Group items tagged

Table 2: Personal learning environment toolset Web application (networked student component) Tool used in test case Student activity level of structure Social bookmarking (RSS) Delicious http://delicious.com/ Set up the account Subscribe to each others accounts Bookmark and read 10 reliable websites that reflect the content of chosen topic Add and read at least 3 additional sites each week. News and blog alert (RSS) Google Alert http://www.google.com/alerts Create a Google Alert of keywords associated with selected topic Read news and blogs on that topic that are delivered via email daily Subscribe to appropriate blogs in reader News and blog reader (RSS) Google Reader http://reader.google.com Search for blogs devoted to chosen topic Subscribe to blogs to keep track of updates Personal blog (RSS) Blogger http://www.blogger.com Create a personal blog Post a personal reflection each day of the content found and experiences related to the use of personal learning environment Students subscribe to each others blogs in reader Internet search (information management, contacts, and synchronous communication) Google Scholar http://scholar.google.com/ Conduct searches in Google Scholar and library databases for scholarly works. Bookmark appropriate sites Consider making contact with expert for video conference Podcasts (RSS) iTunesU http://www.apple.com/itunes/ whatson/itunesu.html Search iTunesU for podcasts related to topic Subscribe to at least 2 podcasts if possible Video conferencing (contacts and synchronous communication) Skype http://www.skype.com Identify at least one subject matter expert to invite to Skype with the class. Content gathering/ digital notebook Evernote http://evernote.com/ Set up account Use Evernote to take notes on all content collected via other tools Content synthesis Wikispaces http://www.wikispaces.com Post final project on personal page of class wiki The process and tools are overwhelming to students if presented all at once. As with any instructional design, the teacher determines the pace at which the students best assimilate each new learning tool. For this particular project, a new tool was introduced each day over two weeks. Once the construction process was complete, there were a number of personal web page aggregators that could have been selected to bring everything together in one place. Options at the time included iGoogle, PageFlakes, NetVibes, and Symbaloo. These sites offer a means to compile or pull together content from a variety of web applications. A web widget or gadget is a bit of code that is executed within the personal web page to pull up external content from other sites. The students in this case designed the personal web page using the gadgets needed in the format that best met their learning goals. Figure 3 is an instructor example of a personal webpage that includes the reader, email, personal blog, note taking program, and social bookmarks on one page.

The personal learning environment can take the place of a traditional textbook, though does not preclude the student from using a textbook or accessing one or more numerous open source texts that may be available for the research topic. The goal is to access content from many sources to effectively meet the learning objectives. The next challenge is to determine whether those objectives have been met.

One final comment, a funny one.  On Monday, in my "Twenty-First Century Literacies" class where laptops are required for a whole range of experiments and inclass collaborative work, I caught one of my students with his laptop open and with a book propped secretly inside it, reading away in his book when he should have been paying attention.   So maybe that's the next class, "Should Professors Allow Students to Use BOOKS in the Classroom Devised for Computer Learning?"   I'm being facetious but that's the point.  A book is a technology too.   How and when we use any technology and for what purpose are the questions we all need to ask.

Do you see the difference?   "Computer learning" doesn't exist.   In 2011, it exists less than it did a decade ago and, in a few years, that phrase won't exist at all.   Students learn.  Computers are tools for all kinds of things, from checking the Facebook page, to making notetaking easier, to being fact checking or calculating devices that can take a class to a more sophisticated level to interactive social networking devices that can either distract a class or allow for new forms of group collaboration.   There are many other uses as well.   The point is that most profs have (a) simply "adapted" (as a colleague told me recently) to computers without understanding the intellectual and pedagogical changes they can enable; or (b) resigned themselves to their present, gleefully or resentflly; or (c) made them into a pedagogical tool; or (d) all of the above.    

The education futurists see the development of Web 2.0 as the final death knell of the 20th century learning model. The proliferation of open source learning tools, social media technology, mobile learning tools, and the ability of educators to cheaply and effectively construct rich, complex, individualized learning experiences for students is bound to revolutionize education.

In some ways, integrating technology with high school and college curriculum may seem like a simple task, but any experienced educator will tell you it’s definitely not. Shifting from a classroom mindset to an online mindset not only presents significant practical problems, but the transformation can be very difficult for teachers to conceptualize.

Although the potential benefits online learning presents are exciting, shifting the way educators think about teaching and learning is definitely not an easy task. Nevertheless, the more students and their parents demand highly individualized and inexpensive curriculum, educators will be forced to change the way they deliver instruction. The market forces that are shaping today’s schools will, at the most fundamental level, disrupt the current educational model. The problem we face as educators is deciding which tools we should use and the best ways to use them. Finding a solution to this problems might require the sort of radical thinking the edupunks like to embrace.