (ontology) is as much a lesson in the learning process as mastering the content (epistemology). Learners often find it difficult to let go of the urge to master all content, read all the comments and blog posts.
  • e. Learning is a social trust-based process.
  • Patience, tolerance, suspension of judgment, and openness to other cultures and ideas are required to form social connections and negotiating misunderstandings.
  • An effective digital citizenry needs the skills to participate in important conversations. The growth of digital content and social networks raises the need citizens to have the technical and conceptual skills to express their ideas and engage with others in those spaces. MOOCs are a first generation testing grounds for knowledge growth in a distributed, global, digital world. Their role in developing a digital citizenry is still unclear, but democratic societies require a populace with the skills to participate in growing a society’s knowledge. As such, MOOCs, or similar open transparent learning experiences that foster the development of citizens confidence engage and create collaboratively, are important for the future of society.
Lisa M Lane

Towards More Effective Online Reading | edfoc.us - 0 views

shared by Lisa M Lane on 15 Sep 09 - Cached
  • Educators should give the act of online reading equal importance.  Why not?  If teachers want students to “slow read” digital texts, then shouldn’t we employ some of the same reading methodologies that work with physical books and printed words?  Should we just say, “Forget it, our students are just going to read online material in the same manner that they read chat scripts and text messages?”  Explicit teaching is the answer IMHO.  Explicitly teaching the act of online reading using tools that support effective, proven techniques.
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    Educators should give the act of online reading equal importance. Why not? If teachers want students to "slow read" digital texts, then shouldn't we employ some of the same reading methodologies that work with physical books and printed words? Should we just say, "Forget it, our students are just going to read online material in the same manner that they read chat scripts and text messages?" Explicit teaching is the answer IMHO. Explicitly teaching the act of online reading using tools that support effective, proven techniques.
gobibijou

Stephen Downes - 0 views

  • ning 2.0 and the
    • gobibijou
       
      S. Downes: http://www.blip.tv/file/840097 2 approaches to learning - tradiotional (AI): old artifitial technology. Expert system organises. Old managnement systems. Focus on: - Goal orientated. - Competencies. - Efficency (from A to B in the most efficient). Requieres: - an expert - knowledge representation (VS. Siemens: the knowledge that we have CAN'T be represented) for expl. language -- Problem: it creates a simplification of the knowledge. - learning activities are set up by an expert. -network approach: (???IDF). Conectivism (born 40 years ago Pappert &?). Computational system is NOT set up as a representational system BUT is set up as a NETWORK (like a brain). The connectivist system: - is unnorganized - is unstructured (previously) - looks messy and unorganised - can NOT be predicted HOw Knowledge is represented in the system? DISTRIBUTED. Our concept of X is not a symbolic representation but a set up of active connections also in a neuronal level (?) Model of learning NOt based in deduction and inference BUT on ASSOCIATION based on: - concurrency. - proximity. - back propagation (economics: supply and demand market is based on that) - ???Amealing the way form networks/community in society work in THE SAME WAY that they do in a neuronal level and a personal level. Communities ARE networks that work through distributed connections. How should be the network? - DIVERSITY (wide representation of different points of views) Knowledge in a network is: EMERGENT - AUTONOMY : each individual is self-directed. Each individual works as his own guide. - CONNECTEDNESS (or interactivities). Knowledge produced by mechanism of interaction is produced by the nature/properties of the network. The way/organization of connections are formed is essential. - OPENESS (there's no inside/outside the "system"). Connection FLOWS freely. RECOGNITION of patterns (clustter). LEARNERS: Learners have different things they want to learn and the system
  • 2.0 and the impact of web 2
    • gobibijou
       
      S. Downes: http://www.blip.tv/file/840097 NOtes (need to be double checked) 2 approaches to learning 1. traditional (AI): old artifitial technology. Expert system organises. Old managnement systems. Focus on: - Goal orientated. - Competencies. - Efficency (from A to B in the most efficient). Requieres: - an expert - knowledge representation (VS. Siemens: the knowledge that we have CAN'T be represented) for expl. language -- Problem: it creates a simplification of the knowledge. - learning activities are set up by an expert. 2.-network approach: (???IDF). Conectivism (born 40 years ago Pappert &?). Computational system is NOT set up as a representational system BUT is set up as a NETWORK (like a brain). The connectivist system: - is unnorganized - is unstructured (previously) - looks messy and unorganised - can NOT be predicted HOw Knowledge is represented in the system? DISTRIBUTED. Our concept of X is not a symbolic representation but a set up of active connections also in a neuronal level (?) Model of learning NOt based in deduction and inference BUT on ASSOCIATION based on: - concurrency. - proximity. - back propagation (economics: supply and demand market is based on that) - ???Amealing the way form networks/community in society work in THE SAME WAY that they do in a neuronal level and a personal level. Communities ARE networks that work through distributed connections. How should be the network? - DIVERSITY (wide representation of different points of views) Knowledge in a network is: EMERGENT - AUTONOMY : each individual is self-directed. Each individual works as his own guide. - CONNECTEDNESS (or interactivities). Knowledge produced by mechanism of interaction is produced by the nature/properties of the network. The way/organization of connections are formed is essential. - OPENESS (there's no inside/outside the "system"). Connection FLOWS freely. RECOGNITION of patterns (clustter). LEARNERS: Learners have different thin
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    downes talking about approaches in education. Web 2.0, elearning...
 Lisa Durff

2¢ Worth » Personal Learning Networks - The Beginning - 2 views

  • the phrase, as we typically use it today, was most likely coined by George Siemens in his discriptions of connectivism,
  • The term ‘Personal Learning Network’ is directly derived from ‘Personal Learning Environment’, which as history shows was first used at the The Personal Learning Environments Session at a JISC/CETIS Conference in 2004.
  • http://www.elearnspace.org/Articles/learning_communities.htm – but it is the first time I believe I used the term “personal learning network” (2003)
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  • The most important inspiration for PLE was Illich’s four learning networks in Deschooling Society
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    Warlick's take on the PLN
Ed Webb

Free Online Courses, at a Very High Price - Technology - The Chronicle of Higher Education - 3 views

  • A success for college-made free online courses—except that Mr. Ziegler, who works for a restaurant-equipment company in Pennsylvania, is on the verge of losing his job. And those classes failed to provide what his résumé real ly needs: a college credential.
  • the recession and disappearing grant money are forcing colleges to confront a difficult question: What business model can support the high cost of giving away your "free" content?
  • David Wiley, open education's Everywhere Man
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  • The education oracle offers another prophecy for open courseware. "Every OCW initiative at a university that does not offer distance courses for credit," he has blogged, "will be dead by the end of calendar 2012."
  • ventures around the country are seriously exploring new business strategies. For some, it's fund raising à la National Public Radio; for others, hooking open content to core operations by dangling it as a gateway to paid courses.
  • "Given that exclusivity has come to be seen by some as a question of how many students a university can turn away, I don't see what's going to make the selective universities increase their appetite for risking their brands by offering credits for online versions of core undergraduate courses,"
  • the unbundling of higher education.
  • MIT, where students pay about $50,000 a year for a tightly knit package of course content, learning experiences, certification, and social life. MIT OpenCourseWare has lopped off the content and dumped it in cyberspace. Eventually, according to Mr. Carson's take on the unbundling story, online learning experiences will emerge that go beyond just content. Consider Carnegie Mellon University's Open Learning Initiative, another darling of the movement, whose multimedia courses track students' progress and teach them with built-in tutors—no professor required.
  • "Social life we'll just forget about because there's Facebook," Mr. Wiley says. "Nobody believes that people have to go to university to have a social life anymore."
  • Peer 2 Peer University
  • University of the People
  • Western Governors University—a nonprofit, accredited online institution that typically charges $2,890 per six-month term—where students advance by showing what they've learned, not how much time they've spent in class. It's called competency-based education. It means you can fast-forward your degree by testing out of stuff you've already mastered. Some see a marriage of open content and competency-based learning as a model for the small-pieces-loosely-joined chain of cheaper, fragmented education.
  • much open courseware is "lousy,"
  • "There's a pretty significant fraction of the population that learns better with instructor-led kinds of activities than purely self-paced activities,"
  • "It doesn't shift what's happening in some of the very stable traditional institutions of higher education. But there are huge numbers of others who aren't being served. And it's with those that I think we'll begin to see new forms."
  • The model boils down to six words: Do you like this? Enroll now!
  • a Korean university where students competed to produce open lecture notes. The prize was an iPod and lunch with the university president.
  • Carnegie Mellon is trying a different model. When its courses are good enough, with other colleges assigning them as e-textbooks, it asks students to pay a fee as low as $15, says Joel M. Smith, vice provost. "That would be a very, very, very cheap textbook," he says. "If it were used by a large number of colleges and universities, it could sustain the project."
  • the free courses taught him one thing, something important when you've been out of school so long: He can do it. He can follow a Yale class. He has nothing to fear.
Ed Webb

Web 2.0 Expo: Harshtags, Twecklers and the Silence of the Death Star | BatchBlue: Blog - 4 views

  • something seems to be changing in the conference world. In the past, they’ve been great places not only to learn from the leaders in your industry but to make connections, spark new friendships and form potential new partnerships. That sense of the hallway conversations being as important as the sessions themselves seems to be receding, largely because the conversations…aren’t really happening.
  • I’m all for the back-channel and having a spirited conversation about a presentation, but I can tell you that as a presenter, to have it broadcasted while you are presenting sucks, especially once the spammers and the trolls join in. There’s even a term now, “harshtag”, which is when people start tagging their related tweets with something insulting in order to get it to trend.
  • There’s something seriously wrong about a thousand people who won’t talk to each other in the hallways bonding together to silently mock presenters, who have taken time, energy and in many cases personal expense to come speak.
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  • Choose your venue carefully
  • Don’t post the back-channel or moderate it if you do
  • Attendees, find a more constructive way to voice dissent
  • Put down your devices
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    When connections don't happen...
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