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Vanessa Vaile

JOLT - Journal of Online Learning and Teaching - 0 views

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    tudent response system (SRS) use may provide one solution for transforming the passive and isolated online learning environment experienced by many students. SRS use combined with sound pedagogical practices can create an active learning environment comprised of a collaborative social learning community capable of effectively meeting varied learning needs. Newly developed SRSs have created the opportunity to explore online SRS use. Incorporation of SRS use within behaviorism, social constructivism, and many other pedagogical approaches makes it a tool worthy of consideration in solving pedagogical dilemmas and creating a positive learning experience. Despite a lack of research related to online SRS use, this article utilizes current SRS and online polling research and information to determine the primary benefits and challenges associated with online SRS use.
Vanessa Vaile

Giving Feedback on Student Writing: An Innovative Approach - Faculty Focus | Faculty Focus - 1 views

  • British journal, Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education involving the use of something called interactive cover sheets. First-year students in an outdoor studies degree program took a two-semester, six module course which required preparation of a number of written assignments. After preparing their papers, students attached an interactive cover sheet on which they raised questions about the paper they had just completed, thereby identifying the specific areas for feedback.
  • The goal was to overcome the one-way communication that occurs when teachers write comments on student papers
  • Students also tell stories about feedback received on their papers
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  • Does this idea of having students frame questions about their papers and writing offer a solution? The faculty who tried the approach found that students struggled mightily with the task
  • It’s pretty easy to understand why students would find this task challenging. Most (especially beginning students) have little or no experience assessing their own work and then to have to frame a question that would elicit feedback helpful to improving your next paper—that’s a pretty complicated task. But it’s such a good one.
  • that’s a really useful skill
  • I wonder if there might be some ways to reframe the task that would make it easier initially. Maybe students need guidelines early on: Identify the part of the paper you had the most trouble with and ask a question about it. Identify the part of the paper you think turned out best and explain why you feel good about it
  • a potentially promising idea with the dual benefits of developing a great self-assessment skill and directing feedback
  • The 5 questions that I ask are: 1) What are you trying to say here (what's the thesis/main point)? 2) Why is what you are trying to say important? 3) What is working in the piece and why? 4) What is not working in the piece and why? 5) What questions do you have for me?
  • If students feel that they are graded on the writers that they currently are rather than the writer that they are trying to be, many will be hesitant to open an honest dialogue.
  • dialogical cover sheet dates back to the expressivist movement in composition studies in the 1980s. I first came across it through Peter Elbow's writing
  • scaffolding the feedback process by offering students the opportunity to identify aspects of the paper or parts of the paper they would like their instructor to respond to is empowering pedagogy
  • The challenge is making the cover sheet simple enough
Vanessa Vaile

The Souls of the Machine: Clay Shirky's Internet Revolution - The Chronicle Review - Th... - 1 views

  • the goal is to study technology and society by making gadgets that challenge assumptions of how machines fit into daily life and get people interacting
  • as Web sites become more social, they will threaten the existence of all kinds of businesses and organizations, which might find themselves unnecessary once people can organize on their own with free online tools
  • Who needs an academic association, for instance, if a Facebook page, blog, and Internet mailing list can enable professionals to stay connected without paying dues?
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  • those who make playful social networks improve society more than all those now-unnecessary offline organizations.
Vanessa Vaile

The eXtended Web and the Personal Learning Environment « Plearn Blog - 0 views

  • developments in their relation to Personal Learning Environments as several people over the past months have asked me why I think there is a need to develop a Personal Learning Environment at all.
  • Applications and aggregators of information are freely available and people can take their pick of their preferred ones and create their own network
  • easy it is for conglomerates to take over the development of tools and applications
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  • three issues that I find important in this respect.
  • 1. Intelligent data connections are one exciting option for PLE development and networked learning,
  • Recommender systems of information, resources, critical friends and experts could form part of the access options
  • the challenges of an open online networked environment for learning.
  • The reality, however, is different and research is available to show that not all adult learners are able to critically assess what they find online and might prefer to receive guidance
  • difficult it is for anybody to reach and access a deep level of information by using search engines
  • need for critical literacies while learning informally on networks
  • Learning in my view is not synonymous with accessing information, and requires a level of reflection, analysis, perhaps also of problem solving, creativity and interaction
  • 3. Access to technology
  • trends in access and digital divides
  • reasons for their non-participation. Some are related to age and socio-economic group, but some are also related to relevance, confidence and skills set.
  • people least likely to use the Internet are also the least likely to participate in adult education.
  • could PLEs that would provide help with Internet use and might be used on mobile devices be the answer to making the Internet relevant
  • What components would be needed?
  • 1. A personal profiler that would collect and store personal information.
  • 2. An information and resource aggregator to collect information and resources.
  • 3. Editors and publishers enabling people to produce and publish artifacts to aid the learning and interest of others
  • 4. Helper applications that would provide the pedagogical backbone of the PLE and make connections with other internet services to help the learner make sense of information, applications and resources.
  • 5. Services of the learners choice.
  • 6. Recommenders of information and resources.
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    although not specifically stated, this is also about gate keeping and controlling / monitoring information flow
Vanessa Vaile

Learning with 'e's: Anatomy of a PLE - 0 views

  • Personal Learning Environments (PLEs) do exactly what they say on the can - they are personal to each individual, created by them, owned by them, used by them within their lifelong learning.
  • Originally a counterpoint to the institutional Managed Learning Environment (iMLE or 'VLE'),
  • Delegates at the conference could not agree whether PLEs should remain the sole domain of the learner, or whether in some way they could be incorporated into institutional infrastructures.
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  • students own and create their PLE but that the iMLE also has something to offer them, even though it is highly problematic in its current form
  • reconceptualise PLEs, so that they are locatable within both informal and formal learning contexts.
  • walled garden effect, which presents a great barrier to student freedom and creativity
  • challenge the unhelpful binary of PLE versus VLE
  • the true nature of the PLE - its anatomy
  • in our view, the PLE is wider than the Web tools students use to create, find, organise and share content. It is also wider than the Personal Learning Network (PLN) of people and content that each of us generates when we learn informally or in formal contexts.
  • hybrid approach.
  • students require structure and scaffolding when they first venture into digital learning environments. No-one is a digital native, no matter how much the Prensky theory is talked up
  • Yet the average institutional Managed Learning Environment is by nature dull, uninspiring and difficult to navigate.
  • Web 2.0 tools (Cloud Learning Environment) are more attractive, easier to use and free, but are unprotected and vulnerable.
Vanessa Vaile

The Multiliteracy Project - 0 views

  • esponsibility to not only educate the minds, but also the hearts of my students
  • I want my students to look at knowledge in a connected and ethical way
  • personal self-understanding on an intellectual and emotional level
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  • higher level thinking skills
  • encourage students to attain greater self-understanding
  • The Multiliteracy Project is a national Canadian study exploring pedagogies or teaching practices that prepare children for the literacy challenges of our globalized, networked, culturally diverse world. Increasingly, we encounter knowledge in multiple forms - in print, in images, in video, in combinations of forms in digital contexts - and are asked to represent our knowledge in an equally complex manner.
  • ighlight two related aspects of the increasing complexity of texts
  • (a) the proliferation of multimodal ways of making meaning where the written word is increasingly part and parcel of visual, audio, and spatial patterns; (b) the increasing salience of cultural and linguistic diversity characterized by local diversity and global connectedness .
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    A research collaboration of students, educators and researchers
Vanessa Vaile

Professors Find Ways to Keep Heads Above 'Exaflood' of Data - Wired Campus - The Chroni... - 0 views

  • "Managing the Exaflood"
  • researchers presented ideas for getting a handle on all this data -- an exabyte is one billion billion bytes -- and using it productively.
  • visualization is one way to work with them.
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  • Google, a major source of information overload, can also help manage it,
  • These strategies present challenges for accurately tagging data and archiving it, the presenters warned.
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    navigating chaos ~ Chronicle article in Wired Campus
Vanessa Vaile

Getting Students to Do the Reading: Pre-Class Quizzes on Wordpress - ProfHacker.com - 1 views

  • learning as a two-step process: First there’s the transfer of information (from a source of knowledge, like an instructor, to the student), then there’s the assimilation of that information by the student
  • students need to have their first exposure to the course material happen some other way—like reading their textbook
  • in all fields, there’s still the challenge of motivating students to actually do the pre-class readings
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  • short, online reading quizzes consisting of open-ended questions that are due several hours before class starts to do the job.  Most of the quiz questions are meant to help students focus on and make some sense of key concepts
  • Students submit answers to these questions online before class, and I grade their quizzes on effort.
  • pre-class reading quizzes allow me to practice what is often called “just-in-time teaching.”
  • pre-class reading quiz questions as a clicker question during class,
  • how do I implement these quizzes?
  • local course management system, but I found the system to cumbersome
  • I find it much easier to post course documents to a WordPress blog, and I like that it makes my course more open to those not enrolled in it. 
  • I create a Facebook fan page for each of my courses
  • that pulls in the course blog content via RSS
  • So I now post my pre-class reading quizzes on my course blogs, tagged with a “PCRQ” for easy locating
  • default comments feature on WordPress to have students reply to them.  This meant that students could read each other’s answers, which, for these questions, only enhanced the learning experience
  • So I looked around for a way to have students comment on posts semi-privately—where I could see their comments but they couldn’t see each other’s comments.  I found a WordPress plug-in called, appropriately, Semi-Private Comments!  (Plug-ins—yet another reason I prefer WordPress to a course management system.) 
  • he main limitation is that it doesn’t help me grade those quizzes
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