Final Paper for Technology for Teaching & Learning with Technology

Reflection on: Technology for Teaching and Learning with Technology

     EDU 651 explored a number of educational technology tools with special emphasis on technologies for online collaboration. Also discussed were some of the current issues pertaining to education and Web 2.0.

Blogs, Wikis, Social-Networking, and Social Bookmarking Services

Blogs and Wikis

     With the advent of easy web publishing, we see the evolution of the Internet into Web 2.0 or, as Sir Tim Berners-Lee ( the inventor of the World Wide Web) calls it, the Read/Write Web (Richardson, 2009, p. 2.) According to Richardson, Blogs (short for Weblogs) are “easily created, easily updateable Websites that allow an author (or authors) to publish instantly to the Internet from any Internet connection” (2009, p. 9). A wiki is a collaborative web space where, once published, anyone can add to or edit content.

     The most important difference between blogs and wikis is that the information in a blog remains constant until the author wishes to edit or replace it while a wiki is open to continuous change either by specified users or from the general public. Both are tremendous tools for education with an almost infinite number of applications. Educator Alison Black (2005) describes how blogging can benefit students:

     I found that students tend to write more formally because they are acutely aware that their written responses will be read by both the instructor and their peers. Also, they are able to reread and, consequently, revise their own work for clarity in communication.

     Richardson (2009, p. 63) described how students at Westwood High in Camilla, Georgia, created the now-famous Flat Classroom Project wiki in 2007 (flatclassroom project@wikispaces.com ). Teacher Vicki Davis contacted a teacher in Bangladesh. Between the two classrooms, students conducted a two-week investigation into some of the “flatteners” that Thomas Friedman described in his book; The World is Flat (Richardson, 2009, p. 63). They collaboratively produced narratives, essays, audio, and video for their project (Richardson 2009, p. 62).

Social Networking

     There are many applications for social networking. In this course, projects were done using Ning, Facebook, and Twitter. Ning could be described as a step beyond a blog but not quite as far as a wiki. Ning can be used to set up a social network on any subject desired. Setting up a Ning is intuitive - with modules that can be plugged in to maximize its utility. The social network widely used by students, Facebook, has a surprising number of educational applications. Invitation-only groups can be made on Facebook, too. These groups can be used for asynchronous discussions, video- and photo-sharing, games, and live chat. Micro-blogging on another social networking tool, Twitter, is a popular fad that, with discipline, can be transformed into a useful idea- and information-sharing network.

Social Bookmarking

     Delicious (formerly Del.icio.us) is one of a growing number of social bookmarking services that help organize, categorize, and share bookmarks. This is enormously helpful for research and for sharing sources. The important aspect of social bookmarking is the emergence of tagging as a means of classifying information. In the past, information was gathered into encyclopedias by expert taxonomists. Now, information is being tagged by millions of amateurs (Richardson, 2009, p. 88). Instead of being disorganized and inefficient, Richardson says the tagging means:

     Thus we get connected to information in way that traditional libraries cannot duplicate. And the more people contribute in the creation of folksonomies, the more valuable they become to all who participate.

Professional Learning Communities

     The “Minds on Fire” article by John Seely Brown and Richard P. Adler excites the imagination with examples of how online collaboration is already being used. Brown & Adler describe niche learning communities:

     Finding and joining a community that ignites a student’s passion can set the stage for the student to acquire both deep knowledge about a subject (“learning about”) and the ability to participate in the practice of a field through productive inquiry and peer-based learning (“learning to be”)(2009, p.28).

     As I’ve stated elsewhere in this course, I believe that our traditional institutions of higher learning will evolve into a system in which we are awarded certificates of mastery in individual pursuits as opposed to general degrees. My belief was somewhat vindicated when I recently looked ahead at the text for my next two courses (e-Learning by Design, by William Horton,) and saw this:

     Learners will have access to millions of billions of knowledge modules. Some will be Web-pages with simple text and graphics. Others may include multimedia simulations. Some may consists of coupons for a video-conference with a human expert….When learners have a need for knowledge, they will engage a diagnostic procedure....The result of this diagnosis will be a request to a database….The needed modules will be rounded up and herded into a structure comprising a lesson or a document custom tailored to the needs of the individual who requested it…The custom set of experiences may take minutes or months to consume. The result, though, will be a shift from mass-manufactured to handcrafted education (2006, p. 580).

Now that’s exciting!

Strengths and Weaknesses of the Course

Weaknesses

(I’ve always been a “bad-news-first” kind of person.)

•  The instructions for many of the assignments were unspecific in many cases.
• There were no written instructions to change student security settings in the class roster so that the invitation mass emails could be sent (a possible solution could have been for the instructor to post a list of all of the email addresses in the discussion forum).
•  We had no opportunity to learn from the instructor’s experience or knowledge of the subject. It would be nice to have an audio or video-conference to become acquainted with both instructor and our classmates.
• RSS Feeds are very useful for research and ongoing education is RSS feeds. They were all but ignored in this course (only mentioned as an addition to one question – “Pros & Cons of RSS Feeds & Social Bookmarking Services”). The chapter on them was not included in the required reading. If that chapter had been read at the beginning of the course, by the end of the six weeks, each student could have had a valuable tool working for them that could be shared with other students. 
• The exploration of Delicious stops just short of being really helpful. There could have been a hands-on assignment requiring its use to research a subject and then posting a screen capture of a listing of the results.

     The other overlooked chapters in the Richardson text (Flickr and Multimedia Publishing) are extremely cogent as well. Perhaps there was just too much content to be covered in one class. I sincerely hope these topics will be revisited soon (although it appears the next two classes focus more on design than on basic “how-to”).

Strengths of the Course

The primary strength of this course lies in the hands-on experiences:

• Creating our own blogs and Delicious accounts gave us a tool we will be using in one form or another probably for the rest of our lives.
•  Working with Jing, Twitter, and Facebook gave us exposure to trends we may not have explored before (and may have underestimated)
• .Creating Ning and PBWorks accounts put into our hands the creative tools we will be using as a starting point for class design. 
• The miserable, in-the-dark, slogging our way through new territory forced us to explore and learn outside of our comfort zones.

Personal Experience

     I haven’t taught quite a few years now. That means that my only experience with these technology tools is at home or in this program. Eight years ago, (in another graduate program,) I made a vestigial website. What took me days then would take me moments today with PBWorks. It is much easier now! However, without that experience, making the wiki in this course would have been more difficult. The wiki class I made was very satisfying. It was thrilling to see the potential of this tool brought to life. I would truly like to use it one day. In combination with a Ning group for discussion and possibly a Facebook group for live chat, it would come close to a miniature learning management system (LMS).

     I set up several RSS Feeds on Google Reader and set them to show up on my iGoogle home page. That has become a place for me to visit every time I am on the computer. Between that and my Delicious account, I will be pulling in prodigious amounts of information on educational technology - hopefully all of it efficiently organized!

     I had already started a blog site in my previous class. With this class, I truly learned how to use it. Thanks to the Richardson text, I can now use Google Docs to upload Word documents to my blog. My blog is part diary of the course and part showcase (portfolio?) for all of the major papers I will write in this program. Blogging (writing) is in my blood. Now that I’ve been exposed, I will probably do some form of blog for the rest of my life!

     I have been on Facebook for almost 2 years now. I had not kept up with its evolution so I missed the addition of all of those intriguing applications. (I’m embarrassed to say I hadn’t even noticed that tab on the toolbar.) Now Facebook has become a support system for me with a few of my classmates. It helps tremendously to hear someone else’s take on a vague instruction! The live chat feature has been great for providing and receiving encouragement during late-night due date sessions.

Conclusion

     This course was an excellent, hands-on, introduction to contemporary technology tools that can be used in education. The discussions on current issues in educational and technology (privacy, “Minds on Fire,” Piaget) were thought-provoking and enlightening. Through the discussion board, we learn from each other – a beginning of social learning. I hope to see true collaboration in future courses because I believe we benefit greatly by learning from and teaching each other.

References

Black, Alison. (2005). The use of asynchronous discussion: Creating a text of talk.

Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education [Online serial], 5(1).

Available: http://www.citejournal.org/vol5/iss1/languagearts/article1.cfm

Brown, J.S. & Adler, R.P. (2008). Minds on fire: Open Education, the Long Tail, and Learning

2.0. EDUCAUSE, January/February.

Horton, William. (2006). E-Learning by Design. San Francisco: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Richardson, Will (2009). Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms.

Thousand Oaks, California: Corwin Press.

Young, Jeffrey R., (2009, July 20). When Computers Leave the Class, so does Boredom. The

Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved from http://chronicle.com/article/TeachNaked-Effort-Strips/47398/