Week 8 Lions, and Tigers, and Wikis! Oh My!

Monday, October 18, 2010

In 2006, Times Magazine made "YOU" the person of the year. "YOU" won! "YOU" made it! What does this mean?! Are "YOU" a celebrity, a Nobel Peace Prize recipient, a world hunger campaigner? No! "YOU" simply have the mind to do anything that "YOU" put your mind to do. According to Brown and Adler, if our minds were on fire for learning, we could accomplish and achieve so much in a lifetime. The problem is too many people take learning for granted. Our minds are build on a A Circle of Knowledge Building and Sharing (Bonk et. al 2008) but we don't necessarily take advantage of this circle. We can obtain knowledge by many ways but it depends on if we choose to do so. For example, the Cartesian View of Learning states that knowledge is substance and the pedagogy as knowledge transfers where as the Social View of Learning states that understanding is socially constructed (Bonk et. al 2008). What is sad is that some people would prefer not to do any learning.

In my immediate small family which consists of my mother and I, I have always been told that learning is a gift and I should NEVER take advantage of it. Since my mother grew-up in the poverty stricken country-sides of Jamaica, school was the one place (other than church) where she could get away from her real life, learn, and expand what she know. My mom has always instilled it in me that there is plenty of knowledge out there to be gained by those who choose to do so and I am one that has to gain that knowledge. I took it for what it was but now as I am currently working on my Masters, I have realized that learning is something that I will forever do until the day I die.

A perfect example of learning that I have received over the past few months is the entire Wikimedia. Wikimedia includes Wikis, Wikipedia, and Wikibooks that make learning that easy! When I first learned about wikis a few years ago, I was told by my professors NOT to use them for any research or citing for projects, papers, etc. I did not understand why as information was so clearly written out. I learned that we, people, were the ones that posted and edited the information on Wikipedia for example. With this in mind, one task for this week was to go onto a specific Wiki page and make a change or edit. I have never done so as I thought that only the elite did so. One thing I got from this weeks class was how simple it was to change anything on Wikipedia. I halfway now understood why my professors frowned upon using this in researching but at the same time I didn't. Since learning comes from the outside and we learn from others, wouldn't editing Wikipedia help us to learn? I think yes. I have generally taken what I have learned with a grain of salt. When I hear a topic that I am very interested in, I do not fully understand, or I do not agree with it, I tend to do my own research to make more sense of it to myself. To me, this is learning. In fact, to anyone, this should be seen as learning. With Wikipedia, I can take what is posted with a grain of salt an find other articles, books, and components to back up the information. If done correctly, Wikipedia and other Wikimedia will be great tools for learning transfers.

Why someone would not want to take advantage of learning especially since we are never to old to learn and there are endless opportunities to do so daily is beyond me.

References:
1. Brown, J. S. and Richard Adler. Minds on Fire: Open Education, the Long Tail, and Learning 2.0. Educause Review, January-February, 2008.

http://connect.educause.edu/Library/EDUCAUSE+Review/MindsonFireOpenEducationt/45823

2. Bonk, Curtis, Mimi Miyoung Lee, Nari Kim, and Grace Lin. "The Tensions of Transformation in Cross-Institutional Wikibook Creation, Critique, and Collaboration: Looking Back Twenty Years to Today" PowerPoint. AERA. NY, NY March 2008 and Chicago April 2007.

Week 7 A Confusing "ism"

Monday, October 11, 2010


Since I have started the IST program, we have learned so many terms. All of the "ism" have been quite difficult to interpret as there are so many theories behind them that in a sense explain them slightly different but different enough to make them confusing. Connectivism is no different. When I saw the agenda, boy was I not at all happy as this is a topic that has been brought up in every single IST class that I have taken at IU. Connectivism states that knowledge exists in the world rather than in the head of an individual. Sounds easy enough, right? Wrong! I did find a YouTube video that helped to clarify my year and a half confusion so please check it out: Connectivism and Connective Knowledge.


Nicholas Carr wrote Is Google Making Us Stupid? Honestly, it depends on ones perception. Mimi Ito's stated that we are making ourselves stupid. We rely to much on at hand information rather that researching for ourselves. To me, I use Charles Darwin as an example. What if he had decided that he wasn't going to go research in the Galapagos Islands and long story short develop the Theory of Evolution? Then he nor his theory would have been well known internationally by him and humankind's thought on the theory on life would have potentially yet to been questioned. On the counter hand, John Seely states that Google is making us stupid. If we do not know an answer, we simply search it. Google has taken the place of search. Other search engines are out there such as Bing but Google is still popular and well used. to me, I believed that both people are saying the same things just in different ways. It goes back to the idea of Connectivism. Though it is a simple definition, here we have two well known scholars explaining it in very different terms.


I started this week with the questions:
1. What exactly does the term Connectivism mean in relations to IST?     
2. What is the importance of Connectivism?
3. Is connectivism a learning theory or a pedagogy?
4. Is learning able to reside or exist in non-human appliances? Explain.
5. What is the significance of zeitgeit in terms of connectivism?
I still feel like I could not answer any of these. I did like Abdullah's explanation of #1 in that "In general I think Connectivism is a nice approach to learning that can be utilized by IST folks while designing instruction" (October 2010), however I would like an expansion of how.


This is one topic I do not truly think I will ever fully understand. 


References
1. Charles Darwin. "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life," 1859.
2. Abdullah Altuwaijri. Oncourse -> Forums -> Week 7 Connectivism, Social Knowledge, and Participatory Learning. Posted October 24, 2010. 

Week 6: Have you had your OERo today?

Monday, October 4, 2010


Last time I blogged, I mentioned how Open Source Software is not being implemented in schools like it should be in this day and age. There are many reasons why but the one I truly believe is that teachers simply do not know about Open Source. 


The first thing we did this week was a have a Breeze chat with Anya Kamenetz. It was an interesting start to class due to the series of technology malfunctions we had to start the class. Though we are promoting e-Learning, we were reminded that technology still has kinks in it to be fixed. When we started the interactive chat, I quickly realized that she was a young, successful entrepreneur. She is the writing of DIY U...Do-it-Yourself University. In it she talks about alternative education. (Please watch the  YouTube Anya Kamenetz on Alternative Education.)Students in the class asked many questions about her book. I actually went out and rented the book from the library. In it she stated three ways that DIY U can help the future. The second point, "Opening up the walls of the Ivy League & other elite colleges can demystify what goes on there and possibly even endear it to the public". First I thought this was an interesting point. If elite colleges were open to all, would all college students be on the same playing field? I think no as there are levels and schools within schools that makes them "elite colleges". Look at IU, IU is a good school but it is not a deemed "elite school" however schools such as the Kelley School of Business is an internationally elite and established business school. Secondly, I find it interesting that she made this point as she herself is a graduate of Yale University. What does she mean by this? I would love to know.

Next Dr. Bonk assigned four OER's to each one of us. Open Educational Resources are "Free-to-Use teaching and learning content from around the world" (OER Commons 2007). The ones I was assigned to explore were:

1. Tufts University’s OCW: http://ocw.tufts.edu/
2. Vietnam Fulbright Economics OCW: http://ocw.fetp.edu.vn/home.cfm
3. The Rai Foundation Colleges OCW project in India: http://www.raifoundation.org/aspirations.html  
4. Teacher lesson plan sites: (see http://www.lessonplanspage.com/ and http://www.sitesforteachers.com/

My favorite out of all four was Hotchalk's Lesson Plan. It was so easily and simply to explore that it should be Lesson Plan for Dummies...but of course getting permission to use "for Dummies". So say I am a new teacher and I wanted to create a lesson. I would click on subject, grade level, category, and specific lesson. The lessons could incorporate several lessons like a recap or review or it could be one thing. For example: Math -> Pre-K - 1 -> Addition -> This lesson is on patterns, adding, and counting. It is so simple to develop a lesson plan as it has the topic, the grade level, the name of the activity (which teacher can change to suit the dynamics of their class), materials, purpose, and description of the activity. There are even sample problems that teachers can use. With sources such as this, especially FREE, there is only one reason why I can see teachers not using OER's...and that is because they do not know about them. We HAVE to get the word out there!

Atkins, Seely, and Hammond (2007) did A review of the open educational resources (OER) movement: Achievements, challenges, new opportunities. In their findings, they listed way more challenges than achievements. As a student, I find this disheartening as Open Source can also be used in Higher Education. Yes, there are new opportunities such as finding ways to both "advertise" these OER's to teachers as well as educate these teachers but we still seemly run into the challenge of teachers wanting to take the time to learn as learning then planning around their subjects in itself can be time consuming especially with subjects that get updated regularly. Though it is easier said than done, life is full of changes so deal with them.

References:
1. DIY U: Edupunks, Edupreneurs and the Coming Transformation of Higher Education. Chelsea Green Publishing. February 2010.
2. OER Commons. 2007. Retrieved Monday, November 22, 2010 from  http://www.oercommons.org/ 
3. Atkins, Dan, Brown, John Seely, & Hammond, Allen (2007, February). A review of the open educational resources (OER) movement: Achievements, challenges, new opportunities. William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. (84 pages). Retrieved on June 25, 2010, from http://www.oerderves.org/?p=23

Week 5: Do you Sakai?

Monday, September 27, 2010


This week we did a mini-conference on Open Source Software. For those not familiar with this according to Wikipedia (2010), "Open Source Software (OSS) is computer software that is available in source code form for which the source code and certain other rights normally reserved for copyright holders are provided under a software license that permits users to study, change, and improve the software". The class was divided into 5 conference sessions each of which were 30 minutes long. Each conference had guest speakers and a moderator who kept the conference going with questions and data.

In my first conference session (#2), I played Brad Wheeler. This name is very familiar on IUB's campus as Dr. Wheeler is the Vice President of Information Technology & CIO, and a Professor of Information Systems at IU Kelley School of Business. Internationally he is well known for co-founding Kuali, the HathiTrust, and most importantly the Sakai Project. The Sakai Project is known as a "transformative software and service collaboration for teaching and learning in higher education". He is not simply known as Dr. Wheeler but as the Sakai guy.

In this conference session, we discussed The Open Source Cause at EDUCAUSE. "EDUCAUSE is a nonprofit association whose mission is to advance higher education by promoting the intelligent use of information technology" (EDUCAUSE, 2010). Speaker on this panel included:

1. Mitch Kapor, the founder of Lotus Development (bought by IBM) and the  designer of Lotus 1-2-3 used by IBM.

2. Sally Johnstone, First Executive Director of WCET

3. James Hilton, Vice President and Chief Information Officer at the University of Virginia 

This was a heated battle as all of those on the panel, though they all had very high militant ranks in the Information Technology department of their prospective organization, they all had very different views of the process and how it should be done.

In my second conference session (#4), I chose between Toru Iiyoshi and Cheryl Richardson as they have worked collaboratively. I chose to be Cheryl Richardson for the mere fact that I listened to her radio show and was drawn in by her words and thoughts in her very professional yet personal public speaking abilities which caused me to feel extremely connected to her as though I was in the studio having her talk specifically to me. This conference session discussed the innovate looks at Open Source in Schools and Beyond. Panelist included:

1. Gary Hepburn, who discussed the strategies and many challenges of getting Open Source implemented into schools.

2. Robert Stevenson (of which I am still unsure of what he does)

This conference was more of a background on what each person does and less of a debate like the previous conferences.

Other conference sessions were The Gaudi Cathedral and the Really Bazaar, The Movement of Open Source from North America to China and An Intimate Session with the Founders of Open Source. I found this week difficult to blog on as I learned a tremendous amount during each conference that I had little to no knowledge about prior to this which was extremely different from the past 4 weeks where I knew somethings even if in very little detail prior to the When we debriefed, we were given a prop from Dr. Bonk's bag. My prop was that of a light bulb which meant I had to state the new idea or awareness that I received during this conference. During the break i had text five friends from different departments (Biology, Linguistics, Kelley School of Business, Art, and Music) the text: If I say Open Source Software, what does it mean? the only person that didn't text me back something like "what are you talking about", was my friend Michael S. who was a senior studying Finance in the Kelley School of Business Honors College. I was shocked! Something so important, not that many people know about. Though my conclusion of this came from a small number, it was still shocking. It made me wonder what other types of technology that are rapidly become prevalent that the average person just overlooks. Yikes!

References:

Bradley C. Wheeler, Ph.D.

EDUCAUSE

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!