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.....!
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Wiki Week in Technology for Teaching & Learning with Technology
Remember the old Chinese Proverb, "May you live in interesting times"? Well, this has been another interesting week. Felt like the ground was wobbling beneath me until about halfway through. Week 2 of the course was devoted to reading and thinking "critically about relevant technologies related to online collaboration" and exploring and designing "learning activities using relevant technologies" (EDU651 assignment text).
For the first discussion post, we read from the West text the chapters on creating wikis for education. We were to discuss the possible pitfalls of using wikis for education. It seems to me that all of the pitfalls mentioned can be avoided through scrupulous planning and design of the wiki and preparation of the learners. The West book has excellent advice for each of those requirements.
For the second discussion post, we read from the West book again in the chapters relating to three main types of educational wikis for: Knowledge Construction, Critical Thinking, and Contextual Application. For each category of wiki, eight ideas for wikis were described (for example, under wikis for Knowledge Construction, development of a Historical Timeline wiki was explained). The assignment was to describe a wiki we might design in each of the three categories, choosing one to use as our larger project in this course.
The Learning Activities for this week were setting up a blog, a Tweeting account, and a wiki. The wiki created will incorporate the idea chosen in the second post for the wiki assignment. Very confused as to this assignment as I do not see any reference to its completion/due date/ scoring, etc. beyond the task to choose one and these words in the Week 2 instructions, "Once your wiki is created, you will start developing a learning activity that takes full advantage of the wiki capability. It's completion will be in Week 4." The Week 4 Overview does not mention this at all, not even in the "point value" section. Clear as mud! It seems that we are destined to muddle through these assignments without enlightenment. I feel like Grasshopper asking, "Is this a test, Master?"
As for what I actually learned this week...
Wikis are far more than I realized. They take blogging a giant step onward from publishing into collaboration and collaborative publishing. After reading the statistics in the Richardson text, my respect for Wikipedia rose prodigiously. Especially telling is this quote from Richardson (2009, p. 56), "So when mistakes occur or vandals strike, the collaborative efforts of the group set it straight, usually very quickly. University of Buffalo Professor Alex Halavais tested this by creating thirteen errors on various posts on Wikipedia, all of which were fixed within a couple of hours (Halavais 2004)."
I was delighted to finally be able to master uploading some of my Word documents to my blog. It was very easy to get started on Twitter and fascinating to start the Wiki. I will be doing a wiki assignment for a theoretical high school APEnglish class to create stories with each small group working in a different genre. There is a lot of work to be done there. I was pretty tickled when I managed to make a few pages and make them link back to the home page. That was such a nightmare eight or nine years ago when I first created a webpage for a graduate class at Mt. St Mary's. Each page was about fifteen steps back then. This is incredibly simple by comparison.
I signed up to take the PBWorks webinar next Wednesday on wiki development basics. I didn't see any clear and easy way to build a sidebar on the page. Hoping to learn that and other button tips. Need to work on content as well. If Moodle is truly free (as I have heard), I might try to find a way to have a discussion thread in the wiki project.
The two texts for the class are:
West, James A. & West, Margaret L. (2009). Using Wikis for Online Collaboration: the Power of the Read-Write Web by James West and Margaret West. San Francisco: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Richardson, Will (2009). Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms. Thousand Oaks, California: Corwin Press.
For the first discussion post, we read from the West text the chapters on creating wikis for education. We were to discuss the possible pitfalls of using wikis for education. It seems to me that all of the pitfalls mentioned can be avoided through scrupulous planning and design of the wiki and preparation of the learners. The West book has excellent advice for each of those requirements.
For the second discussion post, we read from the West book again in the chapters relating to three main types of educational wikis for: Knowledge Construction, Critical Thinking, and Contextual Application. For each category of wiki, eight ideas for wikis were described (for example, under wikis for Knowledge Construction, development of a Historical Timeline wiki was explained). The assignment was to describe a wiki we might design in each of the three categories, choosing one to use as our larger project in this course.
The Learning Activities for this week were setting up a blog, a Tweeting account, and a wiki. The wiki created will incorporate the idea chosen in the second post for the wiki assignment. Very confused as to this assignment as I do not see any reference to its completion/due date/ scoring, etc. beyond the task to choose one and these words in the Week 2 instructions, "Once your wiki is created, you will start developing a learning activity that takes full advantage of the wiki capability. It's completion will be in Week 4." The Week 4 Overview does not mention this at all, not even in the "point value" section. Clear as mud! It seems that we are destined to muddle through these assignments without enlightenment. I feel like Grasshopper asking, "Is this a test, Master?"
As for what I actually learned this week...
Wikis are far more than I realized. They take blogging a giant step onward from publishing into collaboration and collaborative publishing. After reading the statistics in the Richardson text, my respect for Wikipedia rose prodigiously. Especially telling is this quote from Richardson (2009, p. 56), "So when mistakes occur or vandals strike, the collaborative efforts of the group set it straight, usually very quickly. University of Buffalo Professor Alex Halavais tested this by creating thirteen errors on various posts on Wikipedia, all of which were fixed within a couple of hours (Halavais 2004)."
I was delighted to finally be able to master uploading some of my Word documents to my blog. It was very easy to get started on Twitter and fascinating to start the Wiki. I will be doing a wiki assignment for a theoretical high school APEnglish class to create stories with each small group working in a different genre. There is a lot of work to be done there. I was pretty tickled when I managed to make a few pages and make them link back to the home page. That was such a nightmare eight or nine years ago when I first created a webpage for a graduate class at Mt. St Mary's. Each page was about fifteen steps back then. This is incredibly simple by comparison.
I signed up to take the PBWorks webinar next Wednesday on wiki development basics. I didn't see any clear and easy way to build a sidebar on the page. Hoping to learn that and other button tips. Need to work on content as well. If Moodle is truly free (as I have heard), I might try to find a way to have a discussion thread in the wiki project.
The two texts for the class are:
West, James A. & West, Margaret L. (2009). Using Wikis for Online Collaboration: the Power of the Read-Write Web by James West and Margaret West. San Francisco: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Richardson, Will (2009). Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms. Thousand Oaks, California: Corwin Press.
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