When we talk about the value/effectiveness of a certain instructional strategy/method/approach, usually we measure the measurable outcomes, for example, the knowledge students have acquired, or the degree to which instructional objectives are achieved. But, think about students' personal development, the change/inspiration they get in their process of mental maturity. Won't instruction provide an underlying influence which will show its "outcome" in the long run?
Today the 3rd candidate Dr. Glazewski talked about her research in PBL. Let's take PBL as an example, won't it lead to some change in students' attitude toward many other things (the world, other people, ...)/the way of thinking/or something else? Such kind of influence is never taken into account in effectiveness study, also seldom considered in ISD evaluation phase.
Yes, I'd like to admit that this humanistic domain is hard to be measured, and no one can clearly predict what the actual, exact effect instruction has made on human development, even the learner him/herself. Here I want to mention my own experience in R685. I'm really highly motivated in this class. I learn with great enthusiam. The learning outcome is satisfactory. But maybe without the teaching methods of Dr. Bonk, I can still achieve that level of outcome. (No one can assert. Traditional instructional methods sometimes is quite efficient.) Let's assume that apart from the high motivation, nothing is different from traditional class, including what I have learned. But I can tell that the experience of having a class with creativity, explosure to numerous information, frequent interaction, etc., does bring me a new, surprising, inspiring view toward my understanding of instruction and my own learningm, and especially in my way of thinking. And that's something outside of the course objectives.
This may sound somewhat idealistic and romanistic. But learning and education is never limited to the specific knowledge, right?
BTW, I feel this blog is a good place for me to reflect on my professional learning and progress. Blogging motives me to contemplate a bit. It will be a pity if I quit this place right after the end of R685.
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Monday, December 6, 2010
Our cool video!
Final project does not mean the final for learning or the final for fun. Yue and I want to extend our enjoyment in this course, and thus collaborate on creating a video.
We are trying to reflect what web 2.0 and participatory learning mean to us, and express our personal feelings. Learning with technology and in a participatory way brings a lot of convenience, a lot of fun, and a lot of harvest. As we're international students in our first semester, adapting is painful. Culture shocks, language non-proficiency, new technologies and heavy load of work, all these pour to us. The swamp obstructed our steps. I'm so grateful to the support from friends and encouragement from professors, which helps maintain my conviction and confidence.
Anyway, it is painful but rather fruitful and full of joys, to produce this video, and to have actually learned something after such a busy semester. The sense of achievement works a bit for that joy, and every tiny pieces of implication/ enlightenment. As a student majoring in education, all the classes that I have taken are precious treasure for me to learn (Like a large amount of case studies~).
Blogging is really an effective method of reflecting our learning, and a great way to practice English writing for our international students. I don't feel as nervous as writing a formal paper. Instead, I know that some critical friends are going to read my blogs and I expect their comments (Eric Baumer, Mark Sueyoshi, & Bill Tomlinson. Exploring the Role of the Reader in the Activity of Blogging). So I write in a way of narration, like talking with those friends. I also consider my reflection blog as an ideal place to keep notes from articles, lectures and some other resources that I learned.
We mix many technologies for communications in the video, for they do provide us convenience. Whatever synchronous or asynchronous, they bring us together on the Internet, without the limitation of time and space. We use them to collaborate on academic work, and to know each other in daily life as well. Life is not all about study, and peers are not only co-workers. When living and working in an friendly environment, we will hopefully be more productive.
"Gift culture" is a notion that I love greatly. So we talk about OER, in an emotional way. It feels like many people are offering help to each other. Everyone can be accessible to the world talent. But informed by Jason's words, OER is not always perfect. It's like buying things: we have to accept the flaws of free things; but we will get equivalent services when paying for it. Anyway, OER movement is beneficial to many learners and institutions. And I'm one of them~
I tend to use elaborations or metaphors/analogies to help understanding. It's way of grasping distinguishing features of our learning object through comparison and analysis. And can be fun~ Hope those metaphors in our video can work for explanation, and create a little bit fun~
We are trying to reflect what web 2.0 and participatory learning mean to us, and express our personal feelings. Learning with technology and in a participatory way brings a lot of convenience, a lot of fun, and a lot of harvest. As we're international students in our first semester, adapting is painful. Culture shocks, language non-proficiency, new technologies and heavy load of work, all these pour to us. The swamp obstructed our steps. I'm so grateful to the support from friends and encouragement from professors, which helps maintain my conviction and confidence.
Anyway, it is painful but rather fruitful and full of joys, to produce this video, and to have actually learned something after such a busy semester. The sense of achievement works a bit for that joy, and every tiny pieces of implication/ enlightenment. As a student majoring in education, all the classes that I have taken are precious treasure for me to learn (Like a large amount of case studies~).
Blogging is really an effective method of reflecting our learning, and a great way to practice English writing for our international students. I don't feel as nervous as writing a formal paper. Instead, I know that some critical friends are going to read my blogs and I expect their comments (Eric Baumer, Mark Sueyoshi, & Bill Tomlinson. Exploring the Role of the Reader in the Activity of Blogging). So I write in a way of narration, like talking with those friends. I also consider my reflection blog as an ideal place to keep notes from articles, lectures and some other resources that I learned.
We mix many technologies for communications in the video, for they do provide us convenience. Whatever synchronous or asynchronous, they bring us together on the Internet, without the limitation of time and space. We use them to collaborate on academic work, and to know each other in daily life as well. Life is not all about study, and peers are not only co-workers. When living and working in an friendly environment, we will hopefully be more productive.
"Gift culture" is a notion that I love greatly. So we talk about OER, in an emotional way. It feels like many people are offering help to each other. Everyone can be accessible to the world talent. But informed by Jason's words, OER is not always perfect. It's like buying things: we have to accept the flaws of free things; but we will get equivalent services when paying for it. Anyway, OER movement is beneficial to many learners and institutions. And I'm one of them~
I tend to use elaborations or metaphors/analogies to help understanding. It's way of grasping distinguishing features of our learning object through comparison and analysis. And can be fun~ Hope those metaphors in our video can work for explanation, and create a little bit fun~
Sunday, December 5, 2010
What's learning like in people's eyes
All the way through learning in R685, I have heard about different scholars talking about their unique understanding of WHAT IS LEARNING LIKE, such as "I participate, therefore I am". It is such an engaging topic for us to think about!
Except explanations from those dominant learning theories, the following are vivid,fresh and meaningful.
As I have written about, John Seely Brown represents the idea of LEARNING BY PLAYING. "We can make learning fundamentally fun." He suggests an extension as what shows in the picture above. In the homo sapiens' world, tools are instruments in order to get something done; while the homo faber world begins to think of tools as a device to engage productive inquiry. A new notion is homo ludens, man as player. When learning like playing, learners are encouraged of being in freedom to fail, fail and fail again and then get it right, with their passion all the way. It's a play of imagination. They are also encouraged of learning as "riddles", leading to a reframing or re-registering of the world. The epiphany occurring in that process often maintains in the long-term memory.
Learning by playing indicates high motivation, full engagement, great freedom, lasting interest and concentration. I have been playing online games for a period of time. I was always thinking what makes games so attractive that players seldom get bored. There are stimuli from different dimensions: sense of achievements from every incentive, competition with other players, encouragement from peers, enjoyment of game contexts, etc, etc. All that I can come up with seems applicable to our learning as well. But very often it's not the case for us. Why can' t we learn like playing games? As long as touching the deep joy of learning, we cannot stop going on.
Another is Dr. Paul Kim, the researcher of mobile learning. He talks a little bit about his view of learning and teaching in the week 13 video chatting session. I'm not sure whether those pieces of words compose his entire opinion, or whether it is different from "learning by playing". But I think that is his deep-seated belief, which guides his research and his method to help those kids in the developing world. Let me introduce a little separately, as it is from a different but the same wise person. ^^
Call it LEARNING BY EXPLORING for a moment. Paul believes the ability of every child. He believes kids can explore and discover knowledge by themselves or by communication and collaboration among peers, without much help from the teacher. As to teaching, giving everything does not equal to learning everything; telling is not the true teaching. Teaching can somewhat shift to coaching, which provides students with adequate freedom to explore, to try and finally to learn.
We, as promising instructors, talk about individual difference from the very beginning of learning educational theories, but sometimes end up concentrating on our strategies, technologies, system models, etc, while the concept of learners almost throwing away. Maybe the role of teaching is not only coaching, but also tutoring or mentoring. Maybe education is not that powerful. What's truly powerful is men's ability to learn. Maybe teacher is not that important. What facilitates learning is the context and a desire to learn. Teachers facilitate those facilitators.
Ha, my thoughts are rambling...
Relevant Articles:
John Seely Brown (2010, June). Closing Keynote at the New Media Consortium 2010
in Anaheim, CA. A Culture of Learning. Gardner Campbell’s reflective blog post:
http://www.gardnercampbell.net/blog1/?p=1278; Video of keynote:
Except explanations from those dominant learning theories, the following are vivid,fresh and meaningful.
Learning by playing indicates high motivation, full engagement, great freedom, lasting interest and concentration. I have been playing online games for a period of time. I was always thinking what makes games so attractive that players seldom get bored. There are stimuli from different dimensions: sense of achievements from every incentive, competition with other players, encouragement from peers, enjoyment of game contexts, etc, etc. All that I can come up with seems applicable to our learning as well. But very often it's not the case for us. Why can' t we learn like playing games? As long as touching the deep joy of learning, we cannot stop going on.
Another is Dr. Paul Kim, the researcher of mobile learning. He talks a little bit about his view of learning and teaching in the week 13 video chatting session. I'm not sure whether those pieces of words compose his entire opinion, or whether it is different from "learning by playing". But I think that is his deep-seated belief, which guides his research and his method to help those kids in the developing world. Let me introduce a little separately, as it is from a different but the same wise person. ^^
Call it LEARNING BY EXPLORING for a moment. Paul believes the ability of every child. He believes kids can explore and discover knowledge by themselves or by communication and collaboration among peers, without much help from the teacher. As to teaching, giving everything does not equal to learning everything; telling is not the true teaching. Teaching can somewhat shift to coaching, which provides students with adequate freedom to explore, to try and finally to learn.
We, as promising instructors, talk about individual difference from the very beginning of learning educational theories, but sometimes end up concentrating on our strategies, technologies, system models, etc, while the concept of learners almost throwing away. Maybe the role of teaching is not only coaching, but also tutoring or mentoring. Maybe education is not that powerful. What's truly powerful is men's ability to learn. Maybe teacher is not that important. What facilitates learning is the context and a desire to learn. Teachers facilitate those facilitators.
Ha, my thoughts are rambling...
Relevant Articles:
John Seely Brown (2010, June). Closing Keynote at the New Media Consortium 2010
in Anaheim, CA. A Culture of Learning. Gardner Campbell’s reflective blog post:
http://www.gardnercampbell.net/blog1/?p=1278; Video of keynote:
Podcasting
(For week 14.)
I have been holding a bias that the content of podcast is always audios. A correct definition for a podcast can be "a digital media file (or series of files) that is distributed over the Internet." We have podcast, as well as vodcast which adds video to the podcast.
Audios add a different way to learn or layer of understanding for students. It's like the use of video, in line with the effect of dual coding theory. Cognition involves the activity of two distinct subsystems, verbal system and non-verbal system. Podcast extends learning beyond text to visual or aural memory, thereby fostering students dual coding of information (Paivio, 1986 from Lin, 2010).
Teachers can podcast to record lectures, summarize key points, show additional resources, etc. Students can use it to reflect their learning (as some of classmates have done), do projects, also show additional resources, etc.
In this respect, videos on YouTube can be called podcast. Blogs that contain videos or audios can also be called podcast. Podcast is a kind of broadcast. Then what's its difference from other resource sharing formats such as YouTube uploading and sharing activities in social networks? or is it a different dimension from them? I am slightly confused about this...
Suprisingly, I read from a survey in 2007 that 86.2% of the podcasters are males. Similiar phenomenon to contributions to Wiki. More than 90% pocasters have at least high school education. Similar to uploaders of YouTube. More than 80% are working full or half time and more than 60% are not single. Maybe work and love provide people with more experiences that worth sharing?
Podcast is not that money-consuming, but there's a conclusion that "North American podcasters tend to spend more money on podcasting than European podcasters". I'm just curious about how to spend money on podcasting...
Podcasters tend to target their audience to a small group and they interact well with their audience, via email or blogpage. Almost every podcast comes with a blogpage, but podcasters distinguish themselves from bloggers (How about classmates who do podcasting?^^).
People do podcasting mostly to share information or express their opinions.
In my eyes, podcasting is almost the same as blogging. The only difference is their formats of presenting information. One is in video or audio while the other is in texts.
Relevant articles:
Mocigemba, Dennis, & Riechmann, Gerald (2007, July). International Podcastersurvey:
Podcasters - who they are. How and why they do it. Retrieved on June 25, 2010,
Bonk, C. J. (2008, March). YouTube anchors and enders: The use of shared online
video content as a macrocontext for learning. Paper presented at the American
Educational Research Association (AERA) 2008 Annual Meeting, New York, NY.
Jason Lin. (2010). The Open Source and Open Education Movement. Web 2.0 and
Emerging Learning Technologies from Wikibooks. http://en.wikibooks.org
/wiki/Web_2.0_and_Emerging_Learning_Technologies
/The_Open_Source_and_Open_Education_Movement
Learning with mobile
(For week 13.)
This week we had a great guest speaker Paul Kim, from Stanford University. He has been doing abundant studies in mobile learning.
Most of his research is conducted in developing countries where children have few accesses to education, even fewer accesses to life of average standard. Paul developed a kind of mobile device with his group and sponsoring companies, and handed out these devices to each child. Kids were allowed to explore them without teacher's guidance, and in all cases they successfully got familiar with the use of devices through discussion and collaboration. Children can play different games in the mobile device, which involves the knowledge of math, language, etc. There are hundreds of levels in these games. Children can advance to next level by some efforts, but there is always another next level waiting to be achieved. Even Paul himself cannot achieve the highest level. It is such a great motivation for children to challenge, so as to keep learning.
These places for experiments are often poor areas. In some of them, electricity is available for only two hours a day. However, mobile devices need to be charged, and children have to connect their devices to a computer for updating of game programs inside. Paul talked to some univesity, residents and so forth in that area, to establish simple charging stations and computer service centers for all the kids. There are even some cute bicycles on which children can ride to charge their devices. The problem of sustainability seems almost solved.
This is really an amazing work that does help provide education to less developed regions, and gets satisfactory results. We may ask why it is mobile learning method that has been chosen, rather than popularizing computers or some other technologies. Paul considered that people in those areas do not have steady access to the Internet, electricity or even schools. Consequently, the benefits of Internet-based programs cannot reach these populations. Mobile technologies, on the other hand, are more economical, portable and flexible than traditional conputers.
I agree on its protability and flexibility, but cannot help doubting whether mobile technology is economical enough. Paul said each of these devices costed $50. Much less than a computer. However, although those children picked as Paul's experimental subjects have got access to mobile learning devices, many other children do not have the chance. If we think of generalizing mobile learning to all the developing world, who will take the charge of providing those devices and services? Obviously Paul cannot afford the large amount. $50 is not very much to US citizens and many other populations, but it can mean a lot to most of people who are still struggling on the poverty line. So, I really want to ask that in what circumstances can this mobile learning method be able to generalize?
Relevant articles:
Elizabeth Buckner & Paul Kim. (May 15, 2010). Storytelling among Israeli and
Palestinian children in the era of mobile innovation. (to be pulished in) AECT
2011 Educational Media and Technology Yearbook. Volume 36.
This week we had a great guest speaker Paul Kim, from Stanford University. He has been doing abundant studies in mobile learning.
Most of his research is conducted in developing countries where children have few accesses to education, even fewer accesses to life of average standard. Paul developed a kind of mobile device with his group and sponsoring companies, and handed out these devices to each child. Kids were allowed to explore them without teacher's guidance, and in all cases they successfully got familiar with the use of devices through discussion and collaboration. Children can play different games in the mobile device, which involves the knowledge of math, language, etc. There are hundreds of levels in these games. Children can advance to next level by some efforts, but there is always another next level waiting to be achieved. Even Paul himself cannot achieve the highest level. It is such a great motivation for children to challenge, so as to keep learning.
These places for experiments are often poor areas. In some of them, electricity is available for only two hours a day. However, mobile devices need to be charged, and children have to connect their devices to a computer for updating of game programs inside. Paul talked to some univesity, residents and so forth in that area, to establish simple charging stations and computer service centers for all the kids. There are even some cute bicycles on which children can ride to charge their devices. The problem of sustainability seems almost solved.
This is really an amazing work that does help provide education to less developed regions, and gets satisfactory results. We may ask why it is mobile learning method that has been chosen, rather than popularizing computers or some other technologies. Paul considered that people in those areas do not have steady access to the Internet, electricity or even schools. Consequently, the benefits of Internet-based programs cannot reach these populations. Mobile technologies, on the other hand, are more economical, portable and flexible than traditional conputers.
I agree on its protability and flexibility, but cannot help doubting whether mobile technology is economical enough. Paul said each of these devices costed $50. Much less than a computer. However, although those children picked as Paul's experimental subjects have got access to mobile learning devices, many other children do not have the chance. If we think of generalizing mobile learning to all the developing world, who will take the charge of providing those devices and services? Obviously Paul cannot afford the large amount. $50 is not very much to US citizens and many other populations, but it can mean a lot to most of people who are still struggling on the poverty line. So, I really want to ask that in what circumstances can this mobile learning method be able to generalize?
Relevant articles:
Elizabeth Buckner & Paul Kim. (May 15, 2010). Storytelling among Israeli and
Palestinian children in the era of mobile innovation. (to be pulished in) AECT
2011 Educational Media and Technology Yearbook. Volume 36.
Saturday, December 4, 2010
Learning by playing
(For week 11.)
Some scholars, instructors or educators believe learning to be fun. "Learning by Playing" is such an intriguing and exciting slogan!
John Seely Brown said in a video that we can make learning fundamentally fun. When learning like playing, learners are encouraged of being in freedom to fail, fail and fail again and then get it right, with their passion all the way. They are also encouraged of learning as "riddles", leading to a reframing or re-registering of the world.
Games provide learners with a new learning context, in which "recreation facilitates re-creation".
Inspired by this idea, people are now applying serious games and virtual worlds in educational context. These games often use three dimensional spaces, allowing learners to step inside the screen of their imagining. Besides the visualization, serious games and virtual worlds also allow us the potential to: provide support for our learning communities; broaden our networks of learners; provide tools to support creative learning activity and experience design.
The possibilities of the 3D web include the capability to integrate these and other
2D tools and tool kits, to support learner-generated content, to enable sharing of content and to allow us to visualise more clearly different scenarios of practice.
Game-based and virtual world applications has the capacity for integrating with different media and interactive resources, as well as integrating with available social software and collaborative tools. This opens up the option for learner groups studying out of normal hours of learning, or beyond the timeframe of the course, and open up real potential for learning outside the standard institutional framework.
With all these merits, serious games are not necessarily perfect. Work to enforce academic rigour, analysis and synthesis, as well as meta-reflection and higher order cognition, needs to be considered in learning design.
Interestingly, much evidence shows there is no significant difference between serious games and face-to-face or blended learning. Multi-modes of learning often accelerated learning and longer retention of information results. However, some studies indicate that game-based learning can change attitude, and can be engaging and motivating for learners.
Relevant articles:
Bonnie A. Nardi, Stella Ly, & Justin Harris (2007). Learning conversations in World of
Warcraft. forthcoming in Proc. HICSS 2007. Retrieved on June 25, 2010, from
John Seely Brown (2010, June). Closing Keynote at the New Media Consortium 2010
in Anaheim, CA. A Culture of Learning. Gardner Campbell’s reflective blog post:
http://www.gardnercampbell.net/blog1/?p=1278; Video of keynote:
Sara de Freitas (2008). Emerging trends in serious games and virtual worlds. Becta:
Emerging Technologies for Learning, 3, 57-72. Retrieved on June 25, 2010, from
Online rivals inperson
(For week 10.)
When talking about web technology for learning, we can never forget online courses. I myself am taking an online course this semester, which troubles me a lot, but also teaches me a lot.
I have read about a study of comparing the online learning engagement between distance learners and on-campus students. Those conclusions are surprisingly applicable to my situation, the same as what I have experienced and observed. Distance learners tend to experience “higher levels of academic challenge and reflective thinking, gain more in terms of practical competence and in personal and social development“, interact more with faculty, and participate more in leaning communities and independent study (Chen, Gonyea, & Kuh, 2008). They reveal weakness in only one area - active and collaborative learning.
As an on-campus student, I spent long time getting used to online learning, including e-reading, weekly discussion in the OnCourse forum and cooperation with distance students. Because I have to disribute my concentration to different courses, I didn't perform actively enough in group work earlier this semester. With the majority in our group being native speakers, I cannot understand many of their words typed during the group meeting. (We use breeze for meeting, but all of us tend to type...) I apologized a lot for my slow reaction in English. When I saw comments like "Shuya need more participation" in the mid-term peer evaluation, I was really embarrassed and stimulated. From then on, I tried to speak more, take more of the tasks, and reply to group emails as soom as possible. I don't know how much I have improved my performance or whether group members feel better about me. Whatever, I have tried my best...
This article mentions some recommendations for encouraging active and collaborative learning, which is from Dr. Bonk and Zhang. Online instructors can design assignments that feature group discussion, collaborative problem-solving, case studies, group blogging, team reflection papers, and debates. Assigning every student a "critical friend" in the class who provides feedback on course assignments is one way of ensuring that distance learners interact with peers. These are valuable online teaching methods that I need to write down and refer to when necessary.
Relevant articles:
Chen, P., R. Gonyea, and G. Kuh (2008). Learning at a distance: Engaged or not?.
Innovate 4 (3). Retrieved on June 25, 2010, from
http://www.innovateonline.info/pdf/vol4_issue3/Learning_at_a_Distance-__Engaged_or_Not_.pdf
When talking about web technology for learning, we can never forget online courses. I myself am taking an online course this semester, which troubles me a lot, but also teaches me a lot.
I have read about a study of comparing the online learning engagement between distance learners and on-campus students. Those conclusions are surprisingly applicable to my situation, the same as what I have experienced and observed. Distance learners tend to experience “higher levels of academic challenge and reflective thinking, gain more in terms of practical competence and in personal and social development“, interact more with faculty, and participate more in leaning communities and independent study (Chen, Gonyea, & Kuh, 2008). They reveal weakness in only one area - active and collaborative learning.
As an on-campus student, I spent long time getting used to online learning, including e-reading, weekly discussion in the OnCourse forum and cooperation with distance students. Because I have to disribute my concentration to different courses, I didn't perform actively enough in group work earlier this semester. With the majority in our group being native speakers, I cannot understand many of their words typed during the group meeting. (We use breeze for meeting, but all of us tend to type...) I apologized a lot for my slow reaction in English. When I saw comments like "Shuya need more participation" in the mid-term peer evaluation, I was really embarrassed and stimulated. From then on, I tried to speak more, take more of the tasks, and reply to group emails as soom as possible. I don't know how much I have improved my performance or whether group members feel better about me. Whatever, I have tried my best...
This article mentions some recommendations for encouraging active and collaborative learning, which is from Dr. Bonk and Zhang. Online instructors can design assignments that feature group discussion, collaborative problem-solving, case studies, group blogging, team reflection papers, and debates. Assigning every student a "critical friend" in the class who provides feedback on course assignments is one way of ensuring that distance learners interact with peers. These are valuable online teaching methods that I need to write down and refer to when necessary.
Relevant articles:
Chen, P., R. Gonyea, and G. Kuh (2008). Learning at a distance: Engaged or not?.
Innovate 4 (3). Retrieved on June 25, 2010, from
http://www.innovateonline.info/pdf/vol4_issue3/Learning_at_a_Distance-__Engaged_or_Not_.pdf
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