A teacher/instructor/professor obviously plays numerous roles in a traditional classroom: role model, encourager, supporter, guide, synthesizer.
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Teaching in Social and Technological Networks « Connectivism - 10 views
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Selecting a textbook, determining and sequencing lecture topics, and planning learning activities, are all undertaken to offer coherence of a subject area. Instructional (or learning) design is a structured method of coherence provision.
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The largely unitary voice of the traditional teacher is fragmented by the limitless conversation opportunities available in networks. When learners have control of the tools of conversation, they also control the conversations in which they choose to engage.
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I agree with this statement...however, someone has to teach these students how to go out and find this information. This is what is wrong with today's technology being incorporated into the classrooms. The teachers are not trained first!
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I agree! Training opportunities on how to get these resources into the classroom are needed!
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This is true. I agree that there needs to be more training and workshops for the teachers. But that means more inservice days and less school for the kids. It's a trade-off that would definitely need looked at. But Obama's new ConnectED plan does calls for more teacher professional development in the field of technology education. I talked a little about this in my week four blog curation.
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I agree the teachers need training first, however don't most teachers take 'work' home with them such as students assignments to grade? IF that's the case, then why isn't learning new technology part of that? Is there an attitude that if the administration doesn't teach it to the teachers than they don't have to know it? This is where the DIY learner should come into play. Those teachers that want to adopt and try new things will commit their time to do so, meanwhile those that are ok with the status quo will not seek out new methods to incorporate technology into their classroom.
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Traditional teachers feel threatened by tech, when it could enhance their abilities. At what point does the teacher become obsolete, in favor of a less biased Google search?
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This cozy comfortable world of outcomes-instruction-assessment alignment exists only in education. In all other areas of life, ambiguity, uncertainty, and unkowns reign.
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This is so true! Education as a whole is an entirely different entity then other professions when it comes to goals.
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I love this statement. It sheds so much light on potentially why education is coming to a stagnant standstill. There is too much structure, too much policy, and too many rules.
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In the world of English composition there has been some push back against the outcomes movement for some of the reasons mentioned by Siemens, but Chris Gallagher, a writing program administrator at Northeastern University, has written about how "outcomes" language limits what we expect from learners. Instead, he argues for "consequential assessment," which for him is more open to what we hope students will learn, but also what unforeseen positive things can occur.
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#Truth. Competency-based approaches can prove to be a very safe, and very dangerous place at the same time.
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clear outcomes are still needed.
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How can we achieve learning targets when the educator is no longer able to control the actions of learners?
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Thoughts, ideas, or messages that the teacher amplifies will generally have a greater probability of being seen by course participants.
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While “curator” carries the stigma of dusty museums, the metaphor is appropriate for teaching and learning. T
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How do individuals make sense of complex information? How do they find their way through a confusing and contradictory range of ideas?
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We make our way through the complex information by exploring. Unfortunately, most teachers do not have the time to explore how to access the technology available.
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This is a great question and that is an even better rebuttal. Not having the time is so true. Teachers only have so many in-service days and thsoe are usually filled by meaningless information and boring presentations. Their nights are filled with correcting homework, checking tests, reading essays, making lession plans, etc. This is a radical idea but what if we would make our schools a 4-day week for the chilren and leave 1 day for the teachers to prep, explore, and create. I'm sure the kids would like that...
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Today’s social web is no different – we find our way through active exploration
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Today's web is very different. It is both more confusing and comples YET extremely easy to navigate. Confusing because of the unreal number of options for just about everything yet easier to navigate and search for what you need. The web Siemens is talking about is the rudimentary, dial-up internet that has changed tremendously since then. Now, anyone can blog, and you don't have to know any html or ftp.
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Instead of being the sole or dominant filter of information, he now shares this task with other methods and individuals.
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I as well have seen this be a stigma in the faculty world. A lot of teachers are accustomed to being "head" in their field and do not like sharing information or reaserach. We are approaching an age where the kids growing up literally share EVERYTHING.
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The notion of not sharing information is foreign to me as a librarian. Information is free and plentiful so why shouldn't it be shared. Certainly if information was not shared through books, stories, etc where might humanity be without the knowledge of astronomy or medicine that we have today.
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Information is still a commodity, as long as money can be made off of something, we're going to have to keep pushing for full transparency.
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This connects with our text Becoming a Networked Learner by Mancabelli and Richardson. It encourages us to seek information but also put it out in the field for others.
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Having recently relocated to Alberta, I used Google to gain a sense of my children’s teachers, the social media network in Edmonton, colleagues at work, meetups, democamps, etc.
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I find this interesting because up until this year, our school website did not have pictures of faculty nor did it have updated information. This was an issue that our union fought to correct.
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Oh wow, that's crazy that your school website did not have that information up there!
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My district still doesn't have pictures up of staff on our website. They have names, positions, and e-mails posted, but no friendly pictures of your child's teacher.
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Fragmentation of content and conversation is about to disrupt this well-ordered view of learning. Educators and universities are beginning to realize that they no longer have the control they once (thought they) did.
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And letting go of it is the hardest part! I think it will come with understanding.
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I think the uncertainty (of the material ultimately covered/to be assessed) is what scares some educators and learners the most... even if they know it's good for them! The lack of predictable outcomes and control of the material adds some nervous insecurity.
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the system needs to produce concise outcomes. Fragmentation, it would appear, pushes against this.
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Given that coherence and lucidity are key to understanding our world, how do educators teach in networks? For educators, control is being replaced with influence. Instead of controlling a classroom, a teacher now influences or shapes a network.
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Very, very, interesting idea on teachers. I like this perspective and I can absolutely see this class and Phil being that type of teacher for us. Our assignments are based off of reading blogs of leaders in the edtech industry, writing blog posts, commenting on peer blogs, following peer blogs via an RSS Reader. Hopefully we all continue to mainitain our blogs and become the start of our personal learning network! I know I have already added a few other more highly renowned bloggers to my edtech RSS feed.
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I love the idea of influence over control, especially at the graduate level. There is less emphasis on "needing" a degree, and more on "wanting" a degree. I would love to see this type of instruction trickle down into traditional pedagogical environments, along with the self-guided outcomes.
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1. Amplifying 2. Curating 3. Wayfinding and socially-driven sensemaking 4. Aggregating 5. Filtering 6. Modelling 7. Persistent presence
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An expert (the curator) exists in the artifacts displayed, resources reviewed in class, concepts being discussed. But she’s behind the scenes providing interpretation, direction, provocation, and yes, even guiding. A curatorial teacher acknowledges the autonomy of learners, yet understands the frustration of exploring unknown territories without a map. A curator is an expert learner. Instead of dispensing knowledge, he creates spaces in which knowledge can be created, explored, and connected. While curators understand their field very well, they don’t adhere to traditional in-class teacher-centric power structures. A curator balances the freedom of individual learners with the thoughtful interpretation of the subject being explored.
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Instead of explicitly stating “you must know this”, the curator includes critical course concepts in her dialogue with learners, her comments on blog posts, her in-class discussions, and in her personal reflections. As learners grow their own networks of understanding, frequent encounters with conceptual artifacts shared by the teacher will begin to resonate.
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This is a great concept; however, it would require engagement by the student. If the student is not engaged in the course content, he/she may never get to the point in the course where they "bump into" easter eggs of "must know" material. This would also fall onto the teacher as well. On top of being a curator, they would need to be an engaging curator that keeps interest and makes the content exciting.
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This would prove to be challenging. Also, how would this work when not all students are on the same page? Explain essential information at the risk of holding back those that understand -or- push forward and leave others behind?
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In CCK08/09, Stephen and I produced a daily newsletter where we highlighted discussions, concepts, and resources that we felt were important.
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Aggregation had so much potential. And yet has delivered relatively little over the last decade. I’m not sure why this is. Perhaps RSS was too effective. Perhaps we need to spend more time in information abundant environments before we turn to aggregation as a means of making sense of the landscape.
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I think the greatest innovation to aggreation has been hashtags. Go on any social networking site and search by using a hasgtag, and you will get endless results (depending on what you search). Go to twitter and search for #motivationmonday and you'll find thousands of inspiring tweets. Go to instagram and search for #tbt or better known as "throwback thursday" and you'll find thousands of silly, old, rauncy photos of peopls back in their golden days. Hashtags are aggregating information in a scary way, Google knows all about this.
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Interesting take Zach, however I feel like hashtags themselves, made public what we already knew about contextual keyword searches. Try the same search in Twitter without the hashtag, and you get the same results. Hashtags seem to be a way of uniting trends, ideas, and are huge in online marketing. iGoogle was a custom homepage that would aggregate information based on your interests through desktop widgets (weather, Gmail, bible verse of the day, top headlines, etc.). These seemed to limit discovery, unlike hashtags, these aggregate services seemed to be nothing more than a TV with your top channels. While this can be viewed as great for some, it inhibits the ability to receive conflicting messages and outside perspectives.
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“Intelligence” is applied after the content and interactions start, not before. This is basically what Google did for the web – instead of fully defined and meta-described resources in a database, organized according to subject areas (i.e. Yahoo at the time), intelligence was applied at the point of search. Aggregation should do the same – reveal the content and conversation structure of the course as it unfolds, rather than defining it in advance.
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Educators often have years or decades of experience in a field. As such, they are familiar with many of the concepts, pitfalls, confusions, and distractions that learners are likely to encounter.
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Filtering can be done in explicit ways – such as selecting readings around course topics – or in less obvious ways – such as writing summary blog posts around topics. Learning is an eliminative process. By determining what doesn’t belong, a learner develops and focuses his understanding of a topic.
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What cannot be communicated and understood by lecture and learning activities alone can be addressed through modelling by the teacher.
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Without an online identity, you can’t connect with others – to know and be known. I don’t think I’m overstating the importance of have a presence in order to participate in networks. To teach well in networks – to weave a narrative of coherence with learners – requires a point of presence. A
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This model works well when we can centralize both the content (curriculum) and the teacher. The model falls apart when we distribute content and extend the activities of the teacher to include multiple educator inputs and peer-driven learning.
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Experts are no longer “out there” or “over there”. Skype brings anyone, from anywhere, into a classroom. Students are not confined to interacting with only the ideas of a researcher or theorist. Instead, a student can interact directly with researchers through Twitter, blogs, Facebook, and listservs
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Course content is similarly fragmented. The textbook is now augmented with YouTube videos, online articles, simulations, Second Life builds, virtual museums, Diigo content trails, StumpleUpon reflections, and so on.
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Course content is similarly fragmented. The textbook is now augmented with YouTube videos, online articles, simulations, Second Life builds, virtual museums, Diigo content trails, StumpleUpon reflections, and so on.
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It’s all very logical: we teach what we say we are going to teach, and then we assess what we said we would teach.
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Views of teaching, of learner roles, of literacies, of expertise, of control, and of pedagogy are knotted together. Untying one requires untying the entire model.
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can quickly spread a message to hundreds of people
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Designers can aid the wayfinding process through consistency of design and functionality across various tools, but ultimately, it is the responsibility of the individual to click/fail/recoup and continue.
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This is absolutely true. More and more responsibility is falling on the learner/student in today's society, which poses more problmes. How do we engage a student that has no desire to learn or that was brought up in a discouraging environment?
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This speaks highly to design, and the advancements in today's web. With site builders, template pages, and communities that do all the heavy technical lifting, learners can focus on progressing vs. traditional troubleshooting. The gravity of click/fail/recoup seems to be diminished slightly, thus solidifying the importance of wayfinding.
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The network becomes a cognitive agent in this instance – helping the learner to make sense of complex subject areas by relying not only on her own reading and resource exploration, but by permitting her social network to filter resources and draw attention to important topics.
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learners must be conscious of the need for diversity and should include nodes that offer critical or antagonistic perspectives on all topic areas.
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Pageflakes, iGoogle, and Netvibes have largely plateaued innovation in aggregation
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Well I'm 23 and have no idea what any of these three technologies are, which could be very well why they did so little for innovation in aggregation. But I feel facebook and twitter has helped in aggregation, in a different way. Now we have facebook messages that are called "strands" and can be ongoing between any number of poeple. And on twitter you can create groups to follow, etc. Maybee RSS was too effective.
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Another good content aggregator is Scoop.it, which I have used in class for annotated bibliographis and presented on at a couple of conferences. It has a good integration with social media and is its own kind of social media tool.
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The tools for controlling both content and conversation have shifted from the educator to the learner. We require a system that acknowledges this reality
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social and technological networks subvert the classroom-based role of the teacher.
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This is a powerful opinion. I disagree. But I guess it all depends on perspective. I feel as if social and technological networks would add to the classroom-based role of the teacher by allowing the teacher to bring in the experts and be able to direct the students in the right direction. Again this may come back to being able to "know where to look" for information in an age of digital literacy.
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Interesting point on perspective, as their role becomes increasingly important in knowing and understanding the flow of the class, and what may be needed to keep things progressing. When referring to classroom, I feel it is in more of a traditional context.
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In the future, however, the role of the teacher, the educator, will be dramatically different from the current norm.
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I see this happening now, especially with my class last semester (spring 2014 Design Studio). The professor knew what he was doing, but the class was more less about him teaching us, and more about us teaching each other and ourselves. We simple went to class to discuss what we have been doing, new exciting technology discoveries, and to ask questions on projects or any edtech related issue really.
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The Knotted Ball of Education
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I’d like a learning system that functions along the lines of RescueTime – actively monitoring what I’m doing – but then offers suggestions of what I should (or could) be doing additionally. Or a system that is aware of my email exchanges over the last several years and can provide relevant information based on the development of my thinking and work.
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This sounds a lot like facebook advertisement, or Google's intense tracking algorithms, or Amazon's tracking system to what you buy. They all provide custom ads or new products or sites to buy, visit, share, etc. All very scary in today's world, tons of privacy concerns here.
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This sounds something akin to artificial intelligence (AI). I think it would be helpful, but would take away from the personal learning and comprehension that would occur.
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Ah, privacy vs. a more fluid web experience. It's always a struggle. Those ads that follow you are remarketing ads (http://www.google.com/ads/innovations/remarketing.html), and they work based on cookies, and logged in sessions through Google - giving them the ability to jump devices. Just refresh your cookies, and they should stop following you. The AI element is very concerning though, because as you interact with Google, it is curating results based on you (age, sex, location, etc.). Because of this, you may be missing out on a much larger world, as what you see digitally is being constructed for you as an individual.
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“To teach is to model and to demonstrate. To learn is to practice and to reflect.”
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An educator needs a point of existence online – a place to express herself and be discovered: a blog, profile in a social networking service, Twitter, or (likely) a combination of multiple services. What do you do when you meet someone? Most likely, you search for them in Google.
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And now LinkedIn. I know I always look up my professors on LinkedIn, RateMyProffessor, twitter. I like to know who they are and how they teach. I also do this with job applicants and job hire-ers as well. We are in an age where privacy is far and few between. Pretty soon we will be able to facially recognize someone through a devie like Google Glass, and immediately bring up their information. Scary.
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Yes, I also will "research" new people I meet, or names I've heard from colleagues or friends to find out more about that person. Do I know anyone in common with them? What do they do? A person's online prescence provides a general impression that I can then reference when interacting with that person..
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I like the legitimacy that persistent presence provides. When somebody doesn't have an online presence, it's almost kind of creepy, or implies that they are hiding something. Though I don't fancy myself a "power user" of social media, I can still be found.
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Persistent presence in the learning network is needed for the teacher to amplify, curate, aggregate, and filter content and to model critical thinking and cognitive attributes that reflect the needs of a discipline.
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I’m often surprised when I hear a declaration of web company’s birthday – Facebook at six years, Youtube at five years. It seems like these tools have been around much longer.
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This always blows my mind. I remember graduating high school in 2008 and going to college. This was when I learned that YouTube was only 3 years old at the time. I thought YouTube was around litearlly forever, being a young teenager, I had no idea. The first video ever on YouTube still cracks me up! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNQXAC9IVRw
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Each RT amplifies the message much like an electronic amplifier increases the amplitude of audio or video transmitters.
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Reminds me of how people used to comment on tweets and posts on other social networks with videos of Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up" as a joke, as if to say "I caught you off guard! Here's a random song!". The use of that song for that purpose grew exponentially until people got tired of using it!
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he curator, in a learning context, arranges key elements of a subject in such a manner that learners will “bump into” them throughout the course.
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I love stumbling across concepts before they are formally discussed in a class. When looking back at the progression, and how it occurred, you are almost able to follow the path that the instructor took in building up to more complex concepts. Everything is literally connected, and understanding these points, allows for the construction of something greater.
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Criticism was directed at our curatorial activities with concerns voiced that we were only selecting resources that supported our views. This wasn’t the case. We drew attention to both supportive and critical views. However, The Daily was not the only source of information for learners in the course. In the Daily, we aggregated blog posts and twitter posts as well. More on that when we consider aggregation.
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Modelling has its roots in apprenticeship.
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Learning is a multi-faceted process, involving cognitive, social, and emotional dimensions. Knowledge is similarly multi-faceted, involving declarative, procedural, and academic dimensions.
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Apprenticeship learning models are among the most effective in attending to the full breadth of learning. Apprenticeship is concerned with more than cognition and knowledge (to know about) – it also addresses the process of becoming a carpenter, plumber, or physician.
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Apprenticeship models can be seen utilized in trade schools. As a result of this learning by doing method the students have a better grasp on the material than a student in a traditioanl classroom setting.
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I agree that they may have a better physical grasp on the duties that they perform, but do they understand why they know them? i.e. Without the direction of a master/expert, would they be able to overcome all obstacles that come their way?
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I found my way through personal trial and error.
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Social structures are filters.
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The singular filter of the teacher has morphed into numerous information streams, each filtered according to different perspectives and world views.
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People have always learned in social networks).
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Social media like Twitter provide a few examples of how teacher’s roles might change.
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If one Twitterer posts a link to an article in NY Times, her followers may find the article useful and then respond by re-tweeting the article.
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This is basically what Google did for the web – instead of fully defined and meta-described resources in a database, organized according to subject areas (i.e. Yahoo at the time), intelligence was applied at the point of search.
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My view is that change in education needs to be systemic and substantial.
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"Course content is similarly fragmented." Students are no longer confined to textbooks, they can use multiple resources to find different perspectives and knowledge. Youtube, Skype, blogs, and virtual museums allow students to enter a new world, from their chairs in a classroom miles away with a single click of a button.
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Bryan Alexander | Educator, futurist, speaker, writer - 0 views
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This is posted on the blog under EDTECH Blogs, but thought I would post here as well. I've seen Bryan Alexander speak a couple of times and that makes reading his blog that much more fun. Some of his posted videos are fun to watch as he makes scary subjects in the future of education a little less frightening with his humor.
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How Teachers Are Using Technology at Home and in Their Classrooms | Pew Research Center... - 3 views
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Here's one statistic in the report that I think has particular relevance to our class - "... 69% say the internet has a "major impact" on their ability to share ideas with other teachers"
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I was interested in the statistic of, "Teachers of low income students, however, are much less likely than teachers of the highest income students to use tablet computers (37% v. 56%) or e-readers (41% v. 55%) in their classrooms and assignments." I teach at a community college, so I find this to be a major issue.
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@Melissa - do most of your students bring their own computers, or do they use the labs on campus?
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Most of my students use lab computers while on campus, but many have their own computers at home. Very few have tablets or laptops that they carry with them--best estimate is 5-10% that bring laptops/tablets to classes. I have some online students who come to campus or use public libraries to complete their work.
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At NIE we train student teachers for 21st Century Teacher Education and so all students are provided a laptop. That I found out recently via http://youtu.be/WGRYAFZbsko
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I found this statement to be interesting: "In terms of community type, teachers in urban areas are the least likely to say their students have sufficient access to digital tools IN SCHOOL, while rural teachers are the least likely to say their students have sufficient access AT HOME." Why do you supposed this is?
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@cheryl - might be because broadband access is not as widely available in rural areas as urban - e.g., "Because of relatively low population density, topographical barriers, and greater geographical distances, broadband service may be more difficult to obtain in some rural areas" http://www.broadband.gov/rural_areas.html
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John Seely Brown: Learning, Working & Playing in the Digital Age - 18 views
serendip.brynmawr.edu/...seelybrown
learning edtech seely brown ecology digital community collaboration education web2.0 technology
shared by Zach Lonsinger on 16 May 13
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Bricolage, a concept originally studied by Levi Strauss many years ago, relates to the concrete. It has to do with the ability to find something—an object, tool, piece of code, document—and to use it in a new way and in a new context. In fact, virtually no system today is built from scratch or first principles—like the way I used to build systems—but rather from finding examples of code on the Web, borrowing "that code," bringing it onto their site, and then modifying it to fit their needs.
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The course that I teach, anatomy and physiology, can be very difficult for some students. I encourage using the vidoes and dissection simulations that come with the textbook, youtube videos, online games flashcards, etc. I had an instructor in another discipline ask me why I didn't just use an online tool to make flashcards for the students for distribution. But this comment in the article really emphasized why I don't. Each student needs to find the study technique that works best for them. And in finding the appropriate video or website or whatever that helps them to learn the information, that process is part of the learning as well and teaches them important study tools for future classes.
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I use this concept when I write code for websites. Most of the time I don't write new code. I usually take it from a previous project or from another website that I like, and modify it to work for what I want.
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I believe that the real literacy of tomorrow will have more to do with being able to be your own private, personal reference librarian, one that knows how to navigate through the incredible, confusing, complex information spaces and feel comfortable and located in doing that. So navigation will be a new form of literacy if not the main form of literacy for the 21st century.
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I think this prediction was spot on! Today's learning is not really about what you know, but rather do you know how to find it and how quickly.
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"... private, personal reference librarian" with help from our networks (e.g., Twitter, Tumblr, FB, etc.)
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Research literacy is a requirement given how much information is available now. There is not as much a need to have a deep rich understanding of a subject. Instead, how to quickly find the necessary information from credible sources is a requirement for those operating in a digital world.
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I love the "private, personal references librarian". I always described myself to others as a Master Googler. I didn't think anything of it until I saw others try to use Google search engine and fail miserably. Navigation and being able to find what you are looking for is crucial in today's world. And knowing how to use Google, and finding what you actually need, isn't as easy as it looks, as one example.
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This made me smile as I am a reference librarian. As much as I find patrons that want to know how to locate something, I think I encounter at least if not more of patrons who just want the item handed to them and do not care to learn how to find it themselves.
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Further more often than not, most people assume they already know how to use Google, and will not ask for help searching or don't know how to interpret the search results.
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Social media and apps organizes our library for us: FaceBook, Instagram, Email, banking, gaming, even Pintrest. On your device, you can organize your apps by category, which will only make sense to that individual. I also like your google comment Zach! My students didn't even know there was an advanced search option for google. When they go to research, they can look for specific resources available at their reading level, or look up information during a specific time period!
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funny thought here... does anyone remeber using the good old card catalog instead of a computer search to find the old, antiquated devices known as books... Sorry, funny connection to the idea of a reference librarian.
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I do remember using the card catalog. I remember going on a field trip to the school library and having the school librarian demonstrate how to search for books using the card catalog. Even in gradeschool, it seemed rudimentary to me. Now card catalogs are nearly extinct!
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@jason - yes, libraries have most definitely felt the impact of Web 2.0, social technologies, etc. In many of the conversations and research that I've been following they've been more about helping students and patrons build skills in information literacy and navigating the massive trove of data that all these web-based sources, databases make available to us. Bluntly put, it's great that we have access to all this information through Google and various library databases, but how do we efficiently locate the most relevant, high-quality sources for our specific needs. That is no trivial task and so this presents librarians with an opportunity to assist.
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This interplay is best characterized as "knowing" and it lives in the action of deliberate inquiry where the concepts, heuristics, laws and algorithms comprising the explicit function as tools for action–deliberate inquiry.)
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I never really thought of the Web being a tool to reach multiple intelligences! The different tools that are on the internet would be great to use in the classroom because each child could express their learning in the context that best suits their needs. Some students could be typing written documents, others could be creating presentations or even short video clips. The possibilities are endless when involving Web 2.0 tools!
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I noticed this idea, too! I'm a very visual learner, so I appreciate how the Internet can easily include text, videos, and slideshows in the classroom learning environment. Being able to connect to audio for auditory learners or people with visual impairments would also be really useful.
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Much as discussed here, technology often reaches multiple intelligences at once seamlessly. I am a visual learner and my daughter is an auditory learner. Recently, we both watched a clip and picked up on different things because she was mainly listening and I was mainly watching. As stated here, this addresses not only how a child may express themselves but also how a child may learn too.
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Yes, can you imagine have these types of tools when you in a K-12 setting? I envision some of the harder subjects for myself would have been less difficult because I would be able to interact with the content in different ways.
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I would take it one step further to include that it not only reaches multiple intelligences, but also is great at adapting for ability levels. It posses the challenges needed for gifted students, the adaptations for students with needs, and can accomodate students who learn better in different languages. In many ways it is the ultimate instructional tool.
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Most of us experienced our formal learning in an authority-based, lecture-oriented school. And yet with the increasing amounts of information being readily available on the Web, we find a new kind of learning happening—it's not all that new; most of us did it informally anyway—having to do with discovery-based or experiential-based learning.
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The idea that we need to be shifting from lecture-oriented/teacher centered learning is something that is hard for young teachers to start changing in their classrooms because of the lack of support from administration. I believe that soon students need to be learning in schools that are discovery-based. There still would be an underlying core of subjects being covered per grade level but students could work on their own through self-motivating projects to discover the information. The role of the teacher would be more of an adviser/moderator that would check in with students on their projects, make suggestions, and stretch their learning!
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Marie--this is very interesting and I think what leads some parents to a home school curriculum. I am not a K-12 teacher and have no experience in that area, but with my own children I see that sometimes they are being taught one certain way to do something because that is the way they will be tested. Since my husband and I are both college professors, we often teach the kids other things and this gets them in trouble at school sometimes. For instance, we taught them 4 states of matter--liquid, gas, solid, and plasma. My son was told that plasma was not in the book so it was not a correct response.
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Ugh. Yes. The "the answer in the book is the only correct answer" problem. I was one of those horrible students who argued with my teachers all the time that the teacher's edition was wrong. It's why I always try to write questions that are either A) obviously open-ended on purpose or B) specific enough that there is genuinely only one answer. Sometimes it's all in the directions, but because of my annoyance in school, I try to keep it in mind.
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It seems like the discovery option in K-12 is not as prevalent in classrooms these days, because teachers/administrators are more worried about covering material for state tests.
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Marie that is exactly the type of classroom I try to maintain. Students all around the room discovering their own learning. Its amazing at how something as simple as the powerpoint project I'm having them create right now generates so much creativity and interest. The students get to pick their topics and I haven't seen them more excited about a single assignment since I've been there. They ask if we can get out the laptops every free minute and they are constantly calling me over while working to tell me the interesting pieces they are adding about their topic/person/thing. I also have them present their powerpoint to the class hoping everyone can learn a little about each other's projects and generate their own questions. As for "the answer in the book is the only correct answer", I haven't come across students that argue with the material yet (unless it is spelling and they are positive that tomato has an "e" in it), but plain and simple the books are outdated. The information is not always accurate and although I still use the books I try to alternate the books and current internet pieces on the same topic. Learning is about the students and we aren't constrained to just the old, dusty, resources in the room.
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We need to challenge students to think outside the box and using multiple levels of intelligence. they are multi-processors and we must continue to challenge them to do so - 1. to keep them from being bored and 2. so they continue to use this ability that they have.
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I would like to add a number 3 to that, so that we shape then into being the 21 citizens which will be required to drive the world forward.
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If we don't know how to use some appliance, software or game, etc., then we tend to reach for a manual, ask for a training course or ask to be shown how to do it by an expert. Believe me, hand a manual to a 15-year-old or suggest going to a training course and he thinks you are a dinosaur. "A manual? Give me a break! Let me get in there and muck around and try various things and see what works." More generally, today's kids tend to get on the Web and link, lurk and watch how other people are doing things and then try something themselves.
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This made me think of a TedTalk I recently watch. Titled, Sugata Mitra's new experiments in self-teaching" found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dk60sYrU2RU. Basically, given a computer in India, school age children did not know English, did not know what a computer was, did not know what the internet was, and did not regularly attend school. Even with that, they taught themselves. It is worth watching.
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I saw TEDtalks by Sugata Mitra before. He is a great pioneer of educational technology. I definitely agree with this statement. It is also my favored way of learning a new system or machine. I just like to dive in and experiment and get my hands dirty. That is how I learn the best.
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I thought I posted about this before, but I remember reading an article where researchers handed non-speaking English children ipads. The children quickly figured out how to use the ipads without any instruction or previous experience with technology.
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The second aspect of the Web that has interested me for some time is the fact that the Web may be the first technology, the first medium that honors the notion of multiple intelligences.
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In essence the Web augments the knowledge dynamics of a region, increasing its diversity and expanding its learning resources by leveraging local expertise—in a lightweight way—for mentoring.
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It took 20 or 50 years for electrification to take hold and for society to enact new social practices that leveraged the potential of that infrastructure
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@Justin - agree; in many cases, the technical layer is easier than the social, e.g., changing mindsets, developing set of best practices, etc.
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As a society that has always had electricity, it is hard to imagine a life without it. Similar to what I expect the digital generation to realize that the Web did not always exist.
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It is amazing to think of how long it took for some changes to take hold. I feel the web has been able to catch on much more quickly in many ways yet the learning curve for some of its applications are very slow. Schools in particular a slow to adapt to the applications of web based technology.
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The Web helps to build a rich fabric that combines the small efforts of the many with the large efforts of the few. It enables the culture and sensibilities of the region to evolve, not only by enriching the diversity of available information and expertise,
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a shift between using technology to support the individual and using technology to support relationships. This shift will be very important because with it we will discover new ways, new tools and new social protocols for helping us help each other, which is really the very essence of social learning.
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If Web 1.0 was about building a relationship between the web and the individual and Web 2.0 is about building support for relationships, what will Web 3.0 look like ... tailored experiences ... personalization...collaboration? If so, are we already in a Web 3.0 world?
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The Web 3.0 could be the Internet of Things or building a relationship between an indivudal and a thing, or turning things into people. Like having an oven recognize that Zach put a turkey in the oven and the oven knows that Zach likes the turkey cooked a certain way so it automatically cooks it for you. Scary concept, but it's coming.
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In a lot of ways--and this is something that others have pointed out--big internet services have narrowed our influences because of more targeted use of the data we give off when we use Google, for instance. Thus, limited some of the potential for relationships that Brown talks about.
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Interesting! Could this information be considered public like the information that is already being sold by physical stores, etc.? Do you think there will be less material things in the future and more virtual or made of different materials? Like a physical stop sign won't be necessary when cars drive themselves. We won't have to paint our walls we can change the color with a click!
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Sam, I do think there will be less material things in the future. Check out this link. http://mashable.com/2013/05/18/stop-sign-water/ LaserVision, a light show company, designed a curtain of water with a stop sign projected onto it. It's been a project in Austrailia since 2007. The implications of this are endless. And I think we are approacing a very different and radical age.
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A second example: Hewlett-Packard and the Web. In this example, engineers at Hewlett-Packard use the Web to act as cognitive apprentices, or mentors, for kids wanting extra help on scientific, engineering or mathematical type problems. Again, the small efforts of the many—the engineers—complement the large efforts of the few—the teachers. Both of these examples barely scratch the surface of what could result from interlacing the small efforts of the many with the large efforts of the few.
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internet and the Web as a medium is that it enables us to leverage the small efforts of the many along with the large efforts of the few. Two very simple examples: consider a project called Pueblo that is happening in the Longview School in Phoenix, Arizona, in conjunction with some researchers from Phoenix College, a part of the Maricopa Community College System. These researchers have found a way to use a closed internet to connect a set of senior citizens acting as mentors with kids in the school systems. The result was that the small efforts of the many—the senior citizens
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Many of us tend to think that kids who are multi-processing can't be concentrating. This may not be true. Notice that the attention span of most top managers range somewhere between 30 seconds to five minutes, which seems to be about the right span for most kids that I know
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I love the idea of the digital age...however, not every job is going to be digital. These "kids" need to understand that they need to focus longer than 5 minutes if they are to succeed in life!
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Good point made, this means that schools cannot fully exchange one method for another but must skilfully integrate two world to ensure that whereas kids recieve training for the digital age we live in they also acquire other life skills.
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I think his argument would be stronger if he provided actual data. I see students that are 'hooked up' to multiple devices, but I wonder are their brains actually processing and storing data or is it more of a switch in knowing what requires more of their attention at one time?
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So in some interesting sense the need for making judgments is greater than ever. After all, who would necessarily believe something just because it was on the Web? If you found it in the Wall Street Journal you might have some reason to believe it, the National Enquirer, perhaps not.
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I totally agree that the needs for making judgements is greater than ever. It almost brings a sense of accountability to useing the internet. And at the same time, it is easier than every to double or even triple check a source. Wikipedia provides endless sources to back up its information, which is proving Wikipedia to be a valuable source of information today.
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I just had this discussion with my second graders. Just because something is on the web does not make it a fact. It could just be an opinion. Great way to teach FACT vs. OPINION!
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One of my fave examples of "something on the web is not always a fact" is the tree octopus: http://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus/
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@Zach - Yes, Wikipedia has certainly come a long way since its early days when its credibility was questionable and was often the victim of spam wars or vandals. And while it's improved dramatically, there's only so much territory that their groups of volunteer editors can cover, and most of the participation has been by men and so the Wikimedia Foundation is looking at ways to encourage more women to participate. e.g., http://www.dailydot.com/society/wikipedia-gender-gap-sarah-stierch/
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nd so it will be for the Web. But to see this I think it is crucial not to think of the Web and the internet as just a network of computers but rather as the beginning of a fundamentally new medium, a medium as in TV, radio, theater and books. But this medium is going to have properties that are going to be very hard for us to understand because it's going to be a two-way or interactive medium
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t this medium is as transformative as was electrification and with similar diffusion properties. The industrial dynamo was introduced about 1880. It took about 30 or more years for the effects of the dynamo to permeate our society
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I have heard this comparison before--the internet era compared to the industrial revolution--and it is a very interesting comparison. Not just an invention but a disruptive change in the ways that we work, live, and think.
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It makes me think about the combination of technologies as tools and learning the language.
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Comcast offered about 50 billion dollars for Media One
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And to think this was 15 years ago. I wonder how much 50 billion is worth today. And people made a big deal with Facebook bought Instagram for 1 billion, and then more recently WhatsApp for 19 billion, and then a few month ago, Oculus Rift for 2 billion---and yet all of this still does not equal 50 billion.
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Recently, I was with a young researcher, albeit one that was a bit unusual, that had actually wired a Web browser into his eyeglasses.
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Does this guy work for Google now? Perhaps had a part in designing Google Glass? I got to experiement with Google Glass in February. Woah, was that cool. It was very unique in being able to watch a video in your glasses or wink and be able to take a picture. I can definitely see Google Glass, or a future model being implemented in education.
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Google Glass came to my mind as well. I've had colleagues that have had the opportunity to try them. It confuses me as to how it works exactly. Perhaps we have reached the Jetsons age?
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I've been more fascinated with what 3D printers can do in the classroom, where at least for now printers seem to have an easier to identify educational role.
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and to be able to pick up and feel comfortable with these new rapidly evolving multiple media genres
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I think this is evident in children today. You see kids everywhere with smartphones, tablets, iPads. And these kids are better users of these than some of their parents.
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Reminds me of the news article (last year?) which discussed the instance of American researchers providing a handful of children with an Ipad. These children lived in a third world country, but were able to master the use of the Ipad quickly and without any adult instruction.
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and may even become a prominent form of entertainment for the digital kid.
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The catch, however, is that if you are going to become a successful bricoleur of the 21st century, a bricoleur of the virtual rather than of the physical, than as you borrow things you have to be able to decide whether or not to believe or trust those things.
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I think this can get into the touchy subject of plagiarism. There's a famous saying that goes, "stealing from one source is plagiarism, but stealing from many sources is research". I also read a book titled, "Steal Like an Artist" by Austin Kleon. One of the famous sayings used was from Picasso, "Good artists copy, great artists steal."
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Again, I find most middle school and high school students, college-aged, and adults are not always certain on the differenences between a .gov or .edu site versus a .com site.
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The standards for "cobbling" or taking code fragments are different than traditional "ideas," though. Code seems less abstract and more material-based, at least virtually.
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So we now have navigation being coupled to, basically, discovery and discovery being coupled to bricolage but you don't dare build on whatever you discover unless you can make a judgment concerning its quality or trustworthiness.
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So troubleshooting is really story construction, not abstract logical reasoning.
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I love this. Stories are everywhere, from birth to death, and have always been apart of the human nature. I do believe stories are vital to education and how every child learns best. Not always just storybooks, but stories from parents, classmates, friends, and from their teachers.
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Absolutely! I always try to incorporate story telling into my classes. Sharing things I learned during my time in school and letting students share their stories with their peers and myself. A lot of the time I even learn from their stories!
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Learning was happening in a fantastic way in terms of telling and listening to stories.
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The real expert was not a person but was the community mind, the mind of the community-of-practice.
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The twist, though, was that once they received the video, the engineers would replay them in their own small study group, but replay them in a very special way. Every three minutes or so they would stop the video and talk about what they had just seen, and ask each other if there were any questions or any ambiguities that needed to be resolved.
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This is a great way to learn that I think a lot of professors on campus overlook. The engineers basically were experiencing what we call today a "flipped classroom". I think this is a great way to learn, especially with a small group of people where you can bounce ideas off and pause the lecture or re-watch it. Sometimes during a lecture or in a class, people need that time to pause, and think over the material. Some students do this, and then miss what the instructor continued to talk about.
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The next system is an experimental system in use at Cornell University and designed by Dan Huttenlocher. Here they use dual video cameras, one on the lecturer and one that zooms in on any student asking a question. The video stream can then be automaticallly segmented, identifying exactly when a student asked a question or the lecturer changed a slide, etc. Once a slide is identified its image is passed to an optical character recognizer whose output is used to help create an index of the video stream content.
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The traditional producers of knowledge (e.g., faculty) are also becoming consumers of the knowledge that their traditional consumers (e.g., grad students, firms in the region) produce.
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We're just at the bottom of the S-curve of this innovation, a curve that will have about the same shape but a greater slope than the one pertaining to electrification. And as this S-curve takes off, it creates a unique period for entrepreneurs! It is entrepreneurs, be they academic, educational or corporate entrepreneurs, that will shape and drive this relatively chaotic phenomenon especially as it relates to learning. Entrepreneurs are great at challenging the status quo. Their power lies in their willingness to see differently, unearth and challenge background assumptions and then act on their beliefs, often overturning an assumption that others felt were unassailable. Our challenge and opportunity, here, is to foster the entrepreneurial spirit toward creating new kinds of learning environments, ones that leverage how we naturally learn coupled to or enhanced by the unique capabilities of the Web.
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It'd be interesting to find out where this author believes us to be on the S-curve now. This statement made me realize that most discoveries are made by visionaries that want to push the envelope and have successfully done so, such as Steve Jobs & Apple or Mark Zuckerberg & Facebook. For better or worse they have revolutionized our society.
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learning becomes a part of action and knowledge creation.
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I have found that I learn and retain new ideas if I can read about it and then have the ability to interract with it in some fashion.
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When I was in primary and secondary school, I received notesheets that stated that the more senses one uses in studying material, the more likely he is to retain the material as knowledge. Rather than senses, perhaps relating new knowledge to familiar concepts and activitities should have been stressed. (After all, I probably will not be tasting the Renaissance anytime soon!)
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Enculturation lies at the heart of learning.
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These study groups were socially constructing their own understanding of the material.
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One of the things that makes an ecology so powerful and adaptable to new contexts is its diversity
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My understanding of this is that if everyone in a group has the same viewpoint, nothing new may develop. But if you have learners from various backgrounds, and life experiences then innovation can begin. Learner A will propose one solution and Learner B may submit another. Through discussion and evaluation, a final solution will be developed.
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Judgment, navigation, discrimination and synthesis are more critical than ever; again, congruent to our hypothesis about digital kids.
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Basically, each of us is part consumer and part producer. We read and we write, we absorb and we critique, we listen and we tell stories, we help and we seek help. This is life on the Web. The boundaries between consuming and producing are fluid—the secret to many of the business models of Web-based commerce.
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What I want to do this morning is to provide some evocative comments rather than give a coherent, logically argued talk. That is, these comments are meant to be idea sparkers that will, hopefully, evoke additional ideas for yourself concerning how the world might be changing and how we might actually recast or reframe some of the classical problems of education and distance learning in quite new terms.
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f you see a Web site that's more than six months old, it screams out at you—something is wrong.
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I notice this "off-kilter" quality with operating systems--especially when I toggle between my older iPod touch and my relatively newer iPhone. Must be a golden age for these types of graphic designers.
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My summer job is constantly getting new laptops and I never think there is anything wrong with the old ones but each new laptop has a better quality or different feature than the older that benefits the business. This six month timeline sounds about right.
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This is so true! I have a MacBook from 2011 that I have been using and loving. It always worked fine for me, and I saw nothing wrong with it. About a month ago, it started to act up and it eventually quit on me, so I took it in to the local Apple store. I basically needed everything replaced (thank goodness it was still under the extended warranty) and I received all new parts (except for the battery and bottom metal case). Essentially, now I have a brand new computer with the most updated software and I have am so surprised by how much faster and smoother it runs!
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Web surfing
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Knowledge has two dimensions, the explicit and the tacit. The explicit dimension deals with concepts, the know-whats, whereas the tacit dimension deals with know-how.
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even what constitutes a solution in the first place?
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as I mentioned earlier, lurk on the periphery and hear what was going on and in so doing could be a virtual cognitive apprentice. He could also move from the periphery to the center when he had something to contribute, very much like today's digital kids are doing on the Web.
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(This capability may be especially important as a child starts his learning journey. Afterwards, and after a sense of self confidence about being able to learn has been established, mastering a broader set of learning media will be easier).
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When I first heard of so many people having a wii fit, I often thought why not just do the real thing in real life? This section gets me thinking about the times I've been in a situation where my comfort level was minimal and therefore I took a backseat to observe (and also refrained from asking specific questions that would allow me to keep up). I enjoy reading about these "safe zones" and how truly essential they are to learner exploration and building confidence!
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This experiment reflects a win/win situation because the senior citizens wired together actually created a sense of meaning for themselves, through interaction with themselves and the kids, while also acting as a powerful resource to the kids.
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Then he linked and lurked and at the right moment he transitioned from lurking to asking a question therein initiating a brief conversation with this expert. A small momentary effort of one expert inspired this kid.
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Given the vastness of the Web, it's often possible to find a niche community or special interest group that exactly coincides with your own, idiosyncratic interest or, more to the point, a kid's interest.
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. It was a strange experience to say the least.
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You are picking up or apprenticing to the practices of an expert.
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This reminds me a lot of student teaching. In the last two semesters (at least in the Penn State program) are heavy on field experiences. Even though I learned a lot in my methods courses, the most valuable learning experiences I aquired in my time at Penn State were from student teaching, being in an actual classroom and working with an actual teacher!
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I have a student now that due to several reasons cannot read or write. I only have the student for two subjects and during our time with those subjects the student puts his finger on the page as if he is following along, but has no clue where the class is. The student is constantly cutting papers and never doing the assignment like the rest of the class. The student does not even remember my name, but if I give this student a verbal test the student receives grades of 80%. I have no idea how he is retaining the information when he is talking and looking at a completely different page, cannot remember my name, but can get almost every answer correct. Clearly he is able to concentrate on what is being read or spoken to him in those environments even though according to my eyes he's not paying attention at all. Just reminded me an example of multi-processing.
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learning ecology.
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So, having said all that, let's step back and ask about today's kids, kids growing up digital. How are their brains different? How do they learn differently? How do they think differently? How are they different? Because after all, today's kids are today's customers for schools and tomorrow's customers for lifelong learning. So we all have a lot of motivation to jointly come to some understanding of how the "digital kid" is different. Let me first give an overview and then I will dig into this topic a little bit more
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This is something I have put a great deal of thought to. Kids are different and have changed very rapidly. At the age of 36 I like to believe I am not yet in the category of being considered old. However, when i was going through elementary school the web was not yet something available to me. A computer was the good apple 2e. When I hit middle school and high school the web was coming onto the scene. The apple 2gs was in style and dial up and "You've Got Mail" were familiar to many, but not all. The kids of today however have grown up in a world that has never known dial up, have never been without text messaging or phones capable of standing in for computers. This has changed the kids of today. Their person to person communication skills are lacking, they demand immediate feedback, they multitask like pros because they do nearly everything while connected to an electronic device. This is an area of great interest to me because I believe the web and its associated devices have truly changed who we are as people.
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Starting about three years ago we, at PARC, started hiring fifteen year olds to join us during the summer as researchers
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Corporate research centers and high-tech companies are increasingly providing adjunct professors, guest lectures, thesis supervision, richly textured case histories to the universities. They are also providing consulting and sabbatical opportunities for professors and graduate students, thus providing opportunities for the academy to become better grounded in real world problems. Although such intermixing is not fundamentally new, the degree to which it is happening is new and various kinds of cross linkages are growing.
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What that medium will evolve into, believe me, none of us really know.
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A corporation purchases another for billions of dollars, for the purpose of investing in a medium with intense transformation potential. The uncertainty of what those transformations will be does not deter them. This is the power of increased convenience in communications: it is potentially of great service to billions of people, and worth more green bills than each of us shall witness in our lifetimes.
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