Is a little nostalgia appropriate?

I've been visiting several blogs and starting to feel a little sad about the course drawing to an end. while I am as tired as the next person with the usual end of course crunch, I will miss the interaction and Dr. D's "tool of the week" roll-out. Like so many have commented in their blogs, I have come unbelievably far over the last 12 weeks. I no longer feel like "technically impaired" as my family fondly daubed me prior to this class. In all honesty, I don't know how many of the tools I will use in the future. What matters is that I now know they are out there with a whole lot more. If I'm working on a paper, a lesson or whatever and think, "It would be great if there were a tool that could....[fill in the blank]" I know chances are there probably is and I Google it. Before I would never have thought of such a thing. At times it was truly challenging and even frustrating but I'm glad I stuck with it and thank you, Dr. Dennen, for your limitless patience and encouragement.

"Instructional Designer wanted: No experience necessary"

That's the title of Alan Reid's 2012 article which was published in Inside Higher Ed, Both the article itself and the responses it evoked were very honest, passionate and thought-provoking. I quote: "Interactive, customized and adaptive text should be the next educational technological milestone but not like this........we continue to build an increasingly accessible virtual world where we can act as professional instructional designers, physicians and stock traders; with no experience necessary.....Technology doesn't make us experts (Reid, 2012). He makes a good point about technology being so ubiquitous and how anyone can acquire information on pretty much any topic which, therefore, makes them an expert...not really. In the article Reid expresses concern over Apple's iBooks Author which invites every Tom, Dick and Harry to publish textbooks on any subject of their choosing. While he received some responses expressing sympathetic support, the majority of respondents basically communicated a sentiment that went something like: Get out of the way, buddy, or the Mack Truck of Technology will roll right over you and crush you. Reid believes education should be utilizing newer technologies to enhance and benefit faculty and students alike and I think we all pretty much agree on that in this class. If I were to undergo any kind of surgery or treatment, I would want the best surgeon using the latest technology available. The point is that the latest and greatest advancements of our time are only as good as the abilities and skills of the person utilizing them. The wide-spread availability of new tech tools and toys will, no doubt, result in some unfortunate casualties. It will also encourage us to more carefully investigate what and how we eventually choose. However, it will also allow for innovative, "non-expert" ideas and approaches to be easily introduced which, in turn, can be streamlined or redesigned by others with more formal training in the field to the benefit of all concerned. As Reid himself notes, current technology is encouraging everyone to become experts on everything but that does not actually make us experts. It just makes us more knowledgeable on any subject we choose to research. So despite the "pantheon of tools available out there", I believe trained experts will always be necessary to ensure that a quality product or service is delivered. http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2012/02/13/essay-do-apples-design-tools-make-it-too-easy-create-textbooks-and-courses#.TzmQB3r2zRM.mailto

Flourishing Teams

Please take a few minutes to visit my wiki on creating successful teams. http://teamworksuccess.wikispaces.com/

YouTube Video by successful international IDer

"Cognition and Technology: Mutual drivers in a symbiotic relationship" Yep! That's the title of my almost final paper in my other online course. There's still another one due next week in that course as well plus an end of term quiz Total of four (yes, 4) papers and a quiz in two weeks. Sleep anyone? I'm trying to quit(hardly). If it were just school work, I think it would be alright but since the middle of last week, life has gotten very complicated due to a series of poorly-timed events. Each event individually would rate an "OK" to "Excellent" but string them all together and it is beyond stressful since I haven't quite figured out how to be in two counties at one time while trying to oversee construction in our new townhouse and pack and move by next Tuesday/Wednesday. Thank you Dr. Dennen for the extension and reprieve from articles! Maybe one day we'll all publish something astonishing that reshapes mankind for the better. In the meantime, I'm extending an invitation to anyone who visits my blog to take a look at my sister-in-law, Diane's YouTube video (link below). She owns her own ISD company in Milan, Italy and works all over Europe. Talk about networking. She's got her finger in so many pies, it's fattening just to think about it. She asked me to share it with some people before she posts it to LinkedIn. You're people. So if you have comments for her, post them here and I'll pass them on. Thanks. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82XPCZd3FYU&feature=em-uploademail

Are online relationships easier?

In my culture, food has always been of tantamount importance. Some of my best memories growing up were of my grandmother, aunt and mom working into the wee hours preparing mountains of food for someone's wedding, birthday or a special holiday. Our house was fairly centrally-located and since my mom was the eldest of 7 siblings and my grandmother lived with us, aunts, uncles and cousins stopped by every evening and on Sundays to visit or share a meal with us. Even family outings to the beach never involved sandwiches. There was always delicious and abundant food. When I got married, I carried on the tradition. We've moved several times within the state of Florida and wherever we've moved, I've tried to make our home a center of hospitality. I enjoy cooking and feeding people....until recently. We moved to Tallahassee three years ago and I immediately had neighbors and church friends over for dinner...almost every weekend for the first several months and then on a more intermittent basis but still fairly regularly. At work, if I knew of a co-worker who did not have family or anywhere to go for Christmas or Thanksgiving, I would invite them over. My husband did the same for people on his bowling league. For the first time in my life, I experienced people who would either refuse the invitation to be alone during the holidays or who accepted the invitation but did not call and did not show for dinner. Aside from being inconsiderate and just plain rude, I found this unexplainable lack of social grace, discouraging. Gradually, my entertaining tapered and once I started grad school, it came to a screeching halt due to lack of time and disposable energy. I saw one of my neighbors tonight and she said, "I miss your cooking". I told her I was trying to quit. Maybe its just Tallahassee or that people are becoming more withdrawn and less social in general for whatever reason. Personally, I no longer feel the need to connect as much in a face-to-face environment. My coursework, husband, kids, occasional neighborly exchange and online interaction seem satisfying enough. I was emailing someone this weekend and wrote, "Online interaction is so much easier and requires so little energy". Especially when it's casual and NOT required for working on a graded project! Kind of sad though, don't you think?

Supporting Performance and Learning

Since so many bloggers in our class do not visit the DB much, I'm going to solicit help via my blog as well as the DB. From the past semester of online classes which required we work in groups or teams of 4, I realized that there should be a course offered to students to help us acquire the skills and abilities necessary to work successfully in groups. Since most online students do not know each other, trust (or lack of)is a major problem. After working on everything individually in a competitive arena, the gears have switched and now we've discovered the sum is better than the individual parts. It takes some getting used to. Conflict resolution, communication, distribution of roles and responsibilities, facilitation and tactful, sensitive leadership are all requirements in addition to humility (there's a word we don't hear often anymore, knowledge on some aspect of project and appreciation of what others are contributing to the team. In articles I've read, many companies are asking universities to focus more on preparing students to work effectively in teams when they hit the "real working world". Hence, I would like to set up a wiki (??), generate a Twitter thread (??) or use some other tool to provide support for the learning of the much sought-after skill or ability of group work and solicit others to share their ideas on how to facilitate the process, their success stories, nightmare team, etc. What do you think about the topic? Do you think it would draw interest and be helpful? Especially, do you have any platform(s)or tools you think would be particularly to use? My creativity is at a super low point and I crave your input!!!! Thanks.

Trivia

I've granted myself permission to occasionally post something of a trivial nature. Since the past couple of weeks have been rather draining due to a series of unforeseeable events and the next two weeks don't hold much promise of a change in tone, tonight's the "occasional" night. Have you noticed that the CAPTCHAS have changed? Every time I post a comment to a blog, I'm prompted to interpret a CAPTCHA, which is supposedly dual-purposed: 1) It proves I'm not a robot/spammer 2)It aides in the task of translating old, almost illegible manuscripts into readable text (sounds like a small packet of bologna to me but, who knows?) They used to irritate me no end. Then I almost began to enjoy them. And then they changed. Instead of challenging, barely legible squiggles, I am now seeing 3 or 4 numbers. What happened? Did the bots get smarter or did we run out of old manuscripts?

"When one professor can teach 50,000 people it alters the economics of education" - Andrew Ng, Stanford University

Recently, I came across one of the most exciting articles I have read to date about the impact of technology on education. It dealt with MOOCS and a few professors from Stanford who helped get the ball rolling. Their motive? To make quality education available FOC to all interested parties with Internet access. The number of responses to MOOCS has been staggering. Granted, there is a very high attrition rate. In one case cited in the article, 160,000 people from 197 countries signed up for an online course offering on artificial intelligence but only 23,000 completed it…..Only 23,000?!! That is amazing!!! The article entitled "Campus 2.0" is only about three pages long and full of information that contributed to my excitement regarding the future of education and learning and has renewed my belief in the altruism of my fellow human beings. Perhaps there will be financial reward somewhere down the road for them but, for the present, these individuals have dedicated their time, energy and heart to researching, designing and providing quality online educational opportunities to thousands for free. If you’re interested just enter "Campus 2.0" in Google Scholar. It appears in the March 13, 2013 edition of Nature, the International Weekly Journal of Science and is written by M. Mitchell Waldrup. I tried linking it several times to this blog post for convenience and although it appears in "edit/draft" mode every time, as soon as I hit the "publish" button, it vanishes. Poof!!

Taking it outside our borders

As one might expect, the use of social media tools (SMT’s)or SNT's (social network tools)as they are called in the article on Ghana, is not as ubiquitous outside of the U.S. and other “first world” countries as one might like to think. Despite the fact that technology could potentially lend much needed support to the educational systems in poorer countries with low literacy rates there are several barriers to the widespread implementation and use of SMT’s and technology in general. One of the more obvious barriers is the initial cost and resources required to establish an acceptable technological infrastructure in less developed and developing countries. Another resembles one we experience within U.S. borders as well: Resistance from champions of more traditional forms of instruction which oftentimes results from their unfamiliarity with, fear of or unwillingness to learn to use the new technologies. In some countries, such as China, SMT’s are banned entirely. Why? They are perceived as a threat to and by the government. Particularly in those countries where the governing authorities discourage freedom of speech. They fear that SMT’s might allow for people to self-organize rapidly and band together in protest of perceived or real injustices. This fear is justifiable. In his book, “Here comes Everybody”, Shirky (2008) references the unrest the Belarusian Government was unable to quieten, the challenges the Catholic church was unable to ignore because of the self-organizing power of the people via the web (pg.23). Social media provides a platform for opinions and allows these opinions and related stories to spread at astonishing or “viral” rates. We are truly blessed to live in a country that allows and encourages free exchange of opinions and ideas across any platform; even when they are neither complimentary towards government officials currently in office nor their policies.

A Possible Aide to Unifying Society

Know one of the things I like about interacting via social media? I am exposed to viewpoints other than my own which make me think twice about any given subject in which I am interested. Also the exposure occurs in a nicely-controlled environment. No one is going to pull a gun and shoot me over the Internet or start stalking me at home because we happen to disagree (especially since I use a pseudonym for any posts of consequence). Supposedly, when we surround ourselves with only like-minded people, we tend to grow closed and intolerant of those outside our "club". Therefore, wide exposure to varying points of view helps contribute to a “less-fragmented and polarized society” (Cited by Kim et al, 2013 referencing Mutz, 2002; Stroud, 2010 and Sunstein, 2001). What are your thoughts?

Pre-engagement with social media

In my last post, I addressed the age factor as a possible hindrance to the adoption of Web 2.0 tools for pedagogy. After just reading Goodyear’s article, I felt compelled to add as a possible facilitator the love of social media as leverage…a much more positive approach or fix to the issue at hand. People, including teachers, use Facebook and Twitter all the time for personal, social interaction. If someone already loves and uses a tool, it should be relatively simple to help them make the jump to also using it for professional reasons, no?

Revolution

I read a classmate’s blog in which she shared the general consensus seems to be that, while all acknowledge the tremendous opportunities Web 2.0 affords their field, few educators and educational institutions seem to be actually utilizing it - let alone to its fullest potential. I too have noticed this recurring theme in much of the literature I have read on Web 2.0 and learning. The question is “Why not?” It occurred to me that it could be as simple an issue as the changing of the guard. According to CNN Money Online from 6/17/2013, it appears that many college professors have delayed retirement due to the recent economic crisis (“Professors teach into their golden years” by Melanie Hicken). This means that younger professors are experiencing more difficulty in obtaining tenure track positions. Today’s online version of The Chronicle of Higher Education, states: “The American professoriate is aging. Six years ago, the last time the National Study of Postsecondary Faculty was completed by the Education Department, the average age for full-time professors was 49.6 (54 for tenured faculty members). In 1993, the average age was 48 (51.9 for tenured professors). Today it's not unusual for colleges to have faculty members teaching and working in their 70s, or even 80s”. Clearly then, the majority of our higher ed teachers are pre-digital Natives and later. That implies the incumbent educators would have to learn new tricks, new teaching strategies and modify curriculum to be effective in an online environment. As a student in this class it is obvious that several classmates spend much of their time online and working with different Web 2.0 tools. They are completely comfortable in this arena. Some of us, on the other hand, must grapple with learning new material, in new ways, in unfamiliar territory. That means those of us who are less tech savy, have a steeper learning curve. Maybe, when the entire “Golden Generation” has disappeared from the world of academia, we will witness the educational revolution that has been predicted for over the past two decades. Opinions?

Just how Social are Social Media Tools within the Learning Environment?

The Thompson article in our assigned readings this week provided some refreshing insight on the topic of SMT's in learning environments. The study focused on the students' use of first person singular and plural pronouns and verb types used when describing their learning experiences with SMT's. As a result of the study, the authors concluded that, while a small measure of "collective intelligence" was achieved (a main goal of the use of SMT's in education)and "group-oriented and self-oriented utterances were evident", the use of both verbs and first person singular pronouns when describing their activities pointed to a more traditional, autonomous mode of operating. Having now ingested several articles which clearly point to SMT's being the wave of the future in business and education, I have also come to recognize that, like face-to-face relationships, it takes time to create truly effective ones....even in the fast-paced world of Web 2.0. We are accustomed to asking Google for a definition and receiving a reply in 0.29 seconds or similar. We are not accustomed to the idea that anything (learning, relationships, information-seeking, yes, ANYTHING) should still require time. Has technology made our lives easier? That's definitely a loaded question. Of course, it's easier to jump in a car and drive to the store than walk or bike to it. It's way easier/faster to stick a frozen dinner in the micro and "nuke" it for a few minutes than to light a fire (or turn the stove on) and cook a meal in a pot for an hour. But what are we doing with all the extra time that technology is affording us? How are we handling being so much faster and more efficient? Less stress? More quality time for relaxing with family and friends or just more time to do...what? For all our progress, it still takes time to build a relationship and it still takes 10 months (yes, 40 weeks) to grow a baby in utero.

And so on....

Yesterday and today I started looking at media tools for creating timelines. The first one I looked at was Dipity but didn't really like the format. In my opinion it is not visually appealing or free-flowing. So I moved on to Capzles. At first glance Capzles seemed to fit the bill: Nice flow, allows for audio and image uploading, sharing and so on. However, it is nowhere as simple as I was first led to think. It's got some peculiarities that you've got to figure out how to work around. Next I looked at the new tools for this week and watched the tutorials on Yahoo pipes, MeeMoo and Popcorn Maker. And I asked myself, "Self, why do we need these? What makes them different from some of the curating tools we investigated earlier?" Maybe they offer some hidden benefit I haven't discovered yet but nothing I saw was appealing enough to encourage further exploration. It's also possible that people just want their 15 minutes of fame and so keep creating and adding to the already HUGE stack of tools that exist out there on the Web. However, the triumph here for me is that I waded out into the water on my own with the timeline tools. Before this class, I would never have thought to go looking for some media tool, independently (i.e. of my own volition). Progress is being made. Maybe Dr. Dennen will make good on her threat to turn me into a techie after all. I hope every one has a a safe and wonderful July 4th. Independence is a wonderful thing.