2:42 WELL SPENT

TVO offers a thoughtful video "How Should Schools be Using Technology in the Classroom?" that aligns with many of our discussions.

OUT OF MY BLOGGING MIND

So what would you consider a large class? 50 students? 100 students? 200 students? More?

How about 100,00 students?

Algong with mad student-management ideas, this video offers (somewhat similar to yesterday's discussion of Olds College) an example of one groups' approach to online learning.

What I wondered most about when watching the video was the online community - specifically whether the design of this course offered "benefits that online communication can bring to participants, from daily camaradarie to emotional support and real aid in time of crisis" (Rhingold, 1993 as paraphrased in Bruckman, 2008). I suspect that this course - as presented - still has work to do in this area, but feel the designers themselves are very aware of this also.

Another area of interest was that the course had deadlines. To have deadline or not to have deadlines is a topic that often arises when discussion online courses - Peter Norvig makes an excellent case for the need of deadlines.

Enjoy!

REFERENCE

Bruckman, A. (2008) Learning in Online Communities. The Cambridge Handbook of the Learning Sciences. New York: Cambridge.

COGNITIVE PODIATRY

In class we discussed the notion of  a “digital footprint”. The easiest way to get some sense of your internet foot size is simply entering your own name in Google, also known as “egosurfing”.  My top five egosurf results:

1.    The novel I wrote (The Frankenstein Murders)

2.    My LinkedIn profile

3.    My RateMyProfessors (dated) ratings

4.    My Facebook account

5.    A short story I wrote for a brand new e-zine (Dimensional Fallacy)

For a more robust consideration of your web presence, Google has Me on the Web, which “can help you understand and manage what people see when they search for you on Google”.

Chapter 31 of the Cambridge Handbook of the Learning Sciences is titled Internet Use in Schools: Promises and Problems (Schofeld). Among many other items, Schofeld speaks to “concerns about student safely stemming from the fact that students can use the Internet to interact with those they do not know”. Add to this the stories we have all heard of students posting inappropriate comments, photos, and videos on Facebook or some such place.  For Task 4, I intend to examine a second level business communications course that needs to be converted from hybrid/blended to fully online. Considering all this, I would very much like to make new media literacy a (significant?) part of the course.

BEWARE THE EVIL LECTURE

Yesterday's reading included computer-supported collaborative learning and "how people learn together with computers" (Stahl et al.). With this in mind, what  -if any - role does the traditional lecture and its inherent instructionism (Papert) play in teaching and learning, particularly e-learning when the goal is to "use a computer as a cognitive too for learning that occurs socially" (Rochelle and Teasley as cited in Stahl et al.).

CASE STUDY: Ital 310: Dantein Translation (an Open Yale course)

For anyone who has taken a liberal arts course, the style of  Ital 310 - specifically the delivery of information - should be quite familiar. The professor, NAME, stands at the front of an auditorium and speaks to the class. Students take notes and (maybe) ask questions at the end of the lecture. Those (like me) viewing the lecture series via my laptop, can review, stop, fast forward, but could not contribute to question period (the lone interactive component).

Professor Guiseppe Mazzota is a charismatic dynamic and passionate Dante scholar. His understanding (in English and Italian) of Dante's life and work is more than impressive. In addition, Professor Mazzota’s thourough examination of Dante’s cultural milieu through critical reading - including historically significant as well as contemporary literature –  looks intimately into the ideas, phrases, and words of Dante’s greatest work. And when Professor Mazzota reads - aloud in lyrical Italian - Dante's truly divine work, you are sorry when the reading stops even though you may not even understand the language.

REFLECTION

I audited the lectures and enjoyed them immensely. I would not change a thing. However, a friend and I did create our own mini-collaborative learning approach. We read ahead (some of Dante's other work plus related articles) and we met on a weekly basis to watch the lectures and discuss.

INQUIRY

What do you think is the viability of lecture in e-learning?

What would you do with a course such as this to make the learning more collaborative?

POP QUIZ: How is Dante's great work a "comedy"?

REFERENCE

Stahl, G. (2006). Computer-supported collaborative learning. The Cambridge handbook of the learning sciences. New York: Cambridge.

MERENGUE, MAMBO, Y ROLO

NAME THAT ERA

In-class inquiry: so did the people in the Renaissance know they were in the Renaissance?

I suspect the era was named after the fact. If so, what will the generations that follow us call this era? The Internet Renaissance? The Time of the Great Confusion? Bob (after my squirrel)?

Equally interesting might be alignments that might be made between the Renaissance Era. Can we equate Cervante's concern with silent reading to our own frustration with students in their own silent world: wearing earbuds and texting/listening to tunes in class (how dare they be engaged in something else!). And if what we live now is a sort of 21st Century Renaissance, what might we learn from the previous iteration to inform our own?

Interesting and somewhat related site: University of Calgary's Instituto Cervantes.

WHY YOU SHOULD READ CHAPTER 5

Chapter 5 - Cognitive Tutors - not only explores and provides examples of the use of computers for instruction, but also “Principles and Methods for Cognitive Tutor Design” and “Cognitive Tutor Meta-Design Principles”. What this might mean is that if you are interested in – or presented with – a cognitive tutor, but wish to analyze the credibility, reliability, and relevance of the technology, you could use these principles to evaluate the technology (sort of reverse engineering).

Why would you be interested in Cognitive Tutors? Scaffolding has proven to be a topic repeatedly encountered in both our readings and discussions. Scaffolding can be difficult to implement because of the costs involved to have teachers available for each student.  Using computers for instructions – specifically Cognitive Tutors – would likely be much more cost effective. For scaffolding via tutors to be effective it must be timely and “operate at the outer and growing edge of a [student’s] competence” (Gee, 2003). If not challenging enough, a student may lose interest, but this can also happen if too challenging. A cognitive tutor would allow students to be “pleasantly frustrate[ed]” – challenged yet not left to struggle along on their own.

REFERENCE

Gee, J.P. What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy. ACM Computers in Entertainment, Vol. 1, No. 1, October 2003, BOOK01.

JENN'S SOLUTION

Ahh technology...

The good news is that if you have experienced trouble commenting on someone's blog, you are not alone. Jenn's solution was to send me her comment via e-mail:

I enjoyed reading your analysis of the 10 approaches.  I could definitely relate to some more than others.  This reminded me of the recent dialogue on learning styles that have arisen with our group.  As a learner, I believe that we often rely upon the strategy: if at first you don’t succeed…..try and try again!  In a practical sense, we tend to utilize these strategies at different times throughout the learning process as we see fit.  There are some interesting connections between learning strategies and connections on the following website

The site offers everything promised, plus practical application ideas as well.

Thanks Jenn!

TEN APPROACHES

  1. Traditional

Read and take notes, quotes and paraphrase, full sentences and point form.

  2. Transcript

Will not miss any key point, but can be time consuming and onerous task – to which marginalia from medieval monks can attest.

  3. SQ4R
SScan, Question, Read, Respond, Record, Review

  4. Sticky Notes
  Or as they are sometime referred to Post-It (copyright 3M) notes. You can either use them to simply mark key areas, as well as add notes (see also #1).
  5. WTF

A more politically correct version of this migh be “?”. This note taking approach can either be marginalia or perhaps paired with #4. It is used to indicate that the section means nothing to you, so you may want to try it again later, or just ignore.

  6. Replay Retreat Retry

A technique I use often. If a text is not making sense, I will go back a page again (or even to the start). If that does not work, I put the text down, and try it again later. If that does not work, hope it is not on the test.
7.   “Dummie” or Pre-reading

Reading a summary, or Cole’s notes, or Dummie version first to prepare for the full text. For example reading Charles and Mary Lambs Shakespeare.

8. Introduction Visuals Conclusions

Read the beginning and end fully, but only scan the rest of the text for headings, charts, tables, graphs, and other images. This give you enough of a sense of the text to decide if you want to read more.

9. Is This Going To Be On The Test

Necessity: not just the mother of invention, also a great motivator. The drawback of this approach is it is most likely to lead a superficial - short term - understanding.

10. A Blend/All/None/Some of the Above

Your own personal blend, adaptation, or mutation that bests suits you and your current relationship with the text.

PRACTICAL APPLICATION - A Case Study

For Linn’s article, I started with technique #6, but moved quickly technique #8 which worked well primarily because of the tables included.  What helped even more was looking again at the text after class in which it was discussed.

SQUIRREL RESUSCITATION



(Jaimie, 2012)

For some reason, I have always imagined the inner workings of my brain as powered by a squirrel on a tread mill. Typically, my cognative calistenics are not terribly strenuous, and so my squirrel - I call him Bob -  is able to supply all the energy needed. Lately, however, Bob the Squirrel has been more than overtaxed (Jere Confrey nearly killed him). I think I need a bigger rodent.

Photo credit: Jamie

THINK PAIR SHARE

You can never have too many COOKIES!

Happy weekend!

DBR AND GENERAL EDUCATION

The more I hear and read about design-based research (DBR), the more it resonates. After reading Sasha Barab's chapter the first time, I asked a collegue if this is what we should be applying in order to make much needed changes to a particular set of fully online courses. The colleague, although immersed in educational technology studies herself, had also never before heard of DBR. What I see at this point is that DBR would offer us a chance to make systematic changes (rather than "bandaid" fixes) of which these online courses are in serious need.

The courses were originally created, over a decade ago, as a part of the MTCU Credentails Framework. The courses fall under the category of General Education, and most every program in an Ontario college must include at least one of these courses. To date, my college is the only one that chose to make the courses fully online.

The (now 35) courses were created by a variety of professors, from a various schools at the college. One professor was tasked with designing and developing the course outline, schedule, learning units, assessment/evaluation, and the Blackboard course site. While this approach to course development offered each professor complete freedom to be as innovative and creative as they wished, the course design approach was unique to them.

Over the past two or three years, these courses have been getting more attention in order to update them, but this has been done on a sort of "fly in, fix, fly out" approach. What DBR would offer to these courses is an approach to change over a longer period of time, and one that could include all stakeholders: students, faculty, and administration.

Working with developing and designing these General Education courses often feels quite chaotic. The courses are dynamic and unique, and fully online. Add to this that working with technology often feels like trying to shoot a moving target. I strongly suspect that a DBR approach to sytematically change these course would be one of the most effective approaches to making significant, viable, and relevant change.

INQUIRY AS STRESS REDUCTION TECHNIQUE

So there I am in class staring at the pages of the textbook - not at all an uncommon classroom activity and yet I am awash with a strange emotional cocktail of familiarity, perplexity, recognition, understanding, confusion, frustration and more. Stress levels are on the rise. "Why?" you might ask.  In answer, I would show you both my textbook and notebook. What you would see (respectively) are clean printed pages, and lined paper with "CH6 Learning in Activity p79-96" written in my hand at the top (but nothing more). Next I would show you the same items for both the previous and following chapters. You would no doubt notice my handwritten notes, marginalia, underlined text, arrows, stars, and even the occasional exclamation mark - all done to help me connect with the ideas presented.  But chapter 6 has none of this.


Student survival technique #1 activates automatically: do not make eye contact with the professor to reduce the likelihood that she will call on you. Not only does she not call on me, but - a bit later in the class - recommends to the using inquiry when faced with challenging readings. I could easily have explained away the pristine pages of chapter 6 as the result of confusion: chapter 5 was not required yet I have both read it and written notes on it. Inquiry: what is it about chapter 6 that caused me to read it yet not take notes as done with other readings? Again a cursory explanation could be applied: the chapter has no relevance to me. The truth lies in the other direction. The ideas Greeno presents seem to connect closely to a workplace project in which I am involved. This seems to have resulted in a sort of note taking paralysis - perhaps to avoid simply highlighting or underlining pretty much every word. I find Greeno's writing a challenge (perhaps it is the writing style?) and the chapters likely connections to the project seemed to have augmented this challenge.

INSTRUCTIONISM

Within each reading, I find something - often a number of things - related to current practices and conditions in the college where I teach. At the very beginning (the first page of the introduction) of The Cambridge Handbook of the Learning Sciences (Sawyer, 2006), the five bullet points clearly articulated a particular approach to teaching and learning which is - at least in my experience -far too prevalent. I suspect many teachers with whom I work would agree fully with those five points, and believe that the core component of their job is indeed to transmit facts and procedures to their students.


The source of this belief is likely not only was this the approach to teaching and learning they themselves experienced as students, but also because it is an "applied arts and technology" college.  Instructionism may have had some relevance when the college was founded (nearly 50 years ago), but that approach is at the very least stale-dated.  "Instructionism prepared students for the industrialized economy of the early twentieth century" but this is the early twenty-first century and we now have a "knowledge society" (Sawyer, 2006). 


A big question I now have - in the face of this - is what place my research interests might have. I am fascinated with video games and what studying them might tell us about teaching and learning. If you have not already read James Paul Gee's book What Video Games Have to Teach us About Learning and Literacy, I highly recommend it. But how palatable might ideas such as found in Gee's book be to faculty who have not necessarily come to terms with such entities as Google, Wikipedia, and more: the accessibility of information knowledge. What do I need t consider to make my own work palatable?


REFERENCES


Gee, J. P. (2007) What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Sawyer, R.K. (2006). The New Science of Learning. The Cambridge Handbook of the Learning Sciences. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 

TRACKING EXPERIENTIAL ACTIVE LEARNING

This is the title of research in which a coworker (Heather Farmer) and I are currently involved. Beginning with 12 “tested and true” Active Learning Practices (ALP) we analyze student perspectives on how such ALP are being implemented in-class, online, and also within social networks. Key considerations include how social networking practices might influence and improve the online classroom – specifically identifying systems surrounding the 12 ALP in order to develop concrete methodologies and approaches towards achieving the greatest benefit from an online learning environment.  With an applied approach to theoretical research our goal is to contribute to the teaching community and better understand the patterns and processes in ALPs with the application of developing strategies for integrating technologies in eALP contexts.

Allowing technology to “drive” teaching and learning would be ineffective – ignoring technology would be inefficient. Our ongoing research goal is to attain insights into the way people use technology and how it might best be applied in teaching and learning by surveying subjects on their experiences and perceptions as they relate to active learning strategies in both face-to-face and online environments. Ultimately, we hope to better understand how technology has influenced human social interactions and what this may mean to teachers and learners with regards to the implementation of ALP in the online classroom.