"Minds on Fire" Critical Thinking Response Assignment - Week Four

Minds on Fire Response

John Seely Brown and Richard P. Adler, in the article, “Minds on Fire: Open Education, the Long Tail, and Learning 2.0,” discuss the evolution of education as a result of “massive improvements in transportation and communication” (2008, p. 17).

“Flat World” Implications

According to Brown and Adler, the educational implications of Thomas Friedman’s “flat world” are:

 

 Every place has the potential to become globally connected and competitive 

• The places that are globally connected are the ones with a well-educated workforce with skills that are in demand 
• To remain competitive, that workforce must also be learning and creating new ideas and skills (2008, p. 17-18)

Initiatives

 

There have been efforts introduced to deal with this demand for continuous and evolving education. Three of these efforts are the Open Educational Resources (OER) Movement, MIT’s Open Courseware (OCW) initiative, and the Terra Incognita virtual project based in Queensland. A present-day implication of these efforts is, according to Brown and Adler, a new “culture of sharing, one in which content is freely contributed and distributed with few restrictions or costs (2008, p. 18). An impact we will be seeing developed fully in the future is the focus on social learning. Richard J. Light (2001) found that “students who studied in groups, even only once a week, were more engaged in their studies, were better prepared for class and learned significantly more than students who worked on their own” (as cited in Brown & Adler, 2008, p. 18). This demonstrates a change in focus from knowledge transfer (the Cartesian view) to the “learning activities and human interactions around which that content is situated” (Brown & Adler, 2008, p. 18). Three of the benefits of group learning are: 

• Clarifying meaning by asking questions
• Receiving the information by auditory means through discussion
• Learning by teaching others (Brown & Adler, 2008, p. 18)

Professional Learning Communities

 

Brown and Adler state correctly that professional learning communities will be the next major frontier in education. It has already begun. Through the Internet, professionals have begun interacting with students in countless ways from an author’s commenting on a student blog about his/her book (see “Trainer-Expert Collaboration” in Shank, 2007, p, 150) to the “collaborative projects between students and expert astronomers” in the Faulkes Telescope Project (Brown & Adler, 2008, p. 24).

 

Learning 2.0

 

The Internet has changed the way students learn. There is so much course material available online that a student can “find and join niche communities where they can benefit from the opportunities for distributed cognitive apprenticeship” (Brown & Adler, 2008, p. 28). Instead of just learning “deep knowledge,” students can join a learning community and “participate in the practice of a field through productive inquiry and peer-based learning “(Brown & Adler, 2008, p. 28). As Brown & Adler say, when differentiating this “learning to be” from simply “learning about,” these (learning) “communities are harbingers of the emergence of a new form of technology-enhanced learning - Learning 2.0 - which goes beyond providing free access to traditional course materials and educational tools and creates a participatory architecture for supporting communities of learners (2008, p. 28).

 

Equality Issue

 

It is to be hoped that someday the freedoms we cherish in this country will be common to all citizens of the planet. Access to high-speed Internet (and thereby all available knowledge) may very well become one of the essential freedoms assigned to every human being. A student without convenient, free access to a computer and the Internet is at a tremendous disadvantage. Such a student is effectively shut out of Learning 2.0. In the footnotes to the article, “Minds on Fire: Open Education, the Long Tail, and Learning 2.0,” Brown and Adler state:

 

R. Natarajan, the former director of the Indian Institute of Technology-Madras, recently noted that “the half-life of knowledge” in many technical areas is now less than four years. If this is true, then 50 percent of what students learn as undergraduates will be obsolete by the time they graduate and begin seeking employment (Adler, 2007, n.p. as cited in Brown & Adler, 2008, p. 32).

 

Not only will that student be left behind in current education, but that adult will also be unprepared for the lifelong learning that will be the model of the future.

 

Conclusion

 

It is not possible to build the major university each week that Sir John Daniel mentioned in 1996 (Brown & Adler, 2008, p. 17). It is, however, quite possible that the 4-year undergraduate institutions that we see today will no longer exist in the future. With knowledge changing constantly, it would be more likely that we will instead see credentials of acquired competence, which will be as fluid as the subject matter itself.

 

References

 

Brown, J.S. & Adler, R.P. (2008). Minds on Fire: Open Education, the Long Tail, and Learning 2.0. EDUCAUSE, January/February.

 

Shank, P. (Ed). (2007). The Online Learning Idea Book: 95 Proven Ways to Enhance Technology-Based and Blended Learning. San Francisco: Wiley & Sons.

 

Week Four

     Week Four gave me what I've been wanting in this program - an introduction to course design.
Building on the accounts opened in the previous week, I created a fictitious APEnglish class story creation project.  Links to those classes are on the sidebar.

      The most useful tool is the wiki on PBWorks.  It was much easier than I had feared it would be.  Eight years ago, while attending classes for a Master's in Education, I was instructed to build a webpage.  The number of steps required to make even the simplest page was unbelievable by today's standards.  All it took was a simple click on a button and typing in the name of the page to create a page.  One more click made a link to return to the original page.  Amazing.  I was able to make a home page with instructions to the student and separate pages for each assignment to take the small groups from choosing a topic and brainstorming the characters and setting all of the way to posting the finished product for peer review and then for public view on the web.  I learned how to download photos, clip-art, themes, and even videos to the wiki. 

     The Ning class was the easiest to set up, but probably not the most useful. It didn't have the versatility in terms of setting up different pages as the wiki.  It would be wonderful for blogging and for a discussion board tool.  The themes for the site were rich and well-designed.  A very nice feature is the photo slideshow capability. 
    
     The Facebook page was, well, not as versatile as the wiki or as eye-catching and intuitive as the Ning.  It is possible to make the group secret, by invitation only, which alleviates some of the security concerns presented by Facebook's more open features. 

     The "Minds on Fire" critical thinking exercise on the article of the same name by John Seely Brown and Richard P. Adler (2008) was a thought-provoking look at the future of education and learning in general.  My response to the listed questions will be included as a separate document. 

Reference

Brown, J.S. & Adler, R.P. (2008). Minds on Fire: Open Education, the Long Tail, and Learning 2.0. EDUCAUSE, January/February.

Week Three: Facebook Privacy & Applications; Ning

Week Three saw some passionate discussions!

Discussion One: Facebook Privacy
The issue of Facebook privacy and the teacher who was fired for a thoughtless post to a Friend on Facebook brought out vehemence and strong statements of opinion and values. The general consensus was that the teacher was foolish,unprofessional, and naive. The school system was harsh, probably because of the public eye (it was a television expose piece on educators using Facebook). However, the school system had no policies covering internet social networking systems, so I believe that the teacher's lawyer will probably see her reinstated...if she wishes to go back there. The lesson for all educators is that the Internet is not private. No one should post anything they wouldn't put in front of someone they respect whose opinion matters (some suggested a pastor). Many classmates addressed the fact that, as educators, we are held up as role models even in our private lives - fair or unfair as that may seem. We are public figures. Some addressed the issue of an employer determining what we do in our private time.

Only one or two touched upon it, but I really feel that everyone needs to use good judgment in our conduct - public and private. We tend to become lazy in the way we speak and act around those we consider friends or Friends. Good manners, courtesy, self-control, and self-discipline went out of style or at least favor in the Seventies. We need to go back to a more formal time in which we show more respect to one another...without all of the chauvinism, racism, and class schisms this time!

Discussion Post Two:  Facebook Applications
The second Discussion Post covered our exploration into Facebook applications. As I shamefacedly admitted in a response, I have become so rabidly against reading sidebar ads that I had not examined closely the Facebook page as it has evolved over the last year and a half that I have had an account. I never looked a the tab marked "Facebook Applications." Upon being invited to participate in a game, and receiving a request to allow the application access to my profile information, I immediately Canceled and have Ignored all subsequent requests. When following my assignment instructions, I looked at the applications then Browsed the entire list of applications.

What I found changed my mind altogether. It is not simply a list of time-wasting games and frivolous "look at me" venues. There are a great number of educational and worthwhile social applications available there. I critiqued "I Remember,"Visual Bookshelf," and "Cities I've Visited." The application not found there that I proposed is one for a Grammar Question Board with a grammar game as well. There are many word games out there but none for proper grammar - one of my passions.

Learning Activity:  Ning Account

The Learning Activity for this week was to create a Ning account and explore it's application to education or business. I had already created a Ning account during our Week One exploration of learning tools. The topic-centered social network group I created was "Elephant Statue Lovers." I created another group for this class and worked on the page a little. There will be more development in Week 4's Learning Activity. Finally, I found where the Wiki begun last week was mentioned again. We are to "build upon (our) Ning, Facebook, and PBWorks acounts by building (our) own Ning class, (our own)Facebook class, and (our own) PBWork class. I expect to see many questions in the Questions About the Course forum on the Discussion Board as that sentence in the instructions gives very little information about the expectations for the "Class" we are to create.

What I Learned
 I learned that there is a lot more to Facebook than I'd assumed.  I am learning how to make a web-course on PBWorks.  It's fun stuff and exactly what I'd hoped to learn from this program.  There is so much out there!  It's overwhelming. 

As per usual in this course, I'm full of doubts and concerns as to exactly what to do (in the Learning Activity for Week 4).  Truly wish there were more instructional support, a more visible pedagogical agent!  Knowing that our instructor is "there" for us doesn't help much when our questions elicit only responses that are brief & cryptic to the point of appearing computer-generated. (You will do this...").
I'm starting to wonder if the instructors aren't encouraged to do it that way - the test the course's ability to run itself.  Wouldn't it be awesome to be greeted at graduation with the information that our classes were administered by an AI?!  You never know.....!