Week 4: To blend or to fully online...that is the question?

Monday, September 20, 2010

During this week, we spent a lot of time looking at "The Continued Expansion of Blended and Fully Online Learning" as the title of week 4's agenda stated.

Before we get into this weeks topic, let me give you a little background as why this is one of the best week of this class that we have for this semester. In the spring when it was time to register for classes, I had no idea which classes to take. The reason being my first year as an IST student was very much structured as the majority of the classes that I had taken were almost all requirements for the Masters of Science program. Since the second year left it open to the classes that I could take, my choices seemed limitless however this made it difficult as I was not sure what my niche was in terms of IST. I first decided to talk to both doctoral students and second year masters' students to get a sense of the classes that they would recommend. Long story short, 2 of the 3 classes suggested to me had one common theme, Dr. Bonk as the Professor. Secondly, I have a wonderful professional relationship with my advisor and I value her opinions and suggestions so I thought she was the perfect person to get advise from. Once again, the reoccurring "theme" of Dr. Bonk popped up. I decided to do a little research on this professor by looking first at his Indiana University School of Education Profile C J Bonk, Ph. D. The information written was quite basic however he did have a link to his website. Professor Curt Bonk's e-Learning World was what sold me. He had so much to look at that I did not know where to start. I simply decided to click on random links and just see what he was all about. In the 30 minutes that I explored his page I was both fascinated and anxious all at the same time. I was fascinated to see how a professor TRULY loved what he was doing with this life but at the same time I was anxious to know what I was getting myself into.

With all this said, this brings me to week 4 of this class. By something simple as Oncourse, C J Bonk, Ph. D profile, and Professor Curt Bonk's e-Learning World this showed howe important e-Learning is to our current education process. You may be thinking "How my friend?" I am glad you ask and I am about to explain. In this growing age and time, both blended learning and online learning have exploded exponentially especially over the past few years. At this point in time if you are even a grade school student less alone a college student and you have not been exposed to at least one of these phenomenal, then you must either be living in an electricity ridden, unexposed, submerged environment. Though this may should harsh, in a sense it is the truth. Why? Let us take Indiana University for example. It is  impossible to get a degree without at least receiving one's education through blended learning. All of IU's traditional campus classes are no longer "traditional" as they incorporate more than going to a classroom, sitting in a class, listening to a lecture, and going home to study through physical books. They use blended learning tools such as Oncourse, online tools specific to the class (i.e. CALM) or a website specific to a certain class (i.e. CJBonk's Syllabus) that in itself may have many links to external devices like articles, YouTube, or blogs for example.

The various articles that we had to read for this week from the Sloan Reports* had one major theme: the growing on online learning. Each of these reports talked about blended and online learning growing. If you did not realize it by now either by our society or from previous information in this blog, then I hope that these various Sloan Reports will help you to see this. We learn that education is Growing by degrees: Online education in the United States. People can not only get certifications and associates online, they can also get hefty degrees such as Ph. D's online. The question now how received are these degrees by U.S. corporations and the like? In the Sloan Report of Blending in: the extent and promise of blended education in USA, which was explored in 2007 talks about the increase of blended learning and it will continue to grow and become almost needed for years to come. Earlier I mentioned that e-Learning is not specific to Universities but also used among grade schools students. In the article K-12 Online Learning: A 2008 Survey of U.S. School District Administrators it explored students learning, school districts, and retention of those using e-Learning versus those using traditional. Obviously, those engaged in e-Learning were better prepared for the next phase in life (i.e. secondary school or even something simple as the next week of school).

We explored as well which more or less showed the same impact perceived in the Sloan Reports. One of the other articles that stuck to me was that of John F. Watson, A National Primer on K-12 Online Learning (April 2007). In he talked about the three positives on Online Learning. First, those who engaged in online learning especially the younger students had better written communication. Second, the time management skills of both the teacher and students were immensely improved. Third, those who  exhibited the use of online learning increased their technology figuration. For example, when they had any technology malfunction they were first more inclined to try to figure it out on their own than those who did not who were more inclined to either give up or immediately ask for help.

Online Learning is almost 100% essential in our society less alone internationally though we are focussing on the USA. For example, in 2005 when Hurricane Katrina occurred, those who went to school in that area needed a way to continue their education. Berkeley College played a role in helping to make this happen. Sharon Goldstein of Berkeley College explains the need for Online Education. Please see the video, Berkeley College Online: The Benefits of Online Learning, to hear her thoughts.

So to answer the original question at hand, "To blend or to fully online". You should know that answer by the conclusion of this blog if not before...Duh!


*Sloan Report (2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010) and Free Report Downloads.

Week 3: STEM

Monday, September 13, 2010

Week 3: Guest Lecturers

This week, I lost a fight against allergies that caused me to stay at home which made me miss class. Fortunately, my allergies picked the best week to defeat me as this lecture with two special guests were recorded and posted via Breeze! Whew! 

Who is Dr. Michael Mayrath? Dr. Mayrath completed his Ph. D. in Educational Psychology at the University of Texas. "His research focuses on how innovative technologies can be used to enhance learning and assessment" (Academia.edu, 2010). Who is Priya Nihalani? Ms. Nihalani is currently working on her Ph. D. in Psychology and has worked hand-in-hand with Dr. Mayrath. Together, their forces combined to create and present the lecture entitled "Education in the 21st Century: Games, Virtual Worlds, Simulations, Mobile learning and E-Textbooks". They started out the lecture with a quote from Dr. Jackson "Our science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) workforce is the backbone of our innovation economy and the source of our economic and national security". Dr. Jackson is the president of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. To me, this quote states that these educational categories combined (science, technology, engineering, and math) will continue to be grow and be positive effect, monetary wise, throughout our American society and around the world. These are the big economic factors in our society. 

With this said, why are we pushing so heavily towards STEM? Math and Science are ranked by teenagers 28th and 24th respectively and those getting engineering degrees have decreased for over 25 years. Should we continue to push these? Prior to me becoming a Master's student in IST, I would have probably stated no. I was a Biology major for undergraduate and I did it as I wanted to go to Medical School. If you looked back to high school days, I had a niche for languages, writing, and figuring out puzzles meaning, I love to experiment like in Chemistry. However, Biology was not my forte in college. I excelled in courses in Education, Spanish, and Music. I met a Ph. D. student who say that I would make a good candidate in the IST department. This student, Simmone, not only was correct, but she became my mentor. Now that I have embedded over a year in this program, I personally can answer this question as a yes. We should push for STEM. In this technology advancing society, there is almost a need for this push.

In Dr. Mayrath's and Ms. Nihalani lecture, they talked about Neomillenial Learning Styles. This basically is teaching students multi-media learning through web, e-learning, wiki's etc. In our society, this type of learning is completely necessary in this technology advancing world. It is unfortunate that more than half of the nation's schools are not placing any emphasis on media learning and more than 3/4ths of schools say they have to learn the media information by themselves meaning that they 1)could possibly learn the media incorrectly or 2)not learn the hidden concepts and fully take advantage of the media. This society will only see an increase in technology as time goes so it is best to learn technology from an early age so it is easier to embed more information as the technology continues to advance as one gets older.

Week 2: WE-ALL-LEARN

Monday, September 6, 2010

Week 2

Last week we ended with the unanswered question of: What is "Open World?" This week, I hope to answer this question. First we started with quotes from Wedemeyer and Bush. For a very quick statement, Bush contributed to digital media back in the mid-forties while Wedemeyer contributed to distance education in the early 80s. As a side note, overwhelmingly, the majority of class liked the quotes of Wedemeyer.

I found out that the Web is a learning tool but how much of the web should one believe and trust? The term Web 2.0 has been tossed around and like H20. It is a term that everyone knows what it means without a need for a definition. Just to be clear, "Web 2.0 is commonly associated with web applications that facilitate interactive information sharing, interoperability, user-centered design, and collaboration on the World Wide Web" (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0 20, September 2010).

Dr. Bonk states that WE-ALL-LEARN! This is an acronym that states that there are 10 forces that opened the learning world. W: Web Searching in the World of e-Books, E: e-Learning and Blended Learning, and A: Availability of Open Source and Free Software such as Moodle just to name the first 3. (Note: Please see Week 2 PowerPoint for all 10). Going back to week one, we learned bout triple Learning Technology Convergence and in terms of WE-ALL-LEARN, this term combines pipes: the availability of tools and infrastructure for learning, pages: the availability of free educational content and resources, and participatory learning culture: a move towards a culture of open access to information, international collaboration, and global sharing (Digital Learning Skills and General Learning ppt. Bonk, 2010).

In my opinion, WE-ALL-LEARN is a perfect acronym to encompass these 10 openers. I personally feel like some parts of the acronym are better than others in terms of Digital Learning Skills. Opener #1, Web Searching, is a great tool however it depends on where the information is coming from. We live in a society where we Google something if we do not know it. For example, I have conversations with my friends such as how may pints are in a gallon. If no one knows, we simple say, google it! That is great and dandy but what if the first answer is incorrect or what if there are 10 answers but all of them are different? There are so many opinions and ideas out there, how do we know which one is correct? Opener #6, Learner Participation in Open Information Communities which includes Wikipedia. This is a great idea that has expanded to Wikibooks and being in many languages, but now everyone thinks they are a teacher. How do we know which information is the correct one? Opener #9, Real-Time Mobility and Portability that makes information availability to any and everyone in their purse, pocket, or on their hip with a simple touch of a button.

All of these concepts are great tools in WE-ALL-LEARN however I am unsure about the extent of the information. How can we verify what we get on the web through google, wikipedia, our phone are accurate? To me, I do agree with Dr. Bonk over the ideas of Friedman, Smick, and Florida in the sense that the world is open. The World is Open but because it is open, does it mean it is accurate? No! How do we ensure what we get is the correct information? This is something that I as a person, a student need to know!

Week 1: Intro to Open World and Neo Millennial/Web 2.0 Learners

Monday, August 30, 2010

Week 1: The first day of IU classes

We started this class off with a brief introduction into the syllabus. I use the term brief very lightly as the syllabus for this class is not a sheet of paper, nor a simple pamphlet, nor a short story but it is a book in itself for this class. I thought to myself "Oh boy...What did I get myself into?!" After this task was completed, we did simple introduction of ourselves in the class. Here I found out that there were well over 10 different countries represented in a less than 20 person class. Wow! Dr. Bonk did not waste anytime after the introduction, and went straight into the lecture. I was in for a big surprise!

What does the phrase "Open World" mean? Let's start out with the idea that the world is flat broke according to Thomas Friedman. The world became flatten through 10 forces from the collapse of the Berlin Wall (11/9/89) to the launching of Netscape (8/9/95), as well as both Outsourcing and Insourcing. The idea of triple convergence: new economic players, playing field, and processes, acted on the flatteners which created a flatter global playing field. David Smick completely disagreed with this idea and decided that the world is curved. Richard Florida disagreed with both of these ideas and stated that the world is spiky. 

This led to another disagreement and the development of the idea that the world is open. This idea leads us to Dr. Bonk and his "The World is Open with Web Technology" class. Honestly, by the end of these ideas, I did not know what to think or believe. There was so many ideas an thoughts thrown my way that I felt completely overwhelmed. Within 10minutes, I had been given four very different opinions about one idea and I knew right there that this class would be quite interesting. I did not get a direct answer to the phrase "open world" but I was hoping that I would via the articles I had to read for the class in the next coming week.