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Michael Johnson

E-Learning 2.0 ~ Stephen's Web ~ by Stephen Downes - 20 views

  • In general, where we are now in the online world is where we were before the beginning of e-learning [1]. Traditional theories of distance learning, of (for example) transactional distance, as described by Michael G. Moore, have been adapted for the online world. Content is organized according to this traditional model and delivered either completely online or in conjunction with more traditional seminars, to cohorts of students, led by an instructor, following a specified curriculum to be completed at a predetermined pace.
  • networked markets
  • In learning, these trends are manifest in what is sometimes called "learner-centered" or "student-centered" design. This is more than just adapting for different learning styles or allowing the user to change the font size and background color; it is the placing of the control of learning itself into the hands of the learner
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  • creation, communication and participation playing key roles
  • The breaking down of barriers has led to many of the movements and issues we see on today's Internet. File-sharing, for example, evolves not of a sudden criminality among today's youth but rather in their pervasive belief that information is something meant to be shared. This belief is manifest in such things as free and open-source software, Creative Commons licenses for content, and open access to scholarly and other works. Sharing content is not considered unethical; indeed, the hoarding of content is viewed as antisocial [9]. And open content is viewed not merely as nice to have but essential for the creation of the sort of learning network described by Siemens [10].
  • "Enter Web 2.0, a vision of the Web in which information is broken up into "microcontent" units that can be distributed over dozens of domains. The Web of documents has morphed into a Web of data. We are no longer just looking to the same old sources for information. Now we're looking to a new set of tools to aggregate and remix microcontent in new and useful ways"
  • Web 2.0 is not a technological revolution, it is a social revolution.
  • It also begins to look like a personal portfolio tool [18]. The idea here is that students will have their own personal place to create and showcase their own work. Some e-portfolio applications, such as ELGG, have already been created. IMS Global as put together an e-portfolio specification [19]. "The portfolio can provide an opportunity to demonstrate one's ability to collect, organize, interpret and reflect on documents and sources of information. It is also a tool for continuing professional development, encouraging individuals to take responsibility for and demonstrate the results of their own learning" [20].
    • Michael Johnson
       
      Also a place to receive and give feedback. I believe that one of the things that learners need to have to be prepared for learning in this space (social media or web 2.0) is the ability to evaluate, to give good feedback. Additionally, to be able to receive feedback constructively.
  • In the world of e-learning, the closest thing to a social network is a community of practice, articulated and promoted by people such as Etienne Wenger in the 1990s. According to Wenger, a community of practice is characterized by "a shared domain of interest" where "members interact and learn together" and "develop a shared repertoire of resources."
  • Yahoo! Groups
  • Blogging is very different from traditionally assigned learning content. It is much less formal. It is written from a personal point of view, in a personal voice. Students' blog posts are often about something from their own range of interests, rather than on a course topic or assigned project. More importantly, what happens when students blog, and read reach others' blogs, is that a network of interactions forms-much like a social network, and much like Wenger's community of practice.
    • Michael Johnson
       
      So, I believe he is saying that virtual communities of practice that form naturally are more real and approach what Wenger was talking about better than contrived "communities" put together in classes. That may be true. but does it have to be? If people come together to with a common purpose and the instructor allows the students freedom to explore what is important to them then I would hope that this kind of community can develop even in formal educational settings. Relevance is a key issue here!
  • "We're talking to the download generation," said Peter Smith, associate dean, Faculty of Engineering. "Why not have the option to download information about education and careers the same way you can download music? It untethers content from the Web and lets students access us at their convenience." Moreover, using an online service such as Odeo, Blogomatrix Sparks, or even simply off-the-shelf software, students can create their own podcasts.
  • The e-learning application, therefore, begins to look very much like a blogging tool. It represents one node in a web of content, connected to other nodes and content creation services used by other students. It becomes, not an institutional or corporate application, but a personal learning center, where content is reused and remixed according to the student's own needs and interests. It becomes, indeed, not a single application, but a collection of interoperating applications—an environment rather than a system.
  • Web 2.0 is not a technological revolution, it is a social revolution. "Here's my take on it: Web 2.0 is an attitude not a technology. It's about enabling and encouraging participation through open applications and services. By open I mean technically open with appropriate APIs but also, more importantly, socially open, with rights granted to use the content in new and exciting contexts"
  • This approach to learning means that learning content is created and distributed in a very different manner. Rather than being composed, organized and packaged, e-learning content is syndicated, much like a blog post or podcast. It is aggregated by students, using their own personal RSS reader or some similar application. From there, it is remixed and repurposed with the student's own individual application in mind, the finished product being fed forward to become fodder for some other student's reading and use.
    • Michael Johnson
       
      I like the idea of students passing on their work to be fodder for someone else's learning. In this way we change to from a learner to a learner/teacher! (See Dillon Inouye's work and Comments from John Seeley Brown)
  • More formally, instead of using enterprise learning-management systems, educational institutions expect to use an interlocking set of open-source applications. Work on such a set of applications has begun in a number of quarters, with the E-Learning Framework defining a set of common applications and the newly formed e-Framework for Education and Research drawing on an international collaboration. While there is still an element of content delivery in these systems, there is also an increasing recognition that learning is becoming a creative activity and that the appropriate venue is a platform rather than an application.
    • Michael Johnson
    • Michael Johnson
       
      Jon Mott has some cool ideas related to this paragraph.
  • he most important learning skills that I see children getting from games are those that support the empowering sense of taking charge of their own learning. And the learner taking charge of learning is antithetical to the dominant ideology of curriculum design
  • game "modding" allows players to make the game their own
  • Words are only meaningful when they can be related to experiences," said Gee. If I say "I spilled the coffee," this has a different meaning depending on whether I ask for a broom or a mop. You cannot create that context ahead of time— it has to be part of the experience.
  • A similar motivation underlies the rapidly rising domain of mobile learning [24]—for after all, were the context in which learning occurs not important, it would not be useful or necessary to make learning mobile. Mobile learning offers not only new opportunities to create but also to connect. As Ellen Wagner and Bryan Alexander note, mobile learning "define(s) new relationships and behaviors among learners, information, personal computing devices, and the world at large"
  • "ubiquitous computing."
  • what this means is having learning available no matter what you are doing.
  • The challenge will not be in how to learn, but in how to use learning to create something more, to communicate.
    • Michael Johnson
       
      I still think part of the challenge is how to learn. How to wade through a sea of all that is out there and "learn from the best" that is available. Find, organize, evaluate, analyze, synthesize, as well as create. I agree with Chris Lott (@fncll) that creativity is vital! (I am just not so sure that it is a non-starter to say that we should be moral first...though it could be argued that we should become moral through the creative process).
  • And what people were doing with the Web was not merely reading books, listening to the radio or watching TV, but having a conversation, with a vocabulary consisting not just of words but of images, video, multimedia and whatever they could get their hands on. And this became, and looked like, and behaved like, a network.
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    Stephen Downes' take on eLearning and what the future holds
Barbara Lindsey

My School, Meet MySpace: Social Networking at School | Edutopia - 1 views

  • Months before the newly hired teachers at Philadelphia's Science Leadership Academy (SLA) started their jobs, they began the consuming work of creating the high school of their dreams -- without meeting face to face. They articulated a vision, planned curriculum, designed assessment rubrics, debated discipline policies, and even hammered out daily schedules using the sort of networking tools -- messaging, file swapping, idea sharing, and blogging -- kids love on sites such as MySpace.
  • hen, weeks before the first day of school, the incoming students jumped onboard -- or, more precisely, onto the Science Leadership Academy Web site -- to meet, talk with their teachers, and share their hopes for their education. So began a conversation that still perks along 24/7 in SLA classrooms and cyberspace. It's a bold experiment to redefine learning spaces, the roles and relationships of teachers and students, and the mission of the modern high school.
  • When I hear people say it's our job to create the twenty-first-century workforce, it scares the hell out of me," says Chris Lehmann, SLA's founding principal. "Our job is to create twenty-first-century citizens. We need workers, yes, but we also need scholars, activists, parents -- compassionate, engaged people. We're not reinventing schools to create a new version of a trade school. We're reinventing schools to help kids be adaptable in a world that is changing at a blinding rate."
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  • It's the spirit of science rather than hardcore curriculum that permeates SLA. "In science education, inquiry-based learning is the foothold," Lehmann says. "We asked, 'What does it mean to build a school where everything is based on the core values of science: inquiry, research, collaboration, presentation, and reflection?'"
  • It means the first-year curriculum is built around essential questions: Who am I? What influences my identity? How do I interact with my world? In addition to science, math, and engineering, core courses include African American history, Spanish, English, and a basic how-to class in technology that also covers Internet safety and the ethical use of information and software. Classes focus less on facts to be memorized and more on skills and knowledge for students to master independently and incorporate into their lives. Students rarely take tests; they write reflections and do "culminating" projects. Learning doesn't merely cross disciplines -- it shatters outdated departmental divisions. Recently, for instance, kids studied atomic weights in biochemistry (itself a homegrown interdisciplinary course), did mole calculations in algebra, and created Dalton models (diagrams that illustrate molecular structures) in art.
  • This is Dewey for the digital age, old-fashioned progressive education with a technological twist.
  • computers and networking are central to learning at, and shaping the culture of, SLA. "
  • he zest to experiment -- and the determination to use technology to run a school not better, but altogether differently -- began with Lehmann and the teachers last spring when they planned SLA online. Their use of Moodle, an open source course-management system, proved so easy and inspired such productive collaboration that Lehmann adopted it as the school's platform. It's rare to see a dog-eared textbook or pad of paper at SLA; everybody works on iBooks. Students do research on the Internet, post assignments on class Moodle sites, and share information through forums, chat, bookmarks, and new software they seem to discover every day.
  • Teachers continue to use Moodle to plan, dream, and learn, to log attendance and student performance, and to talk about everything -- from the student who shows up each morning without a winter coat to cool new software for tagging research sources. There's also a schoolwide forum called SLA Talk, a combination bulletin board, assembly, PA system, and rap session.
  • Web technology, of course, can do more than get people talking with those they see every day; people can communicate with anyone anywhere. Students at SLA are learning how to use social-networking tools to forge intellectual connections.
  • In October, Lehmann noticed that students were sorting themselves by race in the lunchroom and some clubs. He felt disturbed and started a passionate thread on self-segregation.
  • "Having the conversation changed the way kids looked at themselves," he says.
  • "What I like best about this school is the sense of community," says student Hannah Feldman. "You're not just here to learn, even though you do learn a lot. It's more like a second home."
  • As part of the study of memoirs, for example, Alexa Dunn's English class read Funny in Farsi, Firoozeh Dumas's account of growing up Iranian in the United States -- yes, the students do read books -- and talked with the author in California via Skype. The students also wrote their own memoirs and uploaded them to SLA's network for the teacher and class to read and edit. Then, digital arts teacher Marcie Hull showed the students GarageBand, which they used to turn their memoirs into podcasts. These they posted on the education social-networking site EduSpaces (formerly Elgg); they also posted blogs about the memoirs.
dolors reig

(Clones) Redes sociales o comunidades (institucionales, educativas), de códig... - 0 views

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    Comunidades de alumnos de determinado curso, comunidades profesionales para distintos fines, redes institucionales o corporativas que persigan distintos objetivos. Tenéis opciones open source para cualquier necesidad en la creación de redes.
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